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Gandhi’s Visions Are Millennium Proof
The seeds of Mahatma Gandhi’s visions are being nurtured in India, where a school that started in 1959 with five pupils has become the largest private school in the world with 23,000 students. Today the City Montessori School is a source of inspiration for schools all around the world. Dr. Sunita Gandhi, president of the Council for Global Education in Washington, believes this system of schooling is the way to educate socially-conscious citizens for the 21st century.
Sunita Gandhi was inspired by the ideas of her parents: Mr. Jagdish Gandhi and Mrs. Bharti Gandhi. In 1959 they founded the City Montessori School in Lucknow, the capital city of the Indian federal state Uttar Pradesh. ‘Forty years ago, a young couple, my parents, had a vision of Mahatma Gandhi’, says Sunita Gandhi. ‘At their wedding they made a vow to serve humanity. They had a powerful vision, but no money. They borrowed ten dollars and started a school. They finally convinced a family to send their five children to the school. My father prayed and prayed that he would get students, and finally he got five.’
Over the years the number of pupils attending that school has grown from a hundred, to a thousand, to twenty-three thousand today. The City Montessori School provides an education for students in kindergarten through 12th grade that focuses on both academic excellence and emotional well-being. The vision of Mahatma Gandhi is incorporated in the education and is represented in the Four Building Blocks of CMS Education. Its curriculum focuses on defining values and learning about peace: students follow lessons in world citizenship, social responsibility, peace issues and religious values. Every CMS-event starts with a prayer for peace in the world.
‘My parents are still energised by their vision. That vision is of Jai-Jagat’, says Sunita Gandhi: ‘Jai-Jagat was a slogan that Mahatma Gandhi adopted, and it stands for “glory be to the world, hail the world”. This is the vision that has guided the school all these years. You can recognise the children that have been brought up in this system, they are compassionate human beings; they are world citizens.’
In 1992 the City Montessori School had an opportunity to prove
that a value-orientated education and the promotion of peace could
affect community life. On the 6th of December racial riots broke
out between Hindus and Muslims. The centre of the conflict was
the Babri mosque in the ancient city Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh,
only 40 miles away from the capital city Lucknow. Earlier, in
1990 Hindu fanatics had already attempted to demolish the mosque
thereby provoking severe religious clashes with many casualties.
Two years later another atempt to destroy the mosque was more
successful. More than 2,000 people died in the violence that followed.
‘Wars generate in the minds and hearts of people. It is therefore
their consciousness that needs reform. Education defines human
consciousness to a large measure. Therefore its role in creating
peace in the world is paramount.’
The students of the City Montessori School tried to prevent further violence. They obtained a jeep with loudspeakers from which they played tapes of students singing unity songs. Behind the jeep walked 1,000 children and several thousand parents singing and carrying posters: ‘We should live in unity.’ ‘The name of God is both Hindu and Muslim.’ ‘God is One, Mankind is One.’ ‘All Religions are One.’
The governor saw this as an opportunity to control the violence and animosity. He asked the City Montessori School to provide a meeting place for the heads of all the city’s religions. Every day these leaders of the religious community held public meetings where the leaders and community were surrounded by models of a church, a temple, and a mosque and the children would sing about unity.
Lucknow indeed escaped the violence. Could the schoolchildren have made a difference?
According to John Huddleston, a senior official with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) they did. He visited Lucknow during the riots and reported in the magazine, The Global Classroom: ‘My main impression is that this school system which has a track record of more than thirty years is making a significant contribution to the well-being of this city both in terms of quality and quantity. For instance, during the disturbance at Ayodhya [...] many towns in the area experienced civil unrest. Lucknow was an exception and many have attributed this to the moral impact of the school on the people of the city over a period of time.’
According to Sunita Gandhi education can make a big contribution to achieving peace in the world. She says: ‘I’ve lived in the USA for ten years, and feel that the problem of racism has the exact same symptoms or underlying causes as the problem of apartheid in South-Africa or the caste system in my home country India. When you divide children, when you put them into different camps, and when they do not coexist from the earliest stages of their lives, you sow the seeds for a lifetime of problems in coexistence. You can see this everywhere in the world. Children are not born prejudiced; it’s we adults who introduce prejudice into their minds. There never was a war that was not inward, as Marianne Moore once said.’
The education of the City Montessori School (CMS) is based on
the Four Fundamental Building Blocks, as promoted by the Council
for Global Education:
Building blocks
• Universal Values;
• Global Understanding;
• Excellence in All Things;
• Service to Humanity.
Taken together, these guiding principles promote the education
of the whole child. To build virtues in children, teachers integrate
an appreciation of value into the larger fabric of learning. Classroom
activities centre around collaborative problem solving. When students
write essays or participate in art, music or drama, they often
focus their work on themes such as unity, peace, respect for the
environment, or service. In addition, each day begins with a half-hour
assembly run by students on similar topics. The striving for excellence
is considered normal in the CMS. Parents and teachers are regarded
as role models for the pupils. Both groups play an important role
in the education of the children. That’s why CMS actively includes
parents in their training.
Parents are encouraged to be involved in the school curriculum
as much as possible. They read books and articles the school provides
to them with titles such as ‘How Parents Should Behave with Their
Children’ and they are also encouraged to attend special seminars
and meetings organised by the school.
Children are divided into small groups and assigned a mentor.
Sunita Gandhi: ‘A teacher-guardian is a teacher who takes on the
responsibility for the overall development, physical well-being
and moral values. they strive for a relationship that makes the
school an extension of the home.’ Learning how to serve the world
in theory is not enough. Students learn that they can make a positive
contribution to their community by participating in projects in
the city of Lucknow, like a trash collection project for example.
Every year the children plant trees in collaboration with the
Social Forestry Department. Students also adopt villages where
they educate children and adults in literacy, hygiene and first
aid.
Gandhi was educated at her parents’ City Montessori School. She has been working at the World Bank in Washington for the past ten years on issues of education, women and participatory development. Now she has left the World Bank to concentrate on her work as President of the Council for Global Education, an international non-profit making educational institution dedicated to promoting the development of the whole child.
‘Our goal is to promote a new vision of education for the 21st century’, she explains. Gandhi believes schools are places where children learn to deal with each other, whatever religion, nationality or race. The three R’s (reading, writing and arithmetic) are important skills, but the most important is that children acquire social skills and moral values.
‘In my travels and work with the World Bank, I began to realise that education the world over needs major reform, that more of the same is not enough and that in fact, there was no point expanding an education that does not produce the results we seek from it. It is fine when children and adults are empowered by the learning of the 3 R’s. However, when the same children go through the entire educational process, they emerge from it not quite so empowered and in most cases actually disabled by the education that is supposed to enable them.’
‘The increase in crime world-wide, the despondency and hopelessness among youth, the decline in values everywhere, can all be traced directly or indirectly to a lack of a proper education and a failure to focus on values, both in the formal education system and in the home.’
‘I have observed in the context of my own family’s work, that education can be a highly empowering and positive experience for children. It can make them conscious citizens of the world focusing not only on their own needs but on becoming thinking, compassionate individuals able to contribute to the betterment of the world. Education world-wide seems to be following the same core derived from the 19th century industrial revolution in England. Children are divided by age and led into career streams. The focus is entirely material. This 19th century psychology is not adequate for the needs of the 21st century.
If we want a better world, a different world, we need to organize education differently.’
‘A completely new focus in education is needed. Education needs reform at the core and not just some additions. This is why I left the World Bank and founded the Council. I knew that the Bank, which is more focused on expansion of education, would not be the best place to develop a model of education for the 21st century. Though once developed, it could be a good place for expanding it worldwide.’
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j.verhoeven@euconflict.org