Bringing Spirituality to Students - Value Based Spiritual Education

While thanking Dr.H.P. Kanoria and Business Economics for bringing the most valuable article concerning future generation of bringing Value Based Spiritual Education, it made me to think on what NEXT for a concerned citizens, on how to IMPLEMENT spirituality into school's life. This post is related to the thoughts of implementing VBSE in schools.

http://businesseconomics.in/?page_id=1149 “Right education will help in intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual development of a person. India can lead the world in spiritual matters, which is possible only through a value-based spiritual education.”

These above words are the last lines of the article, “CHILDREN & YOUTH - Spirituality in Education”, written by Varsha Singh in Business Economics dated Dec 1-16 2015.

This inspiring and much needed idea of bringing value-based spiritual education (VBSE) across schools in the country is great.What should be the next step towards this goal? How to plan and implement this idea. With responsibility and commitment,this should be the natural course for Business Economics publishers to take the steps forward in bringing VBSE national curriculum as a service to humanity.

Bringing a national curriculum is a huge task involving number of organizations. This could be done through different spiritual missions and religions co-ordinating rather than one spiritual mission or religion as they may tend to influence their own ideas and values. Since Lalaji Memorial Omega International School, Chennai is already having lesson plans; it could give an advantage over the others to do this in collaboration with other spiritual centres and educationists.

The situation demands it so much that it needs a lot more understanding on the subject as educationists will have their own different views on values. This is very natural because VBSE was not something they learned in their school days. It should be clearly understood we are talking of Value-Based ‘Spiritual Education’, which was not given in schools with the specific name and purpose. We might have moral education or value education, which are not same as VBSE.

To give the example to what extent the teachers themselves who are seen as role models, have fallen in their values, could be understood by Tamil Nadu Government’s circular issued to school teachers to dress decently.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Tamil-Nadu-teachers-told-to-mind-their-blouses/articleshow/5345859.cms

This was reported in 2009, now we are in 2016 the situation has deteriorated very badly. There are still a few teachers who command respect by their dressing sense for whom the circular may not apply. Thus, We are in need to prepare a National VBSE curriculum and VBSE teachers first before we set out to prepare students...

To start with how a teacher appears in a classroom for students is very important in VBSE. Then the inner character which is brought out by his/her teaching makes the job complete. It is also to be mentioned, that schools across the country need to define dress code for teachers, just as we have for nurses in health care.

To bring value-based spiritual education to schools, we first need to bring the qualification for teachers who can undergo the training to become teachers in VBSE. Through rigorous selection process the candidates have to be selected to undergo the training to become a VBSE teacher. The selection process could include written tests on world’s major religions, spiritual gurus of different faiths, group discussions, and interviews and finally a demo class. Candidate should select a lesson plan from the defined curriculum for the class for which candidate likes to teach.

VBSE should not be another kind of modern academic subject where tests/evaluation/retests spoil many students’s learning phase. VBSE should set the trend, where teachers set examples by practicing in different. To prepare the future generation the values and spiritual quality of the teachers who set examples to students should not be compromised on any reason. Since selection process is kept rigorous, to get the best candidates to nurture the future generations to come, the salaries for these teachers should be the best.

The selected candidates must undergo the same training across the country without any exception. Therefore the selection, training and finally the curriculum for all classes should be made at National Level. It is to follow the idea of ‘Vasudeva Kutumbakam’. When the whole world is to be treated as one global family, then VBSE should also be the same for everyone who makes this mother earth our home. India’s globalization of education should really begin with same lesson plans on spirituality for all children of this human race wherever they attend school. ‘Up, India, and conquer the world with your Spirituality’, let these words of Swami Vivekananda come to a reality with VBSE lesson plans for all children of this earth. Let’s do that first in our own country from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, let’s have a single curriculum for VBSE.

It has to be clearly understood, that while trying to bring a universal VBSE curriculum it is not to follow so called secular education. Their definition of secularism is to keep all religions away; instead it must be defined and brought in VBSE, secularism in its true meaning that ALL RELIGIONS are to be treated equally. In fact the essence of VBSE must drive the future generation to understand and accept and practice that all different religions are only different paths leading to the same God as Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and other enlightened souls mentioned. (Schools in Sweden teach major religions in a fair way with videos to all students, which help them to understand and accept other religions.) Thus the value-based spiritual education is one where values are the steps to reach the spiritual goal. And from major religions examples should be given on how different values practiced in different places by different seekers helped them to reach their ultimate spiritual goal. When students are taught these examples from real lives of saints and Prophets from all faiths, the true meaning of secularism is achieved.

Let us remember ourselves as how in those eras of Gurukula, the guru tests the discipline of the learner before accepting him as his disciple or only after ensuring discipline is there, a guru starts giving knowledge to disciple. It is time we bring that discipline and values first among teachers, so they can set themselves as examples for discipline and values among students. VBSE should be taken up nationally with the most priority given to it, by Human Resource Development or Education Ministry. India should set the trend, to what Swami Vivekananda said, ‘Up, India, and conquer the world with your Spirituality’.

Also in Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says among the vidya I am the Atma Vidya. Thus now after 65 years of independence, let us make Spiritual Education the central focus in our school education at the earliest.