Learning to Live Together Harmoniously Spiritual Perspectives from Indian Classrooms

Group Submission Type: Book Launch

Description of Session

The book proposes an alternative vision and practices for education for togetherness and harmony through the discovery of oneself, others, and the larger society along with a transition to harmonious ways of living and being. The current, mass educational system and its practices were born in the light of the industrial revolution, capitalism, and modernity (Cremin, 2023; Miller et al., 2018). Meanwhile, in today’s world a vastly different educational system is required; a system that propels students to learn to live and work together to deal with the many 21st century issues. In an interconnected and interdependent world, it is essential to move away from tolerating diversity to appreciating it, from stereotyping to empathetic understanding and from civic duties to intrinsic responsibility taking.

Several international development reports (Delors et al., 1996; Faure, 1972; Keevy & Chakroun, 2015; Trier, 2002; UNESCO, 2014) and educational thinkers have called for alternative forms of education, emphasising holistic education, learning to live together, character education, social emotional learning, and global citizenship education. Similarly, various Indian philosophers and spiritual leaders, like Mahatma Gandhi (1968), His Holiness Dalai Lama (Dalai Lama, 2014; Dalai Lama et al., 2009), Sri Aurobindo Ghose (Mehra, 2011; The Mother, 1977), Jiddu Krishnamurti (2000, 2013) and Rabindranath Tagore (Aronson, 1961; O’Connell, 2003; Tagore, 1929), have foregrounded various local equivalents like education of the heart, education of the spirit, education for inner flowering and education for a wholesome human being. They founded schools that have experimented to bring about this kind of education, some of which have existed for more than a century.

The book draws upon southern knowledge and primary data collected from various Indian schools that have been founded / inspired by the aforementioned Indian thinkers to build a contextualised conceptualisation of Learning To Live Together Harmoniously (LTLTH). The book also develops a novel conceptual framework with three domains for discovery of the self, other and society, that are intersected by six dimensions of “awareness”, “empathetic and caring relations”, “sense of purpose”, “change in perspective”, “compassion(ate action)” and “meaningful engagement”.

The book also explores how LTLTH can be translated into practice and shares meaningful practices that teachers adopt. This book calls for creating a continuum of lived experiences through pedagogy, systems and processes for autonomy, autonomous behaviour regulation, Teacher Student Relations, schoolwide ethos, and teachers’ ways of living and being. The book makes a case for adaption rather than the adoption of frameworks as per the local micro-contexts. It guides the reader through a practical alternative educational system that brings about togetherness and harmony through a lived experience-based pedagogy and an ethos of harmonious living. It calls for the reader to explore and define what ideas and practices for education for harmony could look like in their respective contexts.

Sub Unit

• Pre-Conference Workshops, Book launches, and Visual Art Exhibits / Book Launch

Chair

• Jinting Wu, State University of New York, University at Buffalo

Book Launch Presenter

• Jwalin Nishith Patel, Together In Development & Education (TIDE) Foundation

Discussant

• Deepa Srikantaiah, USAID, Africa BureauSD