Nathalie RE

N° étudiante : 204108

DU “Neurosciences et apprentissages tout au long de la vie”

UE 5 : Neuroéthique : empathie transculturelle

et conscience globale humaine

Les écoles Alice Project en Inde

un exemple d’éducation à l’interculturalité ?

Septembre 2015

Team Alice Project Primary School Teachers involved in this research. Right - second

line – Nathalie Re, the author of the thesis.

REPORT ABOUT ALICE PROJECT

  (…) Valentino Giacomin, former Italian primary school teacher and then chief editor of a newspaper, chose, upon request of the Dalai Lama in the early 90’s, to resume and continue the educational activities he had started in Italy in state schools in the 1980’s.

Valentino’s Italian experience originated by the consideration, made together with his colleague Luigina De Biasi, primary school teacher too, that it is always more and more difficult for students to keep their attention fixed on what they are doing in class. At the same time teachers have to face a drop in discipline. They suppose that those difficulties are not linked to a problem of didactics butto the fact that students “need to be fed”1. He quotes Ambedkar:

“Freedom of mind is the real freedom. Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence”2.  According to Valentino, students’ bodies and minds sufficiently fed but they lack the spiritual dimension.

The school in Sarnath has been open since 1994. Since 1997 it has been acknowledged by Uttar Pradesh government (federal system). In this respect, the school has to conform strictly to the Indian school program in full.The school welcomes students of all religions: Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and also Christians. Hindu students are the more numerous. Sarnath is a hotbed of Buddhist culture since it is place where Buddha gave his first speech. In Sarnath there is a Buddhist community and there is a cultural openness towards this religion because the town is one of the most important destinations of Buddhist pilgrimage. Most of the countries where there is an important Buddhist community have Buddhist temples among Hindu temples : Tibet, Corea, Japan, Myanmar, Buthan, and so on. (there is also a strong presence of Christians from Catholic Church – priests and nuns…). There are also Buddhist students from the Chakma minority. In fact some Chackma students are welcomed and completely taken care of by the school. (Besides Chackma there are also some tribal children from Mompa communitee, from Arunchal Pradesh). They come from the East States of India 1500 km, 2000 km far. Chaklmas come from Bangladesh, country in which they

were (and still are) oppressed and  from which they ran away en masse in 1964. They found refuge in India.  (Chakma boys and girls students at Alice Project School)

However they are considered as second-class citizens. In their villages in India most often they do not have access to electricity and water and certainly not to education. Alice Project School welcomes those students in order to allow them to find a job. Among former Chakma students who completed their course of studies at Alice Project most of them went back home, many others went to work in South India to get money and support their poor families. Those who remain mostly become teachers.

Chakma School in Arunachal Pradesh

One cannot help but wonder how this co-existence of cultures can work inside a country in which  there are many and sometimes also violent religious tensions. After

two weeks passed at the school in Sarnath, and after taking part to lessons in all primary school classes and some secondary school ones, which observations can be made as an inside observer? What is most striking is certainly the peaceful atmosphere that prevails in it. At no time I have seen violence, arguments, fighting among the students, no matter their age, at most some bickering in pre-primary school classes when students had attended schools only since two months. Another important point: students are responsible. In fact during their long 30 minute’s break in between  the morning classes, no adult supervises students. Teachers talk in their classes, relax a bit or correct their pupils’ books but no adult supervises students. Finally in the classrooms it is amazing the degree of concentration of students, their participation and above all their joy to be there.. (Students of all classes, included kindergarten children, are requested to clean their classrooms at the end of lessons).

Bodhgaya school.

This stems from the philosophy of the school founder. Valentino Giacomin has developed this special program drawing on different sources. In particular he takes inspiration from Carl Jung’s analytical psychology trying to consider the “totality” of a human being, considering it all, taking account of all its perceptions, thoughts, together with all its emotions.This way of considering the relation with education is today is endorsed by neurosciences. In fact, it is now well known that a child is not able to control emotions because of immaturity of his/her prefrontal cortex : “This area is the one in which

maturation comes later, in early adulthood (…) Prefrontal cortex is also the place where our emotional responses are controlled.”

The starting assumption of Alice Project methodology is that “sufferance is caused by a false perception of reality, known under the name of ignorance. Ignorance is the cause of mind pollution”. This principle is inspired by Buddhism (and Advaita Vedanta…) another source of inspiration of the philosophy of Alice Project. Finally, Valentino Giacomin’s main inspiration source is psychosinthesis, an approach to psychoanalysis founded by the Italian Roberto Assagioli6, referring at the same time to Freudian and Jungian approach.

Students of chakma school in Arunachal Pradesh

Psychosinthesis, which takes inspiration from Jung’s transpersonal psychology (we are a bio-psycho-spiritual unity), necessarily presupposes that human being is connected to a combination that goes beyond self, beyond its personal dimension. It is then a systemic global approach which considers human being in all its dimensions and in particular in its spiritual dimension. The term “transpersonal” is used for the first time by Jung to designate originally a “soul center”, a hidden self that can lead the individual beyond him/herself, that is to the universal. According to Roberto Assagioli human beings are not a simple mechanism and this the reason why he does not agree with Freud who, in his opinion, gives too much importance to sexuality forgetting their spiritual dimension. R. Assagioli creates a new school of psychology called “biopsychosynthesis”. It considers human beings in their totality in order to help them

find their unity. For R Assagioli body, emotions, intellect and soul must be considered as a whole, a unity, a unity of body and mind (body, mind, spirit). This represents a break with western dualistic thinking. Body and mind are closely linked and they are connected to the environment where they have evolved. This point refers to the concepts of interdependence and unity developed inside Alice Projcet schools.

From a methodological point of view, psycho synthesis has got a very practical approach.  It is a practice of opening. It uses practical exercises of self-reflection, reflections on the inner being, on one’s own perceptions and thoughts. It uses visualization techniques, body movement, through games and also intuition.

From Wise Rabbit book: “Control your thoughts and you will control the… world!”

In Alice Project special program, used every day in each course of study from kindergarten to class 12 (which is corresponds more or less to the final class in France) in addition to compulsory academic programs, there are elements of psychosynthesis: “ We try to make …chains”7. Students join a program which make them be aware of and distance from their own emotions and origins. Students are led to be aware of the chain which is being used: false or imprecise perceptions come from thoughts, images which are the results of false ideas or from inappropriate emotions activating physical reactions, comments, motivations, decisions, actions and to finish the results, the

consequences of those actions for oneself and for the others8. The idea is to encourage students to be skeptical about the vision of the world they have reached following their false thoughts. This method is called “cognitive deconstruction”9. “We encourage students to build a new vision of themselves and of the world”, according to new educational paradigms basically based on the following principles:·         Interdependence·         Causes and effects·         Unity·         Interior/exterior·         Limits and borders·         EmotionsIn order to help students understand these concepts, teachers use different methods which can be used by the students themselves outside academic courses or can be included in their classes, for instance in English.

Objectives:

Special program: Know yourself and become friend of your shadow and light.

The special program aims to reach several goals, little by little, year by year. Those goals cannot be classified in a particular order because all of them are used starting from a very young age by means of simple methods. You can say that the main goal, crowning all the other ones, is that of reducing the sufferance of the individual by understanding that sufferance is inside false thoughts and inside the projections of

mind (the projection of our thoughts on the external reality, without recognizing them as our own creation). Of course this goal must be put in relation to the Buddhist background of the school founder10 and the wisdom of Hindu philosophers and sages who discovered the concept of Maya, illusion. All the other objectives are in a way or another linked to this main one. They teach the students to get to know themselves, to distinguish their thoughts from reality by emphasizing that we create our exterior world on the basis of our perceptions and that those perceptions are often wrong (objectively wrong, as she/he really is). So students are led to become aware of their own mental projections, of their subjective world. They are also taught to know the origin and the nature of their emotions. They work as well on the concept of interdependence so as to understand that they are in interaction and interconnection with others and with their environment. This to let them (re)gain their potential of benevolence and wisdom, (re)gain their unity (here there is a link with Assagioli’s psychosynthesis). In conclusion, the main objective is to create an individual who is fully aware of her/his humanity in all its dimensions. (“Help the students to understand that they are not a simple, small island“).

Methods

Children work on all these objectives starting from their very early age, since their arrival at school often at the age of four. Kindergarten teachers we met in Sarnath and Bodghaya  (the equivalent of our nursery school) point out that very quickly children settle, calm down, open their mind and are less and less at the mercy of their thoughts and slaves to their emotions. I met the children and I spent several days in the classrooms of nursery and kindergarten at Sarnath and Bodghaya schools. Children were well schooled  after only two months of school and they were already able to express in a simple way and conscientiously the perceptions and emotions they felt. . They were calm, they could concentrate for 20 or 30 minutes on a math task, which was itself interspersed with breaks aiming at bringing the student back to a concentration state necessary for learning. Breaks can vary according to what teachers perceive. So students are invite to listen to the sound of a drum and move their body following the rhythm played by the teacher. When they are older  they can be asked to close their eyes and visualize a series of objects or figures and afterward they  are asked repeat the sequence in the right order and then in the opposite order and then tell which number is between other two. This requires a strong concentration effort and

also a certain training. After one or two years, students can repeat  without any mistake and without hesitation a series of figures that can contain 25 or even 30 items. We are far beyond the 7 items commonly used in the short-term memory storage. The visualization technique is not only used to focus on something but also to memorize lessons, repeat essential points, always eyes shut, before in mind and then aloud. Students practice also candle meditation paying attention to their breathing. It consists in staring at a candle flame for some minutes (Meditation on breath is different from meditation on the candle and concentration). When students reach their classrooms in the morning, they are also asked to recall what they have seen or felt since they woke up. Then, on a voluntary basis (that never fails), some students can express themselves, tell their stories, with no judgment.

Be aware of you feeling and emotions: a white ball for happiness; a yellow one for feeling “so, so” and a black one for negative emotion.

In the classrooms, in Sarnath primary school, every morning, students start their school day with an “emotional check-up” in which each student puts a ball in a bowl choosing the colour of the ball according to her/his emotional state. They can choose among three colours: yellow means “I’m happy”, white means “I’m very happy” , black means “I’m not happy”. After roll call, teachers check the colours of the balls in the bowl and if they notice a black ball they ask the student the reason of his/her choice. I was impressed to observe that  students talked freely. Often it was because of fever. A

teacher says that it can happen that some students do not feel like talking in front of the whole class. In that case they take time to listen to them separately.

Interview to a Primary School teacher.

This teacher, when asked about this morning practice, explains it in the following way:”How could I start my lessons  If I was not aware of the emotional state of my students, how could I start to work with them if I was not sure that my students are in the mental state to receive it?”11 This practice, aiming at taking into account the student’s emotional state instead of ignoring it by asking the student to leave his/her worries behind the door, is today well documented and approved by neuroscience researches. Child’s emotional,  psychic and also intellectual development is at stake as Dr. Catherine Gueguen points out. 12 She focuses especially on stress, which a child is not able to manage alone at an age in which his/her amygdale is perfectly matured, unlike his/her  prefrontal cortex that will be matured much later at the beginning of adult age: “When a teacher integrates this knowledge about  stress harmful effects on a child’s brain, they modify their way of teaching and children are not exposed to useless pressure. Classroom atmosphere becomes pleasant both for teachers and students, students are ready to learn and their performance improves.”13 Teaching methods which banish stress completely are much more (…) satisfactory and allow students to learn better, to memorize better and to be more creative”.14Nevertheless, Alice Project schools  intend to go beyond this laudable objective of giving importance to  emotions.

According to Valentino Giacomin, emotions are the result of our thoughts, the product of our perceptions (the five senses) and still of our memory.  It is a matter of helping students become aware of the fact that thoughts are not reality and little by little gain some distance “through a process of deconstruction going back to the root of emotions”. This approach refers to the concept of individuation described by Jung. Jung writes, in his work Psycological types, that individuation “is the process of formation and differentiation of the individual; more specifically of the psychological individual as being distinct from the general, collective psychology. Individuation is a process of psychological differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality”. V. Giacomin distinguishes between two phases. Initially a first phase during which the child is fused with his/her own emotions. During this phase children cannot differentiate themselves from their own emotions, they are a unit with them and this can be expressed by “I’m sad”. The “I” being one with emotions, there is fusion between the “I” and the emotion. Later there is a second phase when children are emotionally matured, they can draw a line, put some distance between them and their emotions, they do not identify themselves with them any longer, and this can be expresses in the following way: “I feel, I feel an emotion of sadness”. In this way, according to V. Giacomin, when they are supervised by a benevolent adult, little by little but rapidly, children can understand their emotional reactions  and be less controlled by them, without waiting to reach an older age, before they have reached the maturity of the prefrontal cortex. This makes individuals more peaceful and  also interpersonal relations, even between very young people,  are visibly more peaceful.

That is undoubtedly what strikes you most inside Alice Project Schools, this relaxed atmosphere among the students and the teachers. Students  also do several meditation sessions during the day. Every day all the students gather together in a big courtyard and, sitting cross-legged,  they are invited to meditate by a teacher who guides them. It is really amazing to see 800 students, at Sarnath school, in total silence, concentrated, focusing attention on their breath, on what goes through them…. Always during this group session they sing and pray, particularly for peace with Pakistan, country with which relations are particularly tense. Students are invited to consider Pakistanis like brothers. They can pray and sing Christian, Hindi, Muslim or Jewish  prayers and songs (for instance: Evenous Shalom Alerhem).  In the Indian context, for most of the people,  prayers and offering are part of everyday life. Some students wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning to join puja before going to school.  Morning songs can simply be odes to life, to joy. Every class (or every change of activity in primary school)  starts and finishes with a short meditation session (2 to 5 minutes) just to bring students to a state of well-being, of concentration to help them memorize. The signal is given by a bell which can be found in each classroom, K-12. It is also remarkable the dialogue between teachers and students. It can begin after reading a story that can facilitate the realization of one of the concepts. Through questions and answers, students become aware of something they knew implicitly without being aware. This is the maieutic method, used to cause astonishment in the students, in the philosophical meaning of the word, cause their certainties to waver as well as their irrational beliefs, their false thoughts about themselves, the others, the environment and help them unlearn

emotional behaviors or reactions learnt through experience and teach them a new way of reading the world, of relating to other people, of reacting. A sort of virtuous circle.

Yoga class.

Students practice also yoga at Sarmath school. Their yoga teacher trained at the school of yoga of Mongai (Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga) in Bihar. Finally I observed some students massage a classmate’s head and shoulders and then switching parts (give/receive). The teacher explains then that it is very important to teach the students to care for their classmates’ well-being. (Massage was introduces as part of the curriculum. According to us this is the best way to prevent any distorted and perverted manifestation of libido.)

Beyond what has already been said about the climate of serenity existing in the two Alice Project schools I have visited, the students have a high level of responsibility and independence, considering that students there are led to the end of their schooling and pass national final exams. Not only is the success rate at close to 100% but also students leaving these two schools are among the best. As far as teachers are concerned, even though their salaries are far below what they could earn in State schools, they say they are happy to work with Alice Project Schools. They are often former students of Alice Project schools themselves20.

 Can this experience be exported in western countries?

Since 2014 there is a willingness to create this kind of school in Europe and in France in particular. This is a project by Alice Project France, born in 2014, whose founder and president is Judith SOUSSANS and whose objective, a part from financing the three Indian schools, is that of proposing in the kindergarten, that will be opened in France in 2018, a program aiming to reveal concentration, memorization, imagination skills by starting to teach how the human mind works. One of the objectives is to teach the child where are his/her thoughts in order not to identify with them, to put some distance and not to identify with his/her emotions. This approach will help the child understand little by little that everything comes from within his/her mind and, if he/she is in relation with his/her internal world, he/she can realize that everything is our mental projection.  In order to awaken children’s visualization, memorization and concentration skills, which are essential to learning, they will use all the different methods well proven in Alice Project Schools in India (meditation, visualization, concentration games, introduction to philosophy and ethics…)21. Students will work on those skills also through academic subjects. One of the aims is also that of teaching foreign languages from an early age.  Mastering foreign languages together with opening up to the world will allow to develop dialogue and build a world of peace. The recent research in neuroscience on the issue of foreign languages learning show that foreign languages have to be studied as soon as possible.22

It will be also important to reveal the potential for charity, goodness, confidence, solidarity existing in every child, in every human being by cultivating altruism and compassion.

However France is not India. This two countries’ history, culture, references are very different especially in the area of religion. Since 1905, France has chosen secularism, after a fight, a fight between the advocates of religion