Nation’s guiding philosophy of Gross National Happiness

“When I grow up, I want to be like you,” a man in grey hair from the back seat of the room told students of Early Learning Centre up front.

The students had just demonstrated accompanied with video clippings of what they practiced at school towards a green school that draws its essence from the nation’s guiding philosophy of Gross National Happiness.

Meditation to begin and to call it a day at school, denying packaged food at school except once a week and helping ailing and aged citizens at the Thimphu hospital was what the students presented to some 70 people from across the globe.

The participants were gathered to mobilise a fund for green economic development during a conference at Termalinca resort yesterday morning. They were standing most of the time lauding the efforts Bhutanese students were tuning towards that was further embellished with education minister Thakur S Powdyel’s talk on GNH and education.

Impressed by the idea of green schools, the participants dropped money into the waste basket the school had made from plastics and gifted it to the children to use it to pursue their dream of being the change they want to see.

An inventor gave them an instrument that produces electricity from wind energy.

“Over the years, education, whose original idea is to inspire people to be better human beings has come to follow more the law of the market and I feel education has today lost its soul,” Lyonpo said. “That is why we feel we need to reclaim the core function of education itself and that is the reason why we have adopted a strategy called green schools for green Bhutan.”

Elaborating on the first aspect of a green school, he said children needed to understand endowment that’s inherited and the natural diversity that characterises Bhutan.

On intellectual greenery, the second aspect, lyonpo said for a small country like Bhutan, it was extremely important to build students’ knowledge bases, to build intellectual capacity and GNH schools must be intellectually vibrant and open with fertile minds.

A green school, he said, should also be academically green, in that schools should discover the great ideas hidden and so children and teachers will be explorers for the greater mind.

On being socially green, the fourth element, lyonpo said green school should also be culturally green because being a small country with a diverse culture, schools ought to provide space for children to be able to express, articulate and celebrate the different cultural experiences.

“We also believe spiritual greenery is important, which we hope will allow children to find completion, find fulfillment in relation to appreciation of something superior and greater than us,” the minister said. “So this should allow us to moderate our ego, be humble, and be a little more positive.”

Aesthetic greenery is yet another element of a green school, lyonpo said because a lot of children are exposed to influences which compromise and do violence to the integrity of their lives.

“Today, a lot of other things children see on TV screen is such that it can suck the soul of the child,” lyonpo said. “That’s why we need to create opportunities where children know what is really good, and what only looks good; what is genuine, what is fake; what is truly beautiful and appreciate what it is. We call it aesthetic greenery.”

Moral greenery, the ability to inspire to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and falsehood is another extremely important element of a green school, the minister said.

“Perhaps one of the great gaps in modern education is the cultivation of the intellectual dimension, to a point where all other dimensions of the learner are relegated to the background,” he said. “We may have graduates who have wonderful degrees, skills all of which are very important but people who may not be able to relate to each another and the thirst of heart is not quenched by education.”

All these elements are intended to respond to and support the multiple dimensions of the life of the learner, just as GNH is a development alternative that is expected to respond to the multiple dimensions of an individual and society, the minister explained.

“I have a feeling that we need to have green schools even before we have the blue economy,” lyonpo said. “So, a green school in ally to the blue economy, we certainly believe is about time we started looking for a new civilisation, and I call it a new educational civilisation.”

Source: Kuenselonline