Jain Spirit 2002 06 No 11

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 23

Encourage Dreaming
Mr R. Chen Raj Jain listening to children at the Jain International Residential School, Bangalore, India
time we have become one of the most well known institutes in the country.
In my short experience, I have had many-many excellent examples of students who have surpassed their own personal boundaries and achieved unbelievable results in different creative or organisational endeavours. This gives them tremendous inner confidence which they can use when they leave the college to work for other organisations or start up on their own. I feel the job of the educator is to facilitate. We have 30-40 of our own graduates working for the Jain Group of Institutions and they have achieved tremendous results in a short time. We work on the self-motivation of each student, encouraging them to have clear intentions, even to dream and go beyond their personal boundaries. For example, one of our students who became a law graduate was asked to debate in front of 150 students. We organised the event, asked her to demonstrate her skills and persuaded her parents to encourage her to go further. This girl then got a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley and today, she is working in a senior legal position in Germany.
In Jain philosophy everyone is potentially divine. We have found that teaching about values is actually very simple. The teachers have to set a good moral example and help create an appropriate environment where young minds can feel free, self-confident and creative. By giving importance to the students, listening to them and facilitating them, a lot can be achieved very simply and effectively. I feel young people have a lot of untapped energy and they need to be thrown into challenges to keep their mind from getting distracted by modern comforts and idle thinking or activities.
One boy failed in all his classes, but I observed that he had good selling qualities, so I encouraged him to go into marketing. Today, he is the biggest dealer in cables in Bangalore with 16 franchises. I hardly spent 30 minutes with him and he was transformed. Encourage students to dream, to visualise and never show them limitations or boundaries. Unfortunately, many teachers and lecturers have very structured ways of thinking and teaching which does not inspire confidence in others. Students are a nuisance to them
and teaching is a job rather than an opportunity to inspire young people. We have a very different philosophy here.
Teaching is one of the most demanding careers one can choose. Yet it is also the most rewarding. Choosing to teach is choosing to make a difference to the lives of children Teaching is about conveying the love of learning and discovery, giving children the tools they can use throughout their lives to make their own discoveries. With this in mind, we have set up an International Academy for Creative Teaching (I ACT), where we train teachers to play a variety of roles in the classroom -educator, motivator, guide, counsellor, coach and disciplinarian. We prepare teachers to work as part of a team, combining their efforts with colleagues, superiors and parents to create the best possible learning environment for their students.
I would like India to have once again universities like Nalanda and Takshashila, which were the oldest universities in the world. I feel that we have the capability to be world leaders in science, management and the arts as we have a huge resource in our culture and our history. We need to harness this resource, provide holistic education and with our strong sense of moral values and community spirit, we can easily become number one. Then our knowledge will be aimed at healing the planet, not destroying it. It will help raise the quality of all life, not just humanity. The professionals who graduate from here will become public servants of the highest order, enriching others before enriching themselves. I feel that although Western education and science is currently dominant, it is lacking in moral fibre: they are creating experts and elites who exploit others to enrich themselves. This needs to change dramatically if the world is to make genuine and sustainable progress. The unique formula for positive action lies in Jainism.
For further information, visit: www.jaingroup.ac.in or call Jain Group of Institutions, Mr. Darshan Mutha, Bangalore, 080 661 5246/662 5246, Email: pro@jaingroup.info.in
June - August 2002. Jain Spirit
21