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Parshwanath Vidyapeeth News : 141
to their graduate programs of studies in their home countries. During the passage of time the participant's involvement in studies in the classroom and outside increased till the last day as was seen from the comments they made and the regular feedback received from them on a daily basis. All the participants wrote excellent research papers after extensive research at Parshwanath Vidyapeeth, Varanasi.
These papers will be published by Parshwanath Vidyapeeth (an associate and part of ISJS), in its quarterly journal ŚRAMAŅA to be brought out in September 2013. The third program, popularly called as Teachers ready for peace is the second time offering by ISJS. It aims at training the High School and Primary School Teachers in the doctrine and practice of Ahimsa (non violence) in their personal life as well as in their class room to reduce violence and violent behaviours, enhance wellness and learning by the students to attain sound social and emotional values and skills to contribute towards lasting peace and happiness and self improvement. The program was designed in three modules, namely Fundamentals of Ahimsa, Observations of its practice in different types of schools (urban, inner city, rural and high end private schools, followed by class room lectures on applying the doctrines learned in first module. The entire program was designed on the concept of providing a family environment for learning by three eminent experts in philosophy and IT, Sociology and Science. Shugan and Uma provided not only the faculty and expert resource but as the family ensuring comfort and fearless ambience, own life experiences on each topic with easy access to food, water, tea-coffee and savouries all through. Extreme care was taken to avoid religion and replace it by universal spiritual values like Self improvement first, equanimity of all living beings, love, tolerance, forgiveness, fearlessness, reconciliation and non-acquisitiveness as the guiding spiritual values and constituents of ahimsa. The program used all techniques, like movies, mood breakers and quotations, daily Morning Prayer, three interactive academic lectures, afternoon discussions and paper presentations by participants (they were asked to write a paper on a topic identified by ISJS prior to their arrival for the program). Each school visited was discussed at length afterwards and if required the principal of the school visited was requested to come again for detailed discussions. Special emphasis was given on Mahatma Gandhi, his life and practice of ahimsa (Gandhi Research Foundation Jalgaon with an excellent state of the art Gandhi museum and library and two schools run on Ahimsa principles strictly) by Gandhians and Value education program developed by Bhartiya Jain Sangathana, Pune. A day long open house was also organized by inviting scholars of all popular religions (Christianity, Islam, Hindu and Buddhism) to talk on ahimsa in their religions as the one of the main sources of knowledge i.e. religion that is conspicuous by its absence in the present day education and dominated primarily by Science and technology and body comforts. It was indeed a great learning for ISJS also to see how young and experienced teachers alike in a totally alien environment, culture and subject, were deeply involved continuously from 08:00AM till 10:00 PM daily in learning through classroom and discussions amongst themselves organized by ISJS. The participants and the faculty touched the life of all the people visited in schools, museums and elsewhere. At the end, all participants expressed transformational experience, yearning to go back to their schools committed to share their experiences and come back to the ISJS India school next summer with more colleagues.
