Our young provincial (young, compared to people like me!!), Rev Fr Benny CMI, himself an educator of religion (scriptural theology), is shaping his vision on the basis of the already articulated CMI vision of holistic education or integral formation. He claims it as a Chavara legacy, which being a theologian he is able to substantiate -usually established theologians have the uncanny knack of arguing out any proposition the way they want it to be, and substantiate it on the basis of scripture.
Being a diligent observer and a perceptive poet, he is able to split and join words and to expand and extrapolate acronyms and abbreviations with new meanings. I would call them Bennian Educational Treatise (BET). While he compares Shashi Tharoor as a wordsmith in the pattern of describing the various trades like ironsmiths, goldsmiths and blacksmiths, he himself has proven to be one, and more than that, a Wordsworth!
The occasion is the decennial valedictory of Rajagiri Doha - the completion of 10 years of glorious partnership between Rajagiri Kochi and Al Kaabi Doha for an education that is value-based, global citizenship-oriented, stressing excellence - intellectual, aesthetic, humanitarian, and planet-friendly. September 21, the international day of peace is the Foundation Day of Rajagiri-Doha. We celebrate the 10 years with a new campus launched in the busy residential area of Mater Qadeem, and shifting grades 1 to IV with a state-of-the-art infrastructure, a swimming pool for training the kids, a full-fledged multi-purpose hall, a huge cafeteria and a semblance of greenery around.
Our quest for excellence is concretized in the new campus and building implying the importance of adequate planned space for all-round formation. It is one of the few Indian schools in Qatar that has been able to comply with the Qatar state stipulations regarding the space requirements of a school. We are grateful to God Almighty, the compassionate, and extremely merciful, and the source of all wisdom and truth, for guiding our paths in the past 10 years. We are also extremely grateful to Mr Mohammed Nazar Al Kaabi our Chairman, our Managing Director Mr George Jacob FCA and the management team, our former principals Mr Isaac Tharayil and Mr Sanjeev Kumar, our present Principal Mr Joshy Abraham and the VP Mr R.K. Radhakrishnan and teaching and admin staff, and our parents and the students.
According to him, the Chavara legacy of education is about triple I to replace the I-problem (note: not eye-problem), that is disseminated through modern social media. I-problem is typically represented by iPad, iPhone, I-pod and is usually expressed through a 'selfie' with SELF projected disproportionately. Very often it also leads to the eye problem of perception, where only I is seen and the other is not seen, or even when seen, is easily disregarded. It may also lead to the status of an 'eye-for-an-eye', instead of peace and harmony, oftening a fruit of letting go of the I (the ego).
Though, in our Malayalam I-O (spelt ayyo is an exclamation of fear, displeasure or shock), in Bennian terms, it is, in fact, the transformative education process of moving from I (self) to O (other), so that all be well (sarvesham swasthir bhavatu). And in management terms, it is very much the 'good business' where the 'I' is skipped, and the 'U' is projected as 'i', and in democratic terms, it becomes very 'parliamentary' (though rarely to be found) with 'i' remaining silent and what is voiced is always the concerns for Others.
The first I in the Chavara Legacy of education is - Inclusion - amply shown by the humble but daringly humongous initiative to include Dalits in Sanskrit education by a Christian in the first half of the 19th century! Other initiatives include boarding for women, a religious order for women etc.
The second I is Integration - which had been the CMI hallmark - of going beyond the intellectual domain to include the physical, the social, the emotional-relational, the physical and the spiritual - leading to the development of a WHOLE person (Holistic Development) or what NEP speaks about as 'well-rounded formation'. While the CMIs make a claim to this, and maybe our system has made provisions for this to happen to some extent, I have felt that we are yet to make a conscientious, committed, and concerted effort in this direction - and often we have been obsessed by the so-called intellectual (to the neglect of the fascinating idea of multiple intelligence - Howard Gardner 1983) and the rest being more of a white or colour wash!
The third I is Integral Liberation - as proclaimed by Jesus Christ in what is termed as his Nazareth Manifesto (Lk 4:16-21), with the claim of fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-2 of making people free. Jesus claimed that 'truth will make you free' (Jn 8:32). Making truth available on the one hand and setting the learners on the path of searching for truth are the tasks of education which has been demonstrated by the ancient dictum 'vidya sa vimuktaye' - education is that which liberates. It should free the learner from the shackles of ignorance and slavery of untruths of divisive castes, creeds and isms, helping one to recognize oneself as a member of the earth family - vasudhaiva kutumbakam.
In today's academic world of I to Z-quotients, these put together would form the R-Quotient or the Rajagiri Quotient. Rajagiri, the Kochi unit of the world wide web of the CMIs comprising among many other things a network of almost 800 schools, 50 plus colleges (arts & science and professional), has under its own direct responsibility 16 schools, 1 special school and 5 colleges under its guidance and a legacy in the field dating from 1883. In this AI era, its reach out to Doha truly implies AI - from Actually Indians to Arabic Indic interface to truly promoting Altruistic Internationalism based on our core value of promoting global citizens.
Energy rediscovered as Character: Here Bennian redefinition of the Energy formula (E=MC2) becomes handy - He argues that the present formula of Efficiency = Manipulation x Chair.Career (C2) is to be replaced by Mindfulness x Commitment.Creativity (C2) leading to the new energy form of Character.
With this heady mix, together with 45 minutes of non-stop Dance by the X graders and 30 minutes of non-stop music by the XII graders, I felt they ought to go MAD after this with adequate Academic stress to be sandwiched into their apparent natural passion for Music and Dance. I was comforted to see the X graders making a conscious effort to force in some of the core values that constitute the RQ - global outlook and peace as they danced madly.
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