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Alice Project derives its name from the famous book by Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland and like Alice the school invites children to enter the magic land of our unconscious mind, exploring the inner world of thoughts, feelings and emotions and to cross the borders between our inner and outer realities. In this way they will hopefully be able to understand and cope better with the challenges and contradictions of our everyday world.
The philosophy in all our teaching is based on the understanding that our perception of the external world originates in the mind, and so it is that our mind constructs our transient reality depending on many interweaving influences:
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• the laws of interdependence;
• the laws of cause and effect;
• the subjectivity of perceptions and dynamic of projections;
• the relativity of boundaries;
• the ever changing nature of our thoughts and feelings.
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Our aim is to explore our understanding of self.
These universal understandings and values originate in diverse philosophies and spiritualites, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Christianity, etc. and likewise our philosophy is not exclusive to one religion but embraces all of them; we are and we teach without borders. Most of the children in Sarnath and Bodhgaya are Hindu with a few from the Islamic, Christian and Jain traditions. Children are encouraged to know and understand their own traditions, and through these traditions the universal truths are conveyed. |
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Curriculum
The methods used tap the most powerful potential we possess - the potential to be wise and kind'.
The curriculum combines three fundamental disciplines:
1. the traditional Indian Government syllabus subjects as defined by the State Government of Uttar Pradesh: math, science, Hindi, Sanskrit, English, history, biology, chemistry and geography;
2. the ancient Indian disciplines of yoga, meditation and ayurvedic medicine and massage;
3. the integrated universal branches of learning, for example dance, dhama, drama, art, mythology, ecology, farming, social work, ethical teachings and philosophy. |
For the latter, Valentino Giacomin has written an inspiring series of text books , 'Philosophy for Children', moral tales, and stories. The ideas contained in these books are used throughout the school, as a spring board for discussion and exploration of ideas of self and reality.
Body and intellect are combined with yoga and meditation, taught as part of the core curriculum to every child every day. In this same way, spirit and emotions are not separate as they are part of our every day talking and thinking. A story of our day is described in pictures and in Hindi. |
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Alice Project is based on the concept of Unity. Unity of the Body, the Mind, and the External world (we are a biological psychological and spiritual unity). What we call external reality is nothing but an illusion a wrong perception of our dualistic mind, an unrecognized projection of our narrow ego- consciousness. Reality is without borders, and is not independent from the mind; Mind is a ‘place' where people of different countries and traditions are able to meet and understand each other, communicate beyond thoughts without discrimination or language barriers- using the power of silence.
Mind is the place where we can defeat suffering, wars, injustices, harmony. This is Universal Education. Alice Project is an educational method aimed to help people discover and realize, first, the unity within ourselves (the integration of the conscious mind with the shadow and the unconscious then a unity with the so called external reality. If we do not help students understand this, they are wasting time at school, what is worse they risk wasting their whole life.
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