Sathya Sai Education in Human Values
FOCUS
If we want to grow an oak tree, first we must plant an acorn. If we want our children to develop a strong, healthy and happy character, if we want them to be capable of distinguishing between ‘right and wrong’ and to cultivate higher values with loving sensitivity and a sense of unity with all beings, then we ourselves must prepare the grounds and offer them an educational environment in which they can grow and flourish. This is, in a few words, the aim and goal of Sathya Sai Education, whose main purpose is to shape and form character.
"True education does not merely enable a child to learn how to earn his living,
it equips him to live his life”.
WHAT DOES SATHYA SAI EDUCATION STAND FOR?
Sathya Sai Education in Human Values, from here on referred to also as SSEHV, is a simply structured educational programme for teachers, parents and children, which cultivates and promotes universal Human Values common to all cultures and all creeds from time immemorial. It’s intrinsic characteristics are the firm conviction that true education is a life long learning process, that concentration is the essence of education and character the end, and that the human personality can reach out towards a state of excellence through an articulated pattern of integral learning, thus attaining the expression of its full potential.
Just as it is true that mighty oaks grow from tiny acorns, if we want peace and happiness to flourish on our society we need to expose our children to these values and nurture them with the highest ideals from the earliest years of their lives. Only in this way will their noblest character blossom as they grow and develop into caring and responsible adults who learn to meet life’s challenges with resourcefulness and inner strength.
SSEHV & EduCare
“There are two kinds of knowledge. One relates to the knowledge of external things; the head manifests this power. The heart enables to bring out the inner knowledge. Life will become ideal when both these types of knowledge are made to manifest in harmony. These have been called Education and Educare”.
Rooted in the pristine meaning of education, linked to the Latin word educaere, which means to elicit and bring into expression, SSEHV, aims at drawing forth those qualities, talents and potential that lie latent in the human heart. To do so it follows a pedagogy of integral education, based on the universal values of Truth, Right Action, Peace, Love and Non Violence, that emphasizes the education of the whole child rather than subject areas. Through systematic, creative and experiential inquiry into a series of related value aspects, the broad scope of these values is acknowledged and their practice encouraged.
“Good education is that which teaches the method of achieving world peace; that which destroys narrow-mindedness and promotes unity, equality and peaceful co-existence among human beings.”
The universality of SSEHV offers a meeting point for current pedagogies concerned with value oriented education and offers a schematic synthesis, adaptable to all curricula, to which further experience, and inspiration can find its juxtaposition.
