FOLHA DIRIGIDA - A focused school philosophy in human values

FOLHA DIRIGIDA

Supplement teacher - by Maria Cristina Siqueira.

A focused school philosophy in human values.
The prof. Gonçalo Medeiros talks about the work of the educator Sai Baba and tells how his philosophy has spread in Brazil

Gonçalo Vicente de Medeiros is now president of the Institute of Education in Human (www.valoreshumanos.org) values. But in 1986 it was just a retiree who strangely chose India for sightseeing, and was impressed with the kindness of a boy, when he addressed a public tap for drinking water.

- The boy saw that he was a foreigner and hastened to serve me. And wanted nothing else but to show their generosity. I later learned that in school I studied, human values was a discipline that was part of the curriculum.

This boy, whose name he does not remember, lived in the town of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradech, hamlet where Sai Baba, a monk who devotes his life to educational causes lives. In his speeches, the monk does not cease to warn that the behavior of teachers, especially those working with children's education will shape the character of those who pass through his hands.

The speech Medeiros is pragmatic, but not shaped by the concrete. In over an hour of conversation about education, he did not utter even once the word pedagogy. Let us note in passing, he did not use any terminology relevant to the educational field. When you give a talk about school, repeating the words are love, radiation, happiness, who sings like a mantra.

He has trained 20,000 teachers in Brazil in human values, a course taught in the eastern booklets, under the guidance of the monk Sai Baba (Sathya means Father, and Baba, Mother). The course is set to 16 hours in two days. Teachers who participate, learn and practice meditation techniques do not develop literacy, but "universal love" and "forgiveness." He says that teachers leave transformed and magnified into a multiplier instrument, capable of beaming what they learned. The program's goal is to show that peace is also learned in school. This work is voluntary and does not involve any cost. It is made from agreements with municipalities and departments of education.

Directed Sheet - Why the Sathya Sai Institute chose the school for its work in disseminating education in human values?

Gonçalo Medeiros - The school shapes society. Each of us goes through our training school and how we act to define the rest of our lives. The moment our consciousness is still a sheet of blank paper, the concepts that will be on data and examples that are in the past is what will determine our actions throughout life. In adulthood, we judge our actions by the present situations. This is not correct. Behind our actions there is a base that is formed when you start our process of consciousness. So, all the influences, whether from parents, relatives, teachers, shaping our view of life and our character. All of us when we are born we are united with creation. All children have a natural joy, which usually lose when they become adults beings. So the school has to act to maintain this state of bliss, and the school is a powerful place, since the whole society will be shaped according to its education system.

Driven Leaf - What profile human being the prevailing system of education is able to form?

Medeiros - The model we have is the mind teaching the mind, the book content, not the heart. The schools form today is the rational animal who becomes Doctor. We are training people to just have a job. The child enters school already thinking about the future and how much money you can earn. The education system is not worried about teaching people to enfatisarem being, but have. At the moment the school to redirect your resume, it will form for employment, but also to happiness.

Directed sheet - If the school is the vehicle for disseminating human values, who is outside, and there are many in this situation, will also be excluded from this possibility of self-realization?

Medeiros - We do not learn values through content from books, but from the examples of those around us. The illiterate can also teach values and can be a truly wise, because it may have formed at the university of life.

Driven Leaf - In what instruments the school has to contribute in building a peaceful society?

Medeiros - The school can all, according to the resume attached. But the current curriculum emphasizes survival and not be. It also does not help set goals on paper. You must experience them. No person who talks about food, reading food book, you see others eating, will be satisfied. The stomach is only satisfied with food in it, as is the scale of values. No use thinking, speaking, writing, making speeches about values. They just become part of and are to be played when practiced.

Driven Leaf - Do you believe that through the school the state could reduce its high levels of violence?

Medeiros - The mistake of the leaders is to want to change society through projects and goals devoid of any practice. In Rio de Janeiro see a violent situation getting worse every day, in all segments of society. When a member of the Military Police killed the son of the mayor of Freiburg which was recognized as kidnapper Security Secretary said that the police have a responsibility to educate the professional, not the character, it is the responsibility of the whole society. Previously, the concept of a person was given the character and the character set is the person's behavior. In the educational system today there is a glaring error: all projects, even those aimed at a culture of peace, are made of external actions. He does not try to make any changes within the individual. Why do people grow and become increasingly violent? Because the environment that they are only seen violence. Government agents also have to teach the practice of peace, if they themselves do not have the practice of peace. Only those who emanate and radiate peace can teach it.

Driven Leaf - means no output?

Medeiros - Of course there's departure. That's what the Sathya Sai Institute of Education has shown. In our seminars we give teachers the fundamentals of education in human values and teach them to experience real peace. Peace is a state of harmony, interaction with himself. We lost when we let life's difficulties taking care of us. When teachers learn to peace, they learn to teach peace.

Driven Leaf - What methodology used?

Medeiros - teach teachers to sit in silence, making contact with the inside. At this moment feels peace, because he is in union with himself. Taught to practice forgiveness forgiving yourself for what caused the other and then forgiving others. With this, since it reaches an internal state of pure harmony. Another time, we practice the experience of universal love. What is the universal love? It's like electricity, which moves everything. It is the undercurrent of all human values. But to love others one must love oneself. If I destesto me, I hate the next. If I criticize me I criticize others. If I hate myself, I hate the next. I make close to what I do myself. When we experience this energy of love, sit inside a huge joy. And I'm not talking about lip service, I'm not picking up a book of self-help. Is the person feeling within himself that chain of love. When this happens, the teacher wakes up and goes to the student what is inside. When he arrives in the classroom it will give attention, affection, gentleness, respect, because we give what we have inside of us.

Directed Sheet - Can a worried about his salary worship this culture of peace and spread it on the classroom teacher?

Medeiros - low salary does not mean you do not have joy.

Driven Leaf - One of the questions that perplex researchers that focus on this topic is the internal violence, driven by competition among teachers, and also excessive regulations imposed on students.

Medeiros - When I was studying was not violence but had many rules from top to bottom. This issue has nothing to do with violence at school. We do not teach people to have limits, parents do not teach children to have boundaries, today's teachers were trained not having boundaries. Every child thinks he has the right to do what you want. But why not give more limits? Because to give limits have to give understanding. It's no use just saying you can not.

Driven Leaf - It is often said that teachers are not permeable to the changes.

Medeiros - I disagree with that. The teacher must be aware of everything that happens around you. The school is a small world and she proceeded as such, would be wonderful. And what does this little world? It's where people get the experiences that take you outside of school. Teachers to lead change and pass this change to the classroom. The change in the classroom causes a change in student behavior at home, and parents become inspired. Then what happens? The school is now serving the community and end up entering these values in the area of competence of the Government in the area of social action. But it is no use to have people working on social action only for employment. Let me give an example from the College Padre Severino, who is a vocational training school for juvenile offenders. One student said to one of our instructors who only had tranquility during their classes. Why? Because she encouraged that expose what was best in them. Students asked: "Are not you afraid of us?" She said: "No, you are all human beings."

Driven Leaf - You say that the word has power. Can better explain how this happens?

Medeiros - The word has the power of who wrote or spoke. The thought, as I write, transmit my energy to people who read what I write. If you write a text with love, when someone reads it, feel the energy of love. In everything we do, convey feelings.

Driven Leaf - Training courses for teachers should include human values in the curriculum?

Medeiros - All training courses should have three excellences: academic, that would guide for the business component; environmental, that would give us the idea that we should not serve in nature and understand that we are nature, and if we destroy destroying ourselves; and the third is human excellence, the conscience of mankind, one that shows us that everything we do to each other is reflected in ourselves.