Gloria Germani has been to Sarnath many times (a town in India in the federal state of Uttar Pradesh) and she will also return in July, but she has never got used to the serenity she saw in the eyes of the students, she never really used to it. .
An environment totally imbued with education to sensitivity and peace, in the full sense of the terms. A school well described through these words:
" We believe that the Alice School - Universal Educational School - is precisely the education advocated by Latouche, as well as by Terzani and Schumacher . Going to the root of the problem of education, it not only acts as a counterpoint to our metaphysical confusions, but manages to fulfill the two almost incompatible tasks indicated by the theorist of Degrowth : on the one hand it provides a knowledge of modern curricular subjects, which are focused on the world external, - on the other hand, however, it succeeds in giving the students a real capacity for judgment because it guides them in the experience of the inner world and therefore provides them with a series of internal values, unperturbed and on the basis of which they can judge the events and events of the their life ".
Alice Project and Valentino Giacomin
Gloria tells us about Valentino Giacomin, the "prophet of the 80s". Master by vocation, part time journalist, pioneer driven by his intuitive spirit.
In short, Giacomin observes that the immense variety of didactics on different subjects does not go hand in hand with a teaching of feelings, an education to emotions. And a vision of new formation is turned on , centered on the person .
A vision can spring from an existential crisis: we notice something, we realize it in depth and nothing can remain as it was. Anything. And from there starts the momentum to create something else.
It was also so for Giacomin, when, admitted for a psychosomatic patient after a period of strong depression, he came into contact with death and the profound sense of solitude. Then yoga, India, Elder Lama Song Rinpoche, contact with his own Shadow, the subconscious.
He was one of the first to introduce psychophysical techniques of oriental origin in Treviso, in a climate of hostility and general mistrust on the part of parents and relatives of the students, " immediately after the proclamation of Ratzinger against yoga and the Tibetan philosophy! ", As he explained in an interview granted to Gloria Germani in February 2011.
In 1988 he met the Dalai Lama in India, during a study stay in Darhamsala, and chose to go to India working for education, alongside the practice of dharma. He resigned from the direction of local TV Antenna 3 in Treviso, left journalism, arrived in Sarnath, in an India of primitive agriculture, widespread illiteracy. The choice of teachers, the registration of the Company, the purchase of land, the problems on the street and electricity. And the inauguration of the school on 5 July 1994 .
Alice Project has been working towards improvement for 20 years and has since become a qualified school and an NGO recognized by the Indian Government since 1994, which counts more than a thousand students. The classes cover the entire course of studies and range from nursery school, elementary school up to the 12th class (our high school).
Meditation at school: a successful experiment!
Alice Project: a school of happiness and decrease
The book in which Gloria Germani on school and degrowth reports an entire life project, must be read, beyond the interest in the concrete data of a school that has actually been realized beyond all expectations, because there are questions concerning the soul and the existential path .
For example, the fourth chapter deserves mention, entirely dedicated to the contents of the educational paradigm of Alice Project. It is titled: Where do happiness and satisfaction in life go? and it is a condensation of profound wisdom that manifests itself with simplicity and love. "I started to experience the sense of unconditional happiness that comes from helping others " Giacomin's words.
And again, nutritious words: " When one opens oneself to others, the boundary is no longer limited around one's ego, one's home, one's work, but extends progressively to include all beings in the universe, and the feeling related to this experience is of deep bliss ”. A vast vision, truly holistic, far from the senseless push to accumulate.
The distinction drawn between didactic awareness to pass a test, an examination and understanding based on unity and the interdependence of phenomena is very useful . This leads to an elimination of the superfluous and an approach to the essential. And in essence, psychic reality and physical reality must be seen and experienced together.
A good way of thinking generates happiness . The teacher should keep it in his heart and mind. As well as the truth for which to transmit is also to be able to give the possibility to make a mental space, to observe a thought.
Watching this flow of thoughts by suspending the labels (I'm doing a bad thought, I have a too positive approach, etc.) means going towards a sacred space where the thought itself does not chain itself anymore or chases after itself. In this special school it is taught that true happiness is not anchored in passing things similar to the needs of the ego. Beyond the waves of the Ego, it is necessary to tend towards that state of happiness that resembles the sea.
It is not a tale of an exotic experience. Germani gives us something that would work here too, in this dead capitalism, in this rampant unemployment, in a money education that no longer works, has been trudging for some time.
And meanwhile, we, we are all so unprepared for the unemployment event as for the event of death or illness. And the urgency of a spiritual education is outlined .
Gloria Germani will participate in various conferences on the national territory to return to talking about Alice Project. In detail:
- May 13, Turin, Book Fair
- September 13, Prato (FI), conference at the CHANGING SCHOOL FESTIVAL, in collaboration with Terra Nuova Edizioni;
- 8 November Vimercate (MI), Conference at the ITALIAN YOGA ASSOCIATION for CHILDREN;
- December 4, Rome, International Association Conference For ANALYTICAL PSYCOLOGY - Social and political contribution of Junghian; psycology
- December, to be defined at the National Psychosynthesis Association based in Ancona.
