Jill Rees: Welcome Press

Today is not a day for soundbites, but I can feel the hand of history upon us. Today is the first day of the Soka Educators International Network week-long seminar in Bridgwater, Somerset, UK. It is fitting that Bridgwater is a post-modern industrial town and a total non-entity, since Soka, or value-creating, education is for the liberation and happiness of all people, however ordinary, however unacademic, wherever they live, whatever resources they have access to. This week will determine how the educators in SEIN, currently members of Soka Gakkai International Buddhist Organisation, proceed to find ways to support the world’s students and children by applying the ideas and beliefs of the founder of Soka Education, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi.

Soka Education, or Value-creation in education, isn’t originally a Buddhist ideology. The connection is that the educator Makiguchi first founded Soka Kyochi Gakkai, the society for value creation in education, in Japan in 1930, and later himself became a Nichiren Buddhist, realising that his humanistic ideas are in fact Buddhistic and are more powerful coming from the Buddhist faith.

My personal desire, or mission, is to enable all educators to benefit from Soka ideas, whether or not they be Buddhists, so that these wonderful humanistic methods which enable children to be happy at schol and to develop as they should naturally, can be to the benefit of all children in the world. These ideas are based on absolute respect for each individual child, and are the human right of every child.

Today some of the founder members of SEIN are getting together to discuss a varieyt of issues relating to SEIN activities, sustainable education and systemic analysis. They are: Stephanie Tansey, founder of humanistic schools in China and Turkmenistan, trainer in dialogue skills, author of the Handbook on Dialogue skills and founder of Dialogue workshops in Israel; Constance Haig, technical writer for NASA ; Jill Rees author here, consultant and trainer for sustainable education and acting teacher; Elissa Lewis, specialist in Systemic Family Therapy and the work of Gregory Bateson; Martin Rees, computer and webpage designer and trainer in Information Technology. Others may appear during the week.

Some of our discussions wil be about, SEIN Forum 6 which is to start shortly and will be in Portuguese; Systemic Ideology and how it relates to education; implementation of Soka education in the wider educational sphere; as well as more Buddhist-linked topics.

We are a Buddhist group, followers of Mr Makiguchi our mentor and founder of Soka Education, his disciple Josei Toda, educator, and his disciple and current President of SGI Daisaku Ikeda. These discussions are based on our Buddhist practise and are a faith activity. They will assuredly lead out into the secular world, enabling many more humanistic activities to proceed. This is my wish for this week’s discussions, and an espression of my desire to fulfil my vow to the Buddha to enable all beings to become absolutely fulfilled and happy in their own lives.

I will report on these discussions on this site under Buddhist Education during the week. Anyone who is interested and the other SEIN members are asked to please contribute to the discussion. The current blog is on at the following site: http://sein2008.blogspot.com/

Related posts

• April 2008 SEIN Conference Bridgwater - Hand of History (0)
• Sustainable Education Solutions (0)
• Seeking To Build A Community of Life Through Humanistic Education - SEIN Newsletter Volume VI, Issue 1 Sustainable Education Solutions by Jill Rees (0)
• Humanistic education for the world - Soka Education (0)
• Sustainable education - experience (0)

Tags: access, Bridgwater, Buddhism, Buddhist, buddhist faith, buddhist organisation, Buddhistic, Buddhists, dialogue workshops, disciple, faith, Gregory Bateson, history, Humanism, humanistic education, humanistic methods, liberation, mission, nasa, Organisation, respect, SEIN, SGI, Soka, Soka Educators International Network, Soka Gakkai International, Tsunesaburo, Turkmenistan, Value-creation