S. Chitra, PhD & Munna Gurung
Assistant Professor & Programme Leader, Yonphula Centenary College, Royal University of Bhutan. Email: schitra.ycc@rub.edu.bt
Teacher, Ministry of Education, Bhutan. Email: 07200012.ycc@rub.edu.bt
Volume 13, Number 3, 2021 I Full-Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.03
Abstract
Green school as mentioned in Thakur S. Powdyel’s book My Green School: An Outline (2014) was developed to support the initiative ‘Educating for Gross National Happiness’, conceived in 2009 by the Ministry of Education, Bhutan. This is to realize the need for holistic development of individuals and for the fulfilment of the true purpose of education. However, the green school domain requires deeper understanding in correlation with the nine domains of Gross National Happiness philosophy to unsettle the hollowness and reductionism of modern education. Therefore, the paper attempts to explore how the process of holistic learning and wholesome education become the key to understand the principles of life, by analysing the concentric sense of the green school concept constituting eight dimensions represented as ‘Sherig Mandala’. The inherent meanings of the elements of greenery categorized as natural, social, cultural, intellectual, academic, aesthetic, spiritual and moral have been closely examined to revitalize the claims of education.
Keywords: Green school, Sherig-Mandala, holistic education, Gross National Happiness, life & learning.