Promoting alternative forms of education

Buddhist leaders in Thailand have established the Spirit in Education Movement (SEM) with the aim of encouraging a spiritually-based holistic and ecological alternative to mainstream education in the country. They describe prevailing educational trends as concentrating on the head rather than the heart, and rewarding cleverness without regard to ethics. The new movement aims to "develop friendship," in the Buddhist sense among students and teachers; promote exchange learning between people and from the environment; develop meditation and the creative arts within education; foster understanding of indigenous culture and develop personal critical self-awareness in students.