DREAM WORLD SCHOOL (DWS), BALLARI, KARNATAKA, INDIA

THE BACKGROUND

Human life is a blend of social and spiritual objectives as much as it is a blend of political, economic and empirical-scientific-rational objectives. That is why all schools have a challenging role in shaping their students’ intellectual and ethical capabilities and values.

     However, we believe that that blend must also include emotional as well as spiritual aspects of human existence. Every student comes to us to be educated in how to acquire factual and technical information and knowledge as well as a responsible spiritual consciousness. What begins to be called research in specialized fields of human activity in later years requires development of an inquiring mind.

     With that understanding and conviction, Dream World School was established in 1998 under the aegis of the VAG India Trust* with the motto “Educate to Research Life”.

     Life is nurtured both before and after birth. Continuing that analogy, schools are expected to serve as “nurseries” for young minds and bodies for their steady and positive development into responsible as well as adventurous citizenship of an ever-evolving country and world.

     These concepts constitute the foundation of the functioning of Dream World School. That is why the School has six important “organs” that provide nourishment for both minds and bodies: PRAGYĀNA, PRASTHĀN, SAGA-7, [DP]², FSSA and PASCUL.* They mean to nurture every student.

HISTORICAL SKETCH

In the first decade of its existence, Dream World School worked with the motto “Industry”, the way an enterprise works, with the objective of producing and developing core qualities of young personalities such as time-management, responsibility and accountability, (re)searching skills and communication skills.

     In the second decade, Dream World School aspired to grow towards the motto “Temple”. For at this stage we began to pay special attention to spirituality to balance and brighten students’ thought processes. We introduced training in activities like meditation, celebration of festivals, working on the principle of the role of ‘Gurus’ as repositories of information, knowledge and wisdom and instilling moral values that might promote aspiration to participate in a divine environment.

     After having introduced, during our first two decades, the above aspects into our programme to help young people acquire knowledge and experience, next we introduced the third stage of growth the process of Learning to Identify Problems and Work toward their Solutions. That applies to the School as it does to students. Accordingly, the school prepares case studies of as many individual students as possible to try to discover learning problems so as find solutions to them. The “problems” may be in the academic field or in the domains of discipline, self-control or moral and spiritual questions that govern behaviour. Once discovered, these solutions are applied methodically according to the needs and behaviour patterns of individual students.

     That is how, in the third decade of our existence, we are determined to foster the objectives of the first two decades and focus on working toward “Solutions” to facilitate students in their education. We hope that, as a result, when they graduate they are able to take their places in the life of our quickly developing nation and the evolving world, fulfilling their objectives in all domains of human life.

THE MISSION OF DREAM WORLD SCHOOL

Given the above objectives and aspirations, the school believes its Mission is to prepare young people to meet the needs and demands of human society locally, nationally and on the world stage with a constructive view of the future. The following objectives follow from this mission:

•  All-round development of students to enable them to become assets for the Nation.

•  Individual attention to students to identify, consolidate and sharpen their learning capabilities.

•  Diagnosis of individual students’ problems by specific case studies and creation of rational solutions to them.

• Developing skills in inquiry, research and contextualisation.

• Providing experiential learning.

• Inculcating values not imposed but acquired on the basis of analysis by inquiring minds.

• Bringing spiritual consciousness through programmes such as Pragyana.

• Developing the full range and variety of skills required in continuing education.

• Striving for excellence in all aspects of education.

• Inculcating physical and mental discipline.