Alice Project: the Wonderland in a school of Sarnath

In an era of computerization and high speed exchange of information through internet, mobiles, media, Western societies are seeing an acceleration in lifestyle resulting in stress and downward trend in new generations. In schools around the world, in fact, every year students have increasing behavior problems with decreasing attention and concentration skills, more cases of dyslexia and other learning disorders. For this reason many researchers in pedagogy are searching a solution to prevent learning disorders. A final solution seems come from an education that combines Western and Eastern methods. I went to India to document this type of method, "Alice Project" created by two Italian teachers Luigina De Biasi and Valentino Giacomin. Their school was founded in 1994 in Sarnath, is intercultural and generously open to the lower social classes. The Alice method includes all spiritual teachings with no preferences of religion, teaching the attention to humanitarianism and ecology. It is proved that in the Alice schools are almost non-existent discipline problems neither cases of students who suffer from hyperactivity and attention disorders or learning disabilities, diseases which instead concerne other countries worldwide, even Italy where this research comes from. This new path in teaching, learning and human consciousness has been encouraged by Dalai Lama and sustained by private funds, going ahead despite the economic problems. Today, after 20 years of operation, the school has more than a thousand students, is officially recognized by the Indian government as NGO “Awakening Universal Special Education” and the method is regarded as the “the New Pedagogy of the Third Millenium” from prof A. Bocconi.