Dehradun: The real aim of education is to make people compassionate and service-minded, says a leading Indian environmentalist.

“Artificial intelligence will do mechanical work but the world does not run on mechanical work, it thrives on the heart- on compassion and on care,” asserted Vandana Shiva on November 13 while addressing the opening of the bicentenary celebrations of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary School in Dehradun, Uttarakhand.

Shiva, an alumnus of the school and chief guest at the function, highlighted the importance of schools in today’s digital age. “Remote learning can give information but it cannot inspire minds. Miracles of technology that lack compassion have failed,” said the 65-year-of Delhi-based author who campaigns against globalization.

She described compassion as spiritual intelligence and environment the ecological intelligence. “We also need social intelligence,” she asserted.

More than 1,000 people attended the programs put together by almost 500 students. The show portrayed the confluence of cultures all the way from France and the French Revolution to the Yamuna Banks of Agra for this is the richness of India, Shiva noted.

She commended the quality of the celebration that reminded people about a life of service. “We have too much education for cultivating greed these days but service to others will be the perennial quality that will keep societies going,” added the winner of numerous awards, including the Right Livelihood Award in 1993.

Grace, gaiety and grandeur marked the celebrations. Fancy costumes, high quality audio-visuals, live music and some fine acting by students marked the two-hour performance. Principal Sister Greta D’Souza conceptualized the program.

The highlight of the program was a theatrical presentation on the life of St Claudine Thevenet, the founder of the Religious of Jesus and Mary, woven into the birth and development of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary across the world.

Thévenet witnessed the horrors of the French Revolution – she saw two of her brothers executed – and went on to cater to the needs of dissolute children while using her congregation to provide local girls with a religious education. She was canonized on March 21, 1993.

The play began with scenes of gunshots and violence in 1774, the year Thevenet was born in Lyons, France. It also depicted the congregation’s growth over the past two hundred years.

A segment of particular relevance in the stage show was the part on how in the 18th-century nuns were called to India to open the first school for girls in the country around the time that the East India Company made its presence in India.

The first batch of the nuns from France had taken eleven months to complete to reach India. The congregation now has 39 institutions and three colleges in India.

The show also showed the history of Convent of Jesus and Mary, among Doon’s most prestigious schools. In Dehradun, the congregation began in 1901. It began as St Joseph’s Day School with 15 European students.

The school started a boarding facility in 1923 that was closed at the time of Indian independence. In 1938, the nuns opened St. Francis School for Indian children with the name.

When India got political freedom in 1947, both schools were merged to form the present day Convent of Jesus and Mary, Dehradun.

Source: Daily Pioneer