Today’s youth will take the world beyond nationhood to greater models of unity and global cooperation, a former principal of a Baha’i-inspired international school told an International Day of Peace reception on 21 September.
“Parents want their children to be like them, but I tell them not to have such low expectations,” said Vivek Williams, who has recently returned to Australia after six years as a teacher and principal of the Townshend International School in the Czech Republic.
“We shouldn’t strive to make our children just like us, because the world has evolved and needs new capacities that only our youth can offer,” said Mr Williams, who was speaking at the National Baha’i Centre.
“Today’s youth people will take the world forward and we should have faith and confidence in them,” he said.
“We can be very optimistic about the future and the generation that will take us there.”
60 countries
Mr Williams said Townshend has attracted students from more than 60 countries from Europe through to the Pacific.
Its philosophy is based on the Baha’i view that the role of education is to release the potentialities latent in every human being, he said.
The school did not separate academic education from the development of good character.
“Someone who attains academic excellence but has no moral values can cause much harm in the world,” he said.
“But if you have both, the result is light upon light.”
Learning to serve
Mr Williams said that the school instils the value of serving others through the expectation that students participate in some form of community service every week.
This could involve mentoring younger students, assisting the disabled, or volunteering at an old people’s home.
“If you enable young people to serve others, it resonates with their spiritual core and enables them to develop and transform themselves,” he said.
Examples
Lisa Williams, who taught at Townshend for six years alongside her husband, spoke about some of the students she had taught.
One was a 14-year-old Roma girl who entered the school without any knowledge of English, its main language of instruction.
She has now graduated with honours and is studying law so that she can help her people, who face discrimination and prejudice in many parts of Europe.
Another student arrived at the school from inner city London, where he had seldom attended school in the previous three years, Mrs Williams said.
Following his graduation, he served as a volunteer at an orphanage in Honduras, and raised funds to enable two of the orphans to study at Townshend.
“He is now studying media in England, and his main interest is serving others,” said Mrs Williams.
The presentation by Mr and Mrs Williams was followed by a service in the Baha’i House of Worship to mark the International Day of Peace.