"A teacher is like a sculptor. He needs to chip off what is not wanted from a child's mind." This was one of the lessons imparted to around 50 teachers at the Nirman School in Vastrapur. They were being trained by an expert in the science of ontology (the branch of metaphysics that studies the nature of existence), Jinendra Jain.

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Jain, who has been living in the US for the last 36 years, spoke about ancient methods to make the education system powerful. Jain was earlier a professor of English at the Delhi University and also worked at a university in US.

He emphasised that a teachers' job is not only to teach the subject but also to follow lessons of dharma, artha, kama and moksha in school.

The teachers' training workshop at the school aimed at introducing new methods of spreading knowledge and inserting values in teaching methods.

The idea was to change typical methods of teaching and provide students value-based learning.

Interacting with DNA, Jain said that during his conversation with teachers, the first thing he tried to find out was if they were in the profession by choice. "Unless your being a teacher has come from antaha swikruti or with all your heart, it would be difficult to give 100% in any aspect of teaching. One will not be able to be creative in education," he said.

Explaining the concept of dharma, artha, kama and moksha, he said dharma is like ethics and the basis of ethics is giving. This, Jain said, is related to creativity and the relationship between students and teachers.

"Artha is similar to values, it could be economical values and knowledge and kama means life of delight at schools. This means power of nature, beauty and delight should be part of education. And at the end, moksha in education is freedom from fear, caste, prejudice, hatred and violence," said Jain. 

Sharing his experience at one of the schools in India, he said the school has a system where students clean the school campus in morning, sing local songs to learn language and imbibe culture and spend time with nature identifying different species of trees.

Education should be like this and come as a change from the traditional method of classroom learning, he said.