Education of the Heart

In March 2018, in Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan government in exile, an international group of leading education researchers, scientists, and scholars, gathered with classroom teachers to strategize with the Dalai Lama about humanity’s future. In a five-day exchange entitled “Re-imagining Human Flourishing,” they came together to consider a problem both practical and existential. In this era in which humankind is facing challenges of global scale—such as extreme climate transformation, accelerating technological change, and massive population displacements—how we can best prepare children to survive and flourish? How can we educate them to become, in the words of Mind & Life Institute president Susan Bauer-Wu, “compassionate caring citizens committed to the common good?”

In the two years since the meeting, I've been working with a team at Mind & Life to share this dialogue about social and emotional learning with a wider audience. This resulting multi-media website, based on my reporting coverage of the event, conveys both the content and the spirit of the meeting.