Prospective teachers from The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) are being trained in spirituality education to equip them to help students to handle stress and manage frustration.

The need for this sort of training is demonstrated by a recent survey conducted by Hong Kong Women Teacher’s Organisation (HKWTO), which found that 80 per cent of the student respondents always or sometimes feel depressed, and nearly half of them seldom or never speak to their parents when they feel unhappy.

Currently HKIEd students can choose from nine elective modules on religious and spirituality education, including “Faith and Reason”, “Truth and Falsity: Critical Thinking”, “Buddhist ethics: conflicts and dilemmas in modern world” and “Paths to Liberation in modern life: Nibbana, Buddhahood and Enlightenment”.

“This is a small start for life and spirituality education, which is a new educational area. The perspective teachers find the programmes help them to acquire positive views on life, and also offer a structured teaching approach to promoting the values of human well-being among their students. We see a huge demand for training in this field,” said Prof Ng Tze Ming, Director of the Centre of Religious and Spirituality Education (CRSE), HKIEd, at a press briefing today (24 April).

HKIEd is the first local higher education institution to offer life and spiritual education instruction to teachers.

A Master of Education Programme specialising in life and spirituality education is also being planned.

“The findings of the HKWTO survey, along with many other studies of psychological problems faced by our students, reveal an urgent need to incorporate spirituality in school education, and also to prepare our teachers better for the delivery of religious and spirituality education,” said Prof Ng.

“The proposed master’s degree in spirituality education will help empower and assist teachers to engage students more systematically in the area of health and spiritual well-being.”

The centre, set up in May 2006 with $13 million in donations from five major religions in Hong Kong, aims at broadening education with religious beliefs, values and practices, as well as instilling a spiritual dimension into the lives of teachers and students alike.

As part of its latest efforts to cultivate an intellectual and spiritual ethos in the community, HKIEd has organised a talk by His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on “Celebrating Wisdom & Joy” on 28 April 2008. A leading figure in non-violence, human values and universal brotherhood, his vision of uniting the world into a violence-free global family has been an inspiration for peace-seekers around the world.

The HKIEd also co-organised a mass retreat led by world-renowned Zen Master, the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh last year. More than 8,000 Hong Kong professionals benefited from the 10-day mindfulness guidance programme.

His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s talk will be followed by a series of public lectures on spirituality education to be held at HKIEd starting from next month to encourage academic exchange and open dialogue among educators, spiritual leaders and the public on the way forward of spirituality education and its relationship with other disciplines, including religious education, civic education and general education.

Also, a regional conference, gathering experts on life education from the Mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, will be held in Hong Kong in November this year. HKIEd will also organise the first Asia Pacific Conference on Children’s Spirituality in June 2009.

Details of the upcoming events are available at CRSE’s website: http://www.ied.edu.hk/crse.

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(Please click the photo to get a higher resolution image)

	Professor Ng Tze Ming urges an ugrent need to prepare our teachers better for the delivery of religious and spirituality education.
	Students attend the mindfulness meditation and spiritual practice.

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