Yogananda on "How to Live" Schools for Children and Youth

Overcoming restlessness of body and mind by concentration techniques has achieved astonishing results: it is no novelty at Ranchi [school] to see an appealing little figure, aged nine or ten years, sitting for an hour or more in unbroken poise, the unwinking gaze directed to the spiritual eye.

The unique feature at Ranchi [school] is the initiation into Kriya Yoga.

The schools do not teach children how to live, how to have that divine happiness. These universal teachings should be given in the schools — not to emphasize any particular religion, but to show that the way to happiness is meditation and contact of God, and that by such contact one may learn from God what one should do.

It isn't academic education alone that makes people happy. It is “how-to-live” education - how to develop a harmonious, moral life, stronger will power, and spiritual understanding - that will bring happiness.

Moral and spiritual training should be made the backbone of such institutions without neglect of academic education.

This Psychological Chart is used in the training of students in my school in Ranchi, India, where they are carefully and lovingly observed, and their conduct and habits, as well as intellectual faculties, are recorded. These slow and comparative methods of daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly observation-records of a student’s life furnish the teachers with sufficient data to enable them to know what particular line to follow in regulating the lives of their students in the right way, by various changes of environment, company, discipline, and training.

[While talking about the Ranchi school] …the chief distinguishing feature of the school is the individual attention received by each student and the close study made of his nature and possibilities by his trained teachers, who record the general character and psychological development and learning of each child in a chart originated by Swami Yogananda for that purpose.

I consider properly organized schools as gardens where infant souls are grown and nurtured. The gardeners should be well-selected and co-operated with by parents and the public. The teachers should never be neglected for they are soul-moulders. The care and spiritual nourishment of the early life of a human plant usually determines its later development.