Al Bayan School….investing in creative minds

Bahrain Bayan School yesterday won The Zayed Future Energy Prize Global High School Award and if this reflects anything, it reflects the effort the school exerts in broadening the imagination of its students and creating a generation that is creative and capable of contributing towards the solving of many current problems not just Bahrain faces but the world does.

When you instill in young students a sense of responsibility towards the problems every society may have, you are assured that you are creating a generation that will not stand still and wait for solutions to be found for certain problems but a generation that will become part of the solution team is being created. Winning this prize now enables the school to develop a learning platform called EcoLab 360 to educate students and the surrounding community on sustainable practices and technologies by focusing on the five R’s; Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Raise awareness, and Renewable energy.

Thumbs up to the school and to the organizers of the Zayed Future Energy Prize High School Award for encouraging creativity among school students and believing that our children are capable of solving problems and not viewed as a generation that has completely depended on technology and in the process lost their creative minds.

When we as parents send our children to schools, we do not want their brains to just be filled with information they learn from their books and completely forgotten after the exams are over. We send our children to learn skills for survival. Schools should send back home children with the ability to think and create. They should instill in our children the will to make a difference in their societies and country. And this is why in advanced educational systems in Scandinavian countries, children spend less time learning by heart and more time understanding what they are being taught. You can ace your grades but that does not necessarily mean acing your thoughts. The world is changing and our children should ace in life and I personally believe that creating a balance is significant. We should not kill creative minds and insist that our children should be grade A students in all the subjects they learn.

They would obviously have more passion towards one subject more than the other and we should analyze what they are inclined towards at an early age and help them be creative in areas they feel a sense of belonging to.

The project at Al Bayan School will include a 50kW solar PV system, 1kW wind turbine, a 25kW/192kWh battery storage system, a gray water recycling system (25-30k liters/month) and food waste recycling (6 tons/year). The total cost projection is $123,000, of which the school will cover $24,600. The school’s students have conducted detailed feasibility studies and expect that the school will save approximately $6,500/year on electricity bills after implementing the project.

Just imagine that this project will be executed by the students themselves and you can imagine what these creative minds will contribute towards, when they specialize in areas they have passion for and how school student can become citizens that become contributors toward solving our problems because one day their schools invested in their creative minds.