In the UK, for example, LTLT is often interpreted as meaning citizenship studies, socio-emotional learning, peace education (including the study of how to build more harmonious societies) or the study of civic responsibility and human rights. Because it sits apart from the core, academic parts of the curriculum, it often receives only perfunctory attention in the classroom.

“Part of the problem is that we still don’t really know what Learning To Live Together means,” Patel said. “Ideas such as ‘togetherness’ and ‘education of the heart’ are vague and fuzzy. For many schools it ends up being little more than a tick-box exercise.”

“In India, there are schools which may offer a way of resolving this because they focus on what we might call ‘active harmony’ – a way of living and being that we want children to acquire. It’s a very different approach to education, but one that we might want to understand if we are serious about meeting the educational goal of LTLT.”

The five alternative schools Patel studied were all founded or inspired by great Indian thinkers: Mahatma Gandhi, Sri Aurobindo, Jiddu Krishnamurti and Rabindranath Tagore. All four perceived the true purpose of education as developing qualities that make us human and give our lives meaning.

The schools also operate independently of Government, pursuing their own curricula and recruitment. Their approach appears to have achieved impressive results. Mirambika Free Progress School in Delhi, for example, appears in lists of the 100 best schools in India. Rishi Valley School in Chittoor, consistently ranks as one of the best boarding schools.

Patel embedded himself in the life of each school for several weeks, observing lessons and activities, and interviewing teachers and school leaders about their philosophy, what they saw as the purpose of education, and its implementation.

He found that they interpret LTLT as ‘harmonious living’. Specifically, this means developing pupils’ ‘personal’ harmony (for example, helping them to understand their emotions and what shapes them as individuals, and helping them to develop a level of inner peace); harmonious relations with others (by encouraging an appreciation of diversity and difference); and a sense of how, as citizens, they might contribute to creating a harmonious society.

At a conceptual level, the research identifies six overlapping and mutually-reinforcing qualities, or dimensions, which teachers at all five schools try to instil in students . These are:

While the detail of how teachers seek to develop these qualities in the classroom will be covered in future publications, two initial articles by Patel provide an outline. For example, the schools’ learning programmes deliberately focus on social issues, developing pupils’ grasp of their interdependence with nature, and of the processes that shape their community. Teachers interviewed by Patel had arranged visits from local waste-pickers, craftspeople, mechanics and artists in an effort to deepen their students’ understanding of the different roles performed by people in their community. Pupils also spent time living on farms, participating in recycling initiatives, or fundraising for NGOs.

Each school also prizes collaboration over competition, which teachers regard as having the potential to erode self-esteem. Uniforms and academic streaming are generally avoided, as they run contrary to an appreciation of diversity and acceptance of others.

In addition, the research finds that the schools embrace Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha – determined, non-violent dissent to achieve social change – and related philosophies that encourage students to think critically about the social and political structures around them.

Respectful disagreement – including between pupils and teachers – is therefore treated as “a must”. Disputes and conflicts are often discussed openly in classrooms or school fora, with teachers guiding conversations using dialogic techniques to encourage dissent, mutual acceptance and collaborative decision-making. There is also extensive use of student councils, which debate everything from lunch menus to school policy. One teacher told Patel: “Students become tolerant by conflict, by learning to know that you need not always be right... You cannot have an ‘it’s either my way or no way attitude’.”

Such measures suggest that as well as trying to cultivate ‘harmonious living’, the schools deliberately operate as spaces where pupils encounter, develop and practise acts of compassionate citizenship – the approach Patel describes as ‘active harmony’.

Implementing such models of education on a national scale, either in India or other countries, would require a seismic shift in political will. Patel suggests, however, that these local examples of how LTLT might be made meaningful and operable could provide ideas and inspiration for individual schools, or clusters of schools, elsewhere.

“There are lots of small movements in different countries that are challenging conventional ideas about education and looking at what may be possible with Learning To Live Together,” he added. “Many Indian thinkers behind these alternative systems would argue that this does not start with Governments or a one-size-fits-all approach, but has to be a decentralised process, led by schools who retain the freedom to determine how students themselves learn.”

Two initial articles from Patel’s research on LTLT are available now in the Cambridge Journal of Education and Educational Philosophy and Theory.