March 29, 2007

Ambassador Simonyi Visits Ideal Academy Public Charter School

Ambassador Simonyi visited the Ideal Academy, a charter school in NE Washington, DC where all the teachers and students are engaged in a special program for creativity development using meditation.
 

Ambassador Simonyi at the "Ideal Academy"

The school's principal, George Rutherford, has been a teacher and administrator in the Washington D.C. school district for 42 years.  Dr. Rutherford first introduced the stress-reducing technique of Transcendental Meditation at the Fletcher-Johnson school in 1992 to help quell tensions and violence among students. "We had amazing results. I used to have to be in the streets all the time to stop the fighting but after we started the TM program, I didn't have to go out there. You could walk into the school and you feel it's tension-free, a stress-free school right in the heart of the inner city, right around where we had plenty of killings."
 

The Hungarian Ambassador with principal George Rutherford

Ambassador Simonyi was impressed by the school and the eloquence and openness of the students when expressing themselves. He invited the Principal and the class for a visit of the Hungarian Embassy.