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peace through students'
quality circles
 To CMS belongs the credit of introducing Quality Circles (QCs) in education when CMS students constituted SQC Jai Jagat, world's first Student QC by school children. The story of Student QCs goes back to 1992 when Mr Gandhi visited Tokyo in Japan and first came to know about QCs. Returning back to his hotel one evening, Mr Gandhi found the hotel staff gathered around a table animatedly discussing something. Apprehending some crisis, he offered to help and was surprised to know it was a routine QC meeting of the hotel staff. Upon further enquiry he learned about Kaizen, the ancient Japanese philosophy of pursuing continuous improvement as a way of life, on which QC are based. He also learned about Prof Ishikawa's pioneering work and the problem-solving techniques developed by Deming and Juran.
Mr Gandhi collected as much literature on QCs as he could, and once back in his School, he introduced the concept to his Principals and motivated them to adopt the same.
The concept was borrowed and successfully transplanted in the field of education with remarkable results when CMS students constituted world's first SQC Jai Jagat (Glory be to the World) in 1993. Their path-breaking case study won a number of awards at national and international QC conventions in India, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka.
Today, SQC's have been formed in countries like USA, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Australia, Singapore, Bangladesh, Nepal, Malaysia and India among others. Many SQC's by CMS students have been formed with peace as the basic theme, such as Global Village, Lighthouse, Harmony etc.
In order to strengthen the fledging worldwide SQC movement, a World Council for Total Quality for Excellence in
Education was established in February 1999 with international QC experts from 8 countries on the Board of Directors. The WCTQEE coordinates SQC activities worldwide and works for popularizing QCs in schools and colleges thus raising quality awareness in education.
The concept of Quality circles in education conceived by Mr. Jagdish Gandhi has been widely acclaimed and International convention of students’ Quality Control Cirlces (ICSQCC) have been formed. On the occasion of the 5th ICSQCC held in June 2002 at Georgetown, Kentuchy, USA, Mr. Gandhi has been honoured by presentation of the Key to the City of Georgetown by the Mayor Everette Varney, who acknowledged Mr. Gandhi as a ‘true visionary’.
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