Education and the Whole Person

Fragmentation defines our view of the world.  My job, your future, and her opinion are all separate and distinct concerns, we believe. 

Many of our industrial based systems, including education, divide subject matter and students artificially.  Matthew Fox suggests in “Educational Transformation: Welcoming the Right Brain in Each Person,” that we must consider ourselves and our students as we are: inter-related with one another and all that exists (p. 23 OriginalBlessing). 

Fox quotes Kabir writing, “Do you have a body?  Don’t sit on the porch! Go out and walk in the rain!” (p.59).  Engaging the creativity and innate passions of young people is what education is about.  To think of students primarily as minds to be molded misses the point.  It excludes those “original blessings” that we’re all born with. 

We speak of helping students “make connections” in the education world.  This is valuable, but I think we ourselves need to take a step back to see how we can better model and highlight the connections that already exist.  A state of connectedness is the condition of our world, whether we deny or accept it.

Reconnecting

Do we really believe that we’re isolated, disconnected from the rest of the natural world?  Can we care for “the environment” with such a view?

Our challenge is more than egocentrism, writes Joanna Macy.  We live out anthropocentrism.  Macy quotes the Australian deep ecologist: “Anthropocentrism means human chauvinism.  Similar to sexism, but substitute ‘human race’ for man and ‘all other species’ for woman…” (p. 46 Coming Back to Life).

How to overcome?  Macy offers guidance in reconnecting with our minds and bodies through “Practicesto Reconnect Our Lives, Our World” (Coming Back to Life).

Wholeness: Faith & Reason

Modern science clearly impacts daily life.  At the same time, spirituality or religious tradition shapes experiences for many of us.  Yet the worlds of science and religion are often at odds.

There is a history to this antagonism.  By the sixteenth-century “the creativity of the West was now situated primarily in the scientific inquiry…” and not in the religious traditions, notes Thomas Berry the cultural historian (The Sacred Universe, p.6).  Berry writes that “…traditional religion, alienated from the modern world, has reached a spiritual impasse” (p.14).

The message of wisdom always seems to be one of wholeness.  Take everything that is, and work with it.  Don’t throw out discoveries of science.  Similarly don’t dismiss traditions of religion.  Let them mold each other.  See how they can inform and teach each other.

I agree with Berry that there is hope in efforts to allow modern realities to add “new vigor” to old traditions (p.17).  Science and religion need each other.  Without spirit, reason can grow egocentric and meaningless.  Lacking reason, spirituality can become removed from the realities of here and now.  They need to evolve together.

Further, the either-or debate of science or religion reflects the dualistic nature of many arguments and fields of study.  We can learn from this by seeing the need for more integration of academic fields, more acceptance of difference – the need for greater wholeness in ourselves.  Making connections and seeing the wider field, the bigger picture is the way forward for science and religion, for academic study, and for communities.

Getting There

In Wherever You Go, There You Are, author Jon Kabat-Zinn writes that in order to get there, you must be fully here.


I don't think most of us live like that.  We plan, we hurry, we follow automatic patterns of behavior that we hardly - if at all - notice to be patterns of behavior.  Once I get [fill in the blank] done, then life will be better.  Once I get [name the place or situation] then I'll be able to really relax.  I do it, too, and it's silliness.


In fact, whatever we're like now is probably how we'll be when we arrive there, wherever or whenever 'there' may be.  So in some ways the message is comforting: be present now and that prepares us for whatever is ahead.  It's a common theme, really.  It's one of openness, willingness, and allowing.  And it takes some work.