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.
