Democracy – Soul Needs

Education is a mess – is there an integrative way to teach?

I have updated an introduction to the SunWALK model of human-centred studies;

SunWALK: Summary of the main meanings of the components represented in

the model and its ‘logo-diagram-mandala’ – providing a teacher’s process model

SunWALK: Summary of the main meanings of the components represented in

the model and its ‘logo-diagram-mandala’ – providing a teacher’s process model

Give me a brief introduction:

SunWALK grew out of reflection on many years of teaching children and adults and particularly a period of five years teaching in a RC middle school – theorizing my practice via a PhD and practising my theory day-to-day.

SunWALK simply says that the quality of all of our lives will be higher if we undertake all education within the framework of deepening our humanity.

Deepening our humanity is a matter of developing technical competencies within the chief dimensions of the human spirit; Caring (the Humanities), Creativity (the Arts) and Criticality (the Sciences & Philosophy) – all in local, national and world Communities. These are the ‘4Cs’ of the model – 3 intra-personal, 1 inter-personal.

We and our one planet will be better of if all of the technical stuff, from learning to read to Masters degrees in engineering, take place in the context of humanization/the 4Cs. This requires international, national, school & classroom commitment to deepening the best of being human as the context for learning the technical.

We can’t afford to have character and morality and compassion as hoped-for accidental outcomes. Moral Education, PSME, RE etc. don’t work as bolt-on extras. They need to be the general context in which competencies are developed.

It is a model based on the energy flow of the human spirit – that is the given. That is physical, mental and spiritual energy that flows through all living human beings.

That energy, the human spirit, is the true ’stuff of education’. With the best of the past teachers need to equip children to face tomorrow’s challenges which will always be a mixture of new problems combined with eternally recurrent problems. Building all education with will be the medium with which the teacher works to nurture and challenge balanced development.

Today we have lost the balance between specialization, and whole-systems thinking and acting – SunWALK model brings into harmony the best of ‘Western’ & ‘Eastern’ world-views.

OK – so what’s the ‘Sun’ and the ‘WALK in the model’?

The ‘Sun’ = the individual’s spiritual inspiration & values sources – accumulated and ongoing, as operating internally and as expressed in speech and behaviour.

WALK = Willing & Wise Action through Loving & Knowing – here seen as the general goal for education, and as the interiority, character and behaviour of the student.

The model/logo combines a range of sub-models including the following:

a) An ‘interior’ model of the human spirit – in relation to ‘the world’.

b) A model for re-positioning education within being & becoming human – in the world with others.

c) A general model of the curriculum – for primary, secondary and higher education.

d) A framework for the analysis and evaluation of teaching episodes or projects.

e) A model of education that makes non-faith-specific spiritual and moral education intrinsic to all learning.

THE MODEL AND THE PROCESS IN ONE (long) SENTENCE: –

The SunWALK model of spiritualizing pedagogy sees human education as the

storied

development of

meaning, which is

constructed, and de-constructed,

physically, mentally and spiritually, through

Wise & Willing

Action, via

Loving and Knowing – developed in

Community, through the

‘Dialectical Spiritualization [1]’of

Caring, Creativity & Criticality processes, all undertaken in the light of the

‘Sun’ of chosen higher-order

values and beliefs, using best available,appropriate

content.

These underlined concerns are central components and focuses of the practice and theory in the model.

This is an intense combination of theory and practice. It automatically requires the teacher to practice their theory and theorise their practice – dynamically as practice-based research. It automatically enables the classroom to be connected to the school & community as a whole and to e.g. a relevant department in a university.

It attempts to suffuse all teaching with the demands, challenges and joy of being human in the world with others. But it seeks to bring together the Whole and the parts, the ineffable and the concepts – not just concepts because as Heschel (1971:7) says, “Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.”

The diagram/logo/

The outer ring of the SunWALK logo combines two dimensions:

1 ‘Community i.e. the social,interpersonal dimension of interaction with other individuals or groups.

2 ‘Cultural sources’ including such dimensions as the traditions, the political & the legal.

The three major divisions of the arts,sciences and humanities are here thought of as the stored, yet potentially dynamic, accumulation of knowledge and beliefs and procedures – everything from galleries to written laws of physics that the individual can draw upon or be influenced by. This is the ‘stuff out there’ rather than the interiority of consciousness in which there is the perpetual flow and re-shaping, focusing de-focusing etc. of heart-mind.

In SunWALK everything within the inner circle = a representation of ‘interiority’, i.e. human consciousness – the human spirit.

The human spirit is presented intra-personally as 3 ‘voices’ – 3 modes of being & of engaging with reality & of knowing.

The three emanate from the singleness of ‘heart-mind’, consciousness.

They are presented (metaphorically) as the ‘primary colours’ of Creativity (the yellow of inspiration), Criticality (the blue of reason) & Caring (the red warmth of love).

Creativity is the ‘I’ voice of subjective engagement via an artistic medium – it is concerned with subjective knowing and is particularly related to the core virtue ‘beauty’ and its products are of course ‘the Arts’.

Criticality is the ‘IT’ voice of objective engagement which enables progress in the Sciences ( & Maths., Philosophy and ‘critical’ studies). It is concerned with objective knowing – and it is related particularly to the core virtue ‘truth’. The products of course are the sciences and technology – but also philosophy and critical studies.

Caring is the ‘WE’ voice which enables moral engagement – for progress in the moral domain and in service of others. It is concerned with social knowing – related particularly to the core virtue ‘goodness’ and to ‘the Humanities’.

All three of course need to be conditioned by the pre-eminent virtue of justice. All students need to have these ways of engaging with reality developed in a balanced way. High technical competence combined with moral dwarfism leads to ……

The physical dimension is seen as the instrument for the flow of spirit in all of its forms – e.g. via dance, drama & PE and sports.

Each individual develops her/his I, WE and IT voices, the 3Cs, via socialization, starting in the family, the local community and then later in formal education. A sense of justice is seen as paramount intrapersonally as well as inter-personally i.e. it enables us to engage with that which is beautiful, good or true with balance, clarity & due weight.

The essential process in all 4Cs is multi-level dialogue. In the case of the individual dialogue is seen as meditation, reflection and inner-talk. In the case of groups it is dialectical process via consultation.

The ‘Celtic’ knot that surrounds the central shield indicates that the 3Cs are simply aspects of the one human spirit– the flow of ‘heart-mind’.

The white shield at the centre represents the meditative state in which there is no ‘focused’ engagement via one of the 3Cs – and in which there is relatively little of the interference or chatter that we experience in the unquiet mind.

This can enable us to ‘go beyond ourselves’, i.e. transcend our normal knowing – any of the 3Cs (I, WE or IT modes), as gateways, can be a pathway to the transcendent and to subsequent improved insight into reality.

The black dot at the centre is the ‘well-spring’ of consciousness. For artists (and great scientists) it is the Muse. For religionists it is the voice of God within (albeit distorted by the dust of self). For non-religionists it is the inner source of spirit as energy & inspiration – the bits of realization and insight that come to us for which we don’t make an effort.

Educating the human spirit is seen as nurturing, and cultivating, the life-force which culminates in the developed human who, through higher-order consciousness, realizes abilities from within Caring, Creative or Critical engagements.

Teaching is seen as nurturing and cultivating what is normally present, almost from birth, & certainly by the time we go to school – namely the flow of spirit expressed in nascent forms of Caring, Creativity, and Criticality – in Community with others. Holistic Learning takes place when the learner uses Creativity, Criticality and Caring – in Community – inspired by higher-order values – in dynamic combinations such as Creativity providing texts for criticality – which then, via dialogue, produce/attract the spirit for more creativity.

In SunWALK spirituality is not a dimension; it is the model as a whole. In SunWALK moral education is not a dimension – it is intrinsic to all of its praxis.

The SunWALK logo can also be seen as a mandala, or even as a plan drawing for a fountain or an ‘arts centre of light’!

SunWALK is a major shift to a process view of the world, of being human and of educating our young people. It rejects a worldview that is limited to the mechanistic, the ‘human-as-computer, the fragmentary and the materialistic; seeking instead modelling that is based on flow/process, holism and the spiritual.

SunWALK is designed to enable teachers and students to become agents of change to transform a world that is still operated as atomistic, mechanistic and materialistic into one that is holistic, dialogic, and derived from the best processes and products of the human spirit.

The SunWALK logo and model of education Copyright Roger Prentice 1995 & 2009

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Being human – an American high school principal´s view

Many years ago a copy of this letter came my way – supposedly issued by a high school principal to his/her teachers on the first day of school.

It was seminal in the development of my world-view – and it is worthy of re-circulation;

Dear Teacher

     I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:

        Gas chambers built by learned engineers.

        Children poisoned by educated physicians.

      Infants killed by trained nurses.

        Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.

        So, I am suspicious of education.

My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmans.

Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

What if mothers did rule the world?

From QuakerDave we have a post we should all be asking – What if mothers did rule the world?

Funny. Sally Field is getting ripped by the Right because of her “insane ranting” at the Emmys last night. This savaging comes in spite of the fact that what she said (despite Fox’s attempt to censor her) is about as “family values” as you can get. The war-hawkers at Fox had to cut what she said because she had the audacity to mention war in the context of her being (and portraying) somebody’s mother, and Rupert couldn’t ever let that happen:

“This (award) belongs to all the mothers in the world – may they be seen, may their work be valued and raised – and especially to mothers who stand with an open heart and wait — wait for their children to come home – from danger, from harm’s way and from war. I am proud to be one of those women… If mothers ruled the world there would be no (expletive) wars.”

Here’s the question for the day: What if mothers did rule the world? ………………

I would say:

Those that live under terror might then have security.

Those that hunger might be fed.

Those that thirst might have clean water.

Those that long for education and a means to earn a living might be affirmed.

Those that seek justice and a respected place in the human family might be given a place at the human family’s ‘table’.

To read QuakerDave’s answers go HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Heart-rending testimony of an Afghan woman in Fazal Sheikh’s online book, ‘When Two Bulls Fight the Leg of the Calf is Broken’

Be sure to visit Fazal Sheikh’s on-line HERE

Take a look at the heart-rending testimony of an Afghan woman in ‘Fazal Sheikh’s online book When Two Bulls Fight the Leg of the Calf is Broken’.

Here is a short extract;

‘When our great Islamic revolution succeeded, we thought our day of deliverance had come. Finally we would be free and independent. Afghanistan was released. But once again women were treated as the goat in the game, pulled this way and that by one faction or another. Once again, on all sides, indiscriminate bombing and rocket-attacks, bullets and mines killed Afghan children in their mother’s wombs. We were forced to flee with bare feet and uncovered heads to escape the killing. Some of us fled to foreign countries and became refugees. It should not be forgotten that some of us were forced to flee to Moscow for our safety!

I shall never forget how so many of us spent frightened lonely nights waiting patiently in the front line for a single loaf of bread. How many of us were abducted by armed men from Mujahedin parties in the middle of the day in busy streets. How many of us were raped. How many of us threw themselves from buildings to keep their chastity. How many of us were taken from the scorching refugee camps in Jalalabad to become a commodity for men in neighboring countries. How many widows were forced to sell themselves to feed their families.

Those who have come to power, those with guns, continue to leer at us, to make fun of us, to take pleasure in harassing us. These men who think of themselves as the defenders of our faith, as our fathers and brothers sent to protect us, are the same ones who call us “Honey”. They say: “Don’t come out of your bottle, the flies might touch you.” The flies are the men that rush at you. Others tell us that we are “live wires that must be covered.” It is a pity they don’t recognize us as individuals, as fellow human beings. Over the loudspeakers they announce that years of holy war has simply been to cover Afghan women in Muslim dress.

That, dear brother, dear father and son, I am sure was not the purpose of the holy war……’

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Of course people need water and food but as Maslow pointed out long ago security is a comparably important need.

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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Story and storying: the teacher’s self as text in reform of education

Parker Palmer in, The Courage to Teach, (1998 p.3), says that his book:

explores the teacher’s inner life, but it also raises a question that goes beyond the solitude of the teacher’s soul: How can the teacher’s selfhood become a legitimate topic in education and in our public dialogues on educational reform?

It turns out that this site is an attempt to answer Palmer’s question.

In a similar vein Sondra Perl (1994), (in Laidlaw, Mellett and Whitehead 2003) says:

Stories have mythic powers. To know this … is to know the shaping power of the tale. But how, I wonder, do we see beyond the boundaries of a familiar story and envision a new one? What, in other words, are the connections between texts we read and the lives we live, between composing our stories and composing ourselves?

Stories are one answer to the question; ‘What is it that makes of the parts a whole?’. Story-making of our experience is in-built. Conversely we tend to read the world according to the stories to which we subscribe, or that we ourselves have created. A religious world-view would be an example of the former. Concerning personal stories and how we construe the world see the psychology, and methodology, of George Kelly HERE

I am seeking on this site, and have sought in my thesis, to see beyond the familiar stories of my life, and of education as it is has been, and, through ‘a re-composing’ of my life via autobiography, my teaching and dialogues, I have sought to envision a new story for education. This is what is meant by ‘applied autoethnography’.

Starting your own school

Today someone wrote me from Mexico and asked about starting a holistic school or centre. Below is what I wrote back but I will add more as I think of it;

If I were much younger and was able to start a school, my hard-won general principles would include;

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1 Find the finance to buy a school that is already successful. Develop its potential further – including the summer period. Don’t change anything until you understand everything and fully have the trust of the parents staff and children. Alternatively if all you can do is teach 3 children under the village tree then do that. Or support others in home-schooling.

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2 Develop an MA course and get it accredited by an internationally acceptable university.

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3 Draw your MA students from around the world and pair them with classroom teachers for at least half of each day. The teachers with their MA student assistants would consequently be involved in on-going research that was classroom-inspired – what is the best way to teach Maths?, how can the spiritual dimension of all subjects be developed?, what is the optimum amount of physical expression e.g. drama, dance etc.

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4 Make sure that you eventually institutionalize the holistic procedures – one school I about to be holistic when the core charismatic teachers left.

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5 Live what you teach.

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6 Be democratic – use PFC Philosophy for Children but realize that your responsibilities as an adult mean that it is you that will be held to account! Make clear contracts between all stakeholders including children, teachers, parents, community members etc. Authority must be given to the Head – revising policy by others should be restricted to just a few meetings per year.

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7 If the children can help build and care for the school, along with community members, it would be very useful!

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Of course there are a whole bunch of more general principles that you can assemble – have sufficient finance to last if your development stages take 2 or 3 times as long as you expect. etc.

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One UK source of relevant advice is the Human-scale Education movement

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Story and Personal Myth in making our selves, and our education, whole

My personal myth Island, Shoreline and Ocean –

a view of story in Personal Development and in Holistic Education

Introduction:

By way of an introduction here are a few succinct thoughts. Skip this if you want to go straight to my ‘personal myth’;

Myth operates in us – its part of being human – like philosophizing. Therefore we should make the most of it – in terms of the mythology we make, and that with which we choose to identify.

Story is central to our meaning-making and how we (choose) to make sense of the world and give account of our encounters and experiences.

Myth, as opposed to story generally, is about our deepest concerns and is characterized as narrative that gives account of the unknown and unknowable as well as some of the known. E.g. we die but we don’t know what, if anything, happens after that. Myth creates and is derived from beliefs.

Myth intrapersonally is the clothing we give to the psycho-spiritual dynamics of inner experience.

Myth interpersonally is the stories we tell each other to explain encounters with the (mainly) unknown and unknowable.

Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth is a must because it makes clear the relationship between myth and religion and world-views.

“Without myth, cult, ritual and ethical living, a sense of the sacred dies,” says Armstrong. Without the discipline of mythical thinking and practice, it was difficult for many to avoid despair. The dark epiphanies of the 20th century can be blamed on “the absence of a viable mythology” that could help us face the unspeakable. Guardian review by Tim Radford

A personal myth operates in us whether we choose to articulate it or not. It is closely allied to what one psychologist called ‘our personal script’ and the another (Kelly) called our set of ‘personal constructs’.

We can help in healing ourselves by articulating our personal myth in comparison and contrast to the group myths around us – or that exist as historical artifacts.

Restorying, (e.g.by writing different versions of) our personal myth can enable us to re-frame our personal experience and gain degrees of control and depths of energy that previously were denied us through locked-up pain.

Creating a personal myth can facilitate better self-understanding and there is potentially a powerful tool for teaching and learning.

My personal myth is here;

The ‘Island, Shoreline and Ocean’ personal Myth

The personal myth that follows was written as a ‘one-page’ way of expressing a) a sense of the relationship with the cosmos, the Whole, and b) of a range of the ideas in, and behind, SunWALK. Jane is part of me, perhaps the same Jane as in Jane’s Short Story in Chapter 1.

The personal myth is an attempt at re-storying one kind of knowing. A felt need to undertake a re-storying of knowing can lie in acknowledgement of the fact that we know, and need to know, and need to express that knowing, in more ways than the empirical-reasoning mode – hence Island, Shoreline, Ocean. To admit other ways of knowing, is to admit that in our wholeness we are more than our senses and our reasoning. It is also to admit that in our knowing we are surrounded by mystery, which we encounter. We in various ways give accounts of those encounters.

3:3 Island, Shoreline and Ocean

a personal myth concerning the nature of mystical experience & its relationship to consciousness, & to knowledge creation – as such it is an attempt to include as much as possible of what I learned during the eleven year journey of the thesis – in a ‘one page’ story

The sun always woke her. Every day Jane walked through her garden, inspecting this plant and that, analysing what needed to be done. The quest was never-ending. Sometimes she sat a while on an old tree stump in order to consider the tasks and challenges, trying to work out the feelings and puzzles of what didn’t seem quite right, what didn’t feel quite right. What she couldn’t physically arrange she sometimes tried to paint or write – she had an imaginary garden as well as a real one. Sometimes she looked at her neighbours’ gardens, wondering if that would give her inspiration, but she was always left with the feeling that her most important answers came from elsewhere.

Every day beneath the practical considerations she felt a longing. Having made her review of her garden Jane walked over the fields, across the two streams that eventually made their way down to the sea, and along the cliff, and down to the shoreline. At the shoreline she breathed in her sense of the infinity of the ocean, along with the ozone-heavy, sea-weedy, sea air.
Frequently she imagined the island’s shoreline around the island’s circumference. In her mind’s eye she saw each place being shaped in some different way by the ocean – which was sometimes gentle, and was sometimes awesome in its relentless might. Sometimes the feelings that filled her were so powerful that she was overcome. Sometimes the beauty of being in the presence of the ocean was so great that she felt that neither garden nor painting nor poetry would ever fully satisfy the deepest longing.

Often after such reverie she slipped into the sea.

The sea had so much salt that she just floated. And, when the temperature was right, in floating, eyes closed, she lost all sense of where she ended and where the surrounding sea began. There was no separate sea, no separate self – it was just ….. being. It was always that way, just being. At such times she felt both full and empty, both powerless and at that same time she felt herself to be the very ocean that insistently carved and re-carved the island shoreline.

Mostly at that point she just wanted to stay, to be just part of this place between land and sea, like a driftwood sculpture, ocean-polished, that had been thrown up after a long journey from some river bank, high up some vaguely-remembered river. The shoreline was exquisitely the best of places. But she always took that first step. A first step on the walk back to her garden. And with the walking the experience that was ineffable started to give up insights and possibilities to both refine the garden, and to extend it into some more of the island’s familiar, wilderness, space.

In the evenings she and her friends sat beneath the moon, in whichever was the most interesting of their gardens, at that particular time, and they discussed the issues that concerned them. They all, more or less, had similar such deep experiences as Jane. The ongoing conversation was what united them, along with their respect for how they clothed so differently, in imagination and form, the experiences that were ineffable.
C. from an unpublished doctoral thesis by Roger Prentice, Northumberland ver July 2003

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Karen Armstrong’s book A Short History of Myth is HERE NB Read the Customer Reviews which are excellent and ignore the Editorial Reviews which are carping, mean-spirited and self-serving!

Relevant book that looks interesting Restorying Our Lives: Personal Growth Through Autobiographical Reflection HERE

Island map SOURCE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY – TWO VIEWS A) BY KEN WILBER AND B) BY DEB PLATT

Even a cursory glance at the ideological and physical conflicts of today will indicate the desperate need for understanding that enables a ‘clearing in the forest’ of beliefs – one that will enable harmony in diversity.

On this site I argue that the deepest recognition has to lie in our humanity which we hold in common with all others – I am human, you are human, they are human – we all are human. However since religion exists in many and powerful manifestations the most important of all questions is, “In what ways is there a common light at the centre of of all of the great world religions?” The answer is presented in Perennial Philosophy. Perennial Philosophy is not a particularly good title – something like ‘core mystical reality’ or ‘the great chain of being’ are more accurate, albeit much clumsier titles.

In many ways the appeal to recognize sameness in others, harmony in diversity, is also a call to a kind of federalism. That is to say such a recognition will enable the people of the world to hold an allegiance to the whole as well as to the particular – much as most Americans or Germans hold an allegiance to their national government as well as to their state governments.

HERE IS HOW KEN WILBER SUMMARIZES THE SEVEN MAJOR POINTS OF THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, IN HIS BOOK GRACE AND GRIT:

1. Spirit exists.
2. Spirit is found within.
3. Most of us don’t realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin,
separation, and duality–that is, we are living in a fallen or illusory state.
4. There is a way out of this fallen state of sin and illusion, there is a Path to our liberation.
5. If we follow this path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience
of Spirit within, a Supreme Liberation, which–
6 marks the end of sin and suffering, and
which
7 issues in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings.

THIS IS HOW DEB PLATT PRESENTED HER LATE LAMENTED SITE ON WHICH SHE BROUGHT TOGETHER A VAST AND BEAUTIFUL SELECTION OF QUOTATIONS FROM WORLD RELIGIONS

If anyone knows what happened to her site please tell me. Her site was a truly great contribution toward religious understanding and its disappearance a great loss. Equally if you managed to copy her site before it was taken down please let me know (onesummit ATgmail.com replace AT with @).

This is the ‘universal’, mystic heart of all of the great wisdom traditions as Deb Platt presented it;

• There’s a reality beyond the material world:
• Which is uncreated.
• It pervades everything,
• but remains beyond the reach of human knowledge and understanding.
• You approach that reality by:
• Distinguishing ego from true self
• Understanding the nature of desire
• Becoming unattached
• Forgetting about preferences
• Not working for personal gain
• Letting go of thoughts
• Redirecting your attention
• Being devoted
• Being humble
• Invoking that reality
• Surrendering
• That reality approaches you through:
• Grace
• The teacher
• You’re transformed so that you embody that reality by:
• Dying and being reborn

Holistic Education doesn’t have allegiance to any one religion or philosophy, but Perennial Philosophy is very important for many and is the position of this site. It is motivated by recognition of the essential oneness of the great wisdom traditions

(SEE also Aldous Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy or Chap 2 of Jack Miller’s Educating for Wisdom & Compassion)

‘Practical theory’ re: Jane’s Short Story, meaning, interpretation, stories, meta-thinking, the teacher – and generating an antidote to fundamentalism!

Teachers, and other professionals, deal in a) texts (written and other kinds) and b) discourse about their meaning and interpretation with students every day.

When we engage with texts we do so in one of three voices – the philosophical-scientific, the creative or the moral-caring. This article comprises the first of a few reflections about hermeneutics in relation to the process of teaching – and in relation to the SunWALK model and ‘what it is to be fully and positively human’ – the main focus of this site.

‘Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else’s point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary.’ Wiki

1 It makes sense for middle school children, and above, to come to understand that texts represent possible meanings and ‘critiques’ represent readings of texts. It might also be useful from this to understand that readings can both change over time in our lives, but principles might remain constant.

Developing meta-thinking via periodic re-visits to a useful text

There are calls for teachers to help children to achieve meta-thinking and one enjoyable way is to re-visit a story in succeeding years with the discourse centred around such questions as;

“How do you read the story?” and

“How do you feel what you’ve learned over last year has changed your views and, what you value – in relation to the story?” and

“In what respects have you, and your thinking, changed and developed over the last year?”and

“How do you read the story now compared to when you first ‘met it’ – what’s stayed the same and what has changed?”

One re-visiting was to Jane’s Short Story in a Roman Catholic middle school. Jane’s Short Story was posted to this site yesterday (8^th Aug 2007). I wrote Jane’s Short Story to see how good Year 7 children (11 to 12 year olds) were at de-constructing and critiquing a piece that was deliberately stream-of-consciousness, oblique and cryptic! They surprised me the first time we used the story as a text and they also impressed me with their reflections on how their thinking had developed and the differences they saw on their second encounter.

Such work is also an antidote to the shallowness and superficiality that blights much of what children suffer in school. If you treat children as profound thinkers they show that they are profound thinkers – that’s part of the genius of the process in Lipman’s Philosophy for Children

What’s the connection with the SunWALK model?

PFC Philosophy for Children is the exemplary programme for the ‘IT’ voice, the objective mode of engaging with truth. The spirit flows even more powerfully if we combine IT engagement with working with the ‘I’ voice of creative expression. This means that the children can treat the text, including occasionally pieces by the teacher and/or other pupils both as literary text and as philosophical text. Switching back and forth between the two activities and the two treatments of text becomes a very powerful mode of teaching – including for the third voice, that of the moral and other-centred i.e Caring.

What’s the connection with fundamentalism?

There are many including;

Once you have separated out the different forms of truth-telling, the IT voice of philosophy and science, the ‘I’ voice of Creativity and the ‘WE’ voice of Caring you no longer have to defend texts in inappropriate and very dangerous ways. Treating religious texts as the supreme sources of inspiration for acting with justice, truth, beauty and goodness makes sense. Treating such texts as finite and fixed in their meaning as if they were simply mathematic formulae doesn’t.

It is we who make the meaning, not God – which is why we should always be tentative in how we assert our interpretations (including this one!). Sacred texts are gifts of meaning-making possibilities. Of course part of the texts is time-related and part constitutes eternal realities, but understanding what we are doing as we engage in objective, subjective or moral truth-seeking helps minimize confusion.

Literalism is the denial of God because it is the denial of meaning-making possibilities in relating to sacred texts – it limits the text to fixed and finite meaning – and tends to take us away from the focus on the need to act in the world with justice, truth, beauty, goodness – and all of the other so-called names and attributes of God.

It also allows people to start believing that the ‘others’ have broken whatever covenant is deemed to have existed so that no ‘rules’ of war’ need be complied with.

Its only in early life that we can prevent the kind of indoctrination of hatred for others. Understanding that spirituality, be it theistic or humanist, is simply the process of gaining the will to act morally is vital. Understanding the ‘voices’ with which engage and the texts that we engage with are all either objectively focused or subjectively focused or morally focused is vital in developing the truly mature mind-set and world-view.

Writing your thesis, dissertation, essay or paper – Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education – Resource No 1

The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education – a resource when writing your thesis, dissertation, essay or paper

Socrates

A useful resource if you are writing a thesis, dissertation, essay or paper is The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy of Education. It has been developing slowly – being produced by busy people!

Its format is pleasing in that the entries are of sufficient length to constitute short essays and are coupled with sufficient references to take you on to greater depths.

There clearly isn’t much time for editing or strengthening translations. Consequently there are a number of entries that present problems such as this first sentence;

The feminist criticism which in the XIX century emerged in the United States and Europe, even defending the equality of rights, considered the differences between men and women from the biological point of view, respecting the existent dichotomy between the public and private space which also meant to accept the feminine domesticity and subordination to the masculine pattern, besides imprinting on those natural differences an idea of women’s inferiority on account of a greater physical and intellectual fragility, in spite of an undeniable superiority from the moral point of view.

Hmmmmm….. Whether the origin of this painful assault lies in first-language woolliness or clumsy translation major dis-service is done to the cause of gender equality as well as to the reputation of the Encyclopaedia!

However still the project is useful and I hope it flourishes – for several reasons. The main reason is the need to get teacher education back to a core of philosophy of education.

It ought to be able to define its purpose easily as a) giving account of ideas in the Philosophy of Education field and b) giving account of the educational import of the work of philosophers (and others?).

I mention the issue of ‘keeping sharply focused’ the definition of the purpose of the encyclopaedia because of the powerful development of other online resources such as the Wiki Encyclopaedia and the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.

Summaries are HERE

Ugly women rejoice – Salem witches might be forgiven! – great history site for helping teach Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

If you are at all fascinated by our forefathers’ ignorance and cruelty or are about to teach lessons on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible – or more recent American history – check out Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewski’s astonishing sites.

Below are a few snippets that might want to make you visit. The two that leap out for me are;

1 Canon law stated that after the death of a witch, that the accuser and judge might divide his/her property between them.

2 Witchcraft in Massachusetts singled out:

* spinsters [unmarried beyond the usual age of marriage]
* barren women
* the ugly
* the extremely successful
* the independent
* the reclusive
* the litigious [prone to lawsuits]
* the willful.

So would that include ‘fat cats’, lawyers and talentless air-head celebrities (just joking! RP)

Some more extracts

Puritans landed in Massachusetts in December in 1620, during the reign of James I of England, while they were trying to reach the Virginia Colony. A storm at sea directed them north.

Since many people could not afford the price of passage to the American colonies, they indentured themselves to the ship’s captain or another colonist. It usually took five to seven years to pay the money used for passage to the New World. After this time was up, their masters were required to provide their indentured servants with farm tools, seed to grow their own crops, and other essentials they needed to make it on their own.

By 1630 the population of Massachusetts was around 2,000 people. It was then that Governor John Winthrop would begin his first term of office. The Massachusetts Bay Colony would not have a royal standing until May 12, 1686. Most women had as many as twenty-five (25) pregnancies in their life. Families generally consisted of twenty-five people including grandparents, parents, children and their wives. The average life expectancy was forty-five years of age. There were many that lived into their nineties, while children were at the greatest risk during the first years of their lives. Pregnant women were at high risk of dying in childbirth. Most women had to work before and after the birth of their children because the early colonial times were hard and everyone had to work long and difficult hours to survive.

Dying was a regular part of life. Mortality rates were as high as 75% in the early years. Most Puritans were Calvinists. Presbyterians were the model for English Calvinists.

———————————-
The Witches of Salem were hanged. This was less painful than the burning of witches in Europe. They thought the burning of a witch was the only way to release the evil, since the Devil would be forced to exit the melting body through the smoke.

Witchcraft in Massachusetts singled out:

* spinsters [unmarried beyond the usual age of marriage]
* barren women
* the ugly
* the extremely successful
* the independent
* the reclusive
* the litigious [prone to lawsuits]
* the willful.

In New England, no one that confessed was put to death. Those who denied the accusations and fought to clear their names were hanged. The first victim of witchcraft, in New England, was Margaret Jones of Charlestown, Massashusetts. Margaret was hanged, in 1648, for giving herbal cures. Margaret was a physician and some thought she had the “malignant touch” after some of her patients started vomiting or suffered violent seizures. Prison guards testified that they saw a small child run out of the witch’s cell into another room, and then vanished. This was enough to prove that she was under the influence of evil. Anne Hibbons, the sister of the Deputy Governor Bellingham of Massachusetts was hanged, in the words of John Norton for “having more wit that her neighbors” (Buckland, 402-411). Anne’s husband died in 1654. He was a Boston merchant, a Colonial Agent, and an assistant Agent. She was “quarrelsome,” and had “supernatural” knowledge. She was accused in 1655, and was executed in 1656.

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The year 2002 marked the 310th anniversary of the witchcraft hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts. In October of 2004, Stanley Usovicz, mayor of Salem, MA. said that he is considering pardoning those persecuted during the seaport town’s infamous 17th century witch trials” (Judith Kane, 19). He said the the 315th anniversary, in 2007, would be a good time to put pardons into effect.

Eighty-one Scottish witches were pardoned, in 2004, in Prestonpans. Most witches were convicted on the basis of spectral evidence [ghosts, apparitions, and other objects of dread) or evil spirits or voices were heard. The Prestonpans, a seaside resort in Scotland, east of Edinburgh, pardoned all “witches” were convicted, including the cats that were burned along with their owners.

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SEE on page http://www.angelfire.com/mi4/polcrt/WitchHistory.html

Canon law stated that after the death of a witch, that the accuser and judge might divide his/her property between them.

Europe had witchcraft trials for 150 years and the death toll ran into the millions:

Malleus Meleficarum [The Hammer of Witches) was written in 1486 by two German Dominican Inquisitors named Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer. Sprender and Kramer concocted strategies for the use of torture and lies. They planned to torture and then offer freedom to those that would help in the discovery and conviction of other witches. They searched for a “Witches’ Mark” on the body of their suspects. A birthmark, wart, or mole might be seen as a “Witches’ Mark.” After the first witch betrayed other “witches,” they were killed. The thought being that they cunningly turned on thier own kind, simply to save themselves, thus were wicked and deceptive.

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http://www.angelfire.com/mi4/polcrt/SalemTrials.html

These sites are just a fragment of the astonishing array created by Margaret Odrowaz-Sypniewski and her husband.

World-views: understanding our own and other peoples’ world-views

Source

World-view – making clear our own world-view

To be developed.

“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”

H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal of Jordan BBC Newsnight 9^th Feb 2006

“The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. What I own is a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what I own; I must learn not to miss what I face. We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world. We objectify Being but we also are present at Being in wonder, in radical amazement.” A. J Heschel
In this section I intend to do two things. Firstly I will make clear my own world-view as it now is. Secondly I will make clear those questions that need to be asked and answered in consciously holding a world-view.

In this process I hope to also identify some of the excesses, and some of the inadequacies that cause so much suffering and grief.

Understanding our own (developing) world view is vital.

It is essential to self-understanding – and to avoiding self-deception.

It includes our our sense of the whole/Whole – the cosmology, and theology.

It includes what we attribute to the culture in which we have grown up and what we attribute to our essential nature – and what is meant by ‘reality’.

Our philosophy – and our behaviour in the world – rests upon, and is shaped by, our world-view.

For the time being the following chart is helpful;

Five Worldviews

A very useful discussion is to be found at SEE http://www.xenos.org/classes/papers/5wldview.htm

They say;

It sometimes seems as if there are more philosophical and religious views than any normal person could ever learn about. Indeed, there are more than six thousand distinct religions in the world today. However, some people are surprised to find that the world’s religions and philosophies tend to break down into a few major categories. These five world-views include all the dominant outlooks in the world today.

REALITY

MAN

TRUTH

VALUES

Chart is adapted from Christianity: The Faith That Makes Sense by Dennis McCallum (Tyndale).

Open Democracy and Centenary of Magna Carta

openDemocracy – our kingdom (a conversation on the future of the United Kingdom) reported that to mark the anniversary of King John signing the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215, Shirley Williams gave the Magna Carta Lecture.

You can find a WORD document version at the top of the page HERE

Conflict resolution in peace-building

Source

An introduction to conflict-resolution as a key to peace-building can be found HERE

To be developed.

http://www.hbdanesh.org/efp.html

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

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