The SunWALK logo/diagram conveys the basic ideas of the SunWALK model of Holistic Education;
The diagram functions as a logo, badge, a mandala, diagram, curriculum outline, model of what it is to be human (- and even as a building plan design).
You can read more about the basic ideas HERE
or a complete doctoral thesis HERE
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’.
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
Sculpture the ‘Well of Life’, Zagreb – source
I chose the following poem by Seamus Heaney (1996 p.14) as ‘the poem’ for my doctoral thesis because it shows beautifully how we resonate now, in relation to what we sensed and experienced as children. It also shows how, through metaphor, the objective connects with the subjective to thrill, to the very quick of our being.
About the poem, Personal Helicon Pelligrino (2003 p.1) explains;
Mount Helicon is a mountain in Greece, that was, in classical mythology, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. From it flowed two fountains of poetic inspiration. Heaney is here presenting his own source of inspiration, the “dark drop” into personal and cultural memory, made present by the depths of the wells in his childhood. Now, as a man, he is too mature to scramble about on hands and knees, looking into the deep places of the earth, but he has his poetry – and, thank God, so do we.
Of course if Heaney was reading it we would have that wonderful voice, like an aromatic tree giving up the sap, and perfuming the air with all the good things from the soil.
Personal Helicon by Seamus Heaney
for Michael LongleyAs a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.—–0—–
All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
Central to Heschel’s belief and teachings was that we should stay in touch with that experience of the Whole that engenders awe and wonder (what he also calls ‘radical amazement’). He says that;
The secret of being human is care for meaning. Man is not his own meaning, and if the essence of being human is concern for transcendent meaning, then man’s secret lies in openness to transcendence. Existence is interspersed with suggestions of transcendence, and openness to transcendence is a constitutive element of being human……. Indeed, the concern for meaning of human being is what constitutes the truth of being human. A J Heschel P66 Who is Man 1965 Stanford Unity Press
This emphasis on at-one-ment however is not to the exclusion of our duality with the ‘real’ world:
The search for reason ends at the shore of the known;on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide.It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore,and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh. Citizens of two realms, we must all sustain dual allegiance:we sense the ineffable in one realm;we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references,but can never fill the gap They are as far and as close to each other…as life and what lies beyond the last breath. Man is Not Alone p8.
We learn through the dynamic switching between experiences of the Whole and experiences of the parts. Wilber also helps illuminate the ‘dance between the Whole and the parts;
“To understand the whole it is necessary to understand the parts. To understand the parts, it is necessary to understand the whole. Such is the circle of understanding. We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding we come alive to meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the torn and fractured fragments, lighting the way ahead – this extraordinary movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark of every step, and grace the tender reward.”
Eye of Spirit; an integral vision for a world gone slightly mad by Ken Wilber (1997)pub. Shambhala p.1.
Since on this site, and in the Build a Better Model of Education course, we are about to become ‘traders in concepts’ we should keep in mind Heschel’s wonderful statement:“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement”- A. J. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone p.7
This need to experience the Whole as well as focusing on parts, such as concepts, is also contained in the following metaphor:“The larger the island of knowledge,the longer the shoreline of mystery.” Anon
The above quotations teach us a lot about the theme of ‘parts and the Whole’. Another major theme is that of generacy, as opposed to degeneracy. This includes the ability to see particulars as part of the Whole in such a way as to experience their full significance (and perhaps stop time and go beyond place). The alternative to being taken out of yourself is to be eternally burdened with self!
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
‘To see a world in a grain of sandand a heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,and eternity in an hour.’ William Blake
Photo by: Andre Kertesz – source
For some time now I have been interested in how both cinema and photography might be compared to mystical experience. I will post separately re cinema.
One point of comparison lies in how the two see the moment.
In the mystical the moment is seen as out of time – a visit to the eternal present.
In photography the moment is given duration, brought frozen into time – up to a theoretical eternal existence.
Of course a major source of inspiration, in both his photography and his writings, is Henri Cartier-Bresson;
A wonderful retrospective is HERE at Magnum
However in assembling some materials to help articulate a view re photography and the mystical I have discovered some fine materials high amongst which is The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer. Concerning Andre Kertesz, see photo at the top of this post, he says;
What Kertesz sees when he looks out at the street is often this silhouetted representative of his own feelings about being adrift and unappreciated in New York. The people in the streets, heading to shops, are emissaries of his own sadness. That is the lot of the photographer: you walk the streets or sit on a bench – or you look out of the window at people……
Some more wonderful photographs by Andre Kertesz;
TO BE DEVELOPED
You can hear a fascinating interview with Geoff Dyer HERE
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
Experience needs to be transcendent as well as of the here and now if we are to create teaching that is holistic – that is we have to give kids opportunities to sense the Wholeness as well as the parts. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be within one particular religious context.
Happiness and peace and development would be greatly helped if we recognized that there are many paths to the summit of the hill.
From Christianity, amongst other sources, we learn that ‘God is love’. But what else is love and how does it relate to learning and knowing? Perhaps the following quotations indicate that love (affect) and what we choose to identify with determines, or at least shape, what we come to know. Learning ultimately takes place within a love relationship:
A person is only as good as what they love.” Saul Bellow.
Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe.”
‘Abdu’l-Baha.
Love is the beauty of the soul.” St. Augustine.
“Knowledge is love.” `Abdu’l-Baha.
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
A certain Chris Corrigan has assembled 40 meditation practices (a few links need re-newing)
Walking Meditation
Standing Meditation
Sitting meditation
Lying meditation
Be sure to visit Chris Corrigan’s amazing collection of stuff HERE
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
In my PhD I used aspects of autobiography including episodes that were epiphanic. By epiphany I here mean;
a. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
b. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: “I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself” Frank Maier.
I would add to the ‘Frank Mair example above and make it;
“I experienced several epiphanies, that would change the way I viewed education, the world and myself”
The particular episodes in my life I discovered to my surprise had led to the main dimensions of what was to become my model of what it is to be human the ‘I’ (Creative -subjective), the ‘WE’ (Caring – moral) and the ‘IT’ (Criticality-objective) dimension respectively that give us the three ways of engaging with reality. I had moved into autoethnography.
Autoethnography is an established, but still emergent, form of qualitative research. Described by Ellis and Bochner (2000) it is:
an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural. Back and forth autoethnographers gaze, first through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focussing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience; then they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural interpretations – see Deck, (1990); Neuman, (1996); Reed-Danahay, (1997). As they zoom backward and forward, inward and outward, distinctions between the personal and cultural become blurred, sometimes beyond distinct recognition. Usually written in first-person voice, autoethnography , autoethnographic texts appear in a variety of forms – short stories, poetry, fiction, novels, photographic essays, personal essays, journals, fragmented and layered writing and social science prose. In these texts, concrete action, dialogue, emotion embodiment, spirituality, and self-consciousness are featured, appearing as relational and institutional stories affected by history, social structure, and culture, which themselves are dialectically revealed through action, feeling, thought and language.
This does seem to well describe my intentions, and the way I proceeded. Storying is seen as essential for learners in the model, as well as being present in the autobiographic approach. The legitimacy of the applied dimension lies in the fact that I knew I wanted to present a model before I knew that I/the thesis needed to use the autobiographic – the surprise, for me, was how much they are one and the same.
Action research, focusing down to the autobiographic and the ethnographic, is explicit, or implicit, in the overall process of the SunWALK model per se. In a sense the thesis is the story of the thesis – of its evolution from the dynamic between praxis and reflection and beliefs and values. As White (2002) says action research can increase the likelihood that one’s behaviour is congruent with one’s theories about teaching and learning – and, one hopes, the values with which we choose to identify ourselves.1
Given that the primary intention was to create a new model of education intention the suggestion was made that this could be called ‘Applied Autoethnography’.
To be developed
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Ideally I would like to see every school and every teacher connected with research and theory-creation, with relevant university departments working as supportive partners to the teachers. The subject of the study was my self, and my teaching, and the aim was self-understanding as well as producing a model of education – such an action research approach in all schools could not only ‘grow’ more effective teaching, but would also deepen and widen the possible communities to which teachers could belong.
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
What is art?
One definition that works for me is;
Art is culturally significant meaning, skilfully encoded in an affecting, sensuous medium.
Richard Anderson quoted in Freeland (2001 p. 77)
I would make one change;
Art is culturally, and personally, significant meaning, skilfully encoded in an affecting, sensuous medium.
There is a whole range of art that I know has cultural meaning but for it to enable an aesthetic experience in me it has also to have personal as well as cultural meaning.
TASKS:Lesson questions
How far, and in what ways, has art , through the dominance of conceptual art, replaced philosophy?
How far, and in what ways, has art replaced religion?
More resources
Extensive quotations from Tolstoy at Professor Julie van Camp’s site are HERE
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
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
All postings, and pages, for this site are seen as texts as in ‘particulars’ or parts. But each post or page is as I will later point out in relation to an ‘ultimate’ context.
The parts or particulars are as in Wilber;
“To understand the whole it is necessary to understand the parts. To understand the parts, it is necessary to understand the whole. Such is the circle of understanding.
We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding we come alive to meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the torn and fractured fragments, lighting the way ahead – this extraordinary movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark of every step, and grace the tender reward.” Eye of Spirit; an integral vision for a world gone slightly mad by Ken Wilber (1997) pub. Shambhala p.1.
Handling more and more challenging texts is one way to think of progress in education.
One aspect of post-modernism is the attention paid to con-texts. Literally con-text = what (meaning) comes with the text. A whole bunch of questions then become vital for examining the the text in one or more contexts. For example who wrote it or made it and for whom – and why, with what reward, what pressures etc.
One key variable then for the teacher is how s/he emphasizes (or de-emphasizes) contexts as s/he conducts discourse with the class.
I always felt that historical contexts were less important than how a text helps us right now- the group – in informing our selves more deeply concerning, ‘What it is to be positively and fully human’.
One source of novelty in post-modernist art is to re-contextualize objects – literally to give them a new framework. A friend got her first-class honours degree for – amongst other pieces of work – taking a reproduction of an old master and tucking under the arm of a central figure a baby dinosaur.
The most memorable teaching of my life was with a group 12-13 year olds when discussing the shortest story in the world, “When I woke up the dinosaur was still there.” All the drive and creativity was in construction of possible contexts as well as discussing whether or not it constitute a ‘story’ in any meaningful way. In due course I will post sections of the video of the ‘story lesson’.
Schools and teachers should provide experiences that help with developing a sense of the Whole and not just the ‘hell of relativity’ when the world is presented as just endless bits.
The ultimate context that we are all in, in reading all of the texts that come our way, is one of mystery, of not knowing. When we accept that we can enjoy both the concepts of separation and duality and the amazement of laying down the burden of self in an experience of unity- as in Heschel’s;
“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
Peter Ustinov makes the point in a different way; “We are united by our doubts and divided by our convictions.”
Our encounters with the Whole are part of the personal story (history or her-story) that we make up to explain the cosmos. We should all write our ‘personal myth’ at some stage. As an example I will post mine separately.
In the light of the above comments I have added this to the front page of the site;
CONTEXTUAL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
3 Questions and suggested answers that provide the context for all posts and pages on these sites
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Q 1) “What is it to be positively & fully human?” = the most important of all questions. My answers are in 2 and 3 below.
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Q 2) “What is it to function holistically?” My answer =
“To proceed in all particulars with a sense of the whole.”
Two quotations that are key to understanding. Firstly Jung’s,
“The utterances of the heart— unlike those of the discriminating intellect— always relate to the whole.”
Secondly Heschel’s;
“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.”
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Q 3) How in one sentence does my PhD answer the question, “How should we educate to create a paradigm shift in education?”
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The SunWALK model of spiritualizing (or humanizing) 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’ 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.
NB Please see these 3 questions, and suggested answers, as the context for all postings and pages on these sites.
The diagram that pulls everything together
Summaries of SunWALK model are HERE
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These ‘Life-Rules’ by Cherie Carter-Scott, from her book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules are becoming well-known and they seem to me to be are interesting in relation to a holistic perspective, and to the ideas of Perennial Philosophy and a mystical world-view.
When you were born, you didn’t come with an owner’s manual; these guidelines make life work better.
1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s the only thing you are sure to keep for the rest of your life.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called “Life on Planet Earth”. Every person or incident is the Universal Teacher.
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. “Failures” are as much a part of the process as “success.”
4. A lesson is repeated until learned. It is presented to you in various forms until you learn it — then you can go on to the next lesson.
5. If you don’t learn easy lessons, they get harder. External problems are a precise reflection of your internal state. When you clear inner obstructions, your outside world changes. Pain is how the universe gets your attention.
6. You will know you’ve learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.
7. “There” is no better than “here”. When your “there” becomes a “here” you will simply obtain another “there” that again looks better than “here.”
8. Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another unless it reflects something you love or hate in yourself.
9. Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting. Take charge of your life — or someone else will.
10. You always get what you want. Your subconscious rightfully determines what energies, experiences, and people you attract — therefore, the only foolproof way to know what you want is to see what you have. There are no victims, only students.
11. There is no right or wrong, but there are consequences. Moralizing doesn’t help. Judgments only hold the patterns in place. Just do your best.
12. Your answers lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the Laws of Spirit are written. You know more than you have heard or read or been told. All you need to do is to look, listen, and trust.
13. You will forget all this.
14. You can remember any time you wish.
(From the book “If Life is a Game, These are the Rules” by Cherie Carter-Scott)
TASK:/LESSON
1 Take a look at Perennial Philosophy and the Golden Rule and compare and contrast them to Carter-Scott’s ‘Rules’.
2 Re-write these according to your beliefs and world-view.
3 Find out what Cherie Carter-Scott meant by reading her book.
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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
Two aspects of the world-view shared by most holistic educators are Perennial Philosophy (see separate post) and the Golden Rule.
One measure of the challenge facing us is in the following. In looking for short definitions that might be useful I was struck by the fact that several (many?) Western encyclopedias actually refer to the Golden Rule as a Christian doctrine! Ethnocentricity rules! The point is also well pinned down in an interesting article from Arab News by Iman Kurdi
Below are some of the most interesting sites that present and explore the Golden Rule along with some suggestions for lessons and all ages.
http://www.jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler/goldrule.htm
http://www.goldenruleradical.org/
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR LESSONS/Discussion
1 In what sense is the Golden Rule the same as or different to acting justly?
2 Collect some examples, via interviews, of where the Golden Rule was applied with good effect?
3 Choose several of the problems that exist in the world and see how far you can a) analyze the problem and b) obtain inspiration for steps toward a solution.
Source – for your poster Golden Rule info and much more
A TOUCH OF IRONY: The Wiki entry on the Golden Rule currently shows the price of democracy in that it is hung up in disputes! Re-named as the Ethic of Reciprocity – has it been hijacked or up-lifted by philosophers! I’m sure it will settle eventually – in the mean time there is a lot of good stuff alread on the site – including additional sources.
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NB All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD.
Summaries are HERE
Whatever our religious background we tend to say something equivalent to, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’. This is an assertion of certainty. For some of us strength of certainty is an indicator of the quality of faith. Unfortunately, to take an extreme example, unconditioned certainty can lead to unspeakable horrors – the Nazis were certain that their killing of millions was a right and proper thing to do. So is a smidgen of doubt, the cousin of humility? And might it also be that such a conditioner of faith as a ‘healthy doubt’ hold us back from continuously negating ‘the other’.
I’m also suggesting that water-tight, hermetically-sealed certainty might put a break on an individual’s willingness to recognize the essential sameness in all of the world’s great faiths. Why can’t we be one? Well because we think our path up the mountain is the only right one – and because we are familiar and comfortable with it.
I can only think of three possible solutions. Firstly we all become Baha’is, Unitarians or or some form of Universalist worldview. Secondly we all wait to see which religion dominates and then hop on board (a time-honoured method but not out of Morality’s top drawer). Thirdly we take a leaf out of Ghandi’s book and expand our heart and consciousness so that we can revere our own tradition and the inner essence of all of the other great world religions.
Gandhi said;
I came to the conclusion long ago … that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and whilst I hold by my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu … But our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian. (Young India: January 19, 1928)
This is interesting because it suggests that we can have a universal heart that works from within the particular. Is that possible? Is it only possible for a few? Whether or not we go with Ghandi ‘s ‘particular-to-the-universal way we need to break through from narrow-mindedness and close-heartedness. To be able to cherish both the particular culture into which we were born and have a heart that embraces the inner light of all of the great world religions seems to me to make sense – just as federalism makes sense in say America or Germany.
There are some other of Ghandi’s thoughts that are relevant to the view expressed here;
- God has no religion
- My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines. To assent to such a doctrine is for me a denial of God.
- We must respect other religions, even as we respect our own. Mere tolerance thereof is not enough.
- A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
- (When asked if he was a Hindu) Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.
- “The sayings of Muhammed are a treasure of wisdom not only for Muslims but for all of mankind.”
- The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. Source WikiQuotes
If we can’t quite yet expand our consciousness to recognizing the inner oneness of all of the great faiths at least the Golden Rule (separate postings) is an ethic through which we can start to clear a meeting place within the forest of beliefs.
It is only beliefs that prevent the realization of our oneness. And it is only realization of oneness that will enable us to overcome our current ‘hardening of the hearteries’. That ‘hardening of the hearteries’ = beliefs so narrowed as to prevent us seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of the ‘other’.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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)
Discovering the site ‘gateway to Sikhism‘ was one of today’s pleasures.
Discovering the 100+ recipes was also a pleasure and set me thinking.
I’ve heard that one of the last elements of group culture to go in the process of assimilation is food.
Food and harmony in diversity seem connected in many ways.
Firstly of course who in their right mind wants assimilation – of themselves or others. As the (wo)man said, “I want salads not soup” – that was on the question of diversity and its harmony! However what is needed is an understanding of the harmony that can help the diversity flourish. That’s what is in short supply. Perennial Philosophy and a universalist worldview is one way forward. Perhaps this doesn’t require leaving our own culture and religious roots – (although the Baha’is would say, “Yes it does – and that is the ultimate of act of allegiance.”). Gandhi had something interesting to say about this;
“After long study and experience, I have come to the conclusion that [1] all religions are true; [2] all religions have some error in them; [3] all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism, in as much as all human beings should be as dear to one as one’s own close relatives. My own veneration for other faiths is the same as that for my own faith; therefore no thought of conversion is possible.” (M. K. Gandhi, All Men Are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi as told in his own words, Paris, UNESCO 1958, p 60.)
He also said, I’m given to understand, “God has no religion.”
Secondly food is one of the great universals – it demonstrates universality in the fact that we all need, and most love it, and its diversity is astonishing!
Thirdly many of us enjoy (too much?) eating our way into other cultures. I’ve not (yet) visited Japan but we had a meal in a new a Japanese restaurant in Brighton (England). Of course we need to go further so that we can touch some other parts of the essential reality of other cultures. In doing so we need to sense both that which is distinctive and that which is universal.
Some of the many cultural and sacred connections between food and culture and ‘acting-in-the-world’ can be seen in the Sikh Langar
Through food we can also celebrate our sense of ‘world citizenship’. I’m not only defined by what I think, or that with which I ‘link’ as the wit said, but also by the cuisines I celebrate!
Our giving and receiving food is of course the continuation of the ancient practice of neighbourliness. Today we can extend this to distant people through giving via charities.
Many years ago a Roman Catholic school I taught in would celebrate another religion’s festival in the morning assembly. Divali and Just as enjoyable – one of the teachers organized that those children would bring in a ‘pot luck’ of ‘Indian’ food. Now for many of the children this was a memorable kind of experiential education!
With our children and our neighbours, near and distant, let’s reach out and break bread – or mix rice – even more!
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 (8th 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.
In the unpublished doctoral thesis, from which this piece and Jane’s Short Story, is largely taken, the range of concerns include ‘the perpetuation in the present of early experience’. I’m interested to discover that one definition of ‘nowness’ is presentness: the quality of being the present; “a study of the pastness of the present and…of the presentness of the past”.
I wrote Jane’s Short Story to see what a Year 7 class (11 – 12 year olds in the UK) could ‘handle’, but it has become a major piece for teaching me, as well as for teaching others.
Jane’s short story (line numbers are simply to help in discussion)
1 “Come to mummy Jane. Come on, yes, you can do it.” Ste…steppp…stagger step..step got there BIGKISSmmmms’nice. Her mother’s nose stroked back and forth across her neck, as giggles of delight and laughter bubbled from Jane.
“Jane pay attention otherwise you’ll be asking me what the work is in five minutes time.”
5 (’Oh no I won’t Mr Moaner, I know perfectly well what you’re asking – so stop picking on me!’)
“Images Jane, images.”
Tulips. Gigantic red tulips, opened a bit beyond their best, and bigger than any red thing and redder than any red thing and she crawled to grasp, to know the greenness of the green cool green stems and embrace them and lose herself in the redness that was ……..
10 “I want you all to pay attention to the structure of your story……..”
How could she tell her mother that she never felt safe after he left. Only in his hugs with the smell of him did she ever, could she ever, feel safe. She chewed over this and poured herself another bowl of corn-flakes, sensing school time getting nearer and nearer. Her mother had left without giving the bus fare.
Yet again Jane’s leg itched from the nylon thread in the seam of her skirt.
15 She grasped the chair to ease her leg away from the itch, only to put her fingers under her chair and into some freshly placed chewing-gum. “Ugh! Boys are so disgusting!”
“Thank you Jane. I’m not sure what that has to do with careful control of your narrative but I suppose we should be grateful that at least you’ve re-visited our world, even though the visit will no doubt be brief. The trouble with you Jane is that you don’t use the possibilities and talent you have.”
20 Endless possibilities. The muddy brown wet sand, miles and miles of it. She sensed freedoms beyond the edge of her imagination, she would be all creation itself.
“Put your hat on Jane and come here – you’re not going in the sun until I put some cream on you.” Jane submitted to the sun-cream and enjoyed it but also remembered the tug of the harness around her shoulders – tug tug, with her running but not going anywhere.
25 “……and do try to put some images into your writing – do make it come alive.”
The finch, with feathers going in directions they shouldn’t, struggled on its side. The broken leg would not need mending because the shock was already killing the tiny creature. Jane hated the cat with an acid and granite hatred.
“You have ten minutes to finish your story.”
30 Jane sat back on her rump and examined her mother’s radiant face.
She spat out the tulip petals as her sadness entered her.
She was as rigid as the door he had slammed behind him.
She willed the incoming tide to consume her castle and leave only empty sands.
The finch stopped its fluttering and took on the stillness of death.
35 Jane wrote some lines.
Jane felt the tug tug of the harness and struggled to go somewhere.
—–0—–
Jane is, substantially, but not wholly, me. It was an attempt to make the feminine side of my soul ‘walk and talk’
In writing the story I reached back down to early memories with which to ‘clothe’ some of the levels in the streams of consciousness.
In continuing to work with children, or adults, I still sometimes use Jane’s Short Story – as a way to encourage others to create their own stories, made from their own real, and imagined, experience. I discovered how powerful it is if PFC (Philosophy for Children), and creative task-setting, are combined/interwoven – so much so that I believe that the two, when harnessed, together create something akin to ‘exponential development’ i.e the most powerful form of transformative learning. It is still a joy, and a learning experience, when children make their own creations walk and talk, sing and shout, just as Jane became ‘real’ to me, some 9 or 10 years earlier. From time to time I revisit the story and change a few words. Once I also gave it to the same class on succeeding years and asked them to see what they could see compared to their ‘reading’ of the previous year – and to say what differences they felt between the two readings. On the success of this I think that it is worth doing something similar with every class, i.e. for them to re-visit a piece two years running. What they are looking at, with each re-visiting, is, in part, the growth they have had via another year’s experience – a very useful exercise in meta-cognition for the children.
Although it was written when I was in my early fifties I include the story here because it encapsulates some of how autobiography is expressed in even the most creative, or the most abstract, of our work. The story was written in a ‘stream of consciousness’ style to see how well my classes could be at deconstructing the text. It was written in my second year of doing PFC. Sometimes I use it just as a text, sometimes the classes go on to write their own episodes from Jane’s life.
My experience is that children in Year 7 or 8 take a little time to decode the levels in the ‘stream of consciousness’ but then respond most sensitively to the possibilities that exist in and around the story. It seems to work at quite a deep level for some, and very few, except perhaps in initial perplexity, reject the story. It also helps to teach them that story, in its different kinds of truth, can combine re-collected personal experience and meld it with imaginative material. It can be a minor revelation for children who see ‘story is story’ and ‘real life = the truth.
Jane, both as part of my spirit and personal history, and as an independent spirit, has continued to exist, but she has also been transmogrified into the creations of other authors, adults as well as children. It is Jane in the personal myth called Island Shoreline Ocean, presented at the beginning of Chapter 3. My (our) past is re-presented and it is continuously transmogrified, in further re-representations. Each of us re-experiences what we are, as we engage or re-engage, with our beliefs, values, attitudes memories and new experiences. We echo past experiences in each new experience, even when we are seeking to help others in their creativity. Jane’s short story lives on in me as a crystallization of the feelings and images deep in my soul, deep, one might say, in my ‘present’. It has generated versions from 11 – 12 year olds, but also from an 84 year old man who, on one of my courses, wrote the first story he had ever written in his life. (He was pleased and amazed; I was deeply moved by his openness and courage!)
TASK/SUGGESTED LESSONS: It would be fascinating to combine the ideas above with photography!
Great photography blog HERE
Saw this today – with some quick ideas for a lesson;
“You are the average of the five people
you spend the most time with.”
– Jim Rohn
Are you? Am I?
Do we have an essence? Or are we each an admixture of the roles we play and the relationships in which we are embedded?
Or both?
The best answers I ever found were in Who is Man? by Abraham Joshua Heschel.
The Photo is of Heschel with MLK at Selma – they consider each other to be a ‘prophet’
Is my essence the sum of that with which I identify?
Or is there an essence that is independent of the accidents of personal history ?
—–0—–
All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE
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Source Wiki on Meditation
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Soul Needs - One Garden 
