There are various times in our lives when a change comes about that has a revitalising effect, that re-energises and expands meaning in our lives. For me one of these changes was when I was appointed to the teaching staff at the Junior School of St. Christopher School in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, in September 1984. All teachers were known by their first names, there were no uniforms, and emphasis was laid on a learning environment based on the understanding of freedom and responsibility. It was a challenging, lively, and ultimately rewarding place in which to live and work. The lack of formality stripped away false boundaries and hierarchies in relationships.
In it was the space for communication, conversations across ages underpinning this process that enabled this most basic of meaningful interaction.
The school was founded by the Theosophical Society in 1915, and a very young Jiddu Krishnamurti opened the Junior School. Krishnamurti left the Theosophists in 1929, by then the Society had ceased to run the school. Here he describes an insight into relationship.
‘Action has meaning only in relationship and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only bring conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action.'
He goes on to comment on communication. Relationship and communication are the very bedrock of humanity.
‘Communication is not only the exchange of words, however articulate and clear those words may be; it is deeper than that. Communication is learning from each other, understanding each other; and this comes to an end when you take a definite stand about some trivial and not fully thought-out act.’ J Krishnamurti
In the school talking was everywhere – in corridors, classrooms, breaktimes, mealtimes, in the boarding houses, on school trips. Not just in peer groups, but across the age groups and in the community as a whole. Conversations moved from the mundane, the banal and inconsequential to the core of concerns for children and adults.
However, since then I have observed a steady and dramatic change where the field of communication has been opened up by the internet; where in general people have less time, this is particularly true for teaching and many other areas of life where bureaucratic tasks now dominate; and where the quality of interchange has become more aggressive, combatant and insensitive. It is not only what you say, it is also the way that you say it.
Therefore, I would suggest, it is time to explore an approach to talking together that focuses on process and relationship, and that does not fixate on outcomes, learning objectives, conclusions or solutions. As far as I see, conversations are the foundations upon which we can meet the extraordinary crises that we are experiencing. Conversations that will bring about the understanding, insight and perception that come from observing the world around us directly. And these conversations require time, patience, and the willingness to come together with a shared commitment to engaging in the process without any preconception of outcome.
Whilst I was at the school I attended a six week course on Dialogue at Birkbeck College in London. The approach to dialogue was that proposed by the physicist David Bohm and was run by people who had worked closely with him in that area.
Bohm’s approach could be summed up in this quote.
‘It is proposed that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated.’
Much is learnt and understood through conversations which allow the free flow of questions, of inquiry, and of insight: and, I would suggest, it is essential that these conversations or dialogues are intergenerational. In a world where division has been used to control populations, and separation continues to be a by-product of a money obsessed society, connection across ages has been lost.
I want here to suggest that there are circumstances where talking together has the possibility of bringing understanding across generations at a time when there is so much division, separation, competition and conformity in our world. For many the basic assumption about intergenerational interaction is that it involves the passing down of rules, traditions, and codes by which you should live from generation to generation. This assumption does not take into account the fact that we are unique individuals who discover life for ourselves. Each generation faces a changing world within which they have to establish themselves with new eyes and new minds.
It is, I feel, the responsibility of us in older generations to engage with those younger than ourselves in exploring our collective responses to the world around them. There is wisdom, which, I would say, is not age dependent, trust, humility, affection, honesty, and compassion, in which the generations must meet together, without any sense of superiority or inferiority.
Since 1984 my work with young people has been all about conversations, relationship, and the flow of meaning. This has not been a smooth path, at times more like paddling across the ocean in a kayak. However, it has been a process of connection, collaboration and learning; in fact, a constant movement of understanding.
It is time to explore the possibilities of dialogues across generations, and to introduce this approach to schools.
David Bohm’s words again, ‘The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.’
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