New Beginnings

I began this blog in 2012 and have really enjoyed creating sporadic pieces of writing that, over the years, appear to have charted my journey through various aspects of that vast topic of education and life. What has been happening for a while is that the direction of the writing has become more focused and I am putting more time into the process. This is where I am at now. My fundamental concern is the relationship that exists between adults, children and young people and its significance in the unprecedented confluence of crises the world is currently facing. Humanity is in a place and at a time of deep disconnect which is seriously inhibiting the ability of individuals to come together to address the situation. There is division, exploitation and aggression at all levels of human life. This way of being appears to be embedded in the modern world in the way we live and go about our business. Deep disconnection is part of childhood for many, either through poverty, death of a parent or sibling, abuse or violence, serious illness or accident. In my case it was being sent to boarding school at the age of eight. This was a profound experience of deliberate disconnection. I am seventy-two years old, a husband, father, grandfather, and educator exploring life through experience, conversation, observation, reading, and contemplation. I feel I have a responsibility to continue to inquire, learn, understand and encourage intergenerational connection. This work is a personal response to the times in which we are living. This is where you can find me on Substack: (https://andrewalexander.substack.com?utm_campaign=email-home&r=kxs5v)

Vengeance Poems

Fighter

The monstrous massed minds

of forced conclusion

have taken action.

The fighter stands amidst

the steaming, stinking rubble

of destruction.

He looks around

with satisfaction.

Then looks again

and upon the breeze he hears

the wind’s voice crying.

His thoughts lie broken,

a realisation of the consequences

of the solution.

He recognises his voice upon the wind

the cries of motherless children

and childless mothers.

Desperately he tells himself it was worth it.

*    *    *

Old Men

They’re sitting in the shadows,

these old men

whose years have almost left them.

Their murmuring voices

are barely audible

mumbling empty words.

Their fingers are stained

with ink and blood.

For they have spent their lives

rewriting the holy books,

raising demons

in the name of paradise.

These demons have murderous intent

while the old men’s shrivelled hearts

glow briefly with

thoughts of naked power

Fuelling the war machine.

*    *    *

Child

She sits alone

in the still smoking remains

of her home.

Beneath her

somewhere in the ruins

lies her mother

with arms around her baby sister.

Dark haired, dark eyes,

Pale dust covers olive skin.

Last week she reached double figures.

Last week before someone opened the doors to hell.

Again.

There is a slight tremor

in her thin body

as she looks up

into the blue sun-strewn sky.

A silhouetted shape hovers

pausing as if to congratulate itself.

A proud example of

human progress.

Her eyes show no light

as she waits,

and she remembers

again

Last week was her tenth birthday.

The Language of War revisited.

The language of war, of destruction and killing is everywhere, it comes easily to us. Even if you only occasionally watch, listen to, or read the news, you cannot escape it. The words create images that permeate the brain, clouding perception of the immediate and darkening what might lie ahead. 

‘Peace is boring,’ she said with the certainty of a thirteen-year-old. ‘If we all lived in peace life would be very boring.’ 

Every time another wave of organised violence crashes down upon innocent occupants in their flats and houses; their lives exploding with horror and misery, I am reminded of this girl’s words in that class of children some fifteen years ago. There was an imperceptible murmur of agreement from a few, but mostly there was a profound silence. It may be true that we have become slaves to entertainment and crave excitement and stimulation in our passive and disconnected lives; but it is certainly true that there is part of us buried deep within our minds and hearts that yearns for stillness, calm and tranquility. 

Our advancing technologies and scientific innovations continue to give the illusion of the progress of humanity, that time is an unstoppable process from one success to another, constant improvement. However, we know that this is not the case as we remain in the thrall of hatred, division, fear, and greed. Our relationships are built on ever shifting ground and we are constantly looking for safety through power and material security. 

To live in peace is what the vast proportion of these populations want. They want to go about their lives with their families and friends without the threat of being destroyed by bombs, bullets, shells, and rockets. Meanwhile, weapons are being bought and sold through the multi-billion-pound arms trade, and new, more effective, machines of war are being researched and produced. There is much profit to be had in killing our fellow human beings under the euphemistically named ‘defence industry’. 

 

‘This is, I’m afraid a very naïve piece of writing. You cannot believe that what you have written here could possibly happen... It’s rubbish really.’ 

The teacher tosses the piece of paper towards me with disdain. After all this man was high up in the Sudanese Colonial Police Force before he became a teacher, he had sentenced people to death. The British Empire was not built on the ideas of this foolish boy. 

I am about fifteen years old, sitting in a class of boys in a boarding school in 1967. I had written an essay in support of the phasing out of all nuclear weapons. I had argued that these weapons threatened the very existence of the human species, and that it was only a matter of time before a powerful leader with access to nuclear bombs and missiles would threaten to use them. Once the threat was out then it would only be a short step to their actual deployment. 

The teacher turns when he reaches his desk and, with a withering look, says,’ Nuclear weapons have made the world a safer place.’ 

 

 The year before this took place, I was sitting in the school chapel enduring another daily compulsory school service conducted by the chaplain. I sat, like most of the boys there, reducing whatever went on to a background noise to whatever daydream I chose to conjure up. My years at boarding schools had convinced me of the astounding hypocrisy of the teachers, professing the love of Jesus on one hand and yet treating us with continuous aggression and cruelty. Like many of my peers, I was keenly aware of what was happening in Vietnam, in the USA and the increasing solidarity among young people in protesting against the war. Much of the music we were listening to proclaimed peace and unity.  

I heard the Chaplain read from the Sermon on the Mount and my attention was caught by the words of compassion, humility, and care for those who were suffering. If the meek were to inherit the Earth, then surely the arrogant, the greedy and the powerful were going to destroy it. 

 

Peace is not boring – living in tranquility and harmony is the only way we are going to be able to begin to address the challenges that face us. Not only the horrors of war but also climate breakdown, species extinction, increasing social injustice and global economic meltdown. But we love conflict, we love to oppose, to compete, to compare, to be superior and powerful. We are entertained by the drama that is the tragedy of others. We are easily convinced that we have enemies who will destroy us, and, as conflicts plays out on our screens, we become mesmerised by heroes and villains.  

I have been horrified by what has been happening in Palestine and Israel these last couple of weeks. Like so many people, I find considerable difficulty in understanding how human beings can act with such barbarity towards each other, and I am appalled by the language used – the threats, the dehumanisation, and the undisguised hatred.  

I think that I am powerless, but I have begun to question that. I do not subscribe to the language of war, words of division and inhumanity. I am an old man and I refuse to accept the assumption that war is an inevitable fact of human existence. It is a lie peddled by those whose wealth and power relies on the language of war. Within this lie is also that fundamental falsehood that the individual is powerless. We can ask questions, however difficult. There is enormous strength in quiet, considered questioning. 

I am a retired teacher inquiring into the question of what is the education of young people for? The language of war has no place in this process of learning and understanding. We can work to change the language we use and learn to live together. We can transform the way we think. 
 

 

Finding our way: talking together.

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.’ 

 

 

 

 

 

Freedom and Responsibility Part Two: I have some ideas...

Freedom can never be doing what you like or saying what you like regardless of the consequences.

‘Perfect freedom, by Rabindranath’s interpretation, is found in perfect harmony of relationship, not in a mere independence which has no context.’  p.122

This is from ‘The Poet as Educator’, by Kathleen M. O’Connell, published in 2002.

Rabindranath Tagore set up a school with freedom at its foundation in 1901 at Santiniketan, West Bengal in India. He was influential in the thinking behind both Bedales and Dartington Hall Schools here in the UK.

                                                    .    .    .

A few months after we had qualified as teachers, Maggie and I were sitting in the principal’s office at Brockwood Park School in Hampshire six years after it was founded by Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1969. Opposite us sits the Principal, Dorothy Simmons, and lying next to her feet is a golden Labrador named Whisper, who is doing her best to control the urge to jump up and foist her affection on us.

‘Freedom is vital in the process of learning. But responsibility comes with freedom,’ she is saying.

There is silence for a moment or two.

‘In fact, she adds, ‘Freedom is responsibility in action.’

We go on to talk about schools and St. Christopher School in Letchworth in particular, which was founded by the Theosophists in 1915. This is where Dorothy sent her son. 

‘It’s a good progressive school, and well worth a visit.’

                                                        .    .    .

The limits to our physical freedom are clearly defined by what our bodies can do. However, psychological freedom, the ability for the mind to flow unfettered, is a very different matter. Fear, anxiety, ambition, greed, competition, and comparison are some of the many aspects of our mental make-up that limit our functioning as whole, healthy balanced individuals. The workings of the mind are subtle, fragile, and deep.

                                                         .    .    .

Soon after returning from our visit to Brockwood, I went to have a look round St Christopher School. I was entranced by the sense of openness, vitality, and lack of formality. The opening paragraph of the school prospectus that I had been sent before the visit firmly put freedom and responsibility at the centre of the school’s approach to education. All children from the age of two and a half in the Montessori Department to the students in the Sixth form were expected to take responsibility for their behaviour in an atmosphere of friendliness and care that enabled them to think and act freely.

It wasn’t until nine years later that Maggie and I moved the School, by this time with four children. We both worked there for seventeen years, and then spent seven years at Bedales School. All that time we kept in close touch with Brockwood Park, finally working there full and part time, until the COVID pandemic took hold.

Working with young people aged from five to nineteen over that time meant a constant inquiry into the meaning and understanding of the coexistence of responsibility and freedom. In all these places punishment and reward were kept to a minimum, with little or no systematic attempts to coerce the students into behaving according to externally applied norms. Instead, discipline was seen as a matter of learning to be explored through conversation, discussion and dialogue.

These schools were founded upon non-hierarchical human relationships and there was plenty of opportunity for genuine dialogue and meaningful conversations. Consequently, both students and staff were able to become increasingly more self-aware, conscious that understanding comes from the observation of oneself in action - which is the essence of learning. Without these relationships, learning becomes superficial and mechanical, so that the individual is constantly responding to external pressure telling them what to think, how to act, and what is important in life.

Given the chaotic and dangerous situation humanity finds itself in, I would suggest that an approach to education that concerns itself with the culture of the mind is paramount. And this approach is grounded in an atmosphere engendered by the coexistence of freedom and responsibility in action.

Learning is finding out, exploring both the world that is out there and the instrument of exploration – the mind. It is the ability to respond intelligently that ensures that the individual mind is whole, healthy, and capable of understanding. It is the mind that can observe and listen without rushing into judgement or forming conclusions. For the individual to understand the mind that is observing and listening requires total freedom and a sense of trust in the process that comes through responsible action.

                                                                .    .    .

I would like to end this piece with some observations from ‘Home in the World’, a memoir by the Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen.  He became a student at Santiniketan just a few months after Rabindranath Tagore’s death:

‘Santiniketan was fun in a way I never imagined a school could be. There was so much freedom in deciding what to do, so many intellectually curious classmates to chat with, so many friendly teachers to approach and ask questions unrelated to the curriculum and – most importantly - so little enforced discipline and a complete lack of harsh punishment.’ p.38

‘The role of education in enhancing individual freedom and social progress was among the subjects on which I found his (Tagore’s) ideas especially incisive and persuasive…. The belief in reason and freedom underlaid Tagore’s outlook on life in general and education in particular, leading him to insist that education in depth and for all, is the most important element in the development of a country.’ p.56

                                                                    .    .    .

In a time that cries out for the individual to be free from the burden of a life as a mere commercial entity to be bought and sold, and to live with a sense of personal responsibility and integrity that transcends the endless cycle of blame and reproach – what is to be done?

I have some ideas…

Freedom and Responsibility: Part One

  Oh to be young!

 

Throughout the Sixties I was at boarding school. From the age of eight to thirteen I was interned with about sixty other boys in red brick buildings on the Suffolk coast that overlooked marshland and the grey/brown menace of the North Sea. If you gazed out from the small dormitories at the top of the building you could see the construction of the first nuclear power station at Sizewell, just down the coast. Thankfully, the school no longer exists, for, like many others of its kind it held the lives of boys suspended in an unhappy haze of deprived privilege. When I left in 1965 the world was changing from black and white post-war conformity to a tide of creeping colour of sights and sounds.

                                                            ...

 

‘Hey let’s do it!’

 

It is 1968, the year of global student revolutions against military, political, corporate, hereditary, and bureaucratic elites. I am at a school being prepared to join those elites. The film ‘If’ by Lyndsay Anderson has just been released, depicting a group of British  Public School boys resisting the tyranny of the teachers and their prefects, ending with the boys shooting their enemies. 

 

A group of us are standing near the cloistered area of the large court bounded by red brick buildings and the hanger-like glass fronted dining hall. We hold our files, books and the revolutionary enthusiasm of sixteen year olds. Five minutes to the next lesson.

 

‘Let’s not go – let’s protest!’

 

A wave of excitement sweeps through our small group. A chance to change the world, to have our say, to fight against repression. We are growing our hair, challenging the uniform we are forced to wear and questioning the hide-bound traditions of the school.

 

‘Hmm… Well…’

 

We shift about a bit. One boy had the hallmarks of a ringleader.

 

‘Come on. Why should we put up with all this?’

 

There is indistinct mumbling from the rest of us; and the bell rings out over the court, calling the faithful to gather in places of learning.

 

We look shiftily from one to the other, and then begin to drift towards our designated rooms.

 

‘Is that it then?’

 

Our ringleader looks around and plucks victory from defeat.

 

‘OK we have English now. Maybe after that?’

 

 The feeling does not last long, and is dissipated by confusion, fear, and A levels.

                                                               ...

 

 

Technological change was working its magic, simultaneously introducing new worlds of possibility, freedom and independence, and exploiting the aspirations and expectations of all with whom it engaged. Horizons were being expanded in living rooms all over the world, young people could see what was happening and were no longer living in cloistered seclusion according to class, wealth, or education. There was emerging a new kind of equality, slowly but inexorably. However, the dark shadow of exploitation was close behind, for with these new worlds came all kinds of opportunities for making money, for profiting from the unsuspecting, the naïve, the young. Such a market!

 

Freedom was the word that that echoed from the page, the song, the images of young people dressed and behaving and expressing themselves however they wanted to – free to be themselves. Anarchic and joyfully chaotic.

 

So it seemed to me in my late teens. I yearned to join them. I yearned to be free. And I thought I knew what freedom must feel like. But the young mind that has been closed and cloistered does not always understand the implications of its thoughts.

 

 

‘Most of the problems we face today as a species, as a civilisation and as peoples and nations, are problems we have created ourselves. They are possible to solve. We have the knowledge to solve them. What we may lack is the understanding and the sense of personal and collective responsibility before it is too late.’

 

p.462 The Nordic Secret: Lene Rachel Anderson and Tomas Bjorkman

The language of War

 The language of war, of destruction and killing is everywhere, it comes easily to us. Even if you only occasionally watch, listen to, or read the news, you cannot escape it. The words create images that permeate the brain, clouding perception of the immediate and darkening what might lie ahead.

‘Peace is boring,’ she said with the certainty of a thirteen-year-old. ‘If we all lived in peace life would be very boring.’

Every time another wave of organised violence crashes down upon innocent occupants in their flats and houses; their lives exploding with horror and misery, I am reminded of this girl’s words in that class of children some fifteen years ago. There was an imperceptible murmur of agreement from a few, but mostly there was a profound silence. It may be true that we have become slaves to entertainment and crave excitement and stimulation in our passive and disconnected lives; but it is certainly true that there is part of us buried deep within our minds and hearts that yearns for stillness, calm and tranquility.

Our advancing technologies and scientific innovations continue to give the illusion of the progress of humanity, that time is an unstoppable process from one success to another, constant improvement. However, we know that this is not the case as we remain in the thrall of hatred, division, fear, and greed. Our relationships are built on ever shifting ground and we are constantly looking for safety through power and material security.

In Yemen, in Afghanistan, in Myanmar and now in Ukraine, to live in peace is what the vast proportion of these populations want. They want to go about their lives with their families and friends without the threat of being destroyed by bombs, bullets, shells, and rockets. Meanwhile, weapons are being bought and sold through the multi-billion-pound arms trade, and new, more effective, weapons are being researched and produced. There is much profit to be had in killing our fellow human beings under the euphemistically named ‘defence industry’.

‘This is, I’m afraid a very naïve piece of writing. You cannot believe that what you have written here could possibly happen... It’s rubbish really.’

The teacher tosses the piece of paper towards me with disdain. After all this man was high up in the Sudanese Colonial Police Force before he became a teacher, he had sentenced people to death. The British Empire was not built on the ideas of this foolish boy.

I am about fifteen years old, sitting in a class of boys in a boarding school in 1967. I had written an essay in support of the phasing out of all nuclear weapons. I had argued that these weapons threatened the very existence of the human species, and that it was only a matter of time before a powerful leader with access to nuclear bombs and missiles would threaten to use them. Once the threat was out then it would only be a short step to their actual deployment.

The teacher turns when he reaches his desk and, with a withering look, says,’ Nuclear weapons have made the world a safe place.’

The year before this took place, I was sitting in the school chapel enduring another daily compulsory school service conducted by the chaplain. I sat, like most of the boys there, reducing whatever went on to a background noise to whatever daydream I chose to conjure up. My years at boarding schools had convinced me of the astounding hypocrisy of the teachers, professing the love of Jesus on one hand and yet treating us with continuous aggression and cruelty. Like many of my peers, I was keenly aware of what was happening in Vietnam, in the USA and the increasing solidarity among young people in protesting against the war. Much of the music we were listening to proclaimed peace and unity. 

I heard the Chaplain read from the Sermon on the Mount and my attention was caught by the words of compassion, humility, and care for those who were suffering. If the meek were to inherit the Earth, then surely the arrogant, the greedy and the powerful were going to destroy it.

Peace is not boring – living in tranquility and harmony is the only way we are going to be able to address the challenges that face us. Not only a war where there is a distinct possibility of the use of nuclear weapons, but also climate breakdown and serious global economic meltdown. But we love conflict, we love to oppose, to compete, to compare, to be superior and powerful. We are entertained by the drama that is the tragedy of others. We are easily convinced that we have enemies who will destroy us, and, as the conflict in the east of Europe plays out on our screens, we become mesmerised by heroes and villains. We watch this story unfold and forget the refugees that are being driven from their homes by conflicts all over the world, forget the pain and suffering caused to so many by institutional violence. 

I must, after all, treat you with dignity, compassion and respect, for you are a fellow human being.