On Being a Light to Oneself: educating the spirit

The narrow streets of the city of lakes and palaces are cold for the sun is only beginning its morning journey from behind the surrounding hills.  We walk swiftly over the bridge, past quietly ruminating cows and through the small groups of people chatting at the beginning of the day.  Today we are being taken out into the hills to meet a remarkable group of young people who are gathering together to share their stories of their own routes that have taken them away from conventional education.

To feel the sanctity of life is to acknowledge the sacred in all individuals.  In language that is free from any religious associations we might phrase it as the observation of the unique qualities of each individual.  Educating the spirit is about ensuring that these qualities are able flow, in a way that is not destructive to other living beings, that connects freedom with responsibility and encourages a life worth living.  It seems to me that to enjoy one’s humanity is to be learning about oneself: to be exploring all humanity through oneself.  This is a long way from the pursuit of success and the need to validate oneself through achievement which appears to be the motivation in life currently being encouraged; this invariably leads to self-absorption.

‘Do not believe a thing simply because it has been said.

Do not put your faith in traditions only because they have been honoured by many generations.

Do not believe anything because the general opinion believes it to be true or because it has been said repeatedly.

Do not believe a thing because of the single witness of one of the sages of antiquity.

Do not believe a thing because the probabilities are in its favour, or you are in the habit of believing it to be true.

Do not believe in that which comes to your imagination, thinking it must be the revelation of a superior being.

Believe nothing that binds you to the sole authority of your masters or priests.

That which you have tried yourself, which you have experienced, which you recognize as true

And which will be beneficial to you and to others;

Believe that, and shape your conduct to it.’                           Buddha

We are sitting in a circle; threadbare carpets have been put down for us to sit on and we are exposed to the sun as it is still morning and the warmth is welcome.  In the sky above the bare hills soars a majestic bird, its wings hardly move as the warm currents of the emerging day carry it upwards.  It is joined by another and together the birds land by the lake, their vast wings flap slowly and their heavy bodies hop ungainly on the rough ground as they settle.  The circle is made up of young women and men, mostly in their early to mid twenties, their smiles are friendly and they are affectionate with each other.  We hear the accounts of their individual experiences of freeing themselves from the accepted system of school-college-university to learn what they want, to be involved in those things that are fed by their interests and their particular concerns.  Some of them have parental support; others have had to justify their actions to both friends and family; some come from comfortable middle-class families and others have emerged from the margins of society where survival is always an issue.  All of them are driven by a passion to make things better for others, environmental and social concerns at the core of their lives.  One girl has made a film about the only female rickshaw driver in Udaipur; a boy is studying community theatre and is involved with a group of social activists; all are active with their own and often wider community.

‘Most parents unfortunately think that they are responsible for their children and their sense of responsibility takes the form of telling them what they should do, what they should not do, what they should become and what they should not become.  The parents want their children to have a secure position in society.  What they call responsibility is part of that respectability which they worship; and it seems to me that where there is respectability there is no order.  Do you call that care and love?’                J Krishnamurti

Some days later we are further north in a village in Rajasthan sitting in a small, dark room lit only by a single solar lamp.  There are two men and we are joined by a succession of young children who are here to learn to read and write; we have come to one of the night schools run by the NGO we are staying with.  These girls and boys aged from about nine to twelve years have been out in the fields, helping at home, looking after animals, taking care of siblings.  They are huddled in coarse, tired looking clothes as the evening is cool.  One of the children is the Prime Minister of the Children’s Parliament; she is a stern girl coming up to thirteen years old, straight faced and eyes that hold an understanding beyond her years.  We have a question and answer session: we ask of their lives and their concerns, they ask us about farming and land use in our country, showing what is really important in their lives.  Before we leave the children sing to us and we walk out into the dark having been part of another world, touched by sincerity and thoughtfulness often difficult to find in the prosperous parts of the world.

In her book, ‘Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet as Educator’, Kathleen M O’Connell writes about Tagore in the context of Western progressive-humanist education and describes this type of education as using ‘an organic model of education that emphasizes individual independence and focuses on the unfolding of a child’s personality in a non-threatening environment’.  This is the basis of self-directed learning: the preservation of natural curiosity, the exploration and expansion of individual interest, and a continuing sense of connection with nature and, thus, humanity.  Certainly this cannot take place in large authoritarian institutions based on hierarchical decision making promoting competition, conformity and uniformity of thinking.  So do we look to create different kinds of institutions or, perhaps, no institutions at all?

…

The young people we met outside Udaipur are part of Swaraj University.  Swaraj being the term used by Gandhi regarding not just self-determination for India, but self-direction for the individual.  More can be found out about Swaraj University at www.swarajuniversity.org .

The NGO that organizes the Children’s Parliament, night schools and many other things is Barefoot College.  Also much influenced by Gandhi’s outlook there is a policy of encouraging grassroots participation whilst actively discouraging the input of highly qualified experts.  Barefoot College website is www.barefootcollege.org .

Tagore and Education: educating the spirit

For a second we stop and look upwards.  There in the tree are three small owls, their downy heads and piercing, unblinking eyes face us whilst their bodies are hidden by the dark branch.  It is late afternoon in Santiniketan in West Bengal and the sun is going down, easing us from the heat and bringing a crowd of bicycles and cycle rickshaws as students and workers begin their journeys home.  Even now there are mercifully few cars.  We are at the place where Rabindranath Tagore began his experiment in education which began with the School (Patha-Bhavana) in 1901 and then extended to the University (Visva-Bharati) in the 1920s.  They are both now Government run institutions on a heritage site attempting to cling on to the original influence of the remarkable poet and educator.  Having had their fill of us, the three tiny owls fly away noiselessly.

 ‘Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from depths of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever widening thought and action;

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, awake.’

This well-known poem was published as part of Gitanjali by the Nobel Prize winning poet and educator, Rabindranath Tagore, in 1910.

There is a distinction about the school set up by Tagore in Santiniketan, even now; and this is that all lessons are taken outside.  We have walked around the sprawling campus and watched the children sitting under the trees.  They sit in a semi-circle with the teacher facing them, birds sing all around them, dogs come and lie nearby, cows meander past.  There is ample opportunity for day-dreaming, for letting the attention wander from the teacher.  And when the lesson is over the children move on to another class, sometimes they stop and play, or they become involved in chatting or an individual might find her or his gaze caught by something that is much more engrossing than the prospect of another lesson.  In all this the teacher’s authority is significantly changed by the loss of the four walls to contain her or his students: there is an equalizing quality that happens when learning takes place outside in Nature.

In a conversation that Paramahansa Yoganananda recorded in his book, ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ he noted that Tagore ‘fled from school after the Fifth Grade’.  ‘I could readily understand how his innate poetic delicacy would be affronted by the dreary disciplinary atmosphere of a schoolroom,’ stated Yogananda .

Tagore added,’ a child is in his natural setting amidst the flowers and the songbirds.  There he may more easily express the hidden wealth of his individual endowment.  True education is not pumped and crammed in from outward sources, but aids in bringing to the surface the infinite hoard of wisdom within.’ (My italics)

Certain aspects of freedom are beloved by the vast majority of children.  Watch them as they spill from their schools, as they race out into the open and metaphorically spread their wings in the relief of physical freedom. 

‘ Rabindranath believed in helping children realise the great potential human beings are born with… Freedom of man was the basic assumption and an interaction of man and nature; man and man; man and higher truth were considered the highest value.  Individual differences were not only respected, but were actually nurtured.  At the same time selfishness was condemned. Under these conditions competition was totally discouraged; punishment and stifling had no place in the system; stereotyped examinations were discarded….’

Supriyo Tagore  Principal of Patha-Bhavan for 22 years.

My wife, Maggie, and our youngest son, Josh, have made a short film based on interviews we held at Santiniketan and Rajghat-Besant Education Centre in Varanasi for a presentation at the Tagore Festival at Dartington Hall in 2011.  It contains a flavor of Tagore’s approach to education and extracts from two songs composed by him.  The link is  http://youtu.be/ZPilYWJ-ruY if you care to watch.

Is this the only way we can live? A brief reflection.

It is the beginning of a new year and one of those continuously grey days when the soft slate clouds seem to settle inside the head.  It is time for reflection; to nurture the seed that might flower in the Spring.

There has been some interest in this blog, some words of encouragement and my own sense that I am expressing something worthwhile.  The ‘Educating the Spirit’ work appears to be a seed deserving of good soil and gentle watering.  Similarly, the ‘Links with India’ project ( www.linkswithindia.com )  that Maggie and I have developed appears to be worthy of increased and continuing attention.  I have a feeling that with both of these their real potential has yet to be unearthed and we do not know what they will look like when fully in flower.

From India comes my stream of inspiration – not the place violence and hatred currently being so horrifically portrayed in the global media coverage of the rape of the young girl in Delhi, but that where the ancient thread of compassion and intelligence is found in quiet places and smiling faces.  Nor that place where men fight to maintain power over women, expressing their impotency through acts of appalling violence, but where women are so often the embodiment of courage, resourcefulness and understanding.  There is a very interesting quotation from Krishnamurti written down by Professor P Krishna in 'Krishnamurti as I knew him.' -

'Shall I tell you what is unique about this country (India)?  I have travelled all over the world, and I have watched.  This is the only country left where the poor still smile. ....  Then he added, ' Although we are losing that quality in our country, it is still there.'

So the writing will continue and I intend to extend the exploration into travel and discussion with young and old:  there is a seed of a plan to visit India in the summer.  There is more writing and many photographs.  I am embarking on the second year of the seventh decade of my life and can no longer stand and watch the world disintegrate around me – the lonely desperation of the old, the fear and insecurity of the young in a society where lies, greed and arrogance is rewarded whilst honesty and compassion are reviled as signs of weakness.  I have very little to offer – no business sense, no strident leadership with charismatic speeches to create a world changing movement and certainly no sparkling wit and clever use of language.  Maybe all I can do is to be part of that ever increasing river of reflection that is asking: Is this the only way we can live?

'Your children are not your children':Educating the Spirit - 3rd extract.

I am sitting in the summer sun outside the barn that has been converted to create a schoolroom for twenty children, inside there is a high-ceilinged schoolroom, two toilets and at one end, a kitchen.  A redwood tree towers over the building, one of the landmark trees of the area, and there is a stillness in the air now that the laughter and activity of the children has ceased for the day.   The singing of birds in the surrounding woods and the call of a buzzard from far above is contained within that stillness. I look up to see the wide-winged birds wheeling through the blue on a warm flow of air; an expression of freedom and power.

I have been here for nearly a year now.  The grass we planted as seed in the autumn has grown to cover the mud of the Spring to create a large play space around the solid form of the old oak.  It is a place for young children to wander about, to sit and daydream, and to chase each other, to take a book and read or a piece of paper on which to draw.  We, the adults, learn together with the children, watching them, listening, laughing and being silent.  It is a good place; not idyllic for that is mere fantasy – usually thought up through some theory.  Nothing is rushed, there are few deadlines to be attained and there is plenty of time for questions.  If there are tears, anger or unhappiness we have the space to address all these emotions – sometimes with a gesture of affection, sometimes it takes patience and words.

Through economic circumstances I had to leave this school after only two years.  That was nearly ten years ago.  Occasionally I see those children.  They are friendly, bright and still enjoying learning, still clearly valuing the freedom, cooperation, space, affection and a love of learning we all experienced in that time.  For me those two years were a blessing.

…

‘Your children are not your children,

They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

But seek not to make them like you.’

From The Prophet by Khalil Gibran  (1923)

I read this when I was in my late teens, many, many years ago.  Its meaning has resonated in me for all the time I have been a father, educator, and now a grandfather.  In my relationships with other parents, as a teacher and as a houseparent, I have met others with this outlook, but a much larger number to whom this way of looking at their children has no meaning at all.  These parents see their children as possessions, valuable, to be protected, but ultimately belonging to them.  This brings a mutual dependency; their children seek the approval of their parents and the parents want their children’s’ love to be expressed through obedience, conformity and achievement.  So, often the parent’s response is to indulge the child materially and to monitor their every move – there has been much written about the collapse of children’s engagement with nature (George Monbiot recently wrote in the Guardian that ‘Eleven to Fifteen year olds (in the UK) now spend, on average, half their waking day in front of a screen).  These parents separate their children from others, putting them in competitive roles and creating further fragmentation in their relationships…….

I’ll be exploring this further as I examine whether there is another way to approach education rather than child-centred, parental choice or state dictatorship; something that encompasses consciousness and the world in which we live.

Questions and Answers:Educating the Spirit - 2nd extract.

Ten years ago I used to take our dog walking these country lanes.  His large, shaggy soulful frame is long gone and I am reminded, as I take the same walk, of his beautiful friendship.  This time through the heavy silent mist of a mid-November afternoon I am walking with an Indian friend from Canada.  He has been staying at the school for some time and we talk about his experiences and discoveries; he is researching for a book on a different approach to education and has gained fascinating insights from his interviews and conversations.  We walk slowly up the drive to the large house, the fields either side exude a soft stillness and the leaves fall in quiet flurries to the ground exposing the trees to their winter skeleton.  We are not hemmed in by the thick mist, there is not that cloying claustrophobia you can get in the cities and towns, instead there is an atmosphere of gentleness and peace.

The next day I am invited to spend the morning observing and interacting with several classes of students, girls and boys aged from thirteen to nineteen.  These students come from all over the world and have recently joined this particular school community; the only one of its kind in Europe.  Many are a long way from home.  The first two classes explore the role of peer counsellor through role play and reflection.  It is an opportunity to develop the process of listening and observation in respect of human behaviour; so responses to non-verbal as well as verbal expressions are discussed.  There is no authority in the classroom in the sense of an expert and the students are free to question any aspect of what is going on: the intelligence and sharpness of their observations is no surprise to me, but may be of some news to those who consider teenagers only to be capable of receiving knowledge rather than thinking for themselves.

During the human development classes I am given the opportunity of asking the student questions about their experiences of being listened to, which also includes reference to some participation in their own learning.  The vast majority of these students are in their first term at the school and, therefore, their memories are very recent.  Their background varies from home-schooling, through small ‘alternative’ schools, ‘regular’ schools, to one student who had come from a school in South America that had three thousand students. In general they had experienced limited communication with adults.  For some it would be purely about academics, others had relationships which led to broader and more meaningful conversations, a significant few talk about having no relationship beyond that common to most traditional hierarchical and disciplinarian schools.  Many say that they had articulated their thoughts, but had not often been listened to in a way that engendered some kind of response that acknowledged what they had been saying.  Some mention anger and frustration as being a regular facet of their lives with adults.

However, although an examination of their present situation is not an intention of my questioning, several talk of this:  the usage of adult’s first names making a significant difference; active involvement if the running of the school; the culture of the school that does not depend on a hierarchy and an acknowledgement that everyone is learning together.  These young people are relaxed, open and articulate - it is a delight to be with them.

Meanwhile, the UK Government is working hard to ensure the vast majority of children do not have access to a culture of learning in which they might participate fully.  No opportunity is given for them to even question what is going on.  Power is being used to promote a thoughtless, inhumane and ultimately useless approach to education dreamed up from a male-orientated, militaristic, narrowly academic ideology.   Education has become a battleground dominated by fear, distrust and frustration – hardly a creative environment in which both teacher and students can thrive.  We have become so obsessed with what goes on in our heads and what our hands can produce we have forgotten our hearts: for when the heart does not beat the brain can no longer function and the hand is still.

In this quotation it is important to understand ‘he’ is also ‘she’.

‘The true teacher is not he who has built up an impressive educational organization, nor he who is an instrument of the politicians, nor he who is bound to an ideal, a belief or a country.  The true teacher is inwardly rich and therefore asks nothing for himself; he is not ambitious and seeks no power in any form; he does not use teaching as a means of acquiring position or authority, and therefore he is free from the compulsion of authority and control of governments.  Such teachers have primary place in an enlightened civilization, for true culture is founded, not on the engineers and technicians, but on the educators.’                 J Krishnamurti Education and the Significance of Life (1953)

This is why I went into teaching, why I had to leave teaching and why I will return.

Educating the Spirit - draft beginning

This is the draft beginning of a book I am working on.  Any comments gratefully received.

Educating the Spirit: changing the way we think.

Chapter One:     Young Leaves

In the evening we are taken on a boat ride along the River Ganges into the city of Varanasi. This majestic river is soiled by the squalid lives of humanity, fetid clumps of matter float past and her banks are pitted with plastic and polystyrene.  Further on a blackened shape passes us with a crow is perched on it: a body only partially burnt and tossed into the river to save precious wood.  We pass ancient buildings, fiery corpses and garish hoardings: all life is here.  We moor at the edge of the old city and walk up the dusty, mud streets.

Earlier that day we had met a man who had been involved in education in Varanasi and other places in India for many years; we talked about the state of the world and education in particular.  This was in early 2011 when the global economic situation was disintegrating, the gap between rich and poor ever widening, the speed of environmental degradation was gathering pace as humanity desperately searched to unearth whatever resources the Earth had left.

“We need to educate the spirit,’ the man said.  He explained that he felt we have reduced learning to the mere gathering of knowledge in order to get a job, settle down and be secure; being only concerned with the mechanical.  The global crisis we are facing now is an inevitable and direct result of this approach, he felt.

In India, as in many parts of the world, education is seen as a means of obtaining results in a highly competitive world.  Education is big business; in all the towns and cities I have been to there are very many schools from those in converted houses to the opulent ‘international’ schools that boast every modern facility possible.  Parents want their children to become wealthy, to be economically secure and to have status in society; this all reflects well on them and the family.  Such is the intensity of feeling surrounding exam results that it can, all too often leads to tragic outcomes: we met a young lady whose best friend at school killed herself when she received her results as she felt that she had let down her family and life was not worth living any more.  This lady we met works with young people and is a passionate opponent of formal schooling and all it involves, citing this experience as pivotal in her thinking.

 Education is so often presented as being all about policy; about political interest, manipulation of people, and creating institutionalized failure for many against a background of a perception of success for the few.  This policy builds the notion of life as a race with winners and losers, and it begins even before we are born.  However,  I am writing about the individual, the single human, for that is who I have always come across in my teaching: individual students as well as individual teachers and parents.  For the vast majority of my teaching career I have been known by my first name in institutions where young people have not been required to wear uniforms and, to differing extents, formality was not used as a means of control.  The consequence of this was to give greater meaning to relationships between individuals and accentuate the fact that respect lay in the quality of these relationships, not in reverting to status and coercion.  The extraordinary diversity of character of students, teachers and parents contributed to the vitality, effectiveness and happiness of these places.  When this diversity was subjected to oppressive conformity, particularly through the pursuit of narrow academic success, then the delicate web of mutual respect broke down, leaving conventional punishment and reward processes as the means to encourage and motivate. However, when we talk about the spirit of the individual we are actually exploring the human spirit, human consciousness; so in this we move beyond the separation of individuals and their characteristics to that which unifies us all – our thoughts, feelings: life itself.  Therefore, in educating the individual human spirit we are in touch with all that is consciousness; and thus the individual takes on her or his proper significance

Violence and Hatred

It is cold, very cold and the show is lying heavily beside the roads, on the rooftops and on the pavements.  Krakow in Poland is a beautiful city and in the throes of a cold winter when the clear blue skies allow the sun to glisten on the long icicles that hang from the rooftops there is tremendous magic in the place.

Today, however, is a grey, misty day with no sign of fresh snow.  The fog seems to simultaneously rise from the ice and snow and drift down from the sullen sky.  Today is the day we are visiting Auschwitz, the concentration death camp operated by the Nazis in the Second World War.  We climb into the bus and are driven through the snow blanketed countryside.  The few people that we see as we move swiftly along the road are bent against the cruel wind and wrapped up in layers of clothing to keep them warm.  It is a day for reflection; to observe, listen and then to feel.

The car park is filling up as we arrive and we pull up beside another bus; this one is disgorging a crowd of students from another part of Europe – they are in high spirits as they wait to be organised.  We enter the visitor area and buy tickets.  Not for us the guided tour, we want to be apart from the crowds, to have some space to feel what happened there.

The cold is biting, clinging to our faces, dragging at our feet.  It is a welcome relief to go inside to view the exhibition of shoes, of human hair and to read the stories of those that were killed, see the photos of the imprisoned and their guardians.  Steadily the horror seeps into the brain:  here is the place people were put up against the wall and shot;  there are the gas chambers; these are the furnaces where living children met their end;  these are the workers dormitories, cold wooden and concrete; this the end of the railway line, where life finished before death came.

Walking out in the snow they can be seen, shuffling along, leaving no mark.  In the icy air their breathing creates the mist that clings.  My body is cold, uncomfortable, in the silence that still holds the ghosts of the dead.  It is warmer in the gas chambers and where the furnaces once reduced so much flesh and bone to ash.  A new horror emerges as I read about the cold efficiency of the factory of death and my mind slips unbidden from the shock of the killing to the lives of the killers – I become aware that I have more in common with them than the ragged skeletons.  Like many of these men who stare out from their photographs I am well-educated, privileged, with my roots in the dominant professional middle-class.  And it begins to dawn on me that I have within me the capability of cruelty, the level of fear and the lack of compassion to be part of such an institution of torture, destruction and death.  All I need is to be convinced of the rightness of the cause and to separate myself from the existence of other living beings.  I have done it; I could do it now – for I have learnt well, though I cannot remember the lessons.

We return to the car park at the same time as the students; they are returning to their bus in small groups, bowed by the cold and what they have seen and heard concerning the capabilities of the human race.  I sit with my wife and eldest son; I cannot speak as I look back and remember within the walls such echoes of violence, courage, desperation, misery, arrogance and sheer horror.

I ask the question: what is the road we can take that means that we are compassionate rather than cruel; even to the point of facing death rather than destroying another?