Why our Kids need a Holistic Education

Education is Our Most Powerful Tool for a Better World

"As a kid at school in the early 1960′s I loved nature. No surprise then that I was drawn to the study of ecology, looking at the relationships that living organisms have with their surrounding environment. I went on to read Botany at University. There I went into the beech woods and dug up the roots of the trees, with their sheaths of fungi around them, and took them back to the lab for study. I mashed them up, boiled them, analyzed the enzymes and chemicals, came to further understand the symbiotic relationship between the tree roots and the fungi; how each received benefit from the other. I wrote a thesis and obtained my doctorate. But something big was missing. Nature is not just about chemicals. It has a soul!.... "

You can read the full article at Conscious Connection... where it appeared today. Make no mistake: Our future depends on how we educate our kids.

Holistic education, biodiversity and ecotourism

One of the joys of holidays away from the daily routine is the chance it gives me to read beyond my usual genres. Especially I love the opportunity to browse the second hand books so often left on the bookshelves of hostelries by travellers who have passed that way before me. It's like a lucky dip! Their choices and preferences open up new worlds for me. And yet there is so often an enormous sense of serendipity as well.

It always amazes me how often I find titles that provide me with new inspiration, or open up new lines of enquiry within my current project, broaden the scope of my research. It can be very exciting!

I've been in La Gomera, where to be honest a little part of my heart resides. Here is paradise on earth, one of the Canary Islands where time hasn't exactly stood still, but where the powers that be are determined to preserve the ancient traditions and wonderful biodiversity of the natural environment by ensuring that future development is sustainable - to this end ecotourism is encouraged, but high rise hotels and nightclubs you will never find. That is its charm. People flock here for the stunning scenery, the walking and the bird watching, and the rather special laurel rainforest (laurisilva) of the Garajonay National Park, a Unesco World heritage site since 1986.

But I digress.

From one of those said lucky dip bookshelves I picked up a book with a rather under-whelming grey cover. But it was the title that caught my eye: La Coume Across the Years: A School that Discovered how to Live. Authors Y Grangeon and C Haller, 1993, English text J W Stubbs 1997. La Coume in Catalan, the back cover informed me, means a blind alley, having no exit at the upper end, like a combe or coomb in English. And La Coume in the book is situated in the Pyrenees - Orientales in France. An unlikely book to pick up in one of the Spanish Canary Islands, at a holiday venue. Intrigued, I opened the book to read on. The book is charmingly illustrated with many line drawings from pupils themselves, and it soon became apparent that the "blind alley" was certainly not the best of metaphors for the institution described in the book. Pitt Kruger was a political refugee from Nazi Germany. With his wife Yves Kruger this amazing German couple together found themselves in 1933 in a decrepit farmhouse high up in the valley above Mosset in this beautiful part of France near the Spanish border. The property had been provided for them through the Quaker movement and under the direction of the Krugers it quickly established itself as an educational community providing accommodation for young people, "a centre offering friendship, solidarity and a welcome" whether as a refuge for more German political refugees, a Youth Hostel, a Country Centre for Education, a school, an International Reception Centre…but always with the same aim in mind; to help children and young people develop harmoniously in all areas of life, not only physically, intellectually and artistically, but also in the moral, spiritual and social spheres.

The Krugers brought their education background and experience, their sharp intellects and their energy and conviction face to face with the harsh realities of everyday survival tactics and built a rather special community based always on co-operation rather than competition, an ethos of shared and individual responsibilities, and an appeal to spiritual rather than material values. In this respect they were way ahead of their time, true visionaries long before our very recent realization that our materialist way of life is not serving us so well. Their geographical isolation and lack or funds enforced the need for thriftiness and avoidance of waste, but this became a virtue out of necessity and a fundamental part of the ethos which continues at the Centre to this day.

Towards the end of the 1970s, with the Krugers aging, it was recognized that the Centre was nearing the end of an era and would have to reinvent itself. There was increasingly a tension with the "life of modern times, surging and turbulent, with unrest in the inner city, invasion by the media, excessive consumerism, and a conspicuous sagging in the sense of responsibility among parents…(and the)…seductiveness of a civilization of comfort and convenience." How could La Coume hold its own, its "pastoral" holistic way of life, against this tide of change?

But it has reinvented itself, and under the guidance and support of the Kruger Foundation established in 1972, it continues to this day as a centre where those values established by the initial vision of the Krugers live on. 

And I do wonder as I read this wonderful account of such a visionary community, and the values that it espouses, whether La Gomera will be able to hold its own and its ambitions against the " seductiveness of a civilization of comfort and convenience" as a generation grows up and wants to leave the island for the material world just 25 or so kilometres away across the sea in Tenerife. Because the two Canary Islands could be in different worlds, the contrasts are so great. Long may La Gomera preserve its own world unravaged by the societal ills that are all too apparent not so very far away. As long as it manages to do that, some part of my own heart will continue to beat there.

  

Passing the Moral Buck

One thing that has struck me throughout all the debates that have rumbled on about the recent riots on the streets of England is something M Scott Peck wrote of in his book People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, (London: Arrow, 1990, p. 249). Peck warned of the phenomenon whereby there is a fragmentation of conscience across a group of individuals such that it becomes less than the sum of all the individual consciences. He called it ‘passing the moral buck’, and saw therein a great potential for evil.
Clearly there were quite a few of these looters and rioters who when they woke up and reflected in the cold light of day on what they had done, felt rather stupid, even remorseful. At least I hope so!
The holistic education of our kids that I support so wholeheartedly should include group behavior dynamics, alongside conflict resolution and learning to be good decent honest responsible citizens in the community. Academic league tables are far from all that matters in our classrooms.

How to build a culture of empathy with nature

Connection with nature is one of our most effective healing activities. And if we heal ourselves, we start to heal the world.
So how to build a culture of empathy with nature?

Here is a lovely extract from Aldous Huxley's Island:

‘For example, how early do you start your science teaching?’

‘We start it at the same time we start multiplication and division. First lessons in ecology.’

‘Ecology? Isn't that a bit complicated?’

‘That's precisely the reason why we begin with it. Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very first that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and the country around it. Rub it in.’
‘And let me add,’ said the Principal, ‘that we always teach the science of relationship in conjunction with the ethics of relationship. Balance, give and take, no excesses - it's the rule of nature and, translated out of fact into morality, it ought to be the rule among people.’

And as James Lovelock reminds us, we need ‘to renew that love and empathy for nature that we lost when we began our love affair with city life.’

Here are some ideas to build on. Comments welcomed.

The Big Picture

1. Build a truly holistic education – one that helps us understand that we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves – the whole universe. Teach basic ecology from a very early age – to learn to value biodiversity in all species. Don’t teach our different subjects in isolation – The Hindus draw no clear division between the economic or political and the religious or cultural facets of life. The body and mind are in the service of the heart. In the same way Hinduism teaches that politics and economics are rooted in and guided by religion and culture, and ultimately by spiritual experience.

2. Alastair McIntosh holds a vision for a spiritually rich and holistic education. In his book Soil and Soul he imagines a life-long curriculum of organic food and biodiversity, energy alternatives and respect for all, healing skills incorporating not only the most advanced scientific advances but also the spiritual healing principles, of poetry and story. There would be the study of conflict resolution and how to eliminate the causes of war. And the kids would have fun and play in tree houses. McIntosh’s wish list is long but the spiritual message is clear. Such an education is about ‘building of community as right relationship between soil, soul and society, powered by the passion of the heart, steered by the reason of the head, and then applied by the skilled technique of the hand.’ (Soil and Soul)


3. Promote and support Green political parties and encourage a more holistic political agenda – our politics needs to build a wider vision, where humanity is seen not as simply inhabiting an environment there for our own use, but as being interconnected with the rest of the natural world, and in a spiritual as well as material sense. (see Jean Hardy: A Wiser Politics)

4. Question modern farming practices – and encourage minimum eating of fish and meat – promote vegetarianism.

5. Promote films that inspire us with the wonders of nature.

6. Support organisations working for the protection of nature – Friends of the Earth, Woodland Trust, etc.

The Small Picture

1. Feed the birds – learn all their names, listen to their songs. Join bird organisations (in UK The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)

2. Grow plants – anything - however small the patio or yard or garden. Make this a family activity - take on an allotment or join a community garden. Grow vegetables for the dinner plate – they taste so much better, and are healthier. Always buy organic.

3. Be outside in the open whenever possible – encourage outdoor play and recreation in safe spaces.

4. Walk in the countryside – in all its forms – woodland and forest, mountain and river, allow plenty of time to be still, to look and to listen and to just “be” a part of the wonderful natural world around us. Feel the sacred and the spirit in all living creatures. Hold or watch and contemplate the “life” in inanimate objects such as stones, water.

5. For those many of us in towns, take a daytrip by train or bus to the countryside beyond, and use the local parks.

6. Visit the seashore and cliff tops, – rock pools and sand dunes – watch birds at the edge of the shore – walk barefoot in the sand.

7. In fact walk barefoot wherever possible – because as Alastair McIntosh has said, we ‘tread on the earth so much more gently barefoot.’

8. Read and study the English Romantic poets, who understand their own place within nature.

Educating our Children

Following the reviews on Amazon.com of Prince Charles' wonderful book Harmony, I came upon one reviewer's comments that took me back to something I have written about elsewhere; What future do we have if we do not recognize the need for a holistic education for our children?

I visited Herm a year or so ago. It is a very small Channel Island ‘community’ off the coast of North France, where life of necessity is simple. I watched the children playing outside, gloriously free and dirty and happy, using what nature has given them, the trees and bushes and grass and flowers, and their own abilities to run and hide and shout and climb trees, to be themselves. There was not an adult in sight. And I recalled the vision held by Alastair McIntosh, in his wonderful book Soil and Soul,for a spiritually rich and holistic education. He imagines a life-long curriculum of organic food and biodiversity, energy alternatives and respect for all, healing skills incorporating not only the most advanced scientific advances but also the spiritual healing principles, of poetry and story. There would be the study of conflict resolution and how to eliminate the causes of war. And the kids would have fun and play in tree houses.
McIntosh’s wish list is long but the spiritual message is clear. Such an education is about ‘building of community as right relationship between soil, soul and society, powered by the passion of the heart, steered by the reason of the head, and then applied by the skilled technique of the hand.’
The Global Justice Movement describes the purpose of education as to ‘teach people how to become life-long learners and virtuous human beings, with the capacity to adapt to change, to become masters of technology and builders of civilization through their ‘leisure work,’ and to pursue the highest spiritual values.’
The Dalai Lama stresses that education ‘constitutes one of our most powerful weapons in our quest to bring about a better, more peaceful, world.’He emphasizes the need to open children’s eyes to the needs and rights of others, so that their actions have a universal dimension, and they develop their ‘natural feelings of empathy so that they come to have a sense of responsibility towards others.’ He reminds us that traditionally it has been assumed that ethical and human values would be taught through a child’s religious upbringing rather than in mainstream state education. With the declining influence of religion and faith in family life this vital part of a child’s education has become neglected. The Dalai Lama proffers three guidelines for the education of our children. First, he says, we need to awaken their consciousness to basic human values by showing them how these are relevant to their future survival, rather than presenting them as solely an ethical or faith issue. Then we must teach them how to discuss and debate, to understand the value of dialogue rather than violence for resolving conflict. Finally there is the urgent need to teach children that differences of race, faith, culture, while important to preserve, are nevertheless secondary to the equal rights of us all from whatever background to be happy. And of course this is best done in the security of a close loving family unit.
Regrettably the purpose of education as seen in most of our traditional schools is to train people for jobs, rather than to be the rounded and spiritually grounded citizens of tomorrow. As a result the system becomes shackled by the needs of exams and syllabuses and league tables. May it come to pass sooner rather than later that many more of our schools come to be judged not only on their position in academic league tables but on how successfully they turn out well rounded, happy, respectful, empathic and spiritual citizens.