Pedagogy of the Spirit

Education outside government boundaries

2012-01-07T11:39:00.000-08:00

Education must exist outside government boundaries if it is to rise above our most base inclinations. While government should provide education as a basic means to democracy and self-sufficiency, we should not allow ourselves to think this is sufficient. Government systems represent the lowest forms of human development. They enable our safety, access to shelter, and baseline infrastructure. Education, on the other hand, represents our ideals, our hopes, and our possibilities. Therefore, we cannot allow government to control and limit education. The role of government is to provide access, and sufficient funding for the equal access of all. It is then up to us to create a both deeper and broader system using all of the tools at hand. Today this means integration with and immersion in technology and social media. It also means seeing the role of teacher in an entirely different light. The teacher can no longer obtain and contain all knowledge on a subject. There is too much. Therefore the teacher, as the government, should be seen as a basic and essential element, not the conduit. The role of teacher must change.

Understanding the Global Community

2011-06-22T19:36:00.000-07:00

People cannot become wise if they do not know their global community and the context of their knowledge. When education is global, the essence of humanity takes precedence over the relative value of people in the context of their community and country. This enables us to develop human capital that rises above differences and instead collaborates on sustainability, justice, peace, and human rights. The economy lives outside of government boundaries, so now must education. Plato stated in The Laws that “there will be no cessation of evils for the sons of men, till either those who are pursuing a right and true philosophy receive sovereign power in the States, or those in power in the States by some dispensation of providence become true philosophers.”

The Need for Global Education

2011-05-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

Since the beginning of time, education, like politics and economic, was local. Now politics and economics are not local, and as a result of the Internet and social media, neither knowledge nor relationships are strictly local. Knowledge is now global; however, education continues to be local. It is locally designed, focused, and with little exception, delivered. The educational system of all countries needs to become global. This is the only way to harness Digital Age knowledge and create true wisdom. Education professor and author Howard Gardner (1999) said that “the defining characteristic of wisdom is the breadth of considerations taken into account when rendering judgment or recommending a course of action” (p.133) and to Confucius wisdom was the ability to see a question from all sides.

A Strong Virtuous Heart

2011-03-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

Confucius (551-479 BC) believed that the goal of education is “Ren” or a strong virtuous heart that gains primacy through wisdom. But, Einstein (1989-1955) said that “wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” What then is the relationship between education and wisdom? Plato explained in the Seventh Letter how he saw wisdom being acquired. He said that it “is kindled in one soul by flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself.” Therefore education should create a virtuous heart, an understanding of wisdom, and the desire to pass the leaping flame.

Sharing Wisdom So it Matters

2011-03-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

Our place in the evolution of where knowledge is stored and how it is received and processed, and how quickly it can be changed, gives us a unique opportunity to systemically influence knowledge in time for it to matter. As such, we must first dedicate ourselves to the creation and sharing of wisdom that results from our new wealth of knowledge and communication ability, and second we must each be committed to eradication of the digital divide to ensure that all persons have the ability to participate thusly. Since wisdom is created individually, and it is the path to improving lives, then all persons on the planet must have the opportunity, access, and understanding to create wisdom based on the greatest possible amount of knowledge. In other words, everyone must have access to the internet. Currently, 78% of the world’s population does not use it (Fairlie, R.).

Wisdom is Within Us

2011-02-25T14:59:00.000-08:00

While knowledge can now be created anywhere it is still the case that wisdom can only be created within a person, and therefore its power is in sharing and acting, acting and sharing. Wisdom is the result of our own reflection on and critical thinking of knowledge. As Aristotle (384 -322 BCE) put it, wisdom is the “union of intuitive reason and scientific knowledge; it may be defined as the complete science of the loftiest matters.” (Nicomachean Ethics). It is influenced by our own souls led by the unmoved mover, who is greater than any name. John Locke said “the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got, which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not had from things without.” Wisdom also is influenced by our humanness. David Swenson reminds us in The Dignity of Human Life, that we are humans first: “We were men before we became whatever of relative value we became in life, and we shall doubtless be human beings long after what we thus became or acquired will have lost its significance for us.” And, Joseph Campbell (1988) reminds us that as humans we are all the same, stating “[t]he stages of human development are the same today as they were in the ancient times” (p. 87), and he went on to successfully prove this point by analyzing and comparing myths from around the world in order to show us how similar we were and how similar we remain as humans -- across the planet and from the beginning of time.

Knowledge alone

2011-02-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

Knowledge alone will not increase literacy, eradicate poverty, ensure tolerance, create adequate resources, and bring about peace. It takes wisdom to know how to use, create, and share knowledge to solve the most important of human problems. Knowledge itself is additive; it rarely deconstructs. Wisdom is the only thing capable of deconstructing knowledge when it becomes unproductive, false or harmful. Horace stated that "force without wisdom falls of its own weight." It similarly is true that knowledge without wisdom suffocates from its own arrogance.

How the meaning of education has changed

2011-02-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

We in the Digital Age have an opportunity and the ability to reconstruct our view of knowledge and our relationship to it. As the result of our planet's long history of using knowledge to build empires and control others, and our firm belief that only what can be proved is real and knowable, we have come to see knowledge, and the corresponding skills, as an end product. When a person has knowledge,we view them as educated and equipped to lead and solve problems. Indeed, they often see themsevles this way. Jung explained that "the nearer we approach to the middle of life, and the better we have succeeded in entrenching ourselves in our personal attributes and social positions, the more it appears as if we had discovered the right course and the right ideals and principles of behavior. For this reason we suppose them to be eternally valid, and make a virtue of unchangeably clinging to them."

Insead of falling into the trap of becoming complacent in our knowledge, we need to take the opportunity to go back to our human roots... to our early days on the planet... and understand that knowledge is merely a raw ingredient for creating wisdom.