Our
Only True Choice: Vision, Transformation, and Integral Practice looks at the
current practices of mainstream education, governance and media in America. Weeks
one through four provide an overview of elementary-school-through-college experiences
from both a philosophical and a practical perspective, as these years require
the cooperation of students, parents and educators. Week five calls upon the work
of Jonathan Kozol, especially Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace,
and Ordinary Resurrections, and explores the issues that these titles denote.
Weeks six through fifteen address the various paradoxes, ironies, and shortcomings
of mainstream education, governance and media.
A
multi-disciplined look at government, religion, media, education, gender, spirituality,
and violence in America suggests that individual transformations of consciousness,
leading to changes in worldview, are the only true means to address these issues.
Toward that end we will engage Ken Wilber's "all-quadrant, all-level, all-line"
model, and briefly consider several "non-traditional" educational approaches.
Our primary focus, however, will be on the need for lifetime growth and the approaches
available toward personal transformation. An introduction to meditation is included.
Week
#1: GETTING A DEGREE VS. GETTING AN EDUCATION: COMPETITION, COOPERATION, AND CHEATING
During this
introductory session we'll differentiate between education as a lifetime process
and education as a degree/diploma, and we'll see why the latter view seems more
attractive than the former. We'll discuss the true value of education in general,
and a college education in particular, and we'll examine cooperative vs. competitive
approaches to education.
Week
#2: NUTS AND BOLTS: PARENTS, CHILDREN, LEARNING AND SCHOOL
Here we'll
discuss the importance of the student's attitude toward and approach to learning;
self-respect and responsibility; and meeting vs. exceeding an institution's minimum
requirements. We'll establish a step-by-step guide for students who want to learn,
and we'll investigate why some schools work for some students and not for others.
We'll look at both the science and the art of parenting, especially as it concerns
preparing a child for school, the role of homework, and the need for cooperation
among children, parents and teachers—all within the framework of what Mortimer
Adler has called the six great ideas-truth, beauty, goodness, liberty, equality,
and justice, and Wilber's integral vision.
Week
#3: FAMILIARITY, TIMING, AND THE ART OF TEACHING
Picking
up with the need for cooperation raised in session #2, we'll consider who the
"best" teachers are—and come up with a list of characteristics that may predispose
an individual to teach well. We'll explore the needs for freedom, creativity,
structure and discipline in the classroom, and we'll examine teaching as a "minor"
profession—in terms of social perceptions, salary, working conditions, and
respect. We'll call on the work of Parker J. Palmer, Jonathan Kozol, and others.
Week
#4: SMOKE, MIRRORS, AND SELF-ESTEEM: EDUCATION AND INNOVATION
The ages-old
battle between appearances and reality continues, and will serve as the starting
point in our discussion of the dignities and the disasters of the self-esteem
"movement." We'll look at the need for and the inherent risks in educational innovation,
and how it often addresses symptoms, but not root causes, of our educational dilemmas.
The works of Emerson, Nathaniel Branden, Neil Postman, and Stephen Talbott will
help us on our way.
Week
#5: CIVILIZED EQUALITIES: DIVERSITY, COMMUNITY, AND THE GOLDEN RULE
We will
address the inequalities in American public education through Jonathan Kozol's
Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace, and Ordinary Resurrections.
With this as our starting point, we will include and move beyond education to
America at large, and take an honest look at diversity, community, and the "golden
rule" within such a diverse population. The relevant works of M. Scott Peck and
Ken Wilber will also be considered.
Week
#6: WHAT WE FORGOT IN OUR SOMETIME SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
Our First
Amendment freedoms of religion and speech will be the points of departure as we
explore the effects of extreme liberalism and extreme conservatism on our educational
system. This session will introduce what may be the major flaw (what we forgot)
in our public educational system—in our necessary and well-intentioned effort
to separate Church and State, we have all but guaranteed a complete denial of
spirituality in our public schools. We will examine this dilemma through a multi-disciplined
look at human development, human evolution, and fear of difference.
Week
#7: SLAUGHTER, ETHNIC CLEANSING, AND DENIAL IN MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL-INFORMATION
SOCIETY
Session
#7 picks up the theme of session #6 and explores the irony, hypocrisy and denial
that envelop our military- industrial-information society. We'll consider how
government and media, either consciously or unconsciously, work to stagnate consciousness.
More specifically, we'll look for the connections among family, religion, spirituality,
economics, quality of life, technology, history, etc., etc., etc., that might
shed some light on a species that is so quick to slaughter its own. We will raise
two questions: what do we teach our children about the world, and how do we teach
it?
Week
#8: THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE: CALL IT CREATION, CALL IT EVOLUTION: WHAT HAPPENED
HAPPENED
We'll
take a brief look at the history of the relationship between science and religion—how
each has had its turn dominating the other, and how both have much to offer when
they behave. More specifically, we'll consider how contemporary scientific discoveries
provide us with a view of the universe that looks more and more like that presented
in a non-literal reading of the Creation story in Genesis. We'll engage the work
of Stephen Hawking, Brian Swimme, Ken Wilber, and others, and see if we can find
a way to present The Big Story to our children in such a way that honors both
religion and science.
Week
#9: DEVELOPMENT AND THE STORY OF THE TRUE SELF: WHO AM I, REALLY?
We'll take
a brief look at various developmental theories—cognitive, moral, behavioral,
and spiritual, and find ourselves faced with the consistency that is found at
the mystical core of the world's wisdom traditions, East and West. Namely, we
are something very different from the sum total of all our familial, social, religious,
national, gender, emotional, cognitive, and corporate conditioning. Despite evidence,
both historical and contemporary, that is consistent across cultures, languages,
and time, humans who pursue this question remain few and far between. We will
explore some prospective consequences that might result should such pursuit be
taken up on a larger scale.
Week
#10: A COMMON VISION OF AN UNCOMMON VIEW: EDUCATING THE WHOLE SELF
Continuing
with "the story of the true self," we'll consider several models of education
that are currently in practice that do engage the spiritual aspect of the person,
and in most cases identify it as the core or foundation upon which all else rests.
The works of Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf Schools), Maria Montessori, Aurobindo Ghose,
and Inayat Khan will be our focal points. David Marshak's The Common Vision
will serve as a partial guide through Steiner, Ghose and Khan.
Week
#11: KEN WILBER, ALL QUADRANTS, ALL LEVELS...AND EVERYTHING
Taking our
consideration of human development and placing it within the framework of human
evolution, we'll look at two aspects of Ken Wilber's work toward an integrated
world philosophy. Specifically, we'll explore his spectrum of consciousness against
the backdrop of his four quadrant model, and consider what an "all-quadrant, all-level,
all-line" approach to human development might look like.
Week
#12: KEN WILBER, CONTINUED
Week
#13: TOWARD AN ECCENTRIC EX-CENTRISM
Our
travels through human development will demonstrate that we move through various
levels of centric behavior—very generally through a healthy self-centric
level, and on to a healthy group-centric perspective. We will proceed in this
session, with ample evidence from the previous weeks, with the hypothesis that
much, if not all, of the uncivilized, pathological, and harmful (to self and others)
behavior that we experience is possible because of an over-identification with
the self or with some specific group-that is, because of an unhealthy self- or
group-centric worldview. We will address this issue both philosophically and pragmatically,
using historical and current examples.
Week
#14: VISION, TRANSFORMATION, AND INTEGRAL PRACTICE
As we begin
to bring the course to a close, we will explore the concept of vision, Wilber's
use of the words translation and transformation, and the prospect
of truly integral practice as lifetime commitments. We will consider whether what
we need most now can ever be legislated, or if we must instead turn inward, both
individually and collectively, in order to confront the insanity of our species
as it swings on the hinge of self-destruction. We will consider Michael Murphy
and George Leonard's The Life We Are Given, and explore their work with
Integral Transformative Practice (ITP).
Week
#15: WHAT IT TAKES
Civility,
political correctness, thinly veiled contempt. . .—which would you choose?
Continuing the theme from session #14, we will indeed ask what it takes to transform
our world. We'll dare to use the word love in class, not in a romantic,
but in a universal sense, and we'll consider several images of love that might
help us on our way. Wilber's A Theory of Everything will help us summarize
and conclude the class.
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