Emphasizing Wisdom Instead of Utility; Seeking Wholeness in the Raising of Our Children by Anthony and Thecla Howard

"Wholeness. I don't even know what it is. But I know what it isn't. It isn't half life, it isn't half person" M. C. Richards

From our experience as educators we have come to believe that people do not become truly educated by being given answers or information. People become educated when they are provided the opportunity to direct their own learning in environments meant to nurture their awakening. Becoming awake to our full humanity is not a skill accomplished by the provision or exchange of answers or information. Becoming awake to our wholeness involves the development of human insight and a loving will. Concern with the development of such capacities has long been conspicuously missing among our traditional approaches to education. We have done very well at teaching and developing skills related to specific subject matter, but we have done very poorly at developing our other human capacities. The remarkable Native American Chief Sitting Bull once reportedly spoke to this in a conversation with Annie Oakley. After touring several major cities in America with Buffalo Billâ?™s Wild West show, Sitting impression of all he observed was straightforward: "the white man can make anything, but he does not know how to distribute it". The skills we have developed are indeed impressive; the technology developed in the last century convinces us even further that we can indeed make anything. But as Sitting Bull so wisely observed more than a century ago, it is in the distribution of what we have developed that our missing capacities are revealed (1). Becoming more skilled is not synonymous with becoming wiser.

Learning to Make Everything; Questioning our sacrosanct emphasis on a Utilitarian view of education

If you were interested in learning about something on your own, would you pick up a textbook?

School age children, their families, and their schools are under ever increasing pressures to attain academic skills resolutely described as the sin qua non of cultural prosperity and survival. A perusal of Kentucky's identified "Learning Goals and Academic Expectations" attest to this (2). This document identifies, among other things, the goal that all students will learn to apply the "core concepts" of "science, mathematics, social studies, arts and humanities" for "purposes and situations" that will be encountered "throughout their lives". Who would not want their child to be able to know and apply the core concepts of science to their lives? How could one survive in modern society without a working knowledge of mathematics? No one considered practical could question the need for these goals; all discussion revolves around how best to achieve them. Common invocations include: build more schools, increase funding, extend the school day/ school year, eliminate less important activities (such as art, physical education and recess), give more homework, set higher standards, get more parental involvement and support, get business leaders involved, assess more frequently and thoroughly, increase technological support, hold schools and teachers more accountable, use only evidenced based approaches, intervene at earlier ages, etc. The pressures are immense, the stakes high, the apparent logic of need so unimpeachable that children and their families are mandated by federal law to participate. There's a reason every politician claims to be "pro education", anyone who dares to offer criticism of the existing system of education faces a Goliath irrevocably attached to its own well entrenched agenda.

Offering Criticism out of Concern;
Questioning the Teaching of Unnatural Thinking Processes in our Schools
mumpsimus â?? the migration of error from textbook to textbook until it becomes sacred writ

Our current educational systems are out of balance in what they emphasize in their teachings. We are being taught to criticize but not to experience. We have become over-trained in analysis and underdeveloped in our abilities to listen and take in. We have learned to talk about skill development as if skills can be described as something separate from each unique individual. We have learned to meet everything that cannot be rationally validated with silence or disdain. We have learned to reduce the mysteries of the earth to the point that we intellectually know we are inseparable from Nature, but seldom experience or act consistently on our intimate connection with Creation. We have succeeded in becoming educated as intellectuals of the verbal type, but have not learned how to live the relevance of the other parts of ourselves. When "second hand" or abstract knowledge becomes the only acceptable way of knowing, we predictably become alienated from our own bodies and from the realms of our deep feeling. We become alienated from the Earth and the very ground of our being. Thinking that leads to and supports such alienation can only be accurately described as out of balance and unnatural. When such thinking is formally taught by schools and supported by our economic and political systems, our science and technology, the stage is well prepared for all manner of abuse of what is natural to occur (3).

Applying the "core concepts" of "science"for "purposes and situations" that will be encountered "throughout their lives".

"Ideas we don't know we have, have us." James Hillman

Episcopal Priest Matthew Fox offers one of the most powerful illustrations of 'unnatural' thinking being perpetuated by our most formally trained thinkers. Father Fox offers the disturbing observation that it is individuals with PhDs who are directing the majority of the damage currently being done to our Earth (4). Those who have reached the pinnacle of our educational systems, those arguably the most indoctrinated by a system founded on the devotion to rational and logical thinking, have simplified the world to such an extent that it seems possible to have control over it. Surely these adults are examples of students who have reached the educational goal of being able to apply the "core concepts" of "science" for "purposes and situations" that they have encountered in their lives. Even if one does not believe that this state of being has resulted from our collective intellectual development being out of balance, arrested or unnatural, surely we must at least agree that it is time to ask ourselves: Why has our best educational efforts been so shallow in terms of equipping us for creative social imagination, for developing awe and gratitude, for instilling a sense of what is sacred?

Gaps in Teaching - Sins of Omission

"We need not devise educational programs, but rather that we need to perceive how human beings grow and then to surround them with the food they need." Rudolf Steiner

The continuous use and overemphasis of analytical, rational, verbal, and logical thinking in our approaches to education, throws us collectively and individually out of balance. We become one-sided instead of bicameral in our minds, we lose touch with the compassionate concerns of our heart, and we disconnect from the depths of the wisdom our bodies present. Such gaps in teaching and learning cause us to become alienated from the full wisdom inherent in our nature. The results of what happens when such imbalances are continued over time are familiar and predictable. Human chauvinism, the idea that humans are the crown of creation, the source of all value, the measure of all things, gets deeply embedded in our culture and our consciousness. No wonder our youth and even our "most educated professionals" are so often today described as being self-centered, fearful, alienated, hooked on serving the interests of greed and gluttony (today's word is consumerism), and lacking in imagination and compassion. The gaping gaps in our development relate and flow directly from the potentially terminal gaps in our teachings.

You Can't Raise a Horse in a Box
"The proper response to the world is applause." William Carlos Williams

Overemphasizing skills embraced by mainstream academia at the expense of the rest of our natural wisdom is equivalent to attempting to raise a horse in a box. Keep them in a small pasture, keep them predominantly without meaningful activities, keep them apart from other horses and you will create an animal that interacts with the world in ways that are clearly un-natural, (e.g. "barn sour", "herd bound", timidity, undependable, bolting, bucking, avoidant, shying, etc.). It does not take much imagination to apply this same observation to a typical school day. Our one sided and hypervigiliant focus on academic skill achievement has resulted in us attempting to raise our children in boxes. We keep them in small rooms, keep them predominantly focused on abstractions such as those offered by text books and worksheets, isolate them from the great diversity of life by grouping them with their own age and socio-economic class, and surround them with adult authority figures with a preponderance of experience only in the specialized school environment. The result for children is not different than the result for horses, they learn to interact with the world in ways that are un-natural (impulsivity, distractibility, obsessions, compulsions, manias, addictions, boredom, apathy, etc.). Without access to our inherent wisdom, we all wind up not having a clue how to properly respond to the world (5).

The antidote: Horses and Youth out of the Box

The real goal is not the subject matter itself but the development of human capacities

The Greeks believed long ago that for a person to develop fully more than intelligent talk and left brain thinking was needed; they believed that experiences that challenged and informed were also needed. This is why the athletic experience or sport was such an essential element in their educational approaches (not sport focused primarily on skill building and winning as is popular in America today, but sport equally focused on the development of "acrete" which is typically translated as meaning "virtue"). American's forefathers were also clear that a populace educated in their full human capacities was an essential requirement in the maintenance of a democracy. As in the ruling classes of Athens, many of our forefathers saw the ideals and aims of education as being defined directly by the requirements of political liberty. Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the key and most articulate proponent of this view in the United States. Jefferson envisioned a local system of education with a double purpose: to foster in the general population the critical alertness necessary to good citizenship and to seek and prepare a â??natural aristocracyâ?? of â??virtue and talentâ?? for the duties and trusts of leadership. His plan of education for Virginia did not include any form of specialized or vocational training, he was more concerned that American citizens learn to â??read and understand what is going on in the worldâ?? and maintain â??their own vigilant and distrustful superintendenceâ??. His ideas support the provision of what has been traditionally termed a â??liberalâ?? education. Much of this article can be seen as a call for a more balanced emphasis on the timeless standards associated with a liberal education (6).

Challenging Goliath
"We are not meant to work for wages, we are meant to work for wholeness."~ M. C. Richards

But today we have arrived at the place that we look at education from almost a totally practical or utilitarian viewpoint. Education in this view is based simply upon the question of what will lead to employment or "what works". Education is seen as an
"investment" in something acquired to be exchanged for something else, like a "good" job, money and prestige. Kentucky's current "Education Pays" public relations campaign is a vivid example of this view of education. Although the Morrill Act (which established our 'land grant college' system in 1862) attempted to reconcile these differing values and standards for education in a provision calling for both a â??liberal and practical educationâ??, in reality the practical curriculum has driven out the liberal. As Wendell Berry so accurately observed twenty-seven years ago â??in the face of competition from the practical curriculum, the liberal has found it impossible to maintain its own standards and so has become practical-that is, career-oriented-also. It is now widely assumed that the only good reason to study literature or philosophy is to become a teacher of literature or philosophy-in order, that is, to get an income from itâ?? (7).

Getting an "F" in Holistic Education
"The mess in social justice, the mess in medicine, the mess in agriculture, the mess in food and drugs, the mess in education are symptoms of the mess in the human soul. Who do we think we are? Meat with hairs growing out of it?" M.C. Richards

The truth is that neither Greece nor America succeeded in constructing an educational system that was aimed at the development of all human capacities. Historically our collective educations have so lacked the effective teaching of tolerance and compassion that we have lived in incomprehensible violent conflict with the Earth and with each other. Both Jefferson and the ruling classes of Athens kept other human beings as slaves. Are these historical realities and proclivities to be "practically" changed in modern times by an educational system based on the exchange of information aimed primarily at gainful employment?

Authentic change cannot happen until people get to the place of asking themselves deeper and more pertinent questions. Why are we so overdeveloped materially and underdeveloped spiritually? Why is the distribution of wealth in America so inequitable and by all measures getting worse? Why have we developed and continue to support an economic system of consumerism based on mass greed and gluttony? Are there significant differences between the values and goals of capitalism, and the values and goals of a democracy? Why have we been so good at "making everything" but so inclined to exploitation in its distribution? Are our current educational approaches part of the problem or part of the solution? Why are such pertinent questions so resolutely resisted and ignored?

Summary

It is always the prime question: Where is the Moral Source? How are the laws to be learned in the human will? How may intellect and sanctity marry? Where does one look for the teaching; and once found, how does one use it? M.C. Richards (8)

The 'unnatural' one-sided approaches to education that are so prevalent and mandated by our schools, our government and our corporations, can not be effectively challenged by rational and logical arguments alone (as Einstein observed you can not solve a problem at the same level in which it was created). A culture adrift in abstractions can not be challenged into awakening by the provision of more abstractions. Therefore what we are advocating should not be seen as an educational remedy that is merely intellectual. The intellectual is one entry point to the process we are attempting to describe and the easiest one to communicate. What is desperately needed are experiences that re-orient and realign us to the natural wisdom of our bodies, our intuitions and our emotions. It is one of the most important lessons of our time that intellectual knowledge alone does not ennoble behavior.

In order to survive this new millennium we must insist on the development of educational approaches that are aimed at maturing a more viable consciousness. The only way we can realistic develop such educational approaches is by becoming more willing to ask deeper questions. We must ask and be intimately concerned with which society, which education, which form of religion is beneficial for all life on the planet as a whole. Our narrow-minded commitment to a utilitarian definition of the purposes of education asks only what is practical, and what is practical has been consistently resolved in the"most shallow and immediate fashion". What is practical is what makes money; what is most practical is what makes the most money" (Wendell Berry). We can no longer afford to support educational curriculums that pretend to be set aside from issues of value. Isn't it past time that we consider and intently support educational approaches geared more to awakening the best of all that is within us? (9)

About the authors:
Anthony H. Howard and Thecla Helmbrecht Howard are co-founders of Sheltered Risks Incorporated (SRI) located in Shelby County, Kentucky. Sheltered Risks Incorporated is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing wilderness and equine facilitated human development experiences to individuals of all ages. SRI's mission of service is simple â??To assist children, youth and adults to act upon the best within them. To provide a challenging learning environment that teaches the purpose of life is to have a life of purposeâ??. To learn more about the Sheltered Risks System of Education visit http://www.kampkessa.org

Notes
See page 129 Defiant Chiefs: The American Story published by Time Life Books. Reportedly Sitting Bull gave most of the money he earned for his appearances away, but his reservation director James McLaughlin saw his generosity as "uncivilized". Like many 'agents and reformers of the day' McLaughlin thought that the 'Indians would adapt more readily to life in white America if individuals learned to keep their wealth for themselves instead of sharing it'. Sitting Bull was consequently forbade any more tours.
See the Kentucky Education Reform Act core content goals.
There are many that have argued forcefully that this alienation is no accident. That our economic and political systems, our science and technology, are rooted in and could not exist in their present forms without such alienation. See John Taylor Gatto's The Underground History of American Education; An Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling for a comprehensive consideration, Starhawkâ?™s Dreaming the Dark is another provocative resource, as is Wendell Berryâ?™s 1977 classic The Unsettling of American Culture and Agriculture.
We can't remember which Matthew Fox article or book we saw this observation in, but we find it easy to believe regardless of its source?¦
This is a partial excerpt from an article the authors wrote entitled You Can't Raise a Horse in a Box which was originally published by the Equine Facilitated Mental Health Association (EFMH) of the National Association of Riding for the Handicapped (NARHA).
See Jefferson’s Writing; Autobiography notes on State of Virginia, Public and Private Papers, Addresses and Letters, and page 142 The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson.
The authors are deeply indebted to Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of American Culture & Agriculture, especially cited are pages 143-169. M. C. Richards has been an extremely influential resource, see Centering; In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person; Crossing Point; Selected Talks and Writings and Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America.
An incomplete list of other suggested resources includes: Whee! We, Wee All the Way Home; A Guide to Sensual Prophetic Spirituality by Matthew Fox; Small is Beautiful; Economics as if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher; The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk; The Tao of Equus: A Woman’s Journey of Healing and Transformation through the Way of the Horse by Linda Kohanov; The Faith; A History of Christianity by Brian Moynahan; Body: Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom by Don Hanilon Johnson; The Teenage Liberation Handbook; How to quit school and get a real life and education by Grace Llewellyn and The Force of Character by James Hillman.