This past week I have spent some time reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America [1832]. In this chronicle he sought to describe the character of a new nation; he defined and described the habits of the heart that nurtured the experiment we call America. Today, we are learning that these ‘habits of the heart’ are not just American but they reside deeply within all of humanity. Given this, it is the responsibility of all humanity to nurture into life these habits of the heart. The Dalai Lama noted that there is a need to develop a secular ethics of the heart. This is a question with important implications for fostering the ideals of community, compassion, and cooperation in our homes, public institutions, and society.
Consider that in order to develop an ethics of the heart [whether secular or faith-rooted] a reframing of educational purpose is necessary. A number of years ago two researchers conducted a six year study regarding ‘spirituality’ (not ‘religion’) and education. They interviewed thousands of students and teachers (high school through graduate school). 80% of the respondents said that they considered themselves to be spiritual and that they were committed to a search for purpose and meaning in their own lives. When they were then asked how often they experienced such a search in the classroom, close to 60% reported ‘never.’ Since most of the teachers and students have the interpersonal and collective power (power = one’s ability to act) to shape their classroom experiences, the discrepancy raises this question: Who is stopping us? What real or imaginary obstacles are preventing our educational institutions from engaging a search for spirit and purpose?
Gentle reader, if I should ask, what should be the center of teaching and learning, how would you respond? What is the most important task for educators? What is our greatest hope for both students and teachers? In his letters to the young poet, Rainer Maria Rilke was quite clear when he wrote: To take love seriously and to bear and to learn it like a task, this is what [young] people need. . . For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but a preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love; they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-bearing heart, they must learn to love.
I have been an educator for more than 44 years and our educational curricula have largely neglected this central and profoundly challenging task of learning how to love so that we can live in compassionate harmony with others in our global community. I find the challenge and the questions life-sustaining. True education is messy, often opaque, and ever shifting, changing and ultimately transforming. Consider that for each generation there is a window of opportunity that opens about age 14 and closes about age 30; educationally, this corresponds to the time one enters ‘high school’ (in our country) and one finishes his/her post-graduate work (say in medicine). We have the time; do we have the commitment? As Robert K. Greenleaf noted, in the end all that matters is love and friendship.
Searcher-Seeker 