education as a spiritual journey

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Parker J. Palmer: community, knowing and spirituality in education

Parker j. palmer: community, knowing and spirituality in education. parker j. palmer’s explorations of education as a spiritual journey and of the inner lives of educators have been deeply influential. we explore his teachings and contribution..

contents : introduction · parker j. palmer – life · education as a spiritual journey · parker palmer – knowing, teaching and learning · participating in a community of truth · creating space for learning · attending to the inner life of educators · calling · parker palmer – assessment and conclusion · further reading and references · parker palmer links · how to cite this piece

My vocation (to use the poet’s term) is the spiritual life, the quest for God, which relies on the eye of the heart. My avocation is education, the quest for knowledge, which relies on the eye of the mind. I have seen life through both these eyes as long as I can remember – but the two images have not always coincided… I have been forced to find ways for my eyes to work together, to find a common focus for my spirit-seeking heart and my knowledge-seeking mind that embraces reality in all its amazing dimensions. (Parker Palmer 1993: xxiv)

Parker J. Palmer (1939-) has touched many people through his work. In that old Quaker phrase he has been able to speak to their condition. Partly this ability flows from the truth of his subject matter; partly from his capacity to draw from, and reflect upon, his own experience; and partly from the directness and accessibility of his writing. As well as being a gifted teacher, Parker Palmer has authored at least three landmark books – The Company of Strangers: Christians and the renewal of American public life (1983) , To Know as We are Known. Education as a spiritual journey (1983) and The Courage to Teach. Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life (1998). He has also written on community (1977), paradox (1980), the spirituality of work, creativity and caring (1990) and vocation (2000). His most recent book – A Hidden Wholeness; The Journey Toward an Undivided Life – was published in 2004. Along the way Parker Palmer has picked up eight honorary doctorates and several national awards. The Leadership Project, a 1998 US survey of 10,000 administrators and faculty named Parker J. Palmer one of the thirty most influential senior leaders in higher education and one of ten key “agenda-setters” of the past decade.

The terrain that Parker J. Palmer explores has had a number of distinguished visitors such as Donald Schön and Michael Polanyi on knowing and reflection; and Martin Buber on spirituality, community and education. However, Parker Palmer has the knack, probably born of a long and continuing engagement with people in workshops and groups, of exploring such themes in ways that resonate with some very contemporary concerns. To appreciate this contribution it is important to attend both to Parker Palmer’s ‘leading ideas’ and to the particular circumstances in which they found life.

Parker J. Palmer grew up in a white, upper-middle-class suburb of Chicago. His father, Max J. Palmer, worked for the same fine chinaware company for 50 years. In the end he owned the company and was Chairman of the Board. Parker Palmer talks about his father teaching him to rely on a ‘larger and deeper grace’ and modelling compassion and generosity. Although Parker Palmer embarked on a rather different vocational path, the elder Palmer never put pressure on him ‘to be one thing or another’ (Faith Alive 2004). In grade school Parker Palmer became fascinated by flight and when in high school he intended to become a naval aviator (followed by a career in advertising – he had already become fascinated by language) (Palmer 2000: 13). However, he ended up at Carleton College, Minnesota where he gained a BA in Philosophy and Sociology (and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa). Parker Palmer was the first in the family to attend college (Palmer 1998: 22). From Carleton he went to the Union Theological Seminary, NYC – certain that the ministry was his calling. However, at the end of his first year, as Parker Palmer has wryly put it, ‘God spoke to me – in the form of mediocre grades and massive misery – and informed me that under no conditions was I to become an ordained leader in His or Her church’ (Palmer 2000: 19-20). Fairly quickly he started a Masters in Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley (1962) and then went on to do his PhD there (which he received in 1970). In the middle of graduate school Palmer taught for two years (1965-7) – finding that he both loved the experience and was good at it. He has commented that Berkeley in the sixties was ‘an astounding mix of shadow and light’. Parker Palmer continued:

[C]ontrary to the current myth, many of us were less seduced by the shadow than drawn by the light, coming away from that time and place with a lifelong sense of hope, a feeling for community, a passion for social change. ( ibid .: 20)

Parker Palmer made the decision to leave the academy believing that a university career would be a ‘cop out’.

Instead Parker J. Palmer went to Washington DC in 1969 as a community organizer . ‘My heart wanted to keep teaching’, he has commented, ‘but my ethics – laced liberally with ego – told me I was supposed to save the city’ ( ibid .: 21). After two or so years of community organizing Parker Palmer was offered a faculty post (in sociology) at Georgetown University – which also involved working with students in the surrounding communities. He later commented that by looking anew at his community work he saw that as an organizer he never stopped being a teacher he was simply teaching ‘in a classroom without walls’ ( op. cit. ). However, Parker Palmer was burnt-out after five years community work – he was ‘too thin-skinned to make a good community organizer’ ( ibid .: 22). In 1974 he opted to take a years sabbatical at Pendle Hill the Quaker retreat centre near Philadelphia. The year at Pendle Hill grew into ten or more when he became Dean of Studies there (he left in 1985).

The time at Pendle Hill was of fundamental significance. Parker Palmer found God in the silence of the Quaker meetings at the retreat. Until then, he has commented, faith and the experience of God had been an intellectual exercise. ‘In the silence, I was able to reconstruct my faith life in a way that just wouldn’t have happened otherwise,’ he has said. ‘It was a much more direct experience of how God was working in my life’ (Faith Alive 2004). Parker Palmer was also diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression. ‘When I was young’, he later wrote, ‘there were very few elders willing to talk about the darkness; most of them pretended that success was all they had known’ (Parker Palmer 2000: 19). When ‘darkness’ first descended in his early twenties there was a sense of failure. Now, in his early forties, he began to see that depression was largely situational – and that while it crushed him – it was also, in a way, his friend. It kept his feet on the ground (ibid .: 66). From that painful period, Parker Palmer learned, as he has said, to tell the truth about himself (Faith Alive 2004). It was also while at Pendle Hill that Parker Palmer came to the attention of wider public through his writing. He wrote on community (in a Pendle Hill pamphlet) (1977), the power of paradox (1980) and produced his acclaimed books on spirituality and education (1983) and the role of Christians in the renewal of public life (1983).

After Pendle Hill, Parker J. Palmer was in demand as a speaker and facilitator – and he worked with a variety of institutions including universities and colleges, schools, community organizations, religious groups, foundations and corporations. He served as a senior associate of the American Association of Higher Education and was a senior adviser to the Fetzer Institute. One of the most significant pieces of work that he undertook with the Institute was the ‘Courage to Teach’ program, piloted in Michigan from 1994 to 1996, and subsequently replicated in coastal Carolina, Dallas, the Baltimore-Washington DC area, southwest Michigan and Washington State. This work resulted in the establishment of the Center for Teacher Formation in 1997 and contributed to Parker Palmer’s well-received book The Courage to Teach (1998). Subsequently he has written about vocation (2000) and the integrated life (2004). Now Parker Palmer is reported as preparing to ‘leave the public arena of appearances and applause for a quieter, more solitary work’ (Faith Alive 2004). ‘I don’t want to be a 70-year-old man who doesn’t know who he is when the books are out of print and the audiences are no longer applauding. I’ve decided to retire in order to make space for whatever else is out there’ ( op. cit. ).

Education as a spiritual journey

Parker J. Palmer has written in various places of the pain experienced by many educators. In particular he has highlighted the ‘pain of disconnection’. This disconnection is from colleagues, students, and their hearts (1993: x). The culture and size of the institutions and settings where people teach, the emphasis upon achieving grades and gaining marketable skills, and the pressure to ‘produce’ all take their toll. Hope , optimism and social commitment are not in abundance in many formal educational systems (see Halpin 2003). As a result, Parker Palmer suggests, some educators have been turning to the spiritual traditions for the hope they offer. All them, he says, ‘are ultimately concerned with getting us reconnected’ (1993: x). The problem with this it that in the past (and today) the spiritual traditions are often used ‘to obstruct inquiry rather than encourage it. As a result Parker Palmer looked to a spirituality of sources in education rather than one of ends.

A spirituality of ends wants to dictate the desirable outcomes of education in the life of the student. It uses the spiritual tradition as a template against which the ideas, beliefs, and behaviours of the student are to be measured. The goal is to shape the student to the template by the time his of her formal education concludes. But that sort of education never gets started; it is no education at all. Authentic spirituality wants to open us to truth – whatever truth may be, wherever truth may take us. Such a spirituality does not dictate where we must go, but trusts that any path walked with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge. Such a spirituality encourages us to welcome diversity and conflict, to tolerate ambiguity, and to embrace paradox. By this understanding, the spirituality of education is not about dictating ends. It is about examining and clarifying the inner sources of teaching and learning, ridding us of the toxins that poison our hearts and minds. (Parker Palmer 1993: xi)

Palmer looks to an education that is prayerful and transcendent – for it is only when both are present can authentic and spontaneous relations flourish between ourselves and the world. Here we touch on what Parker Palmer views as the insight most central to spiritual experience: ‘we are known in detail and depth by the love that created and sustains us, known as members of a community of creation that depends on us and on which we depend’ (1983: 10).

Parker J. Palmer on knowing, teaching and learning

In To Know as We are Known (1983, 1993) Parker J. Palmer explores an understanding of education that looks to community and its recovery. He is concerned with knowing, teaching and learning. It is important to look at how Parker J. Palmer uses these terms. First knowing . He argues that the dominant mode of knowing in education is rooted in fear and creates disconnections between teachers, their subjects and their students (1983: 1-16; 1998: 50-60). This mode, which he calls ‘objectivism’ (and which shares many qualities with what Schön talks about as technical rationalism), ‘portrays truth as something we can only achieve by disconnecting ourselves physically and emotionally from the thing we want to know’ (Parker Palmer 1998: 51). Furthermore, it fails to give a proper account of what actually happens. ‘Knowing of any sort is relational, animated by a desire to come into deeper community with what we know’ (Palmer 1998: 54). Parker Palmer asks us to look beyond knowledge inspired either purely by curiosity or by a desire to control. The first, he suggests, ‘corresponds to pure speculative knowledge, to knowledge as an end in itself’. The second ‘corresponds to applied science, to knowledge as a means to practical ends’ (1983, 1993: 7). He argues that another kind of knowledge is open to us, ‘one that begins in a different passion and is drawn to other ends’ ( ibid .: 8). This knowledge originates in compassion or love.

The goal of a knowledge arising from love is the reunification and reconstruction of broken selves and worlds. A knowledge born of compassion aims not at exploiting and manipulating creation but at reconciling the world to itself. The mind motivated by compassion reaches out to know as the heart reaches out to love. Here, the act of knowing is an act of love, the act of entertaining an embracing the reality of the other, of allowing the other to enter and embrace our own. In such knowing we know and are known as members of one community, and our knowing becomes a way of reweaving that community’s bonds. (Parker Palmer 1983; 1993: 8)

Such an understanding of knowing, Parker Palmer argues, is what our spiritual heritage claims. The origin of knowledge is love.

To appreciate how Parker Palmer approaches learning it is necessary to return to one of his early concerns – paradox (Palmer 1980). He argues that disconnection in teaching and learning is not only brought about by fear but by a western tendency to think in polarities. This tendency ‘elevates disconnection into an intellectual virtue’ (Palmer 1998: 61). As a way into appreciating the idea he has used the work of Niels Bohr the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Bohr once said that the ‘opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth’. In certain circumstances, Parker Palmer has argued, ‘truth is found not be splitting the world into either-ors but by embracing it as both-and . In certain circumstances, truth is a paradoxical joining of apparent opposites, and if we want to know the truth, we must learn to embrace those opposites as one’ (Palmer 1998: 63). This concern with paradox appears to take Parker Palmer close to the approach of John Dewey and others, who argue that learning inevitably concerned with the exploration of differentiation within wholes.

Parker J. Palmer’s conception of teaching flows in significant part, he has argued, from Abba Felix and the desert searchers. ‘To teach’, he has argued, ‘is to create a space in which obedience to truth is practiced’ (1983: 69). While this may entail some of the standard forms we routinely associate with teaching, to embrace the sort of knowing and learning that Palmer is talking about requires a fundamentally different approach. At one level it entails a shift, as Carl Rogers might have put it, from the diadactive to the facilitative. At another, it involves recovering a sense of education as spiritual formation. Here three spiritual practices are of central importance: ‘the study of sacred texts, the practice of prayer and contemplation, and the gathered life of the community itself’ (Parker Palmer 1983; 1993: 17). This approach to teaching has much to recommend it – but as Palmer found many who encountered it distrusted the authoritarian connotations of the word ‘obedience’ (1993: xii). Instead he has substituted ‘the community of truth’ for ‘obedience to truth’ (see, for example, 1998: 90). He has argued that this ‘community of truth’ was what he originally meant by ‘obedience’ – ‘a rich and complex network of relationships in which we must both speak and listen, and make claims on others, and make ourselves accountable’ (Parker Palmer 1993: xii). In some ways the loss of the notion of obedience as an overt notion is a great pity. It becomes something implied. As a result there is always the danger that we do not engage with the full of the call that a commitment to truth makes upon us.

Participating in the community of truth

Parker J. Palmer argues that the cultivation of such communities of truth should be our goal as educators. A substantial part of The Courage to Teach is concerned with knowing, teaching and learning in community. He is at some pains to problematize some prominent models of community – the therapeutic, the civic, and the marketing (Parker Palmer 1998: 90). For, example, he is concerned that the focus on intimacy in the first can damage our capacity for connectedness with ‘the strange and the stranger’ ( ibid .: 91). In a similar fashion, while the civic model of community offers something of a corrective to the therapeutic (the model is one of public mutuality rather than private vulnerability) and contains many features vital to teaching and learning, it can mean that the quest for the public good takes precedence over the truth ( ibid. : 92). Parker Palmer laments the fact that the marketing model of community is ‘blitzing’ American education in the form of Total Quality Management. ‘The norms of the marketing model are quite straightforward: educational institutions must improve their product by strengthening relations with customers and becoming accountable to them’ (Parker Palmer 1998: 93). Apart from any other problems, and however important is the notion of accountability, the model suffers from ‘assuming the customer is always right’. Furthermore, we can argue, it introduces a language and orientation that works against many of the fundamental tenets of education (see globalization and the incorporation of education ).

Parker Palmer looks to a what he sees as a more comprehensive form of community that has the capacity to support authentic education. and to develop its ‘core mission’ of knowing, teaching and learning.

The hallmark of the community of truth is not psychological intimacy or political civility or pragmatic accountability, though it does not exclude these virtues. This model of community reaches deeper, into ontology and epistemology – into assumptions about the nature of reality and how we know it – on which all education is built. The hallmark of a community of truth is in its claim that reality is a web of communal relationships, and we can know reality only by being in community with it . (Parker Palmer 1998: 95)

At the centre of this communal circle is a subject (and here Parker Palmer draws on Buber and others. ‘This distinction is crucial to knowing, teaching and learning: a subject is available for relationship; an object is not. When we know the other as a subject, we do not merely hold it at arm’s length’ ( ibid. : 102-3). When this is added to the notion of truth that Parker Palmer employs – ‘truth is an eternal conversation about things that matter, conducted with passion and discipline’ (1998: 104) we have a very powerful form. The commitment to conversation, and our willingness to engage with others in community ‘keeps us in the truth’ ( op. cit. ). Parker J. Palmer argues, further, that such a community is not just held together by our personal powers but also by the power of ‘the grace of great things’. By ‘great things’ he means, ‘the subjects around which the circle of seekers has always gathered – not the disciplines that study these subjects, not the texts that talk about them, not the theories that explain them, but the things themselves (1998: 107).

To this combination, Parker Palmer adds a ‘third thing’ at the centre of the pedagogic circle. ‘True community in any context’, he states, ‘requires a transcendent third thing that holds both me and thee accountable to something beyond ourselves. The presence of the ‘third thing’ in a subject-centred place is ‘so real, so vivid, so vocal, that it can hold teachers and students alike accountable for what they say and do’ (op. cit .). In an earlier work on community Palmer also made explicit the significance of place in this.

Clearly community is a process. But it is also a place. When Buber says, “We expect a theophany of which we know nothing but the place, and the place is called community,” he suggests how process and place are intertwined. For theophany, the meeting with the living God, is obviously dynamic and full of movement. But for Christians and Jews that meeting always happens in the concrete places of this world. It is important to retain that sense of place lest community become one of those diffuse and disembodied words which excite our imaginations but never confront us with daily reality. (Parker Palmer 1977: 21)

The task of the educator in all this is to make a space so that the great thing has an independent voice, to speak for itself – and to be heard and understood.

Creating space for learning

In To Know As We Are Known , Parker J. Palmer argues that a learning space has three essential dimensions: openness, boundaries and an air of hospitality (1983; 1993: 71-75). In the first the educator and participants work to clear away the clutter – whether that is meaningless words, pressure to get on with the daily round, obstructive feelings, whatever. However, ‘the openness of a space is created by the firmness of its boundaries ‘ ( ibid. : 72). It has to be a structure for learning, not ‘an invitation to confusion and chaos’. ( op. cit. ). Learning can be painful, its processes and outcomes off-putting. For this reason, and much in the same way that Ivan Illich championed conviviality, Parker J. Palmer has looked, helpfully, to hospitality. ‘Hospitality means receiving each other, our struggles, our newborn ideas, with openness and care’. He continues, ‘the classroom where truth is central will be a place where every stranger and every strange utterance is met with welcome’ (Parker Palmer 1983; 1993: 74).

Later, in The Courage to Teach , Parker Palmer develops these points into a set of six paradoxical guidelines .

Exhibit 1: spaces for learning

Parker J. Palmer talks about six tensions or paradoxes that need to be built into learning spaces.

The space should be bounded and open. Without limits it is difficult to see how learning can occur. Explorations need a focus. However, spaces need to be open as well – open to the many paths down which discovery may take us. ‘If boundaries remind us that our journey has a destination, openness reminds us that there are many ways to reach that end’. More than that, openness allows us to find other destinations.

The space should be hospitable and “charged”. We may find the experience of space strange and fear that we may get lost. Learning spaces need to be hospitable – ‘inviting as well as open, safe and trustworthy as well as free’. When exploring we need places to rest and find nourishment. But if we feel too safe, then we may stay on the surface of things. Space needs to be charged so that we may know the risks involved in looking at the deeper things of life.

The space should invite the voice of the individual and the voice of the group. Learning spaces should invite people to speak truly and honestly. People need to be able to express their thoughts and feelings. This involves building environments both so that individuals can speak and where groups can gather and give voice to their concerns and passions.

The space should honour the “little” stories of those involved and the “big” stories of the disciplines and tradition. Learning spaces should honour people’s experiences, give room to stories about everyday life. At the same time, we need to connect these stories with the larger picture. We need to be able to explore how our personal experiences fit in with those of others; and how they may relate to more general ‘stories’ and understandings about life.

The space should support solitude and surround it with the resources of community. Learning demands both solitude and community. People need time alone to reflect and absorb. Their experiences and struggles need to be respected. At the same time, they need to be able to call upon and be with others. We need conversations in which our ideas are tested and biases challenged.

The space should welcome both silence and speech. Silence gives us the chance to reflect on things. It can be a sort of speech ‘emerging from the deepest part of ourselves, of others, of the world’. At the same time we need to be able to put things into words so that we gain a greater understanding and to make concrete what we may share in silence.

Taken from Parker J. Palmer (1998) The Courage to Teach , San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pages 73 – 77.

Thus far, we have many of the key elements of an uplifting pedagogy – but Palmer has also brought us back to a further, fundamental aspect – the character and integrity of the educator.

Parker J. Palmer – attending to the inner life of educators

In one of a number of memorable passages in The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer dissects a fundamental problem with much of the discussion around educational reform:

The question we most commonly ask is the “what” question – what subjects shall we teach? When the conversation goes a bit deeper, we ask the “how” question – what methods and techniques are required to teach well? Occasionally, when it goes deeper still, we ask the “why” question – for what purposes and to what ends do we teach? But seldom, if ever, do we ask the “who” question – who is the self that teaches? How does the quality of my selfhood form – or deform – the way I relate to my students, my subject, my colleagues, my world? How can educational institutions sustain and deepen the selfhood from which good teaching comes? (Parker Palmer 1998: 4)

We cannot hope to reform education, he argues, if we fail to cherish and challenge ‘the human heart that is the source of good teaching’ (Parker Palmer 1998: 3). For Parker Palmer, good teaching is rather more than technique: ‘good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher’ (Parker Palmer 2000: 11). This means that they both know themselves, and that they are seeking to live life as well as they can. Good teachers are, thus, connected, able to be in touch with themselves, with their students and their subjects – and act in ways that further flourishing and wholeness.

In a passage which provides one of the most succinct and direct rationales for a concern with attending to, and knowing, our selves Parker Palmer draws out the implications of his argument.

Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one’s inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together…. When I do not know myself, I cannot know who my students are. I will see them through a glass darkly, in the shadows of my unexamined life – and when I cannot see them clearly, I cannot teach them well. When I do not know myself, I cannot know my subject – not at the deepest levels of embodied, personal meaning. I will know it only abstractly, from a distance, a congeries of concepts as far removed from the world as I am from personal truth. (Parker Palmer 1998: 2)

If we do not know who we are then we cannot know those we work with, nor the subjects we teach and explore. As educators we can work on this through things like keeping personal journals, exploring our feelings and experiences in supervision, talking with colleagues and friends, contemplation and prayer, and so on.

Parker J. Palmer has talked about vocation and calling in a number of different context – but here we want to highlight two different dimensions. First, and very significantly, he has looked at how subjects choose us.

Many of us were called to teach by encountering not only a mentor, but also a particular field of study. We are drawn to a body of knowledge because it shed light on our identity as well as on the world. We did not merely find a subject to teach – the subject also found us. (Parker Palmer 1998: 25)

Remaining open to that calling, listening for the voice of other subjects is vital if we are to sustain ourselves and our enthusiasm as educators.

Second, Parker Palmer has talked movingly about the calling of educators – and of his own changing understanding of vocation and how this has impacted upon him. Initially, through his socialization in church, he understood vocation, or calling, as something that came from ‘a voice external to ourselves, a voice of moral demand that asks us to become someone we are not yet – someone different, someone better, someone just beyond our reach’ (Parker Palmer 2000: 10). The problem with this both for him and for others is that when we focus on what we ‘ought’ to be doing we can easily fall prey to malignant external forces that distort our identity and integrity. We end up feeling inadequate and guilty. Such an understanding of vocation is, according to Parker Palmer (2000: 10) rooted in a deep distrust of selfhood – that we will tend to selfishness ‘unless corrected by external forces of virtue’. Parker Palmer has come to know vocation in a different way – ‘not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received’ ( op. cit. ). The voice of vocation is not ‘out there’ but within us ‘calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfil the original selfhood given me at birth by God ( op. cit. ). In the light of this Parker J. Palmer concludes that the authentic call to teach ‘comes from the voice of the teacher within , the voice that calls me to honour the nature of my true self’ (1998: 29).

Parker J. Palmer – an assessment and conclusion

So what critique can be mounted against these arguments? Here we want to highlight four areas – ongoing debate around the nature of truth; the particular notion of selfhood that Parker J. Palmer employs; attention to the social, political and economic context; and the process of learning.

First, there will be those who are deeply uncomfortable with Parker J. Palmer’s embracing of the spiritual and with his dismissal of what he calls ‘objectivism’. Substantial elements of his thinking will not resonate with readers who doubt the existence of God. While there are some ways around this – for example, viewing connectedness as both a genetic inheritance and something that is learned, or accepting the centrality of the character and integrity of the educator (but without a fully holistic appreciation of what these might entail) – the whole project is rather empty without faith. In a similar fashion those who believe there is considerable power in technical models of rationality will find Parker Palmer’s focus deeply suspect – just as they would Dewey’s focus on differientation within wholes or Schön’s critique of technical-rationality as a positivist epistemology of practice. Debates about the nature of truth are not about to be resolved (Blackburn 2005).

Second, the model of selfhood that Parker Palmer employs with it’s strong demarcation between inner and outer (admittedly mediated by the presence of the ‘third thing’ and his emphasis upon connectiveness) still tends to a particular, western or northern, understanding. As Burkitt (1991: 1) has put it, ‘the view of human beings as self-contained unitary individuals who carry their uniqueness deep inside themselves, like pearls hidden in their shells’ is deeply engrained (see the discussion of selfhood elsewhere on these pages). In this way of understanding ourselves the body plays a crucial role. The skin becomes a boundary – everything that happens outside the wall it forms becomes the other – the world outside; what is inside is me – the world inside (Sampson 1993). As an alternative we might look to a more interactional or dialogical appreciation of selfhood that places connection in even stronger position. Such a perspective flows from the idea that people’s lives ‘are characterized by the ongoing conversations and dialogues they carry out in the course of their everyday activities, and therefore that the most important thing about people is not what is contained within them, but what transpires between them’ (Sampson 1993: 20). It might well be that a fuller embracing of such thinking around selfhood would have added further power to his argument. Part of the problem that Parker J. Palmer faces in his writing is that a significant proportion of his audience have difficulty moving beyond the constraints of individualized notions of selfhood. This means that while he places considerable emphasis on knowing and being in community – it is filtered by many through a bounded notion of the self. As a result, there has been a tendency on the part of some readers at least to not properly grasp the significance of community and to remain focused on their individualized selves. This may also be something to do with the titling and structuring of The Courage to Teach and to identification with his confessional style of writing.

Third, given his background in sociology, it is surprising that Parker Palmer hasn’t developed a stronger structural critique with regard to education, learning and teaching in his later books. In earlier work (e.g. The Company of Strangers ) there was more attention to this area, and there remains some acknowledgement of context. He does argue that teachers must be paid more, freed from bureaucratic harassment and given a role in academic government (Palmer 1998: 3). Parker J. Palmer also gives some sound guidance with regard to the importance of social movements within education and the need to cultivate them. However, what we do not get is an extended treatment of why we fail to cherish the human heart – and what social and political forces might be in play. Nor do we get a full exploration of the economic, social and political situation of learners and teachers. This is a shame, for as C. Wright Mills has pointed out, it is important to ‘know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of public issues – and in terms of the problems of history making’ (1959: 226). Without an appreciation of this many efforts at change in education will founder as those involved put energy into unproductive activity and become dispirited at the lack of progress made.

Fourth, compared with his attention to teaching and knowing, the process of learning is relatively under-explored by Parker J. Palmer. There has been a significant amount of relatively recent work around reflection and learning that would strengthen his exploration. Some of the more obvious candidates here include Donald Schön on reflection; Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger on communities of practice; and the various writers exploring situated learning .

In a sense, these are relatively minor quibbles when one considers the significance of Parker J. Palmer’s work. He has provided us with the strongest and most direct exploration of what the ‘inner landscape’ of teachers might look like; one of the best explorations of spirituality in education; and a strong model of what reflective, engaged and connected teaching, learning and knowing might look like. Talking of mentors Parker Palmer (1998: 21) wrote: ‘Their power lies in their capacity to awaken a truth within us, a truth we can reclaim years later by recalling their impact on our lives’. Palmer has that capacity to awaken truth within us, to encourage us to allow it to live and to radiate throughout our lives.

To Know As We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey

Description.

source of knowledge, impact of objective methods in education, personal and communal objections of truth, a search for truth, interacting with the world

Recommended Audience

Clergy and lay leaders

Purchase as a book or e-book

Practical Applications

Re-connect education to the spiritual world by following instruction on the spiritual disciplines needed to move teaching into its best role.
Encourage individuals to follow the practical ingredients for a life of integrity by examining patterns of daily living and choices as a small group, using this resource as a guide.

About the Contributor

Brian Witwer is the retired director of the Center for Congregations' northeast office. Brian has specialized training in leadership and group process.

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To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey

This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others.

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To Know as We are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey

Parker J. Palmer

This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process.

https://couragerenewal.org/library/to-know-as-we-are-known-education-as-a-spiritual-journey/ Page URL has been copied!

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How We Work

Our pathbreaking research.

Our research hub at Teachers College harvests practices from leading schools that have achieved excellence in promoting the inner spirit of their students. We test methodologies and tools that schools can use to build a culture and climate of awareness, belonging and connectedness.

The objectives of the Awakened Schools Institute are:

To encourage teachers and school leaders to nurture and ground their practice in their own spirituality;
To reclaim why teachers entered teaching initially, reclaiming that excitement, love, and purpose;
To experience what spirituality in education means and to tie that to their reason for becoming a teacher;
To (re)awaken teachers to this approach to education so that they can change their school culture. By getting back to who they wanted to be as teachers, and to do this collectively so that they can support each other in maintaining this shift and in changing school culture.

The National Council on Spirituality in Education

The National Council is a meeting ground for sharing research, learning, resources and ideas related to the spiritual development of children and adolescents in the school environment. Through its national conference in November 2019 and other future activities, we look to support the broad-based movement for spirituality in education. We aim to elevate awareness of the need to nurture the deep inner core of the child, build awareness of what it takes to do this work, and eventually influence public policy.

This type of approach also models for teachers our understanding of the connection between the work of CSE and preparing students to inherit democracy. Nurturing one’s innate spirituality also forms one’s civic outlook and cultivates one’s civic engagement: if we recognize our inherent interconnection, that cannot but inform and transform the ways in which we engage in our communities.

By creating an environment in which people are members of a community, we are establishing a space in which they can practice the type of society we aim to create, modeling such a process which schools could emulate. In this way, through modeling, we can show through experience the link between a spiritually supportive school culture and civic engagement.

THE TWELVE DRIVERS OF SPIRITUALLY SUPPORTIVE SCHOOL CULTURES

Integrated Mission | Vertically integrating a lived and meaningful mission

1. To encourage teachers and school leaders to nurture and ground their practice in their own spirituality;

2. To reclaim why teachers entered teaching initially, reclaiming that excitement, love, and purpose;

3. To experience what spirituality in education means and to tie that to their reason for becoming a teacher;

4. To (re)awaken teachers to this approach to education so that they can change their school culture. By getting back to who they wanted to be as teachers, and to do this collectively so that they can support each other in maintaining this shift and in changing school culture.

The National Council on

Spirituality in education.

Teaching and the Consecration of Truth: Parker Palmer on Education as a Spiritual Practice

By maria popova.

How to reclaim education’s essential engagement with the spirit is what writer and longtime educator Parker Palmer , a contemporary counterpart of Emerson’s, explores in his 1983 treatise To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education ( public library ).

More than three decades before his fantastic recent Naropa University commencement address and twenty years before his clarion call for inhabiting our hidden wholeness , Palmer writes:

I call the pain that permeates education “the pain of disconnection.” … Most [educators] go into teaching not for fame or fortune but because of a passion to connect. We feel deep kinship with some subject; we want to bring students into that relationship, to link them with the knowledge that is so life-giving to us; we want to work in community with colleagues who share our values and our vocation. But when institutional conditions create more combat than community, when the life of the mind alienates more than it connects, the heart goes out of things, and there is little left to sustain us. In the midst of such pain, the spiritual traditions offer hope that is hard to find elsewhere, for all of them are ultimately concerned with getting us reconnected. These traditions build on the great truth that beneath the broken surface of our lives there remains — in the words of Thomas Merton — “a hidden wholeness.” The hope of every wisdom tradition is to recall us to that wholeness in the midst of our torn world, to reweave us into the community that is so threadbare today.

Pointing out that spiritual traditions have all too often been hijacked for obstructing rather than encouraging inquiry, Palmer argues for a spirituality of “sources” in education rather than one of “ends”:

A spirituality of ends wants to dictate the desirable outcomes of education in the life of the student. It uses the spiritual tradition as a template against which the ideas, beliefs, and behaviors of the student are to be measured. The goal is to shape the student to the template by the time his or her formal education concludes. But that sort of education never gets started; it is no education at all. Authentic spirituality wants to open us to truth — whatever truth may be, wherever truth may take us. Such a spirituality does not dictate where we must go, but trusts that any path walked with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge. Such a spirituality encourages us to welcome diversity and conflict, to tolerate ambiguity, and to embrace paradox. By this understanding, the spirituality of education is not about dictating ends. It is about examining and clarifying the inner sources of teaching and learning, ridding us of the toxins that poison our hearts and minds… An authentic spirituality of education will address the fear that so often permeates and destroys teaching and learning. It will understand that fear, not ignorance, is the enemy of learning, and that fear is what gives ignorance its power. […] To teach is to create a space in which obedience to truth is practiced.

In the remainder of To Know as We Are Known , tremendously timely three decades later, Palmer goes on to explore how to cultivate that space, why civic community is integral to it, and where the experience of education fits with the broader question of how we come to know reality. Complement it with John Dewey on the true purpose of education , Aldous Huxley on how to get out of your own light , and Victoria Safford on what it really means to “live our mission,” then revisit Palmer on the art of letting your soul speak .

— Published September 8, 2015 — https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/09/08/parker-palmer-a-spirituality-of-education/ —

www.themarginalian.org

Teaching as a Spiritual Journey

Given the frequent teacher criticism we see in American society and the media today, one thing is clear: many may not recognize how physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting the teaching profession is. According to research, 1,2 an average teacher makes 1500+ educational decisions in a 6-hour day while interacting with students — which equates to four educational decisions per minute. In addition, teachers plan lessons and work in the evenings to complete the seemingly never-ending grading — which involves even more decision-making. But educational decisions are only a part of what is exhausting about teaching.

As an educator, my day begins by thinking about my students’ lives, struggles, emotional health and well-being as I get ready for work.

Occasionally, I find myself awake in the middle of the night thinking about my students’ problems. Although I try not to worry, much of my rumination happens subconsciously.

To ensure I am doing my best to help my students succeed, I spend time reflecting on my teaching practice and making sure I am teaching with integrity. Beyond curriculum and content, my lessons include time to focus on character, work ethic, growth mindsets, and how to ensure my students become productive members of society. There are days when I feel disillusioned because of my students’ lack of receptivity to these important life lessons. When that happens, I remind myself of my limitations and recognize that my sphere of influence is limited to 55 minutes a day.

Thinking about my students’ lives outside of school, I empathize with the life experiences many students are managing — broken families, shared custody, substance abuse, and greater dependency on medications for conditions like ADHD.

“Given such circumstances, what will all my worrying accomplish?” I ask myself gently. “Except increase my stress level?”

When I am struggling professionally to do what is best for students, I find myself seeking spiritual guidance from the Scriptures. Each of these passages is from Lord Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita (2.47) “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions,” and “Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.”

In the words of Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari, my late spiritual teacher (paraphrased), “In our Sahaj Marg (the Natural Path) meditation, we have Ten Maxims. The Maxims are practical suggestions on how to live life. I now add the Eleventh Maxim: “Expect not for thou shalt not be disappointed.’”

Remembering these teachings, I think about my work as an educator, and this spiritual mantra, “All your problems are stemming from desire, the desire to see students succeed. Instead, focus on doing your work to the best of your ability and let go of this root desire to see results.”

As I further reflect the tiny voice of my conscience utters gently, “Rama! Most of your problems will be solved if you focus on the daily positive experiences and learn to approach teaching as a spiritual journey — a journey, which is full of beauty, inspiration, learning, and joy. Where every challenge can become a gift for you and the credit for even the tiniest success can only belong to the Almighty.”

As I begin a new semester, I am determined to approach teaching as a spiritual journey, a purposeful journey that will help me become a better teacher, a better person, and someone who can be of service to her students.

As I continue to teach students to the best of my ability, I learn to remove myself as the doer and allow the Divine to work through me each and every conscious and subconscious moment. I continue to humbly pray to the Almighty for guidance in all that I do, and to help me be the best teacher I can be.

1 TeachThought Staff. (March 28, 2016). “A Teacher Makes 1500 Educational Decisions a Day,” Retrieved from https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/teacher-makes-1500-decisions-a-day/ on June 19 2019.

2 @MissBartletRTQ. (October 3, 2017). “It’s Time We Talked…Mental Health.” Retrieved from http://schoolwell.co.uk/time-talked-mental-health/ on June 19, 2019.

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Chris Mercogliano was a teacher at the Albany Free School for thirty-five years and stepped down as director in June 2007 to concentrate on writing and speaking about non-controlling education and child-rearing. He is a member of AERO's Board of Directors.

He is also the author of Making It Up As We Go Along, the Story of the Albany Free School (Heinemann 1998), Teaching the Restless, One School's Remarkable No-Ritalin Approach to Helping Children Learn and Succeed (Beacon Press 2004), How to Grow a School: Starting and Sustaining Schools That Work (Oxford Village Press 2006), and In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness (Beacon Press 2007).

Currently Chris is a regular columnist for Encounter magazine. He has been featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio's “Ideas,” and other nationally syndicated radio shows. The father of two wonderful daughters, he lives with his wife Betsy on a one-acre farm in downtown Albany, New York.

Reflecting on spirituality in education

Early in my career, I attempted to define the place of spirituality in holistic education:

A basic premise of holistic education is the belief that our lives have a meaning and purpose greater than the mechanistic laws described by science, and greater than the ‘consensus consciousness’ of any one culture. This transcendent purpose is a creative, self-guiding energy which we ought not attempt to suppress. No ideology, no social order devised by wealth- or power-seeking factions should be allowed to corrupt the delicate, miraculous unfolding of this creative energy. . . . Ultimately, a spiritual worldview is a reverence for life, an attitude of wonder and awe in the face of the transcendent Source of our being (1990, p. 154).

Sixteen years later, having watched a holistic education movement and literature take shape, with the publication of numerous books and articles concerned with spirituality in education, I am revisiting this definition to consider whether I still believe it to be sound and sensible. And, turning fifty years old this month, it seems a good time to reflect on my own experience of spirituality and what I now think it means.

Actually, I do not think I would change the definition I gave in 1990. More than ever, I am convinced that the primary issue at stake here is the choice between recognizing “a creative, self-guiding energy” and holding to some self-interested, self-assured ideology or culturally conditioned belief system. Although I have not yet had any profound enlightenment experience of my own, I suspect that the Zen masters and other sages have it right when they tell us that the Source, the Ultimate, transcends all beliefs. Human beings get into the most trouble when we mistake our concepts, our mind-generated images of reality, for the “transcendent purpose” of the cosmos. Spirituality is the attitude, and the practice, of suspending our imagined reality in order to stand in wonder and awe at that which unfolds and emerges beyond our conceptual grasp.

It is easy to contrast this attitude with the smug epistemology of materialism. Modern culture is conditioned by a worldview that denies the possibility of transcendent realities. Living organisms are compared to machines, and the mind is viewed as a sophisticated computer. To consider this an inadequate, one-dimensional worldview is not to condemn the entire scientific method, which has yielded vitally important understanding and knowledge of the world, but to challenge the overreaching claims of scientism, which leads to a narrowly reductionist, mechanistic image of reality. Since holism is, most fundamentally, an effort to overcome the limitations of reductionism, it poses a radical critique of an overly materialistic science, and holistic thinkers of the last century, from Rudolf Steiner to Fritjof Capra, have eloquently done so. Clearly a “spiritual” perspective offers something different from a materialist one.

I have wrestled more with a more subtle distinction—that between spirituality, as I have defined it, and religious belief and ritual. The holistic literature frequently points out that its emphasis on spirituality does not necessarily imply an endorsement of any specific religious tradition or practice; hence, holistic education does not threaten the important principle of separating church and state.

But historically, at least in the West, religious traditions have been the primary means for discovering and expressing spiritual experience. The imagery, language, and practices of religion are so deeply engrained in our culture that it is radical, and difficult, to express spiritual realities without them. In its suspicion of religious institutions, the secular culture does not easily grasp a non-religious spirituality. Hence, efforts to establish state-supported Waldorf schools in California have met fierce resistance from humanists who are convinced that religion is being introduced into public education. Similarly, in one of the early issues of this journal, I engaged in a debate with a progressive educator who remained highly suspicious of my talk about spirituality; he was sure that I meant to bring angels, demons and similar otherworldly beings into educational theory. If not, he demanded, why use the term “spirituality” at all?

In my definition above, there is no reference to God or any identifiable sorts of beings (such as angels) or realms (such as heaven, hell, or the etheric plane). There is no reference to ritual, dogma, sacred scripture, holidays, or special places for worship. In fact, there is no reference to worship or prayer.

There is no attempt to found a sect, or to identify leaders or priests—indeed, rather than seeking to distinguish one group of human beings as being especially spiritual or having exclusive access to truth, the passage calls for an attitude of reverence toward life, which includes all of humanity as well as nonhuman organisms inhabiting the earth. Is this still “spirituality”?

I think so. In my own searching, I have come across several teachers who insist that the path to wholeness, to a glimpse of the ultimate meaning and purpose of the universe, is a wordless, nameless, doctrine-less presence. Among the teachers who have most inspired me are Krishnamurti (e.g. 1975), Eckhart Tolle (1999), and Toni Packer (2002). Each of them warns of the limitations of conceptual and ritualistic systems; because the transcendent Source is infinitely creative and eternally new, our mental and cultural forms cannot fully embrace it, can instead serve to limit our experience of it. For these teachers, spiritual practice is the cultivation of a compassionate, receptive awareness that remains fluid and open to the world, without trying to fix our experiences in a conceptual mold. As soon as a religious ideology, even under the name “holism,” takes shape, we too easily lose the essence of spirituality and may promote a diminished version, a preconceived package rather than a flowing openness to the restless wholeness of the cosmos.

Many of the influential writers in holistic education suggest this as well. Parker Palmer’s (1993) description of compassionate knowing, and Rachael Kessler’s (2000) notion of the “teaching presence,” have, for me, always embodied the essence of a spiritual approach to education. The classical figures in modern holistic education, Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner, similarly insisted that the primary task of an educator is to become fully conscious and present to the miraculously unfolding lives of the young people before them.

It is the cultivation of a receptive, compassionate awareness, an attitude of wonder, awe and reverence for life, that defines a holistic educator. The form that one’s teaching practice then takes is not, or should not be, fully predictable, because a pedagogy that flows from receptive awareness will respond to the totality of the situation at hand. The teaching moment involves each child’s personality and aspirations, and his or her mood at a given time, as well as the social climate of the classroom, school and community, as well as the current realities of the world at large. Holistic pedagogy should flow freely and spontaneously, not be bound by the expectations of any ideology.

Why then, I have always wondered, do the classical holistic approaches—Montessori and Waldorf education—take such established forms? Why are they recognizable methods that have remained virtually intact since early in the twentieth century? Their practitioners argue that these approaches address universal, archetypal elements of human development. Since every child goes through developmental “sensitive periods” (in Montessori’s terminology) or exhibits universal “soul forces” (according to Steiner) at more or less consistent ages, then pedagogy can and should be designed accordingly. Well, there is much truth in these descriptions; there are inherent developmental patterns that conventional schooling largely ignores, which is why modern educational systems are so alienating, so destructive of genuine learning. There is no question that many young people experience Montessori and Waldorf classrooms as nourishing, often inspiring places for growth and learning.

Still, I have spent much of my career, from my own Montessori training in 1980-82 to my sons’ experiences in a Waldorf school in recent years, wrestling with questions about structure, control, and freedom. I have always wondered about a few crucial questions: Are developmental patterns so universal, so consistent across culture, class, history and personality that they trump the “receptive awareness” or attitude of open-ended wonder that holistic education essentially represents? Is each individual child’s progression through identifiable periods of life so regular and predictable that one set of pedagogical practices can fully meet every child exactly where he or she is alive at a given moment?

I doubt it. I have been too much impressed by the freedom of learners in progressive education, democratic schools, and unschooling to be completely satisfied with the authoritative role granted to adults in the classical holistic models. Young people who have been allowed genuine educational freedom do not flounder, as orthodox Montessori and Waldorf educators imply—much more often, they sparkle. By the time they are teens, most of them turn out to be vibrant, confident, curious, engaged, self-directing and unusually focused and mature—even without having teachers carefully orchestrate every nuance of their learning experiences at every minor step of developmental emergence.

I think we can accept that young people’s physical, intellectual, and emotional growth unfolds according to fairly regular stages, without being compelled to provide a highly structured, highly directive pedagogy. Here is where my understanding of spirituality, and my concern about its confusion with religious ideology, is relevant. If we trust that there is some spiritual dimension, some creative energy at work in the cosmos whose limitless imagination is far greater than anything we or our culture can devise, then we can trust young people to unfold themselves from within, with more or less support from us, as long as we don’t clutter their paths. When some spiritual vision, like any other ideology, becomes hardened into a belief system, we feel the need to guide, direct, mold, shape and control children’s learning accordingly.

Sometimes this guidance is nourishing, if it expresses genuine care and love. But I would argue that it is the care and love that nourish human development, not the pedagogical ideology. In another of the early issues of this journal, I brought two Waldorf and two Montessori educators together for a dialogue, and one of them, Diana Cohn, made an observation that has resonated with me ever since: “The methods are very different,” she observed, “but the bottom line is that you have these very interested adults working with the children, and they feel that. They feel enlivened by the fact that there are these caring adults in their lives ”(Cohn, et. al., 1990). The spiritual teachers and holistic educators who emphasize the importance of compassionate presence would fully understand and support this statement.

It so happens that the classical holistic models, Montessori and Waldorf, attract caring adults who passionately hold a reverence for life. But I want to suggest that an overly controlling pedagogy, like an overly protective and intrusive parent, even if motivated by love and having the child’s best interests at heart, may ultimately make it more difficult for a child to discover his or her own destiny. “The secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil,” wrote Emerson in his brilliant essay on education (1965). “It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret.”

Holistic educators all agree that the child’s destiny should not be foreordained by the Secretary of Education, or the CEO of IBM, or whatever elite bureaucrat happens to dictate public educational policy. But should it be foreordained by Montessori’s observations of children in Rome in 1907, or Steiner’s elaborate (and rather strange) cosmological system? If we truly believe, like Emerson in “Self-Reliance” (1965), that “the relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps,” then why on earth would we construct fixed pedagogical theories and systems?

I have always viewed holistic education—or holism more broadly—as an effort toward synthesis and integration. Ken Wilber’s sophisticated writing on “integral” philosophy emphasizes that deeply meaningful knowledge about the cosmos must be far more comprehensive than any limited, partial vision. While the visions of Montessori, Steiner, and other pioneers of holistic education provide grand vistas compared to the reductionism of modern culture, they too are limited in their own ways, compared to the vast possibilities of the cosmic imagination (Miller, 2000). As the holistic education movement matures and evolves, I expect to see less emphasis on particular teaching methods, less reverence for individual visionaries, and a greater effort to cultivate among all educators the kind of pedagogical presence that invites direct experiences of spirituality.

Cohn, Diana; Gans, Ruth; Miller, Bob; Selman, Ruth; and Miller, Ron (1990). “Parallel Paths: A Conversation Among Montessori and Waldorf Educators” Holistic Education Review 3:4.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1965). “Education” and “Self-Reliance.” Selected Writings . Edited by William H. Gilman. New York: New American Library.

Kessler, Rachael (2000) The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion and Character at School . Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Krishnamurti, J. (1975). The First and Last Freedom . San Francisco: Harper.

Miller, Ron (1990). What Are Schools For? Holistic Education in American Culture . Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press.

Miller, Ron (2000). “Partial Vision in Alternative Education,” in Caring for New Life: Essays on Holistic Education . Brandon, VT: Foundation for Educational Renewal.

Packer, Toni (2002). The Wonder of Presence and the Way of Meditative Inquiry . Boston: Shambhala.

Palmer, Parker (1993). To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey . San Francisco: Harper.

Tolle, Eckhart (1999). The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment . Novato, CA: New World Library.

This article was first published in Encounter Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer, 2006.

Photo by Powerhouse Museum Collection . Three children on a horse. Lake Conjola, New South Wales, Australia. Circa 1930.

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Jerry Mintz has been a leading voice in the alternative school movement for over 30 years. In addition to his seventeen years as a public school teacher and a public and independent alternative school principal, he has also founded several alternative schools and organizations and has lectured and consulted around the world.

In 1989, he founded the Alternative Education Resource Organization and since then has served as it’s Director. Jerry was the first executive director of the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools (NCACS), and was a founding member of the International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC).

In addition to several appearances on national radio and TV shows, Jerry’s essays, commentaries, and reviews have appeared in numerous newspapers, journals, and magazines including The New York Times, Newsday, Paths of Learning, Green Money Journal, Communities, Saturday Review, Holistic Education Review as well as the anthology Creating Learning Communities (Foundation for Educational Renewal, 2000).

Jerry was Editor-in-Chief for the Handbook of Alternative Education (Macmillan, 1994), and the Almanac of Education Choices (Macmillan/Simon & Schuster, 1995). He is the author of No Homework and Recess All Day: How to Have Freedom and Democracy in Education (AERO, 2003) and is editor of Turning Points: 35 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Story (AERO, 2010).

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Being Spiritual Helps You Succeed In School, Here's How

In a fast-paced world that often emphasizes academic achievement and professional success, the importance of spirituality in education is sometimes overlooked. However, integrating spirituality into your academic journey can bring about various benefits that contribute to both your personal growth and educational success.

What is Spirituality?

Spirituality is often associated with a sense of connection to something greater than oneself. It involves a fundamental human search for meaning, both in terms of understanding oneself and the broader world. It encompasses beliefs, values, and practices that give life deeper meaning and purpose. This quest for deeper meaning could have implications for academic success, as individuals who find purpose and significance in their studies are often more motivated, engaged, and driven to excel.

How does Spirituality Influence Academic Success?

Life is spiritual. There are spiritual forces at play that can influence the outcomes of different situations, including exams and academic pursuits. By recognizing the spiritual nature of life, you can tap into higher dimensions of wisdom, insight, and guidance, which may positively influence your academic performance.

Spirituality Enhances Focus and Mindfulness

The concept of being aware of one's "lens of self" aligns with mindfulness practices commonly associated with spirituality. Cultivating mindfulness, or the ability to be present and fully engaged in the current moment, can enhance concentration, reduce stress, and improve overall cognitive functioning. This heightened awareness can contribute to improved academic performance by enabling students to focus more effectively on their studies. Try incorporating regular mindfulness and meditation sessions into your routine to enhance concentration and reduce stress.

Spiritual Growth Leads To Academic Growth

Involvement in activities related to spiritual growth such as interfaith dialogue, charitable work, and reflection/meditation , can contribute to students' personal development. Some research even suggests a positive relationship between spiritual growth and traditional benchmarks for student success in higher education. Spiritual qualities such as equanimity, ethic of caring, and an ecumenical worldview can enhance students' academic achievement and personal development.

Spirituality helps Balancing Academic and Personal Life

Spirituality emphasizes holistic well-being. When you shift your perspective from a solely materialistic view to recognizing the spiritual aspects of life, you can access higher realms of wisdom, insight, and favor. Understanding the spiritual nature of life can empower individuals to overcome obstacles, including bitterness or negative emotions, and achieve their goals. By prioritizing spiritual self-care and understanding the spiritual nature of life, students can prevent burnout and ensure their academic success is sustained.

Spirituality Encourages you to Seek Gods Help

Sometimes, when academics get too difficult, we rely on spiritual understanding and engagement, including seeking God's guidance. This can lead to success in various areas, including exams. Seeking God's help and understanding can lead to improved focus, direction, and mental clarity, all of which can contribute to better academic outcomes.

Here is a prayer you can say for academic success:

Today I seek positive outcomes as I move forward with this prayer. I acknowledge any negative emotions I may fee right now, and release them as I embrace forgiveness and openness. My purpose today, is to achieve academic success, excellence, and accomplishment. I recognize my own potential to overcome challenges and thrive in my academic pursuits.

My determination drives me to reach higher levels of knowledge and understanding. I am equipped with the capacity to learns dart, and excel. I believe that as I focus on my studies, I gain wisdom and insight. My dedication to learning empowers me to perform well in exams and tests.

I trust in my ability to recall information and solve problems effectively. My efforts in studying and preparation will yield fruitful results. I am steadfast in my commitment to academic excellence. As I enter each test, I ask to remain clam, focused, and equipped to answer questions with clarity.

I am shielded from feelings of despair, fear or helplessness. Instead, I embrace peace and favor in my academic journey. With determination and resilience, I walk the path of academic success. I believe in the positive outcomes I have declared in this prayer.

May my effort be rewarded, and may my achievements bring me fulfillment. This prayer is a beacon of hope and positivity, guiding us towards academic success. In the spirit of growth and achievement, I give thanks. Amen.

Incorporating spirituality into your educational journey offers a holistic approach to learning. From enhancing focus and mindfulness to fostering empathy and resilience, the benefits are far-reaching. By intertwining spiritual practices with academic pursuits, you pave the way for not only educational success but also personal fulfillment.

Q: Can spirituality be practiced in a secular educational setting? A: Yes, spirituality can be adapted to suit various belief systems and incorporated into education without promoting a specific religion.

Q: Is spirituality a substitute for traditional study techniques? A: No, spirituality complements traditional study techniques by enhancing focus, emotional well-being, and overall learning experience.

Q: Are there any scientific studies supporting the link between spirituality and academic success? A: Yes, several studies highlight the positive impact of spiritual practices on cognitive function, stress reduction, and emotional regulation.

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To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others.
To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
4.20. 895 ratings79 reviews. This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others.
Parker J. Palmer: community, knowing and spirituality in education
Education as a spiritual journey. Parker J. Palmer has written in various places of the pain experienced by many educators. In particular he has highlighted the 'pain of disconnection'. This disconnection is from colleagues, students, and their hearts (1993: x). The culture and size of the institutions and settings where people teach, the ...
To Know As We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
Re-connect education to the spiritual world by following instruction on the spiritual disciplines needed to move teaching into its best role. Encourage individuals to follow the practical ingredients for a life of integrity by examining patterns of daily living and choices as a small group, using this resource as a guide.
To Know as We Are Known : Education As a Spiritual Journey
To Know as We Are Known: Education As a Spiritual Journey. To Know as We Are Known. : Parker J. Palmer. Harper Collins, Jun 8, 2010 - Religion - 162 pages. This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds ...
To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
In this short story about a Desert Father, Palmer has developed a spirituality of education in which obedience to God's words will lead to spiritual formation of the teacher and the student. First, Palmer rightly pointed out that objectivism and the pursuit of knowledge without reflection is dangerous.
To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. by Parker J. Palmer . Details; Author Parker J. Palmer Publisher HarperOne Publication Date 1993-05-28 Section. Type New Format Paperback ISBN 9780060664510 ... Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong ...
To Know as We Are Known : A Spirituality of Education
To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education. This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share ...
Spiritual Development as an Educational Goal
The promotion of pupils' spiritual development is a statutory duty of all maintained (public) schools in England and Wales. 1 Currently reinterpreted as a means of delivering the "fundamental British values" agenda, spiritual development remains important to school leaders and practitioners because it is routinely included in inspections ...
To know as we are known : education as a spiritual journey
To know as we are known : education as a spiritual journey by Palmer, Parker J. Publication date 1993 Topics Palmer, Parker J, Education, Spiritual life Publisher [San Francisco] : HarperSanFrancisco Collection internetarchivebooks; printdisabled Contributor Internet Archive Language English.
To Know as We are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others. Share.
How We Work
The National Council is a meeting ground for sharing research, learning, resources and ideas related to the spiritual development of children and adolescents in the school environment. Through its national conference in November 2019 and other future activities, we look to support the broad-based movement for spirituality in education.
To know as we are known: education as a spiritual journey
Philosophy for Children as a Form of Spiritual Education. Olivier Michaud & Maughn Rollins Gregory - 2022 - Childhood and Philosophy 18:01-24. The heart of higher education: a call to renewal: transforming the academy through collegial conversations. ... Three Souls in Search for the Inner Peace and Spiritual Journey: Educational Moments ...
Teaching and the Consecration of Truth: Parker Palmer on Education as a
"Character is higher than intellect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary," Emerson wrote in his spectacular 1837 speech on the life of the mind and the enterprise of education, adding: "A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think." And yet in the century and a half since Emerson, the notion that education's highest task is the cultivation of a ...
To know as we are known : education as a spiritual journey
Nathan Stevens. Philosophy. Journal of Research on Christian Education. 2022. Abstract The impact of western philosophy, with a particular focus on the Enlightenment, formed an epistemic default that elevated the intellectual ways of knowing at the expense of any other forms…. Expand. Highly Influenced.
To Know as We Are Known : Education As a Spiritual Journey
To Know as We Are Known: Education As a Spiritual Journey. This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can ...
Teaching as a Spiritual Journey
Teaching as a Spiritual Journey. Given the frequent teacher criticism we see in American society and the media today, one thing is clear: many may not recognize how physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting the teaching profession is. According to research, 1,2 an average teacher makes 1500+ educational decisions in a 6-hour day while ...
Parker Palmer
This is a short summary of Parker Palmer's theorizing of education as spiritual journey. Instead of education as means to control, he suggests education as a...
Reflecting on spirituality in education
To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. San Francisco: Harper. Tolle, Eckhart (1999). The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. Novato, CA: New World Library. This article was first published in Encounter Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer, 2006. Photo by Powerhouse Museum Collection. Three children on a horse.
To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul of education through a lifelong cultivation of the wisdom each of us possesses and can share to benefit others. To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey (9780060664510) by Parker J ...
Being Spiritual Helps You Succeed In School, Here's How
In a fast-paced world that often emphasizes academic achievement and professional success, the importance of spirituality in education is sometimes overlooked. However, integrating spirituality into your academic journey can bring about various benefits that contribute to both your personal growth and educational success.
Readers who enjoyed To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual
To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. by Parker J. Palmer. 4.20 avg. rating · 801 Ratings. This primer on authentic education explores how mind and heart can work together in the learning process. Moving beyond the bankruptcy of our current model of education, Parker Palmer finds the soul o….
Education as a Spiritual Journey: Like all tribal colleges, Turtle
Education as a Spiritual Journey: Like all tribal colleges, Turtle Mountain Community College emphasizes respect for native culture. Volume 2, No. 3 - Winter 1991 ... Cree, an elder spiritual leader of the reservation, has been a familiar figure at the college's annual commencement exercises for years, performing the graduation pipe ...
‎Who Are We?: Henri Nouwen on Our Christian Identity on Apple Podcasts
Join one of the 20th century's most inspiring spiritual writers on a journey of self-discovery. Society teaches us to define ourselves by the things we have: belongings, education, experiences. Our inner worth depends on our surroundings, and, as the Gospels say, we "belong to the world." Spiritua…
‎Prayers and Blessings Daily † on the App Store
Download our app now and embark on a journey where each prayer, each verse, and each moment of meditation becomes a stepping stone towards spiritual enrichment. Let our app be your companion, guiding you through the sacred rhythms of daily devotion and prayerful reflection. Godly app comes with free rosary content every day.

Parker J. Palmer: community, knowing and spirituality in education

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Being Spiritual Helps You Succeed In School, Here's How

What is Spirituality?

How does Spirituality Influence Academic Success?

Spirituality Enhances Focus and Mindfulness

Spiritual Growth Leads To Academic Growth

Spirituality helps Balancing Academic and Personal Life

Spirituality Encourages you to Seek Gods Help

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