Introduction: |
Welcome to the home of The Spirit of Education on the web! Here, you can read the book in its entirety. Just click on any of the chapter headings to the left to dig in. The Spirit of Education is a book that grew out of my years of experience within the public school system, both as a teacher and a teacher educator. It attempts to describe a new vision for schooling, and what it might look like if we took seriously the notion that humans are whole beings, complete with bodies and minds and spirits. If we started with this wholeness as a basic assumption, and then took a step further and seriously considered the importance of learning as our basic mode of personal and collective evolution, what might be possible? Suddenly, learning wouldn't be considered to be a mere trick of the mind that we undertake as we memorize enough crap to meet school standards; learning would be our path toward personhood. Toward our humanity. Ultimately, it is our path toward transcendence. Of course, schools as they currently organized teach us no such thing. Their purpose is to keep us small and powerless, to lead us toward thinking that the way the species has come to see itself and the world is perfectly reasonable. Alan Watts writes: "As I get older, I begin more and more to feel that being brought up and "educated" is a form of hypnosis, brainwashing, and indoctrination that is extremely difficult to survive with one's senses intact." This, of course, is a big-picture view. What about the small picture, if you can call any student's path through their schooling life "small"? Each of us, this book insists, has a calling. Each of us has something within that desires expression. Each of us, with the appropriate nurturing, has the potential to become who we are meant to be. This book begins with the faith that if each of us undertakes this project of true education, then the world will follow. We might yet come to appear to be an intelligent species that has the ability to create beautiful, powerful and harmonious civilizations. Does anyone out there seriously think that our current practice of schooling aids in this function? Here's some jacket copy, to give you a better idea of the book's contents: What is education? It’s a term we use every day to describe the process of putting 25 or 30 young souls into a cinder block room and filling their heads with what-all over the course of the first quarter of their lives. But is that education? If it’s not, what is it? And what are its consequences? The word “education” comes to us from the Latin educere, which means “to lead out” or “to draw out.” What we do in schools, when we attempt to add cumulative layers to children’s bank of knowledge, has little to do with this drawing out; one might go so far as to think that it is its antithesis. Education—true education—is not a process of pouring in from without, but of calling forth what is within. It’s not a process of memorization or socialization or instillation, it’s a process of nurturing, of allowing, of evoking. It’s a process of bringing forth the person one is meant to be. This, of course, is a lifelong project. The Spirit of Education attempts to begin anew our conversations about this thing called education. It suggests that we start not with what students ought to know, but what humans are. It suggests that learning isn’t something that happens to children in specialized buildings at the hands of experts, but something that is hardwired into the human animal, an essential goad to our personal and collective evolution. The Spirit of Education isn’t just about schools. Rather, it’s about learning. Deep learning. Real learning. It suggests that our primary job on the planet is learning: learning the depths of who we are, and learning how to realize (learning how to make real) the best that is within us. If you're interested in what others have said about the book, you can peruse some reviews. I recently had a great deal of fun recording the book for digital delivery. This audio version of The Spirit of Education is available (and free) at iTunes and at Podiobooks.com. A trade paperback copy of the book is also available . You can order a copy directly from the author. If you resonate with what you find here, please pass along the URL to others who might be interested. And feel free to send along your comments or questions to jeff@spiritofeducation.com. The Spirit of Education©2006 by Jeffrey M. White |
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