Healing Our Educational System
“Modern life, with its over valuation of intellectual thinking and its neglect of feeling and willing- especially in education- forms man’s physical constitution in a pathologically one-sided way. This raises once again the deep connection of education and healing…All education should be healing, just as all healing must ultimately be educational.”
(Rudolf Steiner)
The ideal of the religious mystic is to merge with God. If we could, through our limited human perspective, assign attributes to God, we might conjecture that God is the Perfect Being, perfectly balanced, perfectly integrated and perfectly whole. We might also say that God is all-encompassing, all-knowing, creating everything always; that this great archetypal being has created and will create infinite, perfectly balanced beings and systems that always seek the balance and equilibrium that is the perfection of God. If these systems are to deviate from a state of homeostasis, a mechanism will be set in motion to right these systems back into the perfect equilibrium that is God. We might also conjecture that there must be a series of archetypal, creative principles that give birth to all beings in this created world. From an ecological perspective, it has been said that the natural evolution of a piece of land begins with a disturbed (empty) site, which then will evolve through a series of steps from annual plants to biennials, perennials, shrubs, vines, small trees and large trees which ultimately form a canopy known as the climax forest. The archetypal climax forest is considered the most balanced and diverse of all ecosystems. There must be integrated movement and a balanced rate of growth in all things. From our observations we can also see that our own human form is constantly going through a profound metamorphosis in time; that the archetypal form appears to be changing as the body ages, that things shift constantly and that the so-called homeostasis of life is not actually balanced or stable. Yet, beneath these shifting points of growth, we are still human, the ideal form of the human being remains. Finally, our conjectures might lead us to say that all created beings and things in the universe posses an underlying uncreated and perfected form.
Let us take another point-of view. From the perspective of medicine, a healer is someone who acts as guide and intermediary to help another find the balance and full potential that is their ideal form. If, for instance, the human body is dis-eased, the healer seeks to understand the natural and essential movement of the body beneath the disease. The healer would then attempt to help draw the body’s deeper essence to the surface and allow natural wisdom to bring the dis-eased organism back into its “normal” state of homeostasis and equilibrium. This sensitive balance lies on the fulcrum between opposites whose tendency is to tip the scales one way or another. We wish to heal the rift between our essential and earthly natures, and find the means to keep the scales centered at all costs. It is this ability to stay on the “middle path” that will guide us to find true purpose and meaning in this gift of life.
The principles of learning presented here are an attempt to bring healing to an educational system that most of us have been part of and been deeply affected by at some point in our lives. Ideally we would love to find the perfect solution to our educational woes. And we, at least, ought to attempt to find an “archetype of education” and put it into practice. In the course of this book we will be exploring the theoretical and practical applications of whole learning, and attempt to construct an ideal understanding of the educational process, from both the educator’s and student’s perspectives.
As we journey through life, at times we find ourselves in states of ecstasy, at other times in states of depression, pain and suffering. We have all experienced the point between these two extremes, even if for an instant. It is here on the “middle path” that whole learning seeks to bring educators from all walks of life in to a natural way of educational development where growth and understanding blend beautifully into a sense of unity. If the mystic seeks ideally to merge with God, we wish also to walk side by side with the mystic and, hopefully, through the mercy and compassion that lie deep within the recesses of the human heart, provide a perfectly natural model of education where students and educators merge with their work and with each other.