Two Contrasting Modes of Thought Materialism and the Winter of Education Rights and Responsibilities of Elders and Youth Authorities for Monitoring the Winter Weather Mending the Roof: The "Fix It" Mentality The Power of Money Holism and the Spring of Education Authentic Life Experiences as the Foundation of Education Essential Relationships for Growth and Survival Shared Responsibility Within Community Learning Together for Meaning and Justice The Power of People and the Weakness of Money Moving from Winter to Spring Notes

Table of Contents

The Seasons of Education:

Shifting Our Cultural Metaphors in Education

by Robin Martin

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Caterpillar to Butterfly: "How do you become a butterfly?"
Butterfly: "You have to be willing to die."
Caterpillar: "Die?"
Butterfly: "Well, it feels like you're dying. But it really turns out to be a transformation to something better."

As we examine our schools today and our culture in general, the topic of transformation is a recurring one. At a deep level, what does it mean to transform? Is it really necessary to our joyous survival on this planet? As I examine the writings and patterns of social and educational change, I am convinced that transformation is necessary. I'm also convinced that relatively few educators or parents understand the deeper meanings of transformation in a broader context of cultural shifts and how we as individuals can attend to this change by becoming more aware of our own cultural assumptions and how to shift them.

We may not have to be willing to die, as the butterfly suggests to the caterpillar, but we must be willing to see the world from fresh perspectives. Another metaphor that shines light on the problems of education is one that portrays transformation as being akin to the seasonal changes of nature. Just as when we move from winter to spring, so too must we step outdoors to feel the new spring breezes upon our faces.

A growing number of educators (like Parker Palmer, Ron Miller, Don Glines, and Edmund O'Sullivan, to name a few) and futurists (like Duane Elgin and Riane Eisler) have written about the necessity for transformation in schools and beyond. As I attempt to begin synthesizing the many writings that strike my heart most deeply around this topic, I wish to create a framework that will allow myself and perhaps others to understand more clearly two contrasting modes of thought between which we often stumble.

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Two contrasting modes of thought

There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of ways in which one can examine the patterns of culture and why societies choose, consciously or unconsciously, the directions that they do. To simplify some of the pivotal issues of social transformation, I shall examine two modes of thought for viewing life that greatly impact how we live our lives and the growth of institutions such as education that support our life styles. The first and dominant mode of thought is often labeled "Materialism." The other mode of thought goes by many names as it is still in the process of being defined. For the purposes of this paper, this evolving mode of thought shall be called "Holism."

Materialism is powered by rational thought and normal science encompassing research firmly based upon past scientific achievements. Rooted in an objective (or object-oriented) reality, Materialism underlies a set of cultural practices that leads to the continual and unquestioned acquisition of more and more material objects by individuals as well as by groups. Due to the history behind Materialism, it is primarily associated with Western development and capitalism. The society that evolves from Materialism is what cultural researcher and author Riane Eisler calls a "dominator model" where half of society outranks the other half, and persecution and violence are considered a "normal" part of human nature.¹ When our views of reality are determined primarily by objects and scientific facts that are outside of ourselves, this leads to a scarcity for meeting human needs because those needs are also perceived outside of ourselves. In the material world, there are always limits on what or how much each community member can have, which leads to a "dominator model" in which certain groups of people attempt to control the scarce resources to their own benefit. In the material world of achievement, power is based on what you have, what you know, or what you can do; it is not an inherent part of who you are. As such, power can be abused as society breaks down into the "haves" and the "have nots."

In contrast, Holism is powered by rational as well as non-rational thought encompassing science and reflective practices that integrate personal meaning with external observations. While rational thought allows the use of logic to deduce or induce conclusions based on facts and evidence in the external world, the use of non-rational thought taps into the internal world and thereby gives greater viability to intuitions, dreams, values, emotions, and all that which may not have a strictly logical foundation. Holism allows people to conceptualize the world beyond a materialistic focus on mind and body. It values the internal world of spirit where meaning is not derived from the logic around the scarcity of objects in the world, but from one's personal interpretation of the world. Holism directly relates to spirituality, though it is not tied to any one religion but has roots within all religions and goes beyond religion to include the inspirations of individuals, families, and communities. In some religious practices such as Buddhism, the related concept of valuing the internal as well as the external is often called "contemplative experience." In early Christianity, it was called "gnosticism." In normal science, some scientists might label it "subjectivity." The type of society that derives from this mode of thought is what Riane Eisler calls a "partnership model" of society. When a society places its primary values on internal processes rather than external objects, then the need to dominate scarce resources is eliminated; people can work in partnership toward common goals such as community peace and well-being.

In an intense dialogue between a Western philosopher (Jean-Fracois Revel) and a scientist turned Tibetan monk (Matthieu Ricard), this father and son duo try to find the historic and intellectual roots of their two very different paths in life. This engaging dialogue highlights the critical differences between rationalism and spirituality, which in many ways reflects the materialism/holism dichotomy as well. In one part of the book, Ricard wonders why more and more people are turning to advice outside of science. He says: "Why is there such renewed interest in these collections of advice based on practical wisdom? Perhaps it's to compensate for the fact that our educational systems these days hardly deal at all with becoming a better human being. Modern education, more secular than ever, is primarily designed to develop the intellect and accumulate knowledge."²

Unfortunately, the lens with which we see the world from one set of thoughts can often not see the world of the other. So, while alternative educators can talk about "holism" and "transformation," if traditional educators are firmly rooted in an "achievement" orientation and are using the materialist lens wherein becoming a better human being is not part of what education is supposed to do, then how can they exchange any shared meanings for true communication? It would be like the butterfly trying to talk to the caterpillar when neither creature believes in its heart that the caterpillar will ever be anything other than a caterpillar. Dialogue between holistic educators and traditionalists is only rhetoric until experience leads both parents and educators to see beyond their boxes and to realize where their modes of thought, thinking, and being intersect in the world. Until the caterpillar is ready to transform itself into the cocoon stage, it does not even need to believe in the world of butterflies.

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Materialism and the Winter of education

"Just as we humans evolve through major stages of development, so, too, do civilizations. Like the inexorable passing of seasons, civilizations also pass through their seasons of growth and decline. In my judgement, a number of industrial civilizations have already passed through their spring and summer of growth and have entered their autumn and winter of decline. Unless creative actions are taken soon to move beyond the industrial era, we will move deep into a harsh winter of civilizational breakdown."³

In his book, Voluntary Simplicity, Duane Elgin goes into some detail about why most industrialized countries are currently in the winter of their growth, a stage of systems breakdown. Emphasizing the critical time in which we live, he writes that "if we continue along our present course, children alive today will inhabit a warming world whose climate is so destabilized that it disrupts food production and results in massive waves of starvation; a planet with easily accessible supplies of petroleum depleted; with widespread deforestation; with the goodwill of the human family ravaged as nations fight over access to remaining resources..."⁴ To deny that such suffering exists and is escalating is to willfully ignore the facts. For Elgin, the answer to a smooth transition from the Winter ("Breakdown") era of despair to the Spring ("High Growth”) era of faith appears multifaceted—cutting across many dimensions of ourselves and our society. He writes about the importance of moving toward a greater awareness of possibilities for recreating meaning in our lives and finding a common social purpose toward revitalizing civilization.

In the Winter of Education, materialists have felt that the child's mind is barren and needs clothing to survive as an individual in today's cold, harsh world. The clothing comes in the form of knowledge of facts and intellectual tools for problem solving. Materialists view each individual as separate from the whole. There is an "I" that can be talked about, analyzed, and nurtured, and it is the central focus of most institutions. For example, from a student's perspective, schools are built around the idea that "I need improvement. I need more knowledge and skills. I need to prepare for the future." The target of education is the individual separate from others, rather than the human being as part of the community. We talk about wanting to instill in our youth social values, and indeed we create programs for more "group interactions" and "collaborative learning." Yet, it is the individual who gets the grade and the individual who gets the credential.

Within such a framework, the mind is considered, for the most part, the primary instrument that we are developing within school. The mind is viewed as something we each have—separate from everyone else's and often separate from our own humanity. If humanity is viewed as that which connects our souls to all other humans, how can we be fully connected to our humanity within structures that consistently emphasize our separateness over our relatedness? Or, if being connected with humanity is viewed as the process of becoming a better human being, how can we do that in schools when this individuality myth leads us to create curricula designed primarily for developing our minds and skills alone?

The snowflakes of winter are all wonderfully unique, clearly distinct and observable too. Students, like subjects, can be categorized, counted, and measured. Just as we measure the feet of snow on the ground, we can know the number of students from any given school who go on to college, specialize in trades, or become unemployed. When preparing the sand, labor, and snowplows for the next storm, reliable predictors are important for efficiency.

Equipped with the tools of individuality, students and teachers are fully prepared to face the myth of an objective world. Objectivity allows us to presume that reality is a fixed thing composed of separate objects. Steven Glazer explains this phenomenon beautifully: "In our schools, we learn to approach the world as an assortment of separate objects, rather than as an interconnected whole. We learn to see things at face value; as fixed; as in and of themselves. We learn and share in a cultural mythology that the world is made up of matter, and that matter is free to be owned, manipulated, and consumed. Plants, animals, and elements are all considered merely "substance," with no spirit, no feelings-and certainly no inherent rights or liberties."⁵

If the world is made up only of objects, then one of the necessary tasks of education must be to help us learn how to manipulate those objects. In such a world, we do not become more deeply connected to the earth as it is not a living, breathing entity like ourselves. We learn to make distant, rational decisions based on cost/benefit analysis. As we do this, it is only another short step from disconnecting from our emotions altogether as we begin to treat people as objects also. Just as factory managers become more efficient at moving products through an assembly line, educators are trained in methods for moving students through the system so that they are prepared for functional roles in the future.

In the recent Littleton massacre at Columbine High School, it was easy to blame the media or the parents of the killers, or the young killers themselves. Yet, what is it within a school culture that could allow students to feel so much like objects of the social or educational system that they could possibly treat other human beings with such ultimate disrespect, unable to feel the pain of others? In "The Teachings of Tragedy," Chris Mercogliano explores a number of interrelated dynamics which question the "sacred cows" of education. Among other issues, he notices relationships at the alternative school just a few miles from Columbine where he was visiting on the day of the murders in contrast to Columbine: "One last, very important detail: every student at Jefferson County Open has a mentor, so that no one goes unnoticed. Each child is valued for his or her personhood. Contrast all of this with what John Taylor Gatto recently reported to me. Author of Dumbing Us Down and outspoken critic of the tyranny of compulsory education, he received several phone calls from Littleton residents in the aftermath of the tragedy. More than once he was told that students escaping the blood bath at Columbine were heard to have said when they reached safety, "We're only products there; that's all they care about." Funny, I don't remember reading that in Time magazine."⁶ Mercogliano does not believe the murders were the school's fault, any more than they were fault of any one person or any single institution but that the tragedy is a symptom of faulty assumptions within schools that need to be more closely examined and called into question.

A growing body of evidence points to the importance of interconnecting with people and the power of emotions and social skills in helping people to learn more effectively.⁷ Still, the underlying intention is to learn more effectively. That's what schools are for after all: to learn. To learn what? To learn the arts and sciences that lie behind production and consumption in the material world through physics, math, music, English, psychology, the humanities, and now interpersonal and social skills for managing the other learning—all categorical ways of manipulating and studying the objects of the world.

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Rights and responsibilities of elders and youth

In the deep cold of winter, any individual has the right to go outside without a coat on, but it is the responsibility of the wise one to explain, in a fashion that the younger one is able to hear, that a coat might be a good decision. For a community member to allow another community member of less wisdom to suffer due to a lack of knowledge would be cruel and inhumane. Within our objective and material reality, we have a twist of personal freedom with individual rights and responsibilities. What makes this a part of the Materialist mode of thought? Couldn't it be part of the spring, rather than winter, in our cultural and educational metaphor? Civil rights and personal freedoms are progressive indeed, but they do not necessarily fall outside the bounds of materialist reasoning and logic which is often progressive and certainly caring of the individuals. If I am separate from you, then our rights and freedoms as individuals are an important political issue for maintaining efficient systems. Efficiency is an important ingredient to rational thought.

However, personal freedom does become more complicated when we ponder the rights of students in an authoritarian system where there is an objective reality (and standards) that the elders feel are important to teach. Whether we're talking about teaching 2 + 2, or teaching social values, this issue of personal freedom within education is a bit slippery. For example, when is the right time to teach math? If we believe that developmental theories can give us the answers, we can study "natural development" and deduce the best time within a range for learning basic math. Yet, what if the exact time within that range is important and what if teaching all children math at the same time might damage their internal motivation? Should students have the right to learn only when they are ready enough to ask the question? And even then, do we give them the freedom to learn it on their own, or do we take the responsibility to teach it to them? Within a material reality, all these questions can be answered by careful studies of what works best most of the time; so, we simply hire educational specialists to figure out answers to optimize efficiency with as many students as possible. For the students who fall between the cracks, we design alternative programs to catch as many as possible. In this way, we can be responsible, and within that responsibility, still give students the amount of freedom or structure that seems optimal.

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Authorities for monitoring the Winter weather

In the wintertime, we don't know when the spring will come, and it is natural to ask those who have more experience. Rather than calling on the wise ones or the animals who seem to have an inner knowing, our tendency in the age of Materialism is to listen to the credentialed authorities — the meteorologists whose authority comes from training and years of experience. In keeping with the idea that we can be certain about truth in the physical world comes the related metaphor that there is someone who knows the truth — an authority who can convey it to us in words and facts. Some authorities are more trusted and more knowing than others, but all authorities have access to more skills and knowledge than those without training. And certainly, it is easier and more time efficient to ask the authority than to do the research ourselves.

Last week in the Comparative Education course that I'm taking, a graduate student asked the professor, "What do you think about...?" (It was an opinion question that could be answered as much from one's own experiences and observations than any particular readings.) The professor obligingly poured forth a great essay of ideas in response to her question. Meanwhile, I sat contemplating: Why did she ask the professor rather than the whole class? And would the professor KNOW more than the collective wisdom of the class? This scene is likely repeated in thousands of classrooms around the world every day. Even though we know how important it is to engage the students in reflective dialogue, both students and teachers have this ongoing tendency to defer to the "authority" for the answers to questions.

We view the truth as something that we can "get" from someone so that we can come to clearer ideas on what the truth really is. Even though most teachers and indeed most students understand intuitively that there are many topics for which there is no one "right answer," they continue to probe authorities to look for greater external certainties.

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Mending the roof: the "fix it" mentality

During the winter, if the roof caves in from too much snow, the most logical solution is to build stronger supports underneath. There is certainly no need for a new house; unless conditions change drastically, the framework is not in question, merely the support system. In this age of Materialism, school and community problems are all something that can be fixed with similar amends to the basic structure. It is just a matter of coming up with the right tool or the right idea to create the needed support.

Within this "what needs fixing" mentality, there is no need to reframe our perspectives or try to see things from a new light. Rather, it is a matter of adding on to what we already know. If X doesn't work, we can try Y, and then Z. If schools are too violent, then we can add more monitoring and violence prevention programs. There are always more possible solutions. And even if the systems crash (which in the computer world, they do frequently) as long as we have our wits about us, we can still fix it. Techies, for example, don't worry about the Internet crashing because they know that even if it were to happen, it could still be fixed; it's just a technical problem. We don't need to meditate or change our culture to figure out the answers; the answers are there if we only look long enough and with the right programming lens for tackling the problem.

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The power of money

Money relates to the trend of Materialism in so much as the materialist perspective has greatly influenced many aspects of our commercial culture. Not all Materialists are concerned with the acquisition of material belongings, yet this theme of consumerism continues often to distract us from broader concerns of systemic change in education. In the cold days of winter, he who pays the firemaker gets the biggest and warmest fires. Whenever I begin speaking about creative school alternatives, one question inevitably arises: Who is paying for it? At a national level, we see the power of money in dialogs about the national budgets and how much goes to education versus military spending. Teachers who don't feel they're getting enough go on strike or constantly make underhanded comments about how little they make and how much more they deserve (and rightly so).

Money is power, and it is such a pervasive and underlying metaphor for how we think about power that little else can be added. From within the materialist's framework, there is no route to power, success, and happiness without money. We may talk a good yarn about love, time, joy and other important values, but in the end, money also plays a decisive role in our decisions, often keeping us in our place or allowing us to soar.

So says the winter of Materialism.

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Holism and the Spring of education

Parker Palmer writes: "We all know that what will transform education is not another theory, another book, or another formula but educators who are willing to seek a transformed way of being in the world. In the midst of the familiar trappings of education—competition, intellectual combat, obsession with a narrow range of facts, credits, and credentials — what we seek is a way of working illuminated by spirit and infused with soul."⁸

From within the field of education, I find that explaining holistic, respectful, community-based learning environments to those who grew up in the industrialized public schools is often like trying to explain the springtime to someone who has only known winter. It seems too ideal and outlandish to be real, yet there is a dream-like longing for it at the same time. In reading the following notes about the "myths" of the springtime in education, some educators may be tempted to think, "Oh, yeah, we do this at our school." But I would challenge all readers to question the degree to which the mode of thought being described is fully embraced in their day to day practices. The learning environments being described in this section of the essay are fundamentally different from most schools. For traditional schools to believe that they are in the spring of education is like the caterpillar that believes it has experienced the sky. Even many holistic schools are only halfway out of their cocoons.

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Authentic life experiences as the foundation of Education

One critical aspect of Holism is an internal faith that nature (God, or some higher power) will provide what we need in life. The lessons that we are ready to learn are found naturally in response to our own actions. One of the most noticeable strategies of holistic educators is that they don't smother students in curriculum, tests, or extra "busy work." Like planting a tree in fertile soil, ample sunshine and rain are plenty for allowing the tree to grow. In fact, too much water or foreign agents into the soil are the surest way to cause the tree to wither and die.

Humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers was an avid advocate of this concept which he and many others have called "experiential learning." In his book Freedom to Learn, he explained:

“Let me define a bit more precisely the elements which are involved in such significant or experiential learning. It has a quality of personal involvement — the whole person in both his feeling and cognitive aspects being in the learning event. It is self-initiated. Even when the impetus or stimulus comes from the outside, the sense of discovery, or reaching out, of grasping and comprehending, comes from within. It is pervasive. It makes a difference in the behavior, the attitudes, perhaps even the personality of the learner. It is evaluated by the learner. He knows whether it is meeting his need, whether it leads toward what he wants to know, whether it illuminates the dark area of ignorance he is experiencing. The locus of evaluation, we might say, resides definitely in the learner. Its essence is meaning. When such learning takes place, the element of meaning to the learner is built into the whole experience.”⁹