200 Course Introduction: Printer-Friendly Version

EDUCATE YOURSELF FOR TOMORROW:
HOW TO EDUCATE YOUR "SELF"

The Philosophy Behind the Program

Educate Yourself for Tomorrow provides a practical, engaging, and personally meaningful guide to some of the highest and greatest achievements of western culture. The curriculum is presented not as a finished product but as intellectually nursing food for thought, as ideas for you to digest and make part of your vision of yourself and the world. It is a learning experience which meets the needs of many who are dissatisfied with some aspects of traditional academic education. Whereas traditional approaches are often fragment, we approaching education with the ancient alchemy circle symbol in mind: a circle as an undivided whole interconnected to all its parts.

The program you are taking as a continuation of the first course overcomes the current separation between value-learning - "knowing that " and fact-learning - "knowing why," two aspects o education which have increasingly grown apart in our time. Religion, philosophy and the humanities in general are intended to yield perspective on life, while the sciences can help reveal hidden patterns and relationships of the worlds without and within. Both humanistic and scientific studies help us develop a vision of existence; what is profound and what is profane; what is great and what is small. Both studies help us become truly "rational," a word sharing a common etymology with the words "ratio" and "ration." A rational individual is one who has learned to apportion his energies within a wide scope of priorities, concerns and realms of knowledge. In essence, humanistic and scientific studies, if rightly pursued, help the individual develop values. It is this element of holism that is symbolic in the alchemy circles in times past; such circles were symbols of the unification of qualities with a vision of the whole.

Many scientists see values as lying in the subjective realm within the individual; humanists consider objective scientific knowledge dangerous if not tempered with moral or spiritual principles. Our program overcomes this unnecessary and counter productive split between learning facts and values by focusing on educating the self to become capable of synthesizing the two sides into an undivided awareness. Through the readings, recordings and the accompanying lectures the student is given a key to a rich heritage of non-dualistic knowledge essential to the education of the self. Learning of the world and learning about yourself are intimately united and an education which unites both the subject and the object, the known and the knower is the foundation stone of dynamic creativity and of responsible individualism.

Ultimately, it is the educated heart that knows about one's real needs and one's task in the world and can select the outer knowledge and factual information that will supply these needs and facilitate this task.

Educate Yourself for Tomorrow is concerned with the expansion of your mind to include your heart. It is not an attempt at conditioning distinct, specific, observable behaviors. In our view, to educate is more a process of nurturing the growth of a living tree of knowledge than of a piece-by piece construction of a house of knowledge. There is a fluidic element to this learning like the alchemy water symbols in time past. Water flows around things, nurtures, and promotes growth, and water symbols represent these elements of consciousness. The word educate derives from the Latin educere meaning to draw forth or lead out. There is no education where there is no intellectual metamorphosis or transformation; education does not exist devoid of provocation and stimulation of the mind to what Emerson called "understanding."

Everything you learn, to some degree, transcends what you do or say. You recognize, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, that some aspect of the world takes on a new dimension; that a new order is intimated or chaos unveils itself. To continue with our water symbol image, the water is an ancient alchemy symbol of the unconscious, the depths of which we may begin to explore through self-consciousness. True knowledge is never simply information; it is never found in books or computers. It is found always in an active knower who uses such knowledge to make the world or some small part of it, more comprehensible. Knowledge is a dynamic personal extension of the conscious Human Being; it is fluid and pulsing with intellectual vitality from the very heart of the person.

When rightly considered, knowledge is more a verb than a noun; it is both the impetus for and dynamic subject of thought. Knowledge is the cutting edge of the emerging mind. Questions evolve and ideas are tugged and stretched by the energized imagination. "Understanding" unfolds.

The acquisition of knowledge, learning, requires less that one learn a specific behavioral response to a particular stimulus than that one becomes an active thinker. To learn implies that one has integrated an idea into his understanding; it implies that one has not merely added data to static catalogues of the stuff, but that one has become a more astute and intellectually unbounded person. Learning means nothing if not that one has made some aspect of the world more rational and coherent, or perhaps, more complex and mysterious; it extends and clarifies one's vision or fragments and confuses perspective. When one learns, one assimilates ideas and transforms them into integral elements of the mind just as one digests foods and reconstructs it as living tissue.

Unfortunately many of us remember learning without personal insight or involvement. Learning amounted to remembering knowledge was a commercial product, a fixed and finished intellectual package. Few of us recall learning as personally engaging or even less as personally meaningful. Today, the essential dynamic aspects of education, knowledge, and learning have become even more obscured by the increasingly behavioristic tendencies of modern educators. Consequently those individuals in their charge rarely have the opportunity or guidance necessary to experience true intellectual growth. Though new behaviors may be learned, few find meaning and purpose in what they learn.

A prime example of such an intellectually limited concept of education was offered in conversation by a very bright third-grade girl. The child explained how she had learned that the equator was an imaginary line drawn about the center of the globe separating the northern and southern hemispheres. She further explained that the two hemispheres have opposite seasonal patterns, the northern winter being the southern summer and vice versa. Asked why the equator had been drawn after some hesitation she suggested that it prevented the countries of the world from bunching together. (She must have imagined a yellow line painted through the jungles of the Equator.) Questioned why the seasons were different to the north and south, she responded that the sun's rays were at different angles. No explanation of why the sun's rays would be different or why that would matter could be imagined.

It was clear that although this intelligent young child could answer such questions as "What is the equator?" or "Why are the seasons to the north and south of the equator opposite to one another?" she could not meaningfully integrate her lessons into her picture of the world. Although she scored well on her geography exam, as evidenced by her appropriate behavioral responses to the questions asked, her answers referred to what the teacher said and what the diagrams in the books depicted; they did not refer to the world where she experienced the seasons and sun.

The fact is that the lessons the teacher taught had no relation to any questions she would have asked. The lessons were not related to the world she saw through her own eyes. There was no way to assimilate what she "learned into an active, coherent intellectual framework. The importance of the study was unexplored; she saw no meaning in her work other than possible praise. The girl's ability to engage in active thinking was not spurred and some part of life was simply shelved. Though she developed appropriate intellectual behaviors she did not acquire knowledge. It is possible that her own intellectual vigor was ever so slightly diminished, and that after years of such education the curiosity and enthusiasm that shine in her could be all but extinguished.

In general terms, the manner in which one experiences knowledge will not only shape one's conceptions but how one conceives. The theory of knowledge undergirding one's education will affect the attitude of approach one assumes in life. Your sense of purpose and personal responsibility will follow upon your integration of ideas into a coherent vision of the world and your place therein.

The vitality, expansion, and scope of that vision will affect your sense of purpose or purposelessness, chaos or order, personal meaning or meaninglessness. Thus, through education one learns, to varying degrees, to make judgements and establish priorities. An individual learns not only how to solve problems but to determine which problems are worth solving and at what costs.

The cultural responses into the most basic questions of life reside implicitly in the experience of knowledge provided through education. "How shall I live my life?" "Who am I and why am I here?" "Is there a meaning to existence?" The responses are not to be found in static, explicit concepts; they exist in the personal experience of world and self as one grapples with elusive understanding. The way one is introduced to the world and the world to him as well as the guidance provided to make life comprehensible is far more influential than any specific concept that can be offered. The way someone balances family, self, career, nation, and moral responsibility are more reflective of how one experiences knowledge than the content of one's education. Professor Phenix of Columbia Teachers College writes,

The essence of the curriculum - whether considered formally in schools or Informally in other agencies of education consists not of objective lessons to be learned and courses to be passed, but of the scheme of values, ideals, or life goals which are mediated through the materials of instruction. The really significant outcome of education is the set of governing commitments, the aims for hiring that the learner develops. The various subjects of study are simply means for the communication and appreciation of these values.

Such values, however, are not "held" by a person but are "of" the person; they are not kept in the mind but are effluent streams of consciousness itself. In the last analysis, education helps create the primary person - the living, breathing, person who makes the daily decisions that in the end constitute life. In Martin Buber's words, "Education worthy of the name is essentially education of character."

In more specific terms, Frank Winkler, a physician and psychologist of rare perception, explains,

Knowledge serves as a mold for the volcanic content of the growing individual, whose balance depends upon it. Knowledge of a large number of confusing and apparently unrelated facts mishaps the personality into a mental and emotional structure both bizarre and discordant. On the other hand, knowledge imparted with the understanding that every item of information is but a piece in the mosaic of an all encompassing wisdom, creates a harmonious structure promoting a sense of security as well as a feeling of freedom within the framework of purposeful necessity.

It is this subtle yet fundamental aspect of knowledge that is often missing from educational theory and practice. Education does not properly consist of each generation handling down its knowledge, in tact, as fixed and finished; rather it should be a nurturing of the next generation to create knowledge for themselves. This does not mean we should refrain from giving specific instruction but rather that instruction should respond to questions students are ready and capable of pursuing. Yet more it means that we should place more emphasis on helping students ask questions than giving answers that have no place in their hearts and minds.

The baby toying with his rattle shares the same quest for and love of knowledge as does the scientist working in his lab. The latter is an extension of the former; the scientist once wondered and delighted in the colors and sounds he sensed as he lay in his crib just as he now ponders the mysteries of quarkes and quasars. Both are at the cutting edge of knowledge; both are passionately engaged in extending their understanding into the vast unknown. It is the questing person that provides for the unity, purpose and value of knowledge. An education responsive to the inner dimension of knowledge would first and foremost harness the intellectual energies of the growing person; it would be thought provoking.

Students could be asked to find patterns and relationships in their studies. The imagination could be stimulated to find symmetries in the multiplication tables or correspondences between art and history. The student's imagination could reveal new aspects of familiar ideas or generate whole new conceptual models. It has often been the active imagination that has distinguished some of the world's greatest thinkers. Einstein wrote that he believed his imagination provided him with a greater intellectual asset than his positive knowledge, his mathematical skills.

However, education must do more than stimulate your mind, your heart, too, must be stirred. The pursuit of knowledge through times of failure and frustration can be sustained only where there is personal commitment and a sense of purpose. When art and literature weave into science and history, when math is discovered in nature and music, when astronomy is enmeshed with biography, students often find themselves fascinated with the beauty of the simplest things. They begin to develop gratitude and wisdom. The Greeks believed awe was the beginning of wisdom, and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote "The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common."

Emerson's view is very different from that of B.F. Skinner, the most prominent of behavioral scientists. Skinner writes,

To man qua man, we readily say good riddance. Only by disposing of him can we turn to the real causes of human behavior. Only then can we turn from the inferred to the observed, from the miraculous to the natural, from the inaccessible to that which can be manipulated. It was this movement towards depth which is at the heart of the transcendental forms of Plato and other great thinkers such as Goethe.

The great German poet-scientist Goethe noted that every fact rightly considered unlocks a faculty of the human soul. As children learn facts as integrated in a meaningful context, they begin to see a unity, however mysterious and unyielding; they begin to see purpose mirrored within their own lives. The student begins to emerge as a person of moral substance and strength - a person with a sense of direction and meaning to life.

A third aspect of the student must also be quickened. It is not enough to think and feel, education should help one "do." Whether creating a story or orchestrating a community project, thinking and feeling come to fruition when a person assumes responsibility for some action no matter how profound or profane, no matter how public or private. When one has been impressed, that is, when something has made an impression, it is transformed within the learner and extends into some form of expression. Whether we have recognized some change in the market place or in ourselves, there is a desire to act. A balanced education provides the guidance and opportunity for the personal and social creative declaration of knowledge.

If education is to promote social progress it will do so by the development of individuals of substance and character. Society will prosper to the degree that individuals of high moral vision assume personal responsibility and commit themselves to action where needed. To fulfill its social function education must provide more than technological skills; it must help create humane human beings who live in a heightened, active state of consciousness. Educate Yourself for Tomorrow has been developed to provide you with the beginnings of this experience.