|
Click here for full version in printable format.
HOW TO EDUCATE YOUR "SELF" (5 of 5)
The Philosophy Behind the Program
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.
|
Suggested Courses
HUM 309: AN INTRODUCTION TO HOLISTIC EDUCATION
HUM 311: SCIENCE, VALUES AND THE FUTURE LIFE
HUM 401: FROM THE SEARCH FOR MEANING TO THE SOURCES OF MEANING: VIKTOR FRANKL AND RUDOLF STEINER
|
