Spirituality Education.

Spirituality is a never-ending topic. It gets thoroughly confused with religiosity, which is not only quite different, but may well be its opposite.
I focus here on Cathy Ota's and Clive Erricker's Spiritual Education, a compilation of conference papers from 2002. The papers give me a few pegs to hang critique on, whether I like the paper or not. Some papers are wide of the mark. Christiana Welch purports to report on North American Indian (="First Nation") Spirituality but is in fact talking superficially about how the First Nations are represented in 'cowboys and indians' narratives.

David Tacey's Encountering Tradition in a Postmodern Context. Tacey admits to being religious in a generalised radical way but part of a revisionist project [176]. He balances faith with the secular, and espouses a need for prophetic revival, that is a new critique and renovation of tradition. My problem comes with 'Tradition'. Christianity fossilises a two millenia old spirituality, which was already at second hand when the New Testament was written. I have the highest regard for Jesus the 'prophet' (that is, social critic) but despair over the quagmire he has been buried in. Liberating Jesus is part of our task of liberating the dispossessed. The radical Jesus has been colonised and exploited from 30CE until today. And may I burn at the stake for showing dissent, following his example.
Judaism fossilises a spirituality which was five hundred years older. An exile to Babylon had led to a spike of nationalism from which the Hebrew Scriptures were created. All religions attempt to fossilise an historic form of spirituality, giving peacock status to this prophet or that. Our world is rather different. It cannot be critiqued by an Ezra or Nehemiah concerned with racial purity, or a Paul, who never met Jesus, obsessed with a risen spirit. This does not diminish their contribution, but it removes their authority. Authority and spirituality do not mix, for authority removes freedom of thought and belief. Tradition enshrines the authority of this person or that. Siddartha Gautama, the Buddha made it clear that worship and blind obedience were counter to his holistic humanistic (if maybe metaphysical) philosophy, and adherents should not blindly obey.
He offers a case study of 'Elizabeth', a revisionist Catholic. She rejects secular spirituality as a cop-out without resolving her need to be spiritual and religious at the same time. She suffers from the need for external authority to ease the stresses of deciding for oneself. Tacey concludes by emphasising the micro, the personal spiritual experiences of wholeness, integrity and worth. He argues that this is a back-door into religion and will help us to rediscover tradition.
The are several problems, in addition to the fragmentation that he discusses. We may find these religious traditions wanting, with discriminations and assumptions that violate human worth and dignity. Assumptions of original sin rather than original innocence, for example. The great figures of religious traditions (Jesus, Muhammad, Nanak) were reformists with spiritual insights who declared the religions around them as unworthy. They may well continue to do so if they could investigate the religions that draw on their names. 'Rediscovery and renewal' should enable the world to escape labels, and isms, sects, cults and denominations and allow the concept of unity to mean something. It will be unity in diversity - and our individual takes on what the concept of God might mean, will be part of this diversity. But it does not have to make unity impossible.

Mike Pike asks, in 'Reading and Responding to Biblical Texts' why the Bible cannot be read as literature, for personal enlightenment and as personally relevant. The short answer is that most biblical texts were written not as literature but as preaching, so that the use of these texts for personal development is problematic. The texts demand a point of view; personal development demands openness. Interpreting biblical texts requires particular skills, such as Paul Ricoeur develops in his studies of hermeneutics (not mentioned by Pike), such as Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and Imagination (1995). The use of real literary analysis on biblical texts was pioneered by Robert Alter (The Art of Biblical Narrative, and with Frank Kermode he edited The Literary Guide to the Bible, neither cited by Pike) but this did not aim at personal fulfilment and development, but was literary criticism. Of course we want children to develop their own life stances, whether they are reading the Bible, Michael Morpurgo or Philip Pullman. The problem with the Bible is its claim (and claims on its behalf) to truth and authority which demands that the point of view stated has to be accepted as the true point of view. This is not on. It is indoctrination and not education. Education is possible when such stories are actively subjected to the form of literary criticism appropriate to the age of the child. I am developing a range of discussions on this topic on http://4004bce.blogspot.com and will be happy for comments on points of detail.

Mark Halstead, writing on metaphors for spirituality, is spectacularly wide of the mark, writing that children need help in understanding that metaphors are not literal. Children are experts in pretend play and pretend story, which is all a metaphor is - to explain A I pretend it is B. Children are also deeply spiritual, responding to life, brimming with excitement, and becoming engrossed in creative activities. The trouble is that adults mess them up by asking wrong questions and, to be frank, lying to them. Remember Santa Claus? Schools despiritualise children - extending the thought that Ivan Illich so brilliantly began in 1970. They do it by having a point of view, a set of 'truths' to be imposed, and disallowing free thought in children. Children can pretend all day, and therefore make creative links and wise observations. It is adults who cannot hear what they have to say.

Wisdom and education

I remember an 8 year old girl once telling me, "A wise person is someone who knows a lot about many things, but is humble and not proud and uses what they know to help other people". She must have been talking to Robert Sternberg.

Robert J. Sternberg explores (2004) the balance theory of wisdom. At heart it claims that a wise action works towards a common good.

Wisdom is the use of one’s intelligence and experience as mediated by values toward the achievement of a common good through a balance among (1) intrapersonal, (2) interpersonal, and (3) extrapersonal interests, over the (1) short and (2) long terms, to achieve a balance among (1) adaptation to existing environments, (2) shaping of existing environments, and (3) selection of new environments. This article discusses the balance theory of wisdom, and how wisdom can be assessed and developed.

The phrase 'common good' can be problematic unless it is shaped democratically. The Nazi definition of common good was aimed at only part of the population, and was probably not even true for them. Sternberg describes his book (2003) as exploring perceptions of wisdom in America, and may therefore not be generalisable elsewhere. Wisdom is a concept rather than a reality - the balance sought in the definition is more effectively a tool to analyse actions - are the actions for the common good? are they based on sound reasoning and research? have people's needs and views been taken into account? is it likely to be effective long term as well as short term? does it help to improve our world/environment?

Judgements that actions are wise or not may depend on our approval or disapproval of the actions - are actions we disapprove of automatically thought of as unwise? Even if they meet all of the above criteria. The criteria may help us to reject such subjective views of wisdom, but there may be subjectivity in each of the criteria. If the only actions that can be considered wise are those which have a consensus, there is no room for the paradigm-breaking steps which will take people a while to get used to. The need for consensus will in fact hold development back, linking action to the lowest common denominator of understanding. We have to view such paradigm-breaking actions as being in the common good even if they are not so recognised. Sternberg notes elsehere (2003:180):

Whereas the wise person is perceived to be a conserver of worldly experience, the creative person is perceived to be a defier of such experience.

A wise person however it not someone who protects ancient beliefs but someone inspires people now to make a better world for tomorrow. That person is likely to be a paradigm breaker, a thinker of new thoughts, and above all a person who inspires.


[Sternberg, Robert J. (2003) Wisdom, intelligence and creativity synthesised, Cambridge University Press; Sternberg, R. J. (2004). ‘What is wisdom and how can we develop it?’. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 591, no. 1, pp. 164-174. Online: http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/591/1/164.]