Values we live by.

A challenging question posed by Jack Whitehead, who came over for lunch. What are the values that underpin my academic life? This post may be some time being constructed, as it is complex. My academic work ranges from Biblical studies (my PhD), the secular study of religion, engagement within education, equal opportunities, and children's literature. Other interests include growing plants, social history and heritage railways.Is all this coherent or is it the product of a butterfly mind?

First let us examine the idea of 'butterfly mind'. A standard academic career chooses a narrow topic around which a person can become a world expert for ever. In my original field of Old Testament Studies, one might do a PhD on Amos chapter 3 and study nothing but that for the next 50 years. Pretty boring, an example of a pointless life. My PhD was on Hebrew Marriage and Family, a broad field, my first book was on the whole of the Old Testament. So looking at the whole must be part of my psyche. For the secular study of religion, I look at all religions everywhere. A recent paper is on the San bushmen of the Kalahari. For inclusion and engagement within education, I am interested in the holistic question of what (in practical terms) it means to educate and be educated. We can look at the whole through many spotlights, which for someone not knowing the overall picture, might seem to be alighting on disparate subjects.

On religion, if you dig  there is a layer deep down which most religious people would agree with, whatever their faith label. That is where I want to be, engaging with it as a secularist to see if this spiritual core speaks to my non-supernaturalist assumptions. The mythic and legendary elements are still interesting, but I would look for possible motives of this material. This raises the question of whether a secular (non-supernaturalist) person can be considered spiritual. This is concerned with the core values of humanity and feeds into concepts of spiritual education. My interest in multicultural education is, in addition to promoting understanding across cultures, is about building relationships at a personal level between people across the world.

On education, my chief concern is what 'proper' education is. This invites (with Ivan Illich) us drawing a distinction between education and 'schooling', schooling being about what schools do, good or bad. If schooling is (or is not) education, we want to understand what that means and implies. When in charge of research activity across the Faculty of Education, I used the strap-line 'motivating learning', assuming that education involves facilitating active learning rather than acquiescing with passive sequences and memorisation. I make a further underlying assumption that education should change lives, including the lives of the marginalised and vulnerable. Alas, the history of schooling has not done this. Professional development for teachers needs therefore to address the underlying concept of education rather than remaining compliant to a political hegemony.

Children - and people - learn in informal ways perhaps more than through the formal curriculum so my study of children's literature is interested in what children learn when reading fiction. This work has also included writing experimental children's fiction.

The world needs some serious new approaches to learning if today's children are to become the responsible and effective citizens of tomorrow.  This is not within the existing school and university curricula - mostly these are barriers to real learning, somebody's empire. Encouraging teachers and pupils to be critical is a starting point - challenging all items of so-called-knowledge and exploring a varied range of ways of describing life experience. Through scepticism lies understanding and empowerment. The process is supremely important, not the recollection of so-called knowledge.

This brings me back full circle to Biblical Studies, which I explore on http://4004BCE.blogspot.com. Some will recognise 4004BCE as the date once given (and the date taught to me as a child) for the creation of the world - or more precisely, on the evening of September 23rd 4004. Most of what we think of the Bible is wrong, and sentimental. All books were political documents, with a political purpose. Most stories combine legend with fiction, much as TV series of Robin Hood do. To draw out the truth about the Bible and the religions based on it, scepticism offers new understandings of how these troubled people came to terms with their world.

So, motivated learning, sceptical learning, critical learning, problem solving all help to free people from delusion, illusion and false knowledge. Education first is about crap detection; and second about how to recycle that crap in ways that stimulate understanding and personal growth.