Sep 59 min read

Education as Life Itself

I have to share this wonderful article by Stephane L. Pressault. It is so full of wisdom, I hope you read and share it:

Illustration by Elsa Beskow, The Sun Egg, 1932.

Thinking that schooling is education’s de facto tool has had a profound impact on our post-industrial global society. I’d argue that it not only drew imaginary borders on the human soul but has shaped our experience of the world and of each other. It transformed families, neighbourhoods, towns, and countries.

Ironically, the word "school" has its origins in the Greek word "scholē"(σχολή), which originally meant the leisure or free time that we give to the pursuit of learning. For the ancient Greeks, scholē referred to the leisure time that was devoted to learning, intellectual discussions, and philosophical pursuits. The term was then adopted into Latin as “schola” and began to be referred to the place of learning rather than the activity of learning.

Education has broader implications1. “Paideia” in Greek, the idea refers to the broad process of education and upbringing, including intellectual, moral, and physical development. The Latin “educatio” carries the sense of “drawing out,” as it is a combination of “ex-” (out of) and “ducere” (to draw). Education is the process of drawing out our human potential, and all facets of our lives are the grounds on which this process takes place.

Over time, education and schooling became synonymous. School was understood as the only milieu for education. In the 18th century, the modern schooling system, as we know it, was born out of the Prussian Kingdom2, as an effort to strengthen the state and national unity, create a disciplined and obedient citizenry, and boost its economy. The Prussian school system was so successful that it has since provided the education blueprint for nations across the world. The school systems emphasized centralized control, standardized state-run schools, graded classrooms where students are grouped by age and ability, the professionalization of teachers, and examinations to assess student progress. The Prussian school system sealed the school as the place of learning and instruction. Though the model continues to be successful in creating a literate and obedient population, many critics such as Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, John Taylor Gatto, Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire and others argue that it stifled creativity, wisdom, self-knowledge, individuation, spiritual growth, and self-reliance.

The story of the Prussian school system is part of a greater story of industrialization. I admit that detachment from nature is almost as ancient as the human being and the rise of agriculture. However, since the Industrial Revolution, with access to seemingly unlimited energy and power, human capacity has grown exponentially, which characterizes modernity. And for that reason, our detachment from nature was less obvious, perhaps. Mutually Assured Destruction is a case in point. With our technological advancement, access to ancient sunlight (fossil fuels), our capacity to harm is unprecedented. The Prussian school system was just a tool among others to organize the efficient use of this newly uncovered energy. A uniform populace of obedient workers served as the perfect weapon in a rapidly moving global arm’s race. Unfortunately, we are paying a steep price. Depression, anxiety, family breakdown, social mistrust, fear of the other, deskilling, and lack of responsibility are just a few legacy consequences of the Prussian school system. With the rise of AI and Big Tech’s monopoly on the public school system, especially in North America, it is now time to look to the visionaries who foresaw schooling as an activity, not as a place that can be controlled, governed, and micromanaged.

A regenerative education isn't resource and energy intensive. In a potential energy crisis, it will become obvious how much energy our public school systems consume. A regenerative education is a community-led education that embraces elders, neighbours, and peers as teachers. It challenges the fallacy that a good teacher must have an education degree in the same way that an engineer, physician, or lawyer must be certified by an accredited body. A regenerative education understands the community — the polis in the true sense of the word — as the place of schooling. Furthermore, based on my research, conversations, and experience, I'd argue that a regenerative education is grounded in play, imagination, kinship, vocation, and individuation. Let's explore these five precepts.

Play

Illustration by Elsa Beskow, Around the Year, 1927.

There's a stark contrast between play and amusement. As children mature and begin to word the world, they begin to categorize time and space. They can identify moments and places of play, differentiating those to moments and places of work. In those early years, before they word the world, play is the “work” of the child. It is through play that they develop their imagination, emotional intelligence, awareness of others, and unconditional love.

If scholē is the leisure time devoted to learning, then play is foundational. However, amusement, or making school fun, is not the goal here3. Rather, play is the educational tool that enforces creativity, curiosity, wonder, and enthusiasm, which are essential for education.

Imagination

Illustration by Elsa Beskow, The Forest Children, 1910.

Embodying play enables human beings to participate in the world. Instead of intellectualizing the world, which imposes concepts on the world, participating in the world, or what Gayatri Spivak calls, wordling the world4, fosters love, wonder and a deep connection to our world. Imagination is at the heart of storytelling and narrative creation. By participating in a story larger than ourselves, especially if we acknowledge the unseen realm, usually told in fairy tales, myths, legends, folktales, and hagiographies, we find intimacy with a world beyond our five senses. This is why telling the stories of the saints and sages, of angels, and of elves and gnomes, cultivates imagination. In fact, it helps us access the Imaginal World or Alam al-Khayyal5, which the great Sufis have mentioned. The Imaginal Word is the bridge between spiritual realities and the material world, underscoring that the perceptible world is not a fixed entity but is shaped by perception and imagination.

Kinship

Illustration by Elsa Beskow, The Sun Egg, 1932.

In #FieldNotes005: Rediscovering Our Nature, I argued that our metaphysical epistemology must be grounded in kincentrism, the experience of all creatures as kin6. Note that it is the experience and not the idea. The experience of kinship is achieved through that play, before the world is worded. Penobscot educator and lawyer, Sherri Mitchell Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset writes, to “move from ethnocentric ideologies toward more world-centric and kincentric ways of knowing, we have to actively work to develop our spiritual and emotional intelligence. This will offer us the spaciousness needed to gain self-awareness and awareness of others, regulate our emotions, and make better decisions for ourselves and all our relatives on Mother Earth. It also makes it possible to maintain healthy long-term relationships.”7 A kincentric way of knowing is grounded in recognizing that we are deeply woven in a cosmic web. It is part of our pathway towards celestial becoming. This way of knowing is essential for a regenerative education because it expands moral awareness to all creatures.

Vocation

Illustration by Elsa Beskow, Pelle's New Suit, 1912.

Dorothy Sayers often spoke at length on the subject of work and vocation, challenging the assertion that work is drudgery. Perhaps our disdain for work comes from the soulless factories of the industrial age, or from the worker's alienation from his or her production. Sayers argued that work “should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself […] and man, made in God's image should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.”8 In other words, this means serving the work itself and not some other reason, even if noble. (e.g. the market, the community, the family, etc.) Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Ikiru, is a case in point. The protagonist finds himself as senior bureaucratic, having just been diagnosed terminal stomach cancer. As he reflects on his career, he comes to realize that he had survived the drudgery for the sake of his son. He was left, feeling unaccomplished, and his life wasted (I suggest you watch the film to see the protagonist's fate).

Sayers argued that a vocation is work as an ends in and of itself. “Where we have become confused is in mixing up the ends to which our work is put with the way in which the work is done. The end of the work will be decided by out religious outlook: as we are so we make.” Education must instill a sense of vocation in our work lest we become technocrats in a world devoid of meaning

Individuation

Illustration by Elsa Beskow, Ollie's Ski Trip, 1907.

Individuation is the moment when one embodies what they know. In his in-depth study of Islamic Education in West Africa, Dr. Butch (Bilal) Ware writes, in “the classical tradition of Islam — still alive in West Africa — true knowledge was seen as held in the human body. […] When this moment of true knowledge — unveiling or gnosis — arrives, the body is filled with knowledge of God.”9 The penultimate goal of education is individuation, or the embodiment of knowledge.

Indigenous ways of knowing, all over the world, mark moments of individuation through initiation, rites of passages, and ceremony. Those moments symbolize the transition from childhood to adulthood. Unfortunately, contemporary society has lost these moments and replaced them with metaphorical stamps of approval. Those stamps certify what one can do, but not who one should be. No wonder there has been an increasing global crisis of meaning since the late 19th century.

Another way to understand individuation is when someone is aware that they are in the crowd but not of it. It is when they become the narrators of their own story. Carl Jung explained that “it is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona on the one hand, and the suggestive power of the primordial images on the other.”10An education is only regenerative when it lays the foundation for this process; to become whole human beings.11

Life Itself

We need to experience education as life itself. Education permeates all aspects of our lives, including birth, living, dying, and death. Education as life itself is an acknowledgement that our methods and tools are limited. When we think about our children, and obsess about the tool (homeschooling, classical education, unschooling, Waldorf, public schooling, etc.), we forget about our direct participation in education. A regenerative education goes beyond the mere method and looks at the whole system. After all, isn't it obvious that it takes a village to raise a child?

See Machado de Oliveira, V. (2021). Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. North Atlantic Books. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira distinguishes between mastery education and depth education. Master education focuses “on the self-actualization, self-regulation, self-authorship, self-realization, self-expression, or self-care of the individuated self.” Depth education “focuses on complexities and paradoxes and it invites all of us to sit with difficulties; unpack investments; confront resistance; disarm affective land mines; relate beyond meaning, identity, and understanding; rationally explore the limits of rationality; and face humanity within and around us in all its complexity: the good, the bad, the broken, and the messed up.” (pp. 43-44) For our purposes, this distinction is important as it helps us understand the breadth of education. Whereas Machado would argue that the former is self-serving while the latter “expands relationships,” I believe that master education can only come as a result of depth education and not the other way around. See #Seed005: Nature's Masters & Custodians.

For the complete story, see: Gatto, J. T. (1992). Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. New Society Publishers.⬤

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death is worth reading for those interested in understanding the impact of so-called edutainment. Postman argues that television transformed education into a form of entertainment, leading to a decline in critical thinking and serious discourse. It fostered an environment that pushes teachers to compete with entertainers for the attention of their pupils.

Spivak, G. C. (1985). The Rani of Simur: An Essay in Reading the Archive. History and Theory, 24(3), 247-272.

Regarding the Alam al-Khayyal, William Chittick writes, imagination, when “considered as a reality within the human microcosm” is “the human self, which acts as an intermediary between the luminous and immaterial divine spirit and the dark and dense body.” He continues, “it is woven of imagination. Which helps explain its affinity to the jinn.” Finally, “the human task is to strengthen the spiritual light and weaken the bodily darkness,” and “the happiness and wholeness of the human state depend upon the degree of integration that has been achieved in this world.” SeeChittick, W. C. (1994). Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-‘Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity. State University of New York Press. p. 71.

It's worth noting that kinship is also about learning with and from other creatures. See Narvaez, D., & Bradshaw, G. A. (2021). The Evolved Nest: Nature's way of raising children and creating connected communities. North Atlantic Books.

Mitchell, S. (2023, May 9). We Need a Kincentric Worldview. Atmos. https://atmos.earth/sherri-mitchell-wehna-hamu-kwasset-we-need-a-kincentric-worldview/

Sayers, D. L. (2005). “Why work?” In H. Oldmeadow (Ed.), The betrayal of tradition: Essays on the spiritual crisis of modernity (p. 217). World Wisdom. (Original lecture given in 1942).

Ware, R. L. (2014). The Walking Qur'an: Islamic education, embodied knowledge, and history in West Africa. The University of North Carolina Press. p. 253.

Jung, C. G. (1967) “Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious.” Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW, Vol 7.

Readers may be interested in exploring the work of Bill Plotkin, founder of the Animas Valley Institute. Plotkin argues that the initiation of the soul is an essential spiritual adventure that most of the world has forgotten. See Plotkin, B. (2021). The journey of soul initiation: A field guide for visionaries, evolutionaries, and revolutionaries. New World Library.