During the debriefing after the retreat (when you are allowed to talk and make eye contact!), I spoke with two young men: One a physics and astronomy major and the other pre-med. FIRST observations about the day for both of them were that they were "happy to not feel any pressure to respond to their phones or texts."
That response, along with the tonglen meditation used with classes by a practitioner in The Heart of Higher Education, makes me more inclined to try short meditations in class (see pg. 159-160). I envision brief periods of "staying" at the end of class and periods of tonglen at the beginning. The beginning meditation could start on day one with the sangha (or community-creating) goal of relieving the nervousness everyone feels about speaking in class. It could later pertain more to course materials or current events and the relief of suffering in light of our interconnectedness.
I am finding The Heart of Higher Education to be more and more appropriate for a KCELT group and discussion as I feel many of the points raised are important things to consider both for the well being of professors and of students. As it pertains to the former, the authors remind that community of practitioners is important to keep "fresh" the pedagogy as well as to provide support for those who are "experimenting." As it pertains to the latter, the book's co-author, Arthur Zajonc, speaks about the importance of finding a mentor, community, and of "learning to animate what [he] was receiving" in college (pg. 55). He quotes Emerson (pg. 55) adding:
"We see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them."According to the authors, animation is the result of lived (stories, emotions) and experiential (service learning, etc.) connection to the material. Ultimately the authors wish for students to have a contemplative college education that allows them to divine the meaning of life, their place in it, and how they are meant to serve (vocation) the world. The quote (pg. 49) that seems particularly applicable to sociology as a discipline in this mission is: "Giving students knowledge as power over the world while failing to help them gain the kind of self-knowledge that gives them power over themselves is a recipe for danger."
The book's authors are generally advocating "integrated education" as a means of producing students that are engaged and not distanced from the material or from each other. In the course of engaging critiques of the inclusion of 'emotion' or 'humanity' in the classroom, they remind that "a large percentage of the people who oversaw the murder of six million Jews had doctoral degrees from some of the 'great' universities of the era. We need to understand how integrative forms of teaching and learning can mitigate against educational travesties and tragedies such as this" (pg. 32). Likewise, they caution against classroom discourse that allows for dualistic us/them "fascism of the heart that would kill off anyone who threatens my cherished world view- not with a gas chamber, but with a mental or verbal dismissal that renders that person irrelevant to my life" (pg. 32). Overall, integrative education is designed to have students "think the world together rather than think it apart, to know the world in a way that empowers educated people to act on behalf of [spiritual and intellectual] wholeness rather than fragmentation" (pg. 22).
Crucial to me at present is the emphasis on contemplation in education (via mindfulness and meditation) as a means of taking care of both teacher and student. Without awareness of inner worlds, one is unable to respond (rather than react) to the state of outer worlds. Noting the critique of a former Harvard dean that "students are not soulless, but their university is," the authors share a Yale Law School dean's assertion that "a college is not just a place for the transmission of knowledge but a form for the exploration of life's mystery" (pg. 3). They ask whether "current educational efforts address the whole human being- mind, heart, and spirit- in ways that contribute best to our future on this fragile planet" (pg. 5) as well as whether education helps "students move past fragmentation and develop a sense of motivation and purpose in the world?" (pg. 7).
For both student and professor, the authors demand that education (pg. 11):
"...[place] primacy of the participating observer whose experiences and relationships form the core of the new sciences. This emphasis on the lived experience of the scientific 'observer' links the power of scientific knowing with the feelings we have...and the compassion we feel for those who suffer, a shift of perspective whose implications are pivotal for higher education. In this view, the relationships and experiences of our lives- and the lives of our students- are not dismissed as irrelevant or inconsequential but are fully granted their own standing as building blocks of reality."
In order to achieve the integrated education described in the book, both the focus of teaching and the teacher must be as integrated in mind and body as possible. I will confess to spending the majority of my time in the classroom thus far abjectly lacking said integration. I plan to participate in the activities (and many assignments as well) of my students in order to keep me accountable to my fragile, but inchoate, integration. Ultimately, we must live in a way that reflects that we are "a dynamic whole whose faces are many but whose core is single" (pg. 70) if we are to be happy and healthy in relation to ourselves, each other, other sentient beings, and the Earth as a whole.
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