Academic
Exchange Quarterly Spring
2003 Volume 7, Issue 1
Spiritual Growth in the
Secular Schools
Marsha Newman, St. Mary’s
College,
Biography: Marsha Newman is Coordinator of the Liberal
& Civic Studies Program at St. Mary’s College. She is an interdisciplinary scholar with
specialization in visionary literature and the scholarship of teaching and
learning.
Abstract: The development of compassion for others
through awareness and service is a basic ingredient in most recipes for
spiritual growth. In many religious
traditions, this is measured by the movement from solipsistic individuality to
a shared concern for and participation in the larger community. Increasingly, educators believe that the
public schools can also function as communities in support of the development
of understanding and compassion. To do
so requires the provision of a context that is incontrovertibly shared, such as
the framework of democracy, in which individual and community are both highly
valued. A most effective pedagogy is the
structuring of a democratic classroom, and the implementation of
service-learning, through which intrinsic motivation to grow in concern for
others is successfully fostered. In this
way, “spiritual” growth can be a concern of the secular schools.
Spiritual
Growth in the Secular Schools
The
development of compassion for others through awareness and service is a basic
ingredient in most recipes for spiritual growth. However, the development of genuine concern
for others is not only evidence of spiritual evolution, but of psychological
and emotional maturation. Moreover, it
is a vital stage in human growth that deserves support through the public
school curriculum. While the classroom
is a secular space, the individuals who come together there are products of
many diverse spiritual traditions. In
acknowledging some of the common insights and values offered by these
traditions, and their relevance to a democratic, secular society, schools can
incorporate discussions of values in the
classroom without violating principles of religious freedom, or straining the
legal limits of such state-funded institutions.
The
degree to which individuals learn to care about others is not only a
psychological and social concern, but is seen by many religious traditions as a
measure of spiritual growth. Within
Christianity, St. Teresa of
When
I see people very diligently trying to discover what kind of prayer they are
experiencing and so completely wrapt up in their
prayers that they seem afraid to stir, or to indulge in a moment’s thought,
lest they should lose the slightest degree of the tenderness and devotion which
they have been feeling, I realize how little they understand of the road to the
attainment of union. They think that the
whole thing consists in this. But no,
sisters, no; what the Lord desires is works.
If you see a sick woman to whom you can give some help, never be
affected by the fear that your devotion will suffer, but take pity on her: if
she is in pain, you should feel pain too; if necessary, fast so that she may
have your food…if you find you are lacking in this virtue, you have not yet
attained union. So ask Our Lord to grant
you this perfect love for your neighbor….
(The
Here
St. Teresa suggests that it is compassion that releases us from the
circumscription of egoic identity with the small,
individual self, and moves us towards selflessness, an open state, receptive to
union through love. The complexity of the command to love is that this
transcendent act is accomplished not solely by an intellectual choice, nor by a
movement of the will in accordance with faith, but by acts of sacrifice.
Within
the Jewish tradition, Martin Buber speaks eloquently
of “sacrifice” as an essential stage in the act of relating to another. He distinguishes, however, between a
sacrifice of “things” or offerings, which he calls “magic,” and a sacrifice of
the small self, which is a step towards relationship with others and with
God. In a passage from his well-known
book I and Thou, he explains:
What
distinguishes sacrifice and prayer from all magic?--Magic desires to obtain its
effects without entering into relation, and practices its tricks in the void.
But sacrifice and prayer are set “before the Face.” In the consummation of the
holy primary word that means mutual action: they speak the Thou, and then they hear (83).
The psychology of union within the Hindu tradition
bears some primary similarities to both Christian and Jewish thought, but with
the difference that the “sacrifice” and the union are seen as a progressive
movement from lower (selfish) to higher (generous) centers of consciousness
represented by chakras, or centers of energy and
consciousness within the human body.
Through acts of purification, meditation and charity, energy, or “shakti,” progresses upwards through these centers until it
reaches the crown chakra at the top of head, where
small self and large Self merge in one.
At this point, self-consciousness ceases, as “I” and “Thou” are
united. In Hindu teachings, the
attainment of enlightenment, then, depends upon a kind of sacrifice: the
renunciation of the restrictive concept of the small self (jivan),
and the identification with the higher Self (Atman) (Madhusudandasji,
8-10).
That growth in love and compassion is a sign of
spiritual progress is also emphasized by Annemarie Schimmel in her book, Mystical
Dimensions of Islam. There she
explains that within the Sufi tradition, “the last stations on the mystical
path are love and gnosis….Sometimes they were considered complementary to one
another, sometimes love was regarded as superior, and at other times gnosis was
considered higher” (130). Schimmel further notes a resonance between Sufi concepts of
love, and the dictum of St. Augustan, “one can know something only insofar as
one loves it” (131). She further shows
the central place of love in Sufi practice by citing the words of the Sufi Prophet: “O God, give me love of Thee,
and love of those who love Thee, and love of what makes me approach Thy love,
and make Thy love dearer to me than cool water” (131).
Similarly,
Buddhism recognizes the essential role of relationship to others in spiritual
formation. The Dalai Lama lists
“generosity” as the starting point for spiritual development: “The first five
transcendent practices are generosity, moral discipline, patience, enthusiasm
and meditative absorption” (112). While
non-violence is a basic Buddhist principle, psychological and spiritual
maturation demand an active and generous spirit towards others. Guenther and Kawamura describe in some detail
the Buddhist call to compassion. “
‘Wholesome by being involved with benefiting,’ for instance, is an activity
through which sentient beings reach maturity by four essentials: 1. Charity, 2. Speaking kindly, 3. Acting in
such a way that others benefit, 4. Sharing ” (60). The practice of Buddhism today rests upon
three foundations: the Buddah, the dharma (body of
knowledge), and the sangha (community of practitioners). The sangha is a
body of support that allows the individual to transcend mere individuality by
joining in unitive purpose and practice with a
broader community.
Churches,
synagogues, ashrams, temples, and sanghas recognize
that community has the ability to draw the individual past the difficult stages
of spiritual growth from mere individuality towards recognition of their shared
humanity and worth. Community is the
crucible of sacrifice, where love for others carries the individual beyond a
narrow love for self, and shared goals and values support the spiritual and
psychological maturation of members.
Citizen Formation
While
this is the essence of the spiritual path, increasingly educators believe that
the public schools can also function as communities in support of the
development of understanding and compassion. Public schools can and do share
some of the major goals of world religious traditions: to help individuals grow
beyond the isolation of selfishness; to promote not just an intellectual/moral
obligation to others, but a bond of compassionate caring; and to support a
sense of purpose beyond superficial sense gratification. While private, religious schools can directly
focus upon the development of spirituality through teachings, rituals, and
prayer, public schools struggle with a perceived need to promote psychological
well-being and emotional growth in the absence of religious traditions. Many agree that public education also needs
to address ethical and moral issues, particularly as they manifest at societal
and institutional levels, but can public education ever really promote spiritual
development in an environment that is not only non-denominational, but which
draws firm lines between the teaching of secular and sacred knowledge?
Perhaps
through the widespread effort to promote tolerance of differences, and
celebrate ethnic awareness and diversity, at least two of the goals of most
spiritual traditions can easily be accommodated by the secular classroom. By exploring the role of the individual in
society—through the lens of history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, economics,
science—and in attempting to shift cultural lenses, students can be positioned
to examine their own diverse identities and values. They can be asked to look at social
structures and issues—homelessness, poverty, racism—as a challenge to
individual values as well as to shared democratic ideals.
To
define within the public school the meaning of “spiritual” growth in terms that
do not distort the larger meaning of the word requires the provision of a
context that is incontrovertibly shared.
A common ground for
The
democratic classroom is one in which students and teachers collaborate on
setting goals and determining the means to achieve these goals. It is a place
where students share projects rather than working individually. It is a class that is not limited by a
“room,” but which relies on connections to parents, and the larger community
outside of the classroom. It is
furthermore a flexible structure and pedagogy that promotes connections between
intellectual and experiential learning. One long-enduring philosophy that
supports this approach to learning is the supposition that learning is not
simply for the good of the individual in forming career skills, but is for the
good of the greater society, in forming a strong and responsible
citizenry. This concept is thoroughly
explored by Carl Glickman in his book, Revolutionizing America’s Schools:
If education is for freedom in a democracy—for ensuring
one’s own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and protecting the same for
other citizens—and not mainly career preparation, then the curriculum needs to
be broad-based, and students should not be made to select particular, tracked
career options. Work experience in
business and the public sector should support and reinforce students’ general
academic competence, communication skills, critical thinking, and associative
learning. Curriculum, courses,
concentrations, and projects should not prepare students for particular jobs or
careers; rather, they should be experiences that teach students how to continue
to learn and how to expand choices about the good life (81).
It
is clear that Glickman’s reference to the “good life”
is neither a reference to material goods, nor to particular moral or religious
virtues, but to those shared values that define American democracy, “equality,
liberty, and fraternity; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
(164). He further suggests that the
exploration of these values is well within the perameters
of acceptable study for the public schools, measuring the achievements of such
schools by their effectiveness in educating students to be better citizens:
When
professionalism in education is seen as completing democracy, as establishing
standards of practice and altering curricula , instructional programs, and
teaching and learning methods to further the purpose of democracy, the
accumulative results for students are stunning.
Schools in inner cities, rural towns and suburbs—wealthy and poor—show
substantial evidence of student achievement…when a pedagogy of democracy is
implemented (176).
The Path of
Service
One
vital and popular aspect of such a pedagogy is service-learning. It is more than an internship within the
community for the purpose of community-building, or even for strengthening
democracy. Its real power lies in the
opportunity it offers students for enlarging their sense of “self” beyond the
personal, for creating inner change akin to spiritual development as defined by
the religious traditions: the movement from self to other.
Service
to others, of necessity, involves some degree of “sacrifice.” It is inconvenient to give up time to
participate in service activities. The
larger and more difficult sacrifice, however, is the relinquishing of
comfortable and fixed ideas about the indigent, the poor, the
homeless. Frequently students new to
service may approach those they serve with genuine good will, but also with
some degree of judgment that holds the poor responsible for their own
condition. Students who maintain an
active service role within the same project or organization for at least thirty
hours a semester have the potential to gain understanding of circumstances that
cause or induce poverty. They also have
the availability of time to enter into relationship with those they serve. They learn that these are people much like
themselves, with loves and fears, with families, with dreams and hopes, with
hearts that break, with sufferings and with joys. This recognition dissipates to some degree
the barrier between self and other, and is the starting point for the growth of
compassion.
A
further development that can occur through consistent and ongoing
service-learning is an entering into community with the poor. Students who serve in unfamiliar communities,
especially in inner-city environments with which they have little connection,
may first encounter fear—if not from an imagined threat of physical danger,
then, more commonly, from an inarticulate sense of being the “other”
themselves, the outsider, the stranger.
While such role reversal may at first deepen a sense of distance from those
they have come to serve, as students learn through exposure to care about
individuals, by extension, they become concerned about their communities and
environments. They thus become “members”
of a larger community than they had previously known, and as such, frequently
need to reassess their own identity, when its original bounds have moved.
To
more fully accept and integrate such change into a shifting context and value
system, students need to articulate to themselves and others the kinds and
degrees of experiences they are having.
Therefore, regular lab sessions attached to required service-learning
projects help students to develop a better understanding of their own growth,
of the communities they serve, and of the larger structures and conflicting
value systems that impact such communities.
The labs are also a safety zone for those who are engaged in the
sometimes painful and challenging act of surrendering self-love and
self-righteousness to a higher understanding of their essential connectedness
to others. It is through shared
reflection that new ideas of personal and relational identity are
concretized.
Scholars
engaged in the study of service-learning
often measure its effects by the degree to which students become self-motivated
to continue in service to others. Carol
Werner and Natasha McVaugh agree that intrinsic
motivation to serve is most desirable, and that it is best attained by
connecting a task to pleasure or benefit.
Furthermore, they emphasize that concern for others is teachable, and
that reflection within a course structure is an appropriate pedagogy:
Reflection is the
process of thinking about one’s service
activities and their relationship to course
content. It also provides an
opportunity to discuss deeper personal values about
one’s role in the
community, the satisfactions of service, and so
on. To strengthen
commitment to the idea of service outside of course
requirements, we
talk in general about the importance and
satisfaction of service (123).
When
students recognize the depth of satisfaction they feel in sharing the burden of
suffering with others by working to end that suffering, they are increasingly
motivated to grow in caring and in love.
Some
therefore believe that political activism is a sign of spiritual
maturation. Albert Nolan in his article,
“The Service of the Poor: A Spiritual Growth,” identifies stages of spiritual development through service in the following
ways:
The first stage of our commitment to the poor is
characterized by compassion….The second stage begins with the gradual discovery
that poverty is a structural problem….The third stage of our spiritual
development begins with yet another discovery.
It begins with the discovery the poor must save themselves and that they
will do so and don’t need you or me to do it for them. Spiritually it is the stage when we come to
grips with humility in our service to the poor….The fourth and last stage of
development begins with the crisis of disillusionment and disappointment with
the poor….The poor are human beings like any of us. They are sometimes selfish, sometimes lacking
in commitment and dedication and sometimes waste money.”
While
this may sound rather insensitive at first, he further explains that our
“noblesse oblige” is itself a distancing quality that stands between the union
of the self and the other:
Real
solidarity begins when it is no longer a matter of “we” and “they.”…Even when
we romanticize the poor and put them on a pedestal we are alienating ourselves
from them. Real solidarity begins when
we recognize together the advantages and disadvantages of our different social
backgrounds and present realities and the quite different roles that we shall
therefore have to play while we commit ourselves together to the struggle
against oppression.
In many religious traditions, the path to
enlightenment, or union with the Divine, is through love of others. For a secular society, the way to peace and
well-being is through love of others. To
love others, we must know them, and enter into relationship with them. This is the way of Mother Teresa of
Works Cited
Buber, Martin. I and Thou.
Glickman, Carl D.. Revolutionizing America’s Schools.
Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998.
Guenther, Herbert V. and Leslie Kawamura. Mind in Buddhist Psychology.
Emeryville: Dharma
Publishing, 1975.
Gyatso, Tenzin
(The Dalai Lama of
Snow Lion Publications,
1994.
Madhusudandasji, Dhyanyogi
Shri. Shakti: Hidden
Treasure of Power.
McBirnie, William Steuart. ed., Holy
Bible.
Community Churches of
Mother Teresa. Jesus,
the Word to Be Spoken. Edited by Brother Angelo
Devananda.
Nolan, Albert. “The Service of the Poor: A Spiritual
Growth.” The New
Electronic Library. Blackfriars
Publications. 1984
<http://www.bfpubs.demon.co.uk/el-lib.htm>.
Schimmel, Annemarie.
Mystical Dimensions of Islam.
Teresa of
Werner, Carol M. and Natasha McVaugh.
“Service-Learning ‘Rules’ that
Encourage or Discourage
Long-Term Service: Implications for
Practice and Research.”
Learning 24 (Fall, 2000): 117-125.