Neohumanist Educational Futures:
Liberating the Pedagogical Intellect
Tamsui and Taipei, Tamkang University, 2006
FOREWORD
AND INTRODUCTION
Inayatullah, Bussey and
Milojevic
Personal Reflections
Sohail
Inayatullah
The
origins of this book are varied. For me, they are both professional
and personal, and in the spaces outsides these two defining but
confining
categories.
The
traces of this book certainly go back to a special issue of New
Renaissance (Autumn 1996) titled Holistic education. Essays by Ivana
Milojevic on women and holistic education, Marcus Bussey on
redefining education and myself on multiculturalism and education
are foundational pieces for this book. We would like to thank the
editor, Dada Vedaprajinananda for leadership in providing a forum
for helping us and others develop the theory and practice of
neo-humanism. New Renaissance remains a social and spiritual
incubator for social innovation (www.ru.org).
More
recent links can be traced to the Journal of Futures Studies (http://www2.tku.edu.tw/~tddx/jfs/).
The links between critical theory and spirituality; between
globalization and alternative visions of education and between
pedagogy and futures studies have been developed there. Ivana
Milojevic (critical spirituality and education) and Marcus Anthony
(integrated intelligence and education) contributed to Vol. 9, No.
3, 2005; Helene Pederson on schools and speciecism contributed to
Vol 8, No 4, 2004) ; Marcus Bussey (critical spirituality and
neohumanism) contributed to Vol. 5, No 2, 2000, and myself
(Teaching Futures Studies: From strategy to transformative change)
in Vol. 7 No. 3 2003. We would like to thank the Journal of Futures
Studies for moving the discourse from education about the future to
education about alternative futures, specifically toward neohumanist
futures.
Instrumental in moving this book from an idea to reality was a
seminar held at the end of August, 2003 in Dubrovnik called New
Wave: vision of the youth (http://www.gurukul.edu/news_00009.php).
Touched by the enthusiasm and idealism of youth from that region,
Didi Ananda Rama focused
us to work in writing a book on Neohumanist education.
My
personal commitment to neohumanism and neohumanistic education go
back decades. For me, the neohumanistic challenge is about opening
up identity from exclusivist dimension of territory and community to
far more inclusionary planetary articulations. This means
challenging those attitudes, selves that "other" others – that are
racist, sexist, nationalistic in practice. Having grown up in a
number of places – Lahore and Peshawar, Pakistan; Bloomington and
New York, USA; Geneva, Switzerland; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia;
Honolulu, Hawaii and now
living in Mooloolaba, Australia – I’ve seen how I have been othered
– put down, bullied, made to feel less – and how I too have used the
weapons of nation, religion, gender on others. Even in spiritual
practice, as we attempt to move toward universal humanism, we, I,
have disowned selves that are far less inspiring. Recognizing these
disowned selves is crucial in developing a neohumanist self. Without
this new self, our educational content, process and structure will
tend to remain tied to historical exclusionary identities.
The
chapters in front of you are attempts to move out of these
identities, to create new futures, particularly exploring the
implications of neohumanism on pedagogy.
There is
no end game to neohumanism – it is not as if we are suddenly
enlightened and become neohumanist. Even the enlightened being must
speak, and when she or he does so, language is used. Language is
central to the challenge of pedagogy. Language is not transparent,
but opaque. Our worldviews – of transcendence but also of trauma and
dogma – are complicit in language. Thus, neohumanist educational
futures –is a vision, an ideal, a possibility of a different type of
education. Realizing this vision, however, does not only come from
theorizing, but from creating schools that practice neohumanism, so
that the theory is interactively informed by day to day learnings.
In between the theory and the practice is the person. Neohumanism is
about transforming that person, expanding our selves and our
societies, embracing the earth, and indeed the universe. Doing so
requires liberating not just educational processes, content and
structures but the self, the intellect, we use to envision these
possibilities.
_____________________________________________________________
Marcus Bussey
As Sohail
Inayatullah has acknowledged the sources and inspiration for this
book, I would like to offer three credits of a different nature. The
first to Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar (1921-1990) who first developed the
idea of neohumanism articulated in this text. His
first discourses on neohumanism as a general reframing of the social
were given in 1982 and he noted its particular relevance to
education. A number of educators at the time made the first steps
toward applying his ideas in the context of early childhood
pedagogy. Didis Ananda Mitra and Ananda Nivedita developed a
curriculum that appeared as The Circle of Love. This
book and its underlying ordering of the curriculum into stages that
correspond to the yogic concept of the Brahma Chakra – the
evolutionary cycle of creation - is still an invaluable resource
today. Since then numerous texts have appeared to enrich our
educational thinking culminating in two significant books, a
collection of essays on neohumanist education by Sarkar
and Didi Ananda Rama’s wonderful and visually sumptuous collection
of neohumanist reflections.
The
beauty of all the thinking on neohumanist education to date is its
openness to the cultural contexts in which it finds itself. This
openness is premised on the recognition that to write a classroom
method would kill the creative and transformative spirit of
neohumanism. Why? Texts have a tendency to become dogma, and any
classroom method would prematurely define what is right, possible
and relevant. Such definition would soon become both historically
and culturally bound.
Method
without deep intention/reflective/deconstructive processes will
inevitably become a victim of its own best intentions – violence to
self and other will always result. Sarkar wisely left no neohumanist
education method. His was a cultural project in which he valued open
systems over closed. He recognised that the uniqueness of the human
condition – its existential condition – meant that replicability of
a pedagogical process through legislating curriculum and mandating
behavioural, structural and affective processes would destroy the
real meaning of neohumanist education.
Intention-as-method should always unleash the creative energies of
those involved and should also affirm agency. Intention-as-method
means deep praxis. The core of the neohumanist method exists not in
the classroom but in the human heart. Principles for benevolent
action are built into it at all levels of the human condition: the
physical, intellectual and spiritual. This is what we must work
with.
The
second credit is to the tireless work of Arete Brim. Her part in my
story is significant though we have only met face to face on one
brief occasion. I have been teaching in neohumanist schools and/or
contexts since 1988 and it has been a growing and deepening
experience for me. I went to the first global neohumanist conference
held in India in 1992 and it was then that I was first inspired to
edit a text like this. Then in 1995 I decided to do a masters in
education focussing on neohumanist education.
Filled
with confidence I went to a university, found an open minded
supervisor and started work. Early on she turned to me and asked me
to define neohumanist education for her. I was struck dumb. I could
not find any appropriate way to communicate what I thought and felt.
With my tail between my legs I went away. I dropped out of the
course and thought long and hard. At this time I read everything I
could find, meditated and kept teaching. Then in 1998 I received an
email from Arete asking me to help write up pages for the new
Neohumanist education web site-http://gurukul.edu/.
Suddenly the words started to flow. Thank you Arete!
Arete has
also worked closely with Didi Ananda Rama in designing the first
comprehensive diploma in Neohumanist early childhood education. In
addition, she has pretty much single-handedly produced the Gurukul
Newsletter for the past ten years. Her quiet role in the venture
cannot be under estimated.
My third
credit is a thank you to my mother, Marjorie Bussey, whose image of
kundalini
is on the front of this book. I am convinced that my interest in
education and sensitivity to creative processes as a way of engaging
in transformative education owe much to her own vital engagement
with art education. The creative world of ideas that was the
hallmark of my parent’s love of living and learning can certainly be
seen to have shaped my own concerns and career.
This book in many ways is a journey to the heart
of learning. There is no attempt here to define a method for the
classroom or school. The chapters in are exploratory and open.
Learning, as I have pointed out, is not something that can be
codified. It is not curriculum though this has something to do with
education. Nor is it about information or even wisdom, though these
too are aspects of learning. Learning, or specifically neohumanist
learning, is an attitude, a stance that cannot be easily expressed
and certainly cannot be prescribed. The teacher comes to embody the
process, hence it is always alive and responsive to context.
Neohumanist education is something you come to feel as much as
think.
The
paradox of futures work is that it has much less to do with the
future than the present and the past. Neohumanist futures
involves
working in the present towards desired outcomes that foster
increased levels of meaning, wellbeing and purpose around the world.
In this process we acknowledge our indebtedness to the past in the
form of the rich and diverse cultural traditions we inherit today.
Simultaneously, we must acknowledge the debt we owe to those in the
past whose lives and cultures have suffered because of the actions
of our predecessors. This double debt carries on into the present
where affluence in one part of the world is linked to poverty in
another. Similarly, this debt is projected into the future, as
affluence today is in many ways built on diminished returns in the
future for future generations who will not only inherit the best of
what we do today but also the foreseen and unforeseen results of
current economic, social and environmental activity.
So,
when we come to map neohumanist educational futures we must unpack
the traditions that inform the neohumanist educational potentiality
while acknowledging the deeply ethical commitment it has to a
fulfilment of our debt to the hidden temporal economics described
above. Indebtedness, which brings gratitude not guilt, is a
necessary condition for a deepened sense of connection and
responsibility towards all generations, past, present and future, as
well as to the cultures and environments (both human and natural)
that have, do or will sustain them.
It is
hard for modern western consciousness, permeated by a belief in
individuality and personal agency and autonomy, to feel comfortable
with this concept of indebtedness; the owing of an impersonal debt.
Yet this awareness has many useful ethical dimensions. Firstly, it
humbles those who feel ‘above’ or ‘outside’ of the social,
historical and environmental contexts of their humanity. Secondly,
it also underscores the relationship with past, present and future;
bringing with it a sense of responsibility and the need for ethical
and sustainable action at all times. Thirdly, it carries with it a
spiritual imperative linked to a sense of belonging to a ‘story’ or
‘body’ of humanity by virtue of blood spilt, tears shed, and hope
unfulfilled; this is what might be called belonging by virtue of
the debt that cannot be repaid.
________________________________________________________________
Ivana
Milojević
I owe a
personal debt to people and experiences that helped make me who I am
today. What follows is a part of my story that may help
contextualise my attraction to neohumanist stretching of boundaries
and challenging of tightly held yet socially constructed identities.
Similarly to personal histories offered by Sohail Inayatullah and
Marcus Bussey my personal commitment to neohumanist education also
goes a long way. Furthermore, both my personal and professional
engagements with core neohumanist ideas have not been an easy
process but one that has gone through many trials and tribulations.
This has been a process of both trauma and transcendence, in regard
to my own identity, educational and knowledge processes that I have
been part of, and indeed, in regard to my own views on life itself.
One common thread in this process has certainly been the questions
of who and why I am and where I may be going. Another common thread
is my desire to go towards ever expanding vistas, well beyond the
confines of imposed, stifling answers and confining identity
structures. In this process, some events held greater significance
then the others.
My first
memory of a confining identity was when a bunch of boys didn’t let
me join their game for being ‘a girl’. They were moving miniature
cars by hand, over improvised tunnels, bridges and roads – a task
apparently beyond my capabilities and that of my gender. As a girl
and a woman I experienced various forms of exclusion, semi-inclusion
and subtle and not so subtle dwindling of my humanity all my life.
Throughout my childhood, through both formal and informal education
practices, I received two messages that often collided – that I was
a ‘human’ and that I was a ‘girl/woman’. As a human I had the
opportunity to fully participate in a human society, however, as a
girl/woman I had the obligation to know/accept my limitations as a
member of a particular ‘sub’/inferior social group. I was often
confused as to what to expect from myself. For example, I could see
that my academic ‘achievement’ in primary and secondary school was
‘superior’ to that of all the boys that attended same classes as
myself. Unlike me, no boy was a straight A student there and then.
At the same time, I could also see that all ‘important’ people in
human history that somehow ‘excelled’ in the area of academic
achievement – i.e. theorists, philosophers, academics, scientists –
were not of my gender. The best explanation to this phenomenon I was
to be given early on was related to men’s superior physical
size/strength, ability to go to the Army, late but also
extraordinary development in late teens, and a peculiar influence of
male hormones and brain size. Needless to say, I was relieved,
enthused and inspired by discovering feminist theory. This
increasing knowledge of feminist theory, concepts, research and
methods have been slowly, over the years and decades, chipping away
at the damage done in my early childhood. Thus my first chosen
identity was that of ‘a feminist’ – identity that was initially
giving me some freedom to cross over one particular
boundary/border.
We all
carry many traumas within our psyche. Two major ones for me – that
continued this previously described process of chipping away any
certainty I may have had in regard to the socially constructed
identity – were wars in former Yugoslavia and my migration to
Australia. In various ways, these two qualitatively different types
of events took away my national, ethnic, professional and the
identity based on a particular social strata. Upon my arrival to
Australia I also ‘managed’ to change my racial identity – from
considering myself as ‘white’ to being considered by others as
‘olive’. A peculiar racial identity indeed (!), but certainly based
on particular histories of migration and various ‘otherings’
operating within an Australian context. The complexity of an
ethnic/racial/cultural mix of my current family is yet another
reason in a series of personal events that have lead to neohumanism
making so much sense to me. Beyond various geo and socio sentiments
there lies a possibility for a unified humanity, a vision of our
identities as they truly, ultimately are. The latest scientific (ie.
human genome mapping), anthropological (ie. where we all originally
come from) and psychological research (i.e what we need to be
mentally healthy as well as happy) requires such a vision/
functioning cosmology that may further facilitate the development of
a ‘conscious’ evolution of/for a global/planetary human society. To
me, the not so wonderful alternatives to planetary based cosmologies
and philosophies such as neohumanism may only result in further
divisions among humans, environmental degradation, as well as in
further increase in social anomia and various forms of violence.
But the
beauty of neohumanism is that the liberating possibilities do not
stop here, with the only consideration given to the sentient beings
we identify as human. Rather, neohumanism enables us to position
ourselves within a broader context of ever evolving life on Earth,
and possibly beyond. This planetary vision transcend various
limitation posed by individualism, nationalism, industrialism,
competitive globalism as well as classism, castism, racism and
patriarchy. The impairment to human spirit and psyche, through
various boundaries of socially constructed identities, cannot be
overstated. Many decades ago Sigmund Freud has discovered and
described what happens when the narcissistic injury – the
infatuation with one’s self – becomes a narcissistic rage –
wherein individual associates with a larger group such as ethnic
group or nation state and perceives injuries to the group as an
injury to the self. If such events do occur, as they often do, the
subsequent rage can, of course, only be lessened by violent
‘undoing’ of hurt, through both forms of illegal and legalised
violence (‘just war’ being an example of the latter). Subsequently,
the cycles of the ‘initial attack’ and ‘subsequent revenge’ keep on
continuing. Neohumanism, on the other hand, challenges such
historical and contemporary developments in regard to global war,
violence and social injustice in a simple yet profound way, by
asking the following question:
What happens, when human desire for limitlessness
– for identifying with something larger than the self – goes all the
way, beyond limitations of ethnicity, class, race, religion, gender,
nation state, and even species?
To me,
the answer is again both simple and profound:
There are no enemies to fight, no boundaries to
hold our spirit thwarted, no socially constructed identity in
gripping fear of being lost and no attachments worth human
suffering.
Among
many challenges neohumanism throws at contemporary dominant ways of
being, thinking and doing is in relation to how we threat and what
we teach our children. It is painfully obvious to me that if we
continue to model and teach – in both cover and overt terms –
various forms of ‘othering’ and limiting identities, the
contemporary processes of domination, ‘power over’, unrelenting
competition and endemic violence will continue. And so will human
misery and hopelessness. It has been said many times before that our
current dominant educational processes, structures and contents -
which are too often in line with and directly feeding into various
individual and social dysfunctions - need to be fundamentally
challenged. Countless educators, parents and community members have
been working relentlessly to help us both further theorise as well
as put into practice alternatives that are inspiring, transformative
and doable. Some of those individuals, and in regard to their
influence on this book, have been mention earlier in this Forward.
Countless more others, many of which we have not had a personal
contact with, are also helping transformative praxis of planetary
neohumanistic education continue, whether they are using these terms
or not. My sincere thanks goes to all that are part of this process
in general, and to writers and readers of this text in particular.
Education may not help save the (human) world but an education of a
particular kind just might. At the very list, it may help with one’s
own spiritual yearning, personal transformation and the walk back
home.
________________________________________________________________
Introducing
Neohumanism
While the roots of neohumanism are certainly
based on the spiritual practice of Tantra (from the broader Indic
episteme), neohumanism and neohumanistic education is situated best
as a transcivilizational global pedagogy.
Neohumanism has linear dimensions, continuing the
progressive evolution of rights that the Enlightenment has given us
and a cyclical dimension, embracing our ancient spiritual
traditions, creating thus a turn of the spiral, transcending and
including past and present.
Neohumanism thus aims to relocate the self from ego (and the pursuit
of individual maximization), from family (and the pride of
genealogy), from geo-sentiments (attachments to land and nation),
from socio-sentiments (attachments to class, race and religious
community), from humanism (the human being as the centre of the
universe) to Neohumanism (love and devotion for all, inanimate and
animate, beings of the universe).
The
chapters
The book itself is divided into five parts.
Chapters
by Marcus Bussey, Acharya Vedaprajiananda, Ivana Milojević and
Sohail Inayatullah theorize neohumanist education. In these
chapters, educational process is set within the context of
globalisation and the theoretical domains of critical theory and
social futures.
The
second part is focused on the spiritual in education. Chapters by
Tobin Hart and Marcus Anthony explore the genealogical and epistemic
traditions that have defined the spiritual in education and with
which neohumanist theory dialogues. A further chapter by Ivana
Milojević offers insights into how neohumanism is situated in the
discourse of collective violence pedagogy with specific reference to
the relationship of transformative educational practice to both
‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions of religion and constructions of the
spiritual.
The third
section of the book focuses on particular issues in educational
futures. Included are chapters on partnership education by Riane
Eisler, social cohesion by Marlene de Beer, speciesism by Helene
Pederson, indicators of alternative education by Vachel Miller, the
teaching of neohumanist history by Marcus Bussey and Sohail
Inayatullah and finally Peter Hayward and Joseph Voros’ role-playing
game that provides an experiential sense of the implications of
neohumanism for leadership.
Part four
presents two examples of neohumanist education in practice with a
case study by Ivana Milojević of a neohumanistic school and
Mahajyoti Glassman’s thoughts on how to teach neohumanism.
The book
concludes on a futures note with an exploration of neohumanist
educational scenarios by Sohail Inayatullah.
Interspersed in these parts are short Perspectives by Prabhat
Rainjan Sarkar, Acharya Shambushivananda, and Acharya
Maheshvarananda (interviewing Paulo Freire) and concludes with a
short set of appendixes.
We hope that this
book will engage the intellect, however, our intention is that this
process of engagement leads to its liberation. As Sarkar wrote many
years ago: " Sa' vidya' ya' vimuktaye" or
"Education is that which liberates." Thank you for joining us on
this journey.
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