Tradition
& Energy:
Calculating our
Educational power bill
Marcus Bussey
University of the
Sunshine Coast
MBussey@usc.edu.au
Energy
Seeing an orbital
image of planet Earth at night you immediately become aware of two
things. Firstly, how much energy is used to maintain the human
experiment; secondly, how inequitably it is distributed around the
globe. As James Lovelock recently observed, “civilisation is
energy-intensive” yet the real energy that is involved in human
existence cannot be seen as easily as the orbital photo of our
nightly planet suggests.
The real energy
driving the human experiment is psychic energy. There is undoubtedly
some correlation between the physical energy emitted each night by
our cities and the psychic forces that are driving late-modernity,
yet this tells only part of a much bigger story.
Much of the psychic
energy driving the human experiment is bounded by traditions. In
fact it is quite a plausible proposition to claim that traditions
are energy streams that draw on energy from the past, condense and
focus energy in the present and, like a torch light, channel and
project energy into the future. The fibre optic cables and satellite
transmissions that bring speed and flexibility to the planet and its
globalising economy and culture, as well as the urban incandescence
of the Earth at night, are in fact the by products of an invisible
but clearly defined confluence of energy generating traditions.
Roots & Rivers
Rabindranath Tagore,
one of India’s great poets, describes creation as a waking up, an
explosion of energy. Not the traditional Big Bang, but something
akin as Brahma awakens and its joy is boundless. The roots of the
Indic tradition lie in this expression of boundless-joy. Today this
story has merged with many others like the course of the Ganges as
it first meets the great rivers of Yamuna, Ghaghara and Kosi and
goes on through twists and turns, finally spitting again and again
in the monsoonal Delta of Bengal.
Similarly, the turbine
engines of culture are alive with the dynamic dance of traditions,
churning away like the great river Ganges as it makes its (untidy)
way to the sea. The stories cultures tell themselves are the source
of much energy, the dreams (and nightmares) that inspire nations,
drive business and political leaders are more powerful than nuclear
energy. The myths and metaphors that frame our unconscious daily
coming and goings are what we need to turn to when seeking to
rethink civilisation and our role in its maintenance.
The Educational
Power Bill
When you think of
traditions as conduits of power it is possible to look at any social
structure and ask about it: What traditions power it? Who pays? Are
there alternative energy sources?
Take one of societies
most complex and contested institutions: Education. Far from being
monolithic education is a veritable power grid generating huge
energy for the expansive and predatory economic and the cultural
practices of a globalising world.
The energy of this
system draws on an array of traditions each bringing to the current
system energy in the form of values, practices and beliefs. The
humanism that drove education for centuries has been absorbed by the
utilitarian needs of a rapidly globalising society. The pragmatic
concerns of utilitarianism are at least in part off set by an
opening up of democratic processes and a greening of the school.
Furthermore, we also have the romantic tradition placing the child
at the centre of the learning equation. Thus we find humanist,
utilitarian, democratic, environmental and romantic strands at work;
all provide energy and work to maintain the coherence of the
system.
And the cost? The
humanist tradition privileged the old elites, where culture and
money and power coalesced, the poor payed; the utilitarian, as power
shifted from the old elites to the new, a new form of education
emerged and the user pays, ultimately the poor are excluded and as
money flows upwards, they pay again.
The democratic offers
a way out, as does the environmental: both stem from traditions that
challenge hierarchies, yet both are too fragmented to challenge the
dominance of the utilitarian, their effect is ameliorative but they
contain the potential energy to challenge this dominance should a
shift in the world-system cause a ‘power failure’ – such a shift
could be either social or environmental. And the romantic? Child
centredness is powerful, as it is the root of both soft and hard
individualism, but it is too easily coopted by the dominant cultural
elites, particularly those seeking a cultural ‘off-set’ for the
vacuum created by the loss of humanism to utilitarianism.
Alternative Energy
We have lived in a
resource rich world that at the physical level is coming to
recognise its limits. What has been left largely unharnessed is the
natural capital essential to traditions: human energy. To date human
psychic capital has been focussed on the control and manipulation of
the physical world. It has been largely shaped and directed by the
materialism inherent to the Enlightenment and the drive to generate
capital.
Holistic solutions embrace
spiritual energy. This is energy locked in ancient traditions such
as that Tagore describes above. Captured by the so-called
‘Protestant work ethic’ creation becomes an act of toil; schooling
as a result is about ‘hard’ work, productivity and accountability.
Add to this a healthy dose of capitalist rhetoric with ‘user pays’
and ‘choice’ on the menu and we end up with an entropic system that
consumes energy, in the form of the lives, heart and imaginations of
people and communities, rather than generates it.
This formula can be
turned on its head with creation becoming an act of joy. Creative,
life-affirming neohumanist traditions generate energy. If we infuse
education with spiritual energy drawn from the practices, values and
commitments of the great spiritual traditions we produce a system
that channels powerful creative forces into the future. The turn is
inward and thus saves us from the materialist despair inherent to
the thinking of James Lovelock who can only measure energy at the
physical finite level.
Physical energy is a
measure of the psychic, but it is a symptom not a driving force.
This is so, despite the obvious fact that both physical decline and
technological advance, a la Moore’s Law, have momentums of their own
once they gets beyond a specific point.
To harness traditions
of power and depth and focus them into systems such as education is
a powerful idea. Education that generates rather than consumes
energy has the potential to return hope and creativity to the human
experiment and enliven our daily dealings with the pressing
environmental concerns that seem so overwhelming. Moore’s law and
environmental catastrophe theories are certainly a pressing concern
but they overlook the largely untapped power that lies within us
all.