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SCHOOLS WITH SPIRIT
Nurturing the Inner Lives of Children and Teachers
Edited by: Linda Lantieri
Boston:Beacon Press:2001
Reviewed by Lon Woodbury
The editor relays her early frustration with teaching in
public schools where the Separation of Church and State seemed
to prohibit her talking about spiritual matters at all. She
knew her spiritual beliefs were very important to her and
a significant part of her being, and she felt divided, not
providing her best efforts for her students. This book is
a collection of essays by several educators who faced the
same dilemma, and each found ways to bring “soul” and “spirit”
into the classroom in a way that allowed them to teach to
the whole child, without violating the principle of the Separation
of Church and State. In other words, they are attempting
to bring meaning and purpose into the classroom.
In the foreword, Daniel Goleman points out that the concepts
presented by the writers featured in Schools with Spirit
are consistent with his ground-breaking book, Emotional Intelligence.
The Schools with Spirit editor and Goleman both state that
they feel it describes approaches that are the next natural
step in developing practices that teach to the whole child,
especially the aspects Goleman describes in Emotional Intelligence.
Each of the Schools with Spirit writers have developed a
different solution to the goal of being public school teachers
that are “divided-no-more.”
Some describe how they have used art as a tool to help the
students nurture their inner life, while others have drawn
on a respect for nature and learn from Native American concepts.
Another writer describes how learning the philosophy and
practice of the martial arts can be a powerful anchor in
teaching to a child’s inner life, as well as the more secular
goals of public education.
All students have the basic meaningful questions we all
ask from time to time, such as “Who am I?” and “Does my life
have meaning?” But, since these questions demand a spiritual
focus to even discuss them, they were ignored or turned aside
until the teacher found a way to address them without bringing
religion into the classroom.
The editor points out that her journey to the vision of
Schools With Spirit came through her work exploring ways
to help students with conflict resolution. She concluded
that a root part of the problem of violence in our culture
is being fostered by a narrow secular education with no attention
to the spiritual side of humans. It was a logical next step
to find ways to address spiritual or soul questions. Expressing
enthusiastic support for the Constitutional principle of
the Separation of School and State, the various writers present
approaches they believe address children’s inner lives, while
also respecting the wide diversity of religious and spiritual
perspectives found in this county.
The book summarizes a movement in public school to teach
to the whole child that parallels the work being done by
private residential Emotional Growth schools and programs.
Many of the approaches described in this book have long histories
in some of the better-established residential Emotional Growth
schools and programs commonly written about in this newsletter. |
