Putting spirituality in public schools.
Marlin Foxworth
America's public schools badly need a spiritual transformation. Ironically, that transformation is needed because the schools are doing a major part of their job - reflecting the society from which and for which they were created - so well. If we are to redress the lack of spiritual sustenance in education, we must address some fundamental components of our current social thinking, including: the reason we have a separation of church and state in the first place, a social ethos of selfishness and materialism, a confusion of culture with race, and the historically defensive attitude of teachers and administrators when asked to confront what is, by any standard, an overwhelming set of tasks.
Our society, almost unwittingly, has made our public schools into an institutional guardian for the separation of church and state. The original purpose for this separation was to preclude public institutions from proselytizing for a specific religion. The contemporary result, however, has been that students are not only shielded from religiosity in general or any given religion in particular, but that no attention to spirituality has been allowed into public schools at all.
One of the following assumptions always seems to be cited to justify leaving the spiritual out of public education: 1) parents will take care of that part of education; 2) religious pursuits should be left up to the individual; or 3) religion is simply not an issue that can or should be addressed by public institutions.
At the base of these assumptions, however, is the mistaken belief that religion and spirituality are identical. Religion is produced by spirituality, rather than the converse. Spirituality is not peculiar to "a people" or to a religion but is what makes us all "people." It is universal.
There is no way to educate without including the whole person. Yet there is no "whole person" without the spiritual. When public schools are expected to exclude the spiritual from their educational process and curricula, we are creating a policy that is antithetical to sound education. Since it is in the spiritual that the highest meaning, both individual and collective, is to be found, the absence of spirituality equals the absence of education as it should be. Without addressing the needs of the whole person, education is necessarily limited in its possibilities.
If we are to pursue spirituality in public schools, we first need to confront other ways in which society limits its definition of what a person is and can be. To start, we must confront the reality that our society is powerfully locked into an ethos of selfishness and materialism that blocks people from reaching for their highest spiritual needs. Instead, many Americans appear to despair of building the kind of society they really want, a society based on spiritual values, love, caring, and ethical sensitivity.
That despair leads to the perception that pursuit of a social system steeped in spirituality is unreal and, therefore, nonsensical. Consistent with that despair is the perception that schools are to prepare students for success in the real world rather than for the creation of an ideal one. Public school education increasingly is expected to focus on preparing students for success in a "second choice" society that has abandoned spiritual values.
Should you ask most teenagers what the purpose of an education is, the answer most consistently forthcoming is, "to get a better job." The major source of criticism of public education comes from business people who claim that schools are doing an inadequate job of preparing students for tasks at the workplace.
Since it is reasonable to assume that most people working for a living in our country went to its public schools, that perception of inadequate preparation is contradicted by the agreement among the same business people that we are in a healthy economy. What is missing from our schools more than perceived adequacy in preparing students for work is the absence of a curriculum that will enable students to assess our economy, the meaning people find in it, the demeaning that also results from it, and its impact on our spirituality as a people.
It is sensible for public schools to prepare students to be productive workers. It is certainly no less important to prepare students to question why an economy is called "healthy" when we see more and more people pushing shopping carts filled with empty aluminum cans. While getting ready to get a job, students also need to be able to figure out why, in the midst of such economic largesse, there is so much poverty and why it is visited so disproportionately on people of color. No less important than learning how to pursue a good salary is learning how to address the reality that some women receive a smaller salary than men doing the same job. While learning how to be a good employee for companies doing business internationally, students also need to learn why it is acceptable for U.S. businesses to lay off U.S. workers, move their manufacturing facilities into other countries, and radically maximize profits while radically minimizing wages. While learning to work, students should learn what must happen in the workplace for it to provide not just the most money, but the most meaning.
A large part of such an education must include a redefinition of what the "real world" is and who is in it. America's public school students come to class with a breadth of experience far more varied than the curricula, teaching methodologies, and the values and assumptions on which they are based represent, in part because educational institutions have not been able to change as rapidly as does the society in which the schools reside.
Consider the situation I face: twenty years ago the California school district I serve as superintendent was almost entirely white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in composition. Today, of our 22,065 students in kindergarten through the 12th grade, 77 percent are children of color. Approximately 47 percent of our students have a primary language other than English and about half of them are limited English Proficient. Thirty-four languages are spoken in the district. Of our 21,000 adult school students, over 50 percent are people of color. Many of our students come to us from countries torn by war.
Unfortunately, the well intentioned effort in public schools to value and celebrate such diversity is contributing, unwittingly, to the diminishing possibilities for public schools to be a locus for the pursuit of meaning and spirituality. Diversity tends to be defined in educational circles as the sum of the inevitable differences in our varied skin pigmentations, hair textures, languages, cultures, and races. Given that such variety is inevitable, this definition leads to the belief that we can never be one people, and the goal of social relations becomes nothing more than peaceful coexistence.
The flaw in this approach is the assumption that pigmentations, textures, languages, cultures, and races are the structural elements of inalterable and irreversible human difference and separation. The point is not that one person's skin is of a different color or hair of a different texture than another's, but that they both have skin and hair. It is not that something substantively different comes out of one skin color or hair texture as contrasted to another, but that all of us have skin color and hair texture into which things are read and about which assumptions are made.
The point is not that one of us speaks English, another Spanish, and another Vietnamese, but that we each have a system of sound that has meaning. It is not that one of us has some ancestors traceable to a different continent than another of us. It is that each of us has a set of human experiences, varied in detail and nuance, none more or less human than another, through which we see our prospects for meaning and respectful social treatment and from which we conclude the appropriateness for group affiliation.
The concept of race, itself, damages the prospects for finding meaning. Race is a social, not a scientific construct. Historically, the utility of the concept of race has derived from what is read into and assumed about combinations of hair texture and skin pigment and the social stratification that correlates with or results from those interpretations and/or assumptions. Maintaining a concept of race accrues to the benefit only of those who benefit most materially from such stratification.
This concept of race produces a syllogism which has strong currency in our society and which, therefore, influences what public schools produce and what meaning our students can glean from school experience. If my race and your race are different and if our views of the world are each tied to our respective races, then each of us is absolved of the responsibility of seeing the world through each other's eyes because we cannot.
If we are unable to see the world as someone in another race does, then we are left with what Presidents Bush and Clinton have pushed for: racial tolerance. Racial tolerance works as long as what we need in order to find dignity and meaning does not mean that I have to give up some of what I have. For example, ethnic or women's studies programs are tolerable unless and until one or a combination of the following occur: 1) their existence reduces resources available for curricula and pedagogy consistent with perspectives of the dominant culture; 2) they become required courses.
This concept of race is antithetical to the pursuit of dignity and meaning in public schools. Instead, it should be replaced with the concept of culture. Culture is learned and is, therefore, learnable. A focus on culture yields a recognition that the difference in people is not in how we are structured as human beings, but in the social tools we use to express the reality that we are all exactly, historically, perennially, universally, and inalterably the same. Recognizing and celebrating our identical sameness as human beings along with our cultural differences, rather than focusing on "racial differences," will enhance the prospects for public schools to contribute to the pursuit of meaning and spirituality for students and educators alike.
A recent initiative passed in California highlights this issue. Proposition 227 requires that limited- or non-English proficient students be given only a year to learn English so that thereafter they can be in classes taught only in English. Quite aside from any consideration of the motivations behind this initiative, it fails to recognize that the forced obliteration of students' language and cultural heritage is not a sound pedagogic tool for genuine learning of anything.
Since English is the dominant language in the United States, there is everything right about teaching those who do not speak it to do so. At the same time, the culture, including language, from which every student comes is a major filter through which any student will envision the prospects for engaging the dominant culture in any society. The prospects for that engagement are negatively altered when public schools, as institutional representatives of that dominant culture, move from struggling to refine a process for blended cultural inclusivity to a blunt, simplistic demand for sameness. Suppose a student can't learn English in a year but, nonetheless, must take all classes in that language anyway. Not only will s/he be more likely to fail and drop out of school, but their educational experience will be even less useful in their search for value and meaning, both within themselves and with those who share with them a common social origin and primary culture.
Similarly, that pursuit of meaning can be inhibited by the current attempt in state and national education policy circles to ignore the subjective experience of students, irrespective of ethnicity, and to focus exclusively on academic standards. Students often come to school in a great deal of pain from their lives in troubled families and from the sometimes frightening interactions they have had on the streets of both our cities and suburbs. The pain they bring with them to school interferes with their ability to learn. Yet teachers and school systems are increasingly under pressure to ignore this dimension of their experience and to simply teach basics, as though that can be done successfully with students whose pain level is so high that they find it difficult to concentrate on the material being presented to them.
Our students come to class with needs that must be addressed or, at least, acknowledged before they are likely to make good use of what we are offering in the way of instruction. We have to recognize who they are as human beings, rather than look at them merely as very clever machines that can be programmed to acquire a product we call knowledge. Yet, precisely because we have been trained only to teach students a particular set of skills, addressing the fuller range of human needs is anything but easy. There is little within our system that would prepare us to become agents of change, both within the school system and in the lives of our individual students.
Many would not know how to begin making such changes: some may feel resentful that their work now might require a broader definition of tasks without any corresponding increase in pay or decrease in the time required for traditional forms of educational work. In effect, schools are being expected to take on the problems of the larger society that other societal institutions cannot or will not face. For example, when I started as a teacher in the 1960s, we did not have to deal with teenage pregnancy, AIDS, students coming hungry to school every day, drugs, gangs and gang conflict, violence, or guns. Our teachers today are asked to take on this host of societal problems during the same hours that they are being paid to teach academic subjects. Ironically, the people in the larger society who are asking us to address all these societal issues often are the same people who are complaining simultaneously about our failure to help students do better academically.
It does not take long for teachers and administrators to recognize we are being asked to do an overwhelming set of tasks. Since we educators are no different from other people, we often feel despair about the prospects for changing society. Consequently, we frequently accommodate reality as it exists and take a defensive stance to protect ourselves from these overwhelming demands. Unfortunately, this leads easily to real resistance to changes that could reasonably take place in schools, changes that would allow greater sensitivity to the spiritual and meaning needs of our students and of ourselves.
Teachers' unions and administrative organizations (some are now unions) were formed initially to protect their members from systemic abuses, including the insistence that more or varied tasks be taken on without sufficient training and/or additional compensation. Although those of us in such organizations personally may have a favorable predisposition toward a meaning- and spiritually-oriented school system, there is no comparable predisposition in the structure of our organizations. Essentially, those organizations are set up as Us-vs.-Them, serving to advance OUR interests and to block THEIR interference in OUR pursuit of them. In light of that reality, innovation is sometimes blocked on the grounds that it might create new requirements without corresponding compensation.
Organizations protecting school district teachers, administrators, and other staff also are increasingly pursuing power and control of the systems in which the employees work. While such organizations secure their members additional power and control, there is no corresponding shift in systemic accountability. Although union/organization members and leaders are as responsible as any other employees of a school system, any unsatisfactory practice ensconced in a district as a result of the exercise of their organization's power and influence will not result in systemic discipline being visited on them. It is still school district administrators who will get fired or otherwise disciplined under such circumstances. The struggle around power/control and accountability is a distraction from the collective focus needed in public schools necessary to provide the pursuit of meaning and spirituality we so desperately need.
Also problematic is the reality that even thinking in these long-term strategic ways is rarely part of the discourse in public schools. Often you hear teachers and administrators say things like, "Let's quit philosophizing and get on with it." The overwhelming burden of just getting through undermines our ability to think about our own best, long-term self-interest. Assaults on the school system from outside leave many of us feeling that we are surrounded by a meanness of spirit that is so powerful that all we can do is protect ourselves, primarily by securing an increase in compensation.
Examples of historic abuse make the protective and power/control seeking nature of unions and administrative organizations understandable. Yet, without some reform, that focus may become self-defeating. Unless we transform schools in ways that really speak to the larger spiritual crisis in our society, our schools will fail and the public will defund the enterprise. The result will be profoundly negative consequences to teachers, administrators and the whole system.
Here are some things that could be done in school districts if we intend to address the crisis in meaning and spirituality:
Make it requisite for graduation that each student engages in a senior project which demonstrates how that student manifests the values of caring, solidarity, or support for others - thus validating the notion that schools are not only about individual success but about caring for others. To award the student whose projects are found to be the best, every administrator in the district and as many teachers and staff as possible should gather on the street outside the homes of each of those students, ask them and their parents to come out, and cheer the worth of the student's work. All students who participate in such a project should be acknowledged in some clear way for having done so. Sponsor community celebrations which, in addition to acknowledging students for their academic prowess, will honor students, families, teachers, and staff who have demonstrated their capacities to be supportive, nurturing, and ethical. Construct spiritual (as opposed to religious) ceremonies to encourage students to develop appreciation for Us, in our many cultural manifestations, as contrasted to accepting an Us-vs.-Them mentality. Create an advisory board of community groups to participate with the district in envisioning what the schools require to best serve the interests and needs of the community. Incorporate broad representation of community groups, including senior citizens, ethnic organizations, families on AFDC, business organizations, gays and lesbians, people from all socio-economic strata, women's organizations, religious leaders, civic leaders, employee organizations, etc. Create a student volunteer corps to work with senior citizens and another to work on ecological issues. These are just a few of the concrete steps we might take if we are to move toward creating a school system that addresses the meaning and spiritual dimensions of human needs.
Please do not underestimate the amount of resistance that will come from both inside and outside our school systems when we try to move them in this direction. I believe the Politics of Meaning as a vision could make a powerful impact on our school systems were it introduced as an official approach, as our shared goal in education. If all of our students, new to our society or not, irrespective of ethnicity or socio-economic status, are to find meaning in their education, their histories and life experiences must be included in the process.
It is only when people feel that they are fully recognized as intrinsically valuable human beings that they let their guards down enough to begin to engage in deep learning. In the pursuit of human meaning and spirituality we can find that as human beings we are exactly the same, each of us precious. A step in the right direction, indeed.
Marlin Foxworth, Ph.D., is Superintendent of the Hayward Unified School District in Hayward, California. He is also an adjunct professor in. the Education Leadership Program at St. Mary's College, Moraga, California.
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