Educational Work - On Relationship
Relationship
Looking at the world around us – the situation of refugees, the charges of corruption, the indifference to the environment, violence and terrorism, the escape into entertainment – the crises in the world are not caused by forces outside of us.
The crises are caused by our fears, anger, greed and prejudice and our perceived need to belong to a group and belief that in that identity is security.
We find that it must be the purpose of education to look inward and to know ourselves.
Students involve themselves in work on campus and are encouraged to participate in the work at home – cleaning, clearing and arranging. Work, we see, is a significant antidote to pleasure seeking. Students learn to contribute their own work to others around them.
Circle Time and Culture Classes with students and Theme Meetings with parents examine conflict, fear, indulgence, notions of success, the individual and the group, among others. The adult is here as much a learner as is the student.
Through General Studies in the senior most classes students learn skills of critical reading, discuss contemporary issues and watch and talk over significant documentaries.
Conversations between a teacher and student often allow for loosening of tightly held views and an examination of a situation as it is.
Questions that students have find voice in discussions that deal with issues of personal safety, insensitive behavior or sexuality.
Field trips undertaken in senior school to different parts of the country introduce students to lives different from their own, in regions quite unlike their city and to work and action that offer varied perspectives on life as it is lived.
“You are in various schools and you are being educated, that is, you are learning mathematics, history, geography, science, and so on. Why? Have you ever wondered? Is it merely in order to earn a living afterwards? Is that the purpose of education? Is education merely a matter of passing examinations and putting a few letters after your name, or is it something entirely different? If you look around, you will see what an awful mess the world is in. […] There are the poor and the rich, those who are ill and those who have good health, and throughout the world there are wars, there are miseries, there is every kind of trouble. And should you not begin to think about these things while you are young?”