Whole Mind Education for the Emerging Future

ByRama Mani, (University of Oxford)

Scilla Elworthy (Peace Direct)Meenakshi Gopinath (Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi),

Jean Houston (Jean Houston Foundation)Melissa Schwartz (Meridian University)

ABSTRACT

At a time of unprecedented multiple crises threatening life on earth, the imperative for the wholesale transformation of cultures and societies has never been greater. Insights and experiences from a group of eminent women leaders who met in Oxford, UK for five days of intensive thinking and discussion on the Emerging Future (October 2013), are drawn on. The group concurred that more than any other single other factor, transformed educational institutions, curriculum, and methodologies could help meet the challenges of the 21st century and shape a positive future on earth. The central feature of transformed educational models is posed in this article as ‘Whole Mind’ education. Three manifold components of Whole Mind education are posited as providing the greatest benefit to meet 21st century challenges: integration, creativity, and peace. This article especially draws on the research and insights of a subset of the Emerging Future group who have pioneering experience in innovative education, ranging from primary to tertiary levels, across USA, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Keywords: mindfulness, whole mind, conflict transformation, non-violence, peace, human potential, creativity, arts, paradigm shift, social artistry.

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Overview: Whole Mind Education for Social Transformation.

As complex and interlinked challenges of the 21st century and its attendant crises multiply, the

often myopic and fragmented responses offered by political, corporate, and social leaders bring

us ever nearer to human and ecological self-destruction. An entirely different, integrated way of

seeing the world and our place in it is needed, as well as new skills and capacities to address

interconnected problems. A firm foundation in new values, skills, and human potentials is

essential to meet and shape the emerging future in ways that are sustainable and give human

lives greater freedom and meaning.

As such, never has the time been so ripe for change and never before have education and

educational institutions been more available to new strategies. So much is now known about the

nature of learning, that its methods and institutions can be seen as having the power and

influence to transform civilization. Within a few generations, educational institutions have the

potential to develop individuals who are endowed with the skills and moral courage to navigate

the challenges of the future.

The UN Millennium Development Goal of Education has been an essential first step, as it

democratizes education and seeks to bring education to children in all countries and all social

groups, without exception. This is fundamental – but not enough. For the emerging future, it is

not the quantity of education - measured by the percentage of literacy, the number of years of

school attendance, and the percentage of children attending school - that will make the crucial

difference. Rather, it is the quality of the education itself that will matter most. In Mahatma

Gandhi’s words, “Literacy in itself is not education. It is not the end of education nor even the

beginning.” 1

The assumption in this article is that the emerging future will require education rooted in the

‘whole mind’ in its fullest sense. Here, we make the distinction between the mind, by which we

mean conceptual competencies and the ability for rational analysis, versus that of the Whole

Mind, referring to a whole person/whole system understanding of embodied knowledge. We

might say that the Whole Mind is an embodied mind and by comparison, a splintered mind is a

far narrower, conceptual mind. As such, a Whole Mind education entails a far broader spectrum

1 Singhvi, L.M, and M. R. Rai and Ramakrishnan, eds. (1937). “Nani Palkiwala-Selected Works” New Delhi: Bhawan’s Book University.

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of human capacities of the mind, soma, and spirit - the rational, emotional, creative,

interpersonal, ethical, ecological and spiritual intelligences – intentionally activated and brought

into mutually reinforcing relationship. This kind of understanding does not divide reality into

fragments of distinct, unrelated disciplines, but rather recognizes the fundamental

interconnections and overlap between seemingly separated parts. It is our assumption that such a

coherent mindset would provide more holistic and wise answers to the interrelated challenges

and crises of our times, as individuals educated in this way are more likely to understand the

world as a whole. Writes educator Ron Miller (2011):

Education in modern culture has come to mean training and disciplining the intellect largely for utilitarian purposes in a world of material resources, but if we understand ourselves in terms of holarchy, this is a partial and inadequate education of the human being. Pedagogy needs to cultivate our ecological, emotional, moral, and spiritual aspects as well.

An education for the Whole Mind would entail many dimensions and potentially yield

immeasurable benefits. While such an education would not bring about change overnight,

pioneering innovations with education around the world show how quickly, and relatively cost-

effectively, change can be brought about. The expectation that we put forth here is that

transformed educational systems – applied world wide- have the capacity to start transforming

the world.

A Shared Vision

At the end of October 2013, a group of 20 eminent women leaders from all continents and

drawn from diverse disciplines and vocations – politics, science, academia, arts, business,

media, arts and theatre, culture, and religious institutions – met outside Oxford, UK in a Quaker

manor house, over the course of five, intensely packed days. The group’s purpose was to reflect

on the state of the world and begin to design an emerging future, with the intention of imagining

the contours of a world that would benefit all living beings without exclusion and that would be

harmonious with the needs of the planet. This was not an exercise in utopianism but rather was

rooted in individuals’ expertise garnered from leadership in some of the most violent and

challenging parts of the world: Palestine, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Georgia, India, China,

Lebanon, and Syria.

Although we were a diverse group, our shared motivation was to see children of the future grow

up in a different kind of world, one that would liberate - instead of fetter - human potential, and

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that would enable individuals to realize - instead of stifle - their dreams. Over hours of

discussion, the theme that repeatedly emerged as the decisive factor in creating such a world

was Education. In this tightly-packed five day period, a consensus emerged: Transforming the

institution and methodologies of education, worldwide, will be key in preparing children in

becoming adults who will be co-creators and guardians of a better world, and when applied to

the education of adults, will assist adults in developing or deepening their capacities for these

important goals.

It is perhaps not surprising that the group consisted entirely of women. These 20 women were

tremendously different from one another in culture and expertise. Yet the myriad of experiences

in different sectors and continents brought the group to a common ground and a shared

conviction of the power of education to potentially address the imperative needs of the 21st

century. For example, Angelique Jiang, a corporate leader from China, has led an extraordinarily

successful and cost-effective Internet-based training for 200,000 head teachers across China’s

provinces which, in just three short years, has helped teachers in developing essential

interpersonal skills for more supportive and effective interactions with students. Zahira Kamal,

former Minister of Women’s Affairs in Palestine, has led educational programs that encourage

parents to keep their daughters in school despite major security risks, as well as programs that

have made a significant contribution in encouraging girls to study sciences, math, medicine, and

engineering for careers previously considered for men only. Chipo Chung, a noted theatre

actress, has worked with youth to use theatre and the arts to stop election violence in her native

Zimbabwe, and to spread awareness on health and poverty in Kenya.

One of the outcomes of the gathering was the shared determination in the group to contribute to

the shaping of a new global education curriculum. We do not envisage a homogenized global

curriculum that would be imposed uniformly in different countries and contexts, but rather a

curriculum that would be adapted in each country to its specific culture, history, languages and

requirements while sharing a common core. This kind of education would:

Be grounded in universal values, drawn from the world’s diverse cultural, civilizational, indigenous, spiritual and ethical traditions that are harmonious with nature.

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Emphasize self-knowledge, including the ability to reflect in solitude, integrate diverse information coherently, embody ethics, and engage in critical and appreciative inquiry.2

Have as its central goal the development of interpersonal skills, particularly in transparent and non-violent communication, conflict transformation, and deep listening and dialogue, at all levels and in all media.

Be embedded in a dynamic, transdisciplinary curriculum that spans ancient wisdoms from diverse cultures and cutting-edge frontier science and technology.

Presuppose lively, inclusive, multi-cultural, and non-hierarchical teaching-

learning environments, which encourage cooperation and group learning above competition and individual learning.

Emphasize the arts and creativity.

Emphasize life-long learning, i.e., encouraging the love of learning in students of any age.

Limitations in the Global Availability of Innovative Education

Certainly, there have been some remarkable innovations in education in past decades. At the

school level, the International Baccalaureate with its inspiring constructivist and humanist

philosophy, and at the university level, the liberal arts education, widely practiced across the

United Kingdom, United States, several countries of the Commonwealth, and now enjoying a

rich revival in the Netherlands, are among the best examples. However, both of these examples

are as yet accessible to only a relatively privileged group of students, as, for instance,

International Baccalaureate programs are primarily clustered in North America, while liberal

arts education is practiced across the United Kingdom, United States, several countries of the

Commonwealth, and the Netherlands, but much less so in the global south.3

2 Appreciative Inquiry is a qualitative research model, first developed in 1987 by David Cooperrider and Suresh Stavros, that has gained rapid notoriety for its effectiveness in emphasizing the assets and positive strengths of the subject under inquiry, as opposed to the traditional qualitative research focus on negative, problematic traits of the research subject.

3 Although there are almost 3800 Baccalaureate schools in the world attended by approximately one million students, almost 50% of these are in North America (1527 in the United States, and 338 in Canada). Otherwise, four countries have 155 or less (155 in the UK, 152 in Australia, 110 in India, and 105 in Mexico), 75 are in Spain, and otherwise though worldwide, there are just a smattering of these per country. (From: International Baccalaureate World School Statistics, @ www.ibo.org)

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At the curricular level, there are significant educational movements, most notably in North

America and Europe, that have brought innovative education theory and methods but as with the

school level noted above, these constitute a relative minority amongst the world’s populations. 4

These include Waldorf education, with its aim of integrating cognitive, practical, and artistic

themes via a strong emphasis on imagination; the SEL (Social and Emotional Learning)

movement that aims for the development of students’ social and emotional competence through

five core competencies (self awareness, self management, responsible decision making,

relationship skills, and social awareness) gained through an emphasis on learning in the context

of relationship; the Mindfulness in Education movement, which, in its goal of supporting

mindfulness practice in educational settings, provides optimal conditions for learning and

teaching, and the Montessori movement, with its emphasis on respect for each child’s unique

educational development and learning needs.5 Of note is the unique success of the Montessori

movement in its worldwide reach.6 Although beyond the scope of this article, an important

question is what factors – in its pedagogy or history- might explain Montessori’s success in

establishing its worldwide presence.7

4 For the first three, innovative movements noted, the 1039 Waldorf schools that exist worldwide are primarily clustered in Central Europe (506 schools) and the United States (119 schools) (source: Waldorf World List, 2014). Although a growing number of SEL programs can now be found in several countries (Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the UK), programs are far more significantly found in the United States (where it originated in 1993. A key critique of its use is that it is not well integrated into academics overall curriculum, but rather is not understood as a core part of students’ overall learning (sources: Schonert-Reichl and Hymel, 2007; Social and Emotional Learning in Schools, 2012). Mindfulness in Education programs are primarily found on the northeast coast of the United States, with a few on its west coast, and a few in Germany, Ireland, and Venezuela (source: mindfuleducation.org/mindful-education-map/#map/_top; accessed 5/1/14)

5 Some excellent sources for each of these movements are: For Waldorf education, Todd Oppenheimer’s Schooling the Imagination; for SEL, The Missing Piece: A National Teacher Survey on How Social and Emotional Learning Can Empower Children and Transform Schools; for Mindfulness in Education, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s talk on this same topic at the Askwith Forum, Harvard Graduate School of Education in October, 2013; and for Montessori education, Paula Lillard’s Montessori Today: A Comprehensive Approach to Education from Birth to Adulthood (1996).

6 Tim Seldin, President of the Montessori Foundation, writes: “There are perhaps 4,000 Montessori schools in the United States and Canada and thousands more around the world. Montessori schools are found throughout Western Europe, Central and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Asia. The movement is widespread in countries such as the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Sri Lanka, Korea, and Japan, and it is beginning to mushroom in Eastern Europe, the republics of the former Soviet Union.”

7 Two related subfields within the academic discipline of education in higher education in the west that have gained significant note over the last three decades are the fields of: 1) Transformative Learning, originating at Columbia University Teacher’s College via Jack Mezirow (The Handbook of Transformative Learning, Edward Taylor and Patricia Cranton, eds., provides an excellent overview); and 2) Holistic Education, a lesser known field possibly because unlike Transformative Learning, it has not gotten traction within a university-level department of education; nonetheless a loosely associated wide-ranging body of written work has coalesced (the journal, Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice, provides further context).

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These educational innovations notwithstanding however, for the vast majority of school-aged

and higher education students around the world today, such innovation and openness in

educational forms past nursery or kindergarten are rare: children throughout the world are

quickly weaned from the open, creative and exploratory introduction to schooling they were just

beginning to enjoy.8 Instead, children are progressively induced into the shackles of present day

curricula, with the tight discipline and overload of information it imposes. This intensifies

annually until students are forced to cram their minds with two years worth of facts, on six to

eight subjects, for regurgitation in a few hours during the stressful hothouse environment of

baccalaureate or school-leaving examinations.9 Countries like India, Pakistan and many in the

UK are known for the stress placed on ‘A-level’ and ‘O-level’ exams, where students are told in

no uncertain terms that their quantitative success in this debilitating exercise will determine their

chances for university education, locally or internationally, and their prospects for the rest of

their lives.

The pressure on students is excruciating. In highly competitive countries like India and China,

teenagers commit suicide owing to the pressure of examination, or out of a misplaced sense of

shame or failure when results are published. Anna Durisch writes:

In India about 20 students kill themselves every day due to the stress related to exams, wanting to secure seats in prestigious schools, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. South India is considered the world’s suicide capital; especially Kerala, the first fully literate Indian state, has the highest number of suicides committed daily – about 32. According to the Bangalore psychologists from the Indian Southern Medical Centre, “(children)…are under pressure to deliver at school, (…) to appear for competitive examinations, no one gives them any advice about the meaning of life.”

A survey done in UK on 6020 students (2002) has shown that 70% of self-harming teenagers with suicidal thoughts have admitted that the cause was their concerns about the school performance and exams.

There have been several reports in Hong Kong, China, Japan and other Asian countries related to the exam-induced psychological problems, suicidal feelings and fear of exams – according to publications by Suen & Yu (2006), Hesketh, Ding & Jenkins (2002), Zeng & Le Tendre (1998).10

8 A web search of the phrase ‘encouraging creativity in kindergarten worldwide,’ conducted on May 10, 2014, turns up almost 20 million references.

9 John Holt’s classic, text, How Children Fail, poses an especially potent, critical analysis of this issue. 10 Anna Durisch’s excellent piece on suicide in youth relative to exam stress in Global Education Magazine, cites a number of additional, searing statistics on this issue.

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Further, given the pressures in higher education to develop curriculum that will enable students

to obtain employment upon graduation as well as data-driven pressures for colleges and

universities to perform in accordance with the U.S. federal standards for gainful employment,

schools and universities are pressured to tailor education to the job market – even as that job

market shrinks and recedes beyond the access of all but the ‘lucky’ students.11 A small part of

their minds – their analytical, fact-accumulating part – is full, yet so many students burst with

frustration and unfulfilled and unrealized talents.

It will take an act of will, at the highest levels of the national and international academic hierarchy, to

regain autonomy and liberate students’ minds again for the true purpose of education. This is an urgent

need today.

Distinctions in Learning: Mindful vs. Mindless

Since the 1960s, neurological research has completely reversed the old view that the brain is

immutable. Over the last decades, major developments in neuroscience research have shown

that the brain will respond to life experiences that are enriching and stimulating by expanding its

neural networks as well as its levels of functionality; this ability of the brain, known as

experience-based neuroplasticity, has had significant implications for education and the

behavioral sciences.12 For better or for worse he brain can change structurally and functionally

as a result of learning and experience. Environments that are positive, stimulating, and

encouraging of action and interaction support the human brain to continue to develop throughout

the life cycle and even into old age. Under such conditions, the brain grows new neural

connections that enhance our capacities for learning, creativity, and problem-solving.

For educators, the message is clear: the era of rote learning and brain-deadening, penalizing

pedagogies is over. Education is not and cannot be about filling the mind with facts, and

fulfilling the demands of the market place. Nor can students – of any age - be allowed to

11 For an informative article on the effect of potential rules coming into play in United States federal regulations, see Paul Fain’s Nowhere to Go (Inside Higher Education: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/05/27/gainful-employment-will-hit-profits-and-their-students-hard-industry-study-finds#sthash.anIVsCgH.dpbs). 12 Robert Roeser and Philip Zalazo’s special section on “Contemplative Science, Education, and Child Development” in the journal Child Development Perspectives, provides an excellent overview of the brain’s potential for neuroplasticity throughout the lifespan.

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dissipate their creativity and sharpness with the mindless requirements of memorization and rote

learning.

Ellen Langer’s classic discussion of ‘mindful learning’ versus mindless education (1997), makes

an important distinction. Mindless education, says Langer, is trapped in categories, reinforces

linear thinking, strengthens belief in limited resources, leads to automatic behaviour; and infers

that actions in the world originate from singular perspectives. The costs of mindless education,

she posits, are a narrow self-image, loss of control, learned helplessness, unintended cruelty, and

stunted potential. By contrast, Langer views mindful education as creating new categories of

learning, emphasizing process before outcome; welcoming of new information, and fostering

more than one viewpoint, describing mindful learning as nothing short of ‘re-imagining the

world.’ Educator Parker Palmer writes on a similar theme:

If we can affirm the search for truth as a continually uncertain journey, we may find the courage to keep the space open rather than packing it with pretense. . . . But precisely because a learning space can be a painful place, it must have one other characteristic—hospitality. Hospitality means receiving each other, our struggles, our newborn ideas with openness and care. It means creating an ethos in which. . .the pain of truth’s transformations can be borne. (pp. 72-4)

There are a wealth of benefits that could accrue from a Whole Mind education. With rapid

developments in our understanding of the brain, cognitive function, and mindful learning, educators can

now readily adapt old pedagogies to ensure that education is an enriching and transformative experience

for students of all ages.

The following discussion outlines the three key dimensions of Whole Mind education and their

corresponding benefits, proposed as most relevant to meeting the challenges of the 21st century:

integration, creativity and peace.

Whole Mind Education for Integration

The first component of a Whole Mind education emphasizes the idea of integration, reversing

the perilous fragmentation that threatens education and society at large today. The visionary

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quantum physicist David Bohm underlined the extent and danger of fragmentation more than 30

years ago (1980):

…fragmentation is now very widespread, not only throughout society, but also in each individual; and this is leading to a kind of general confusion of the mind, which creates an endless series of problems and interferes with our clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us from being able to solve most of them.’

Bohm goes on to explain the necessity of integration as:

… [hu]mans’ general way of thinking of the totality…is crucial for overall order of the human mind itself. If…the totality is constituted of independent fragments, then that is how [the] mind will tend to operate. But if … everything [can be included] coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken and without a border (for every border is a division or break) then [the] mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.

A Whole Mind education rooted in integration would move away from the atomization and

compartmentalization that has led to super specialization with its accompanying inability to

comprehend the wholeness and interconnection necessary to transform crises.

Holistic educator Ron Miller (2011) writes:

Holistic education is essentially the effort to embrace the organic wholeness of our human experience and to support young human beings on their existential journeys…Because it follows, rather than dictates to, the organic unfolding of life, a holistic pedagogy must remain open, responsive, flexible, and self-reflective.

An education that emphasises integration would have three facets, each with its benefits: the

integration of left and right brain functionalities, mindfulness training and practice, and an

enriched relationship with the natural world.

Integrating ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ Brain Functionalities

Education that prizes integration consistently integrates ‘left brain’ rational, cognitive,

analytical, logical and spatial skills with ‘right brain’ artistic, linguistic, emotive, interpersonal,

and process-oriented skills, from kindergarten through to university. Traditional societies,

whether in West Africa, India or China, had developed ways to balance these countervailing

forces within society. Indigenous societies consistently taught their members to develop such a

balance from childhood. Ancient educational institutions whether in Greece or India also

developed both sets of skills as they combined disciplines. This is consistent with contemporary

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multi-disciplinary liberal arts education that combines the humanities, sciences, social sciences,

and the arts, thus not forcing young people to choose between them and truncate their capacity

to think and act integrally. In describing the role of experience and culture in transformative

learning, the faculty at Meridian University (2012) emphasize that, “engaging the right

hemisphere of the cortex is key to the competencies that are driving contemporary society and

economy.”

Any fear that an equal emphasis on ‘right brain’ skills, and on the arts, humanities and sports,

would diminish the skills of scientists, is misplaced. Mirabai Bush quotes Michelle Francl’s

emphasis on this point (2011):

The world cries out for reflective scientists, who can intentionally create a space in which to see their work in its full context—scientific, cultural, political and personal. Embedding these … lets students grow as scientists in a culture that acknowledges that such ways of seeing and relating to the world are useful for their work and not incongruent with what a scientist should be. (p. 191)

Mindfulness Training for Education

Over the past several years, research into mindfulness-based practices as applied to mental

health and education has had a dramatic rise. The subfield of contemplative science has

coalesced to engage the span of research and study in this area, defining itself as, “…a

transdisciplinary effort to derive a new understanding of the mind/body system in light of

insights gleaned from contemplative traditions that have explored the prospects for social and

self-transformation through practices such as mindfulness, meditation, and yoga…” 13 The Dalai

Lama himself said in 2012 that if all children were taught to meditate, violence would be wiped

out in a generation.

Psychologists have conduced numerous studies on the effects of mindfulness-based practice,

with relevant findings for educators. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl and Shelley Lawlor (2011)

found that mindfulness education contributed to enhanced wellbeing and social and emotional

competence among young and early adolescents.

The Centre for Contemplative Mind in Society, comprising leading academics, sponsored 158

fellows in over 100 universities in the USA between 1997 and 2010, to introduce and observe

13 Roeser and Zelazo (2012), p. 1.

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mindfulness and its effects in university education. The outcomes were significant, writes Bush

(2011), suggesting cognitive transformation, inclusive of, “increased concentration, greater

capacity for synthetic thinking, conceptual flexibility, and an appreciation for a different type of

intellectual process, distinct from the linear, analytical and product oriented processes so often

valued in contemporary education.”

A rigorously conducted scientific study in the effects of intensive meditation training conducted

over a three-month period with 17 participants (Vipassana meditation, a form of mindfulness

practice) found that this intensive meditation practice led to clear improvement in attentional

stability – the ability to sustain attention without frequent lapses. 14

In their discussion of the effects of mindfulness training with children, Philp Zelazo and Kristen

Lyons (2012) suggest that mindfulness training may support children’s development of self-

regulation processes, which could be help for them, “both during problem solving and in more

playful, exploratory ways.”15 Donald McGowan and colleagues’ detailed treatment of the

training of teachers of mindfulness (2010) provides an important understanding of the specific

skills that an educator in mindfulness practice must have, and by implication, the educator who

incorporates this work into their teaching.

A considerable literature that now exists in the area of mindfulness training, bringing with it

strong validity for the importance of mindfulness training as applied to educational settings.

Re-integration with Nature:

Education that prioritizes integration re-integrates humans with nature, drawing equally on

scientific and cultural knowledge. Recent findings of evolutionary biology and neuroscience on

human nature, and of quantum physics and astrophysics on matter and the cosmos, show

decisively that the universe and the earth are alive, and that humans are not separate from but 14 Lutz, et al., 2009

15 Zelazo and Lyons, page 1. For an excellent overview of mindfulness training can support teachers’ own development – both personally and professionally – see Roeser et al., Mindfulness Training and Teachers’ Professional Development (2012). For a discussion on mindfulness training functioning as an intervention in psychotherapy (which has implications for education), see Baer, 2003.

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part of nature. 16The new science corroborates the wisdom teachings of indigenous people and

spiritual traditions from ancient times.

Quantum physicist David Peat’s study of indigenous beliefs and practice, (2005) discusses how

indigenous ways of ‘coming to knowing’ are similar, and can even be seen as superior, to

atomized and rationalized science in the West. This is echoed in indigenous ways of learning, as

Peat writes that “…knowledge for indigenous societies is not the stuff of books but the stuff of

life’ (2005). Peat describes how indigenous children and youngsters ‘come to knowing’ not by

sitting in rows in classrooms in disciplined and constrained silence, but by close observation and

daily interaction with nature and their community of elders.

The educational movement, ‘Forest Schools,’ conceived in the late 1920’s by H.L. Wood at the

University of Wisconsin, has been popular in the UK. Teachers take children into local

woodlands to learn how to use a knife safely, how to identify birds and animals, how to build a

shelter, how to recognize the seasons. At school and at home children learn how to make

compost and grow tasty vegetables and fruit, even in a tiny allotment or on a balcony; they get

how good it tastes to eat some of them raw. They learn how to harvest them and store them.

They build gutters and tanks to collect rainwater to use when there is drought or if the municipal

supply is contaminated. If they want to eat fish, they learn how to set up a small fish farm in

their community, sharing the daily maintenance with other children. If they like eggs, they learn

to raise chickens, accepting the daily routines of feeding, watering, cleaning the hen house and

shutting up the hens at night so the fox doesn’t get them. Learning to live simply and nourish

themselves and their families is a challenge that children thrive on, because they feel useful. 17

Integrating Universal Values

Education that emphasize integration must be grounded in foundational values and ethics that

are timeless, resonant with nature’s laws, universal and yet applicable in diverse indigenous and

contemporary cultures. Such timeless and universal principals include inter-connectedness and

16 Duane Elgin’s The Living Universe does a remarkable job of making a case for this point.

17 See Forest School Research Summary (2008) for further detail on the Forest School movement.

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inter-dependence, reverence for nature and all life-forms, compassion and empathy, creativity,

respect for difference, and cooperation.

A Whole Mind education would, from the start, form children to understand their place in nature

and in the world, to view all ways of learning and disciplines of knowledge as interconnected, to

see things in ‘wholes’ not parts, and to embody the values that accompany and reinforce such an

integrated perspective. Education would nurture wholesome, healthy, integrated children into

adulthood, prepared to understand the root of global problems, and solve them with discernment

and ethics. This points towards the next priority, that of the arts.

Whole Mind Education for Creativity

A core component of the transformative Whole Mind education of the 21st century is creativity

and the arts. In educator Jean Houston’s experience, the arts help students to learn more quickly,

retain what they have learned, and feel more positive about learning (2004). It is in fact

understood by many in the neuroscience community that the mental mechanisms that process

music are deeply entwined with brain functions such as spatial relations, memory, and language

(Ettlinger, 2011). Mani (2011) provides detailed discussion of the arts as playing a range of

functions in preventing conflict, protecting people during conflict, and rebuilding peace and

justice after conflict. Omer and colleagues (2012) emphasize the power of well-designed

learning activities that, “engage the learner’s experience through various, expressive modalities,

like writing, expressive/poetic spontaneous speech, movement, drawing, and rhythm. The intent

is to empower through engaging the whole person.” (page 380)

In Houston’s experience, the best schools to which children run in delight and expectation, are those

where learning is creation, performing, thinking across subjects, exploring ideas through images,

sounds, songs, dances, and artistic expression. Houston likens children’s development to

Shakespeare’s, myriad-mindedness, which Houston defines as “the process of becoming conscious

participants in their own unfolding.” While children in the schools that Houston sees as the most

encouraging of educating for the Whole Mind are as well required to continually to read, and write, and

cipher, in these schools children are also constantly encouraged, “to imagine, dream, and expand the

limits of the possible.”

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Houston gives great tribute to the effect of theater activity to the child’s becoming, to what she terms,

‘the possible human,’ using all skills – music, dance, rhetoric, expression, feeling – to tour the full

landscape of human experience. If all the world's a stage, then all stages of life, all grades of human

aspiration, all levels and layers of human expression and emotion are scaled when drama comes to

school.” Theater, writes Houston, allows children to “try on the many parts of the human comedy and

the full range of human knowing. What one enacts, one remembers.” 18

Case Study: The Clara Barton School

Houston’s detailed study of the public Clara Barton Open School in Minnesota, USA (2004) illustrates

these points, where the finest characteristics of education are realized in brilliant contemporary forms.

The school was originally highlighted in Dorothy Fadiman’s classic award-winning documentary film

on innovative education, Why Do These Kids Love School? which focuses on nine innovative public

schools. At Clara Barton the curriculum is interdisciplinary, with an emphasis on cooperative groups

and, “whole brain learning, using all the senses and honoring each child’s unique learning style” (Suid,

1991).

In describing creativity and the use of the arts at Clara Barton School, Houston writes,

Willy’s classroom buzzes with rich language and the vivifying words of great literature, as students and teachers read aloud classics. Students try their hand at writing in the style of the literary greats, identifying the techniques and using them in their own poems, plays, and stories. In third and fourth grade classes, students read and compare versions of the "Cinderella" story from many cultures. They identify common themes, explore cultural differences, and then write their own versions.

Visual art is central. Children use the line drawings of Picasso, Durer, and Degas as stylistic models for their own sketches.

Currents of theater and drama flow through all levels of the curriculum at Clara Barton. Children in the primary grades act out stories and poems in order to interpret them and practice social behaviors by dramatizing a full range of social conduct, from the comically disastrous to the elegant and courtly. By the fourth grade, history class is frequently enriched with reenactments of the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the delivery in character of great speeches of the past.

Starting early, children at Clara Barton learn to cherish personal writing. Like Leonardo da Vinci, their journal notebooks have sections for writing, drawing, and deeper reflections. Life becomes an opportunity to record day-to-day happenings.

18 A prolific author of 28 texts, quoted material from Dr. Houston in this article is excerpted from Jump Time: Shaping Your Future in a World of Radical Change.

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Debate is also high on the academic agenda at Clara Barton. In the midst of an emotionally laden

debate, teachers may ask students to switch sides and argue the opposing point of view.

Children in middle grades are provided many opportunities to see all sides of an issue and to speak with

different voices as if they are different characters, which helps in the expression of viewpoints other

than their own.

The results that Houston has witnessed in numerous other programs underscore her

understanding on why the arts in education are so critical.19 Houston concludes that children can

“learn almost anything if they are dancing, tasting, touching, hearing, seeing, and feeling the

information. They become passionate learners who delight in using so much more of their

mind/brain/body system than conventional schooling generally permits.”

In the authors’ joint viewpoint, creativity in the education of children throughout their school

years enables their adult selves to be creative in the face of adult challenges, whether in

governments or corporations, laboratories or warzones. This underscores why the priority of

peace education is so important.

Whole Mind Education for Peace and 21st Century Citizenship

“Education is, quite simply, peace-building by another name. It is the most effective form of

defense spending there is.” Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, has stated. Maria

Montessori asserted, “establishing a lasting peace is the work of education...all politics can do is

keep us out of war.” 20 We cannot overstate today the importance of education as a pathway in

the long-term process of building peace, where ‘peace’ is recognized as inclusive of justice and

civic responsibility.

For education to play a peace-sustaining or peace-building role, the language of critique needs to

be united with the language of possibility, in a manner that makes despair unconvincing and

hope, practical. This calls for a conceptual shift in terrain, the language for which can be

derived from the language of nonviolence. Such language calls for radically reorienting

19 Oprah Winfrey’s 2012 interview of Houston, broadcast on Winfrey’s weekly program, Super Soul Sunday, provides significant context on Houston’s myriad experience.

20 From Maria Montessori’s 1932 classic, Education and Peace, p viii, Foreward. Reprinted in the Clio Montessori Series, 1989.

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education to emphasize teaching and modelling practices from nonviolent conflict resolution,

respect for the essentiality of basic human rights, as well as communication and dialogical skills.

There is a need to revalidate nonviolence as an effective philosophy of peace building. This

involves not merely teaching about peace or conflict resolution skills or merely the philosophy

of nonviolence. These already exist as programs of study or topics within the curricula of many

schools, colleges and universities.21 What is required is to incorporate methodologies of conflict

transformation as an integral part of the teaching-learning process across disciplines.

Initiatives for engaging education in sustaining and building peace need to go beyond the

assemblage of concepts and facts. Three essential aspects in educating for peace and citizenship

are prizing the values of learning from conflict, engaging in critical thinking, and dialogue and

dialogical practices.

Learning from Conflict

A sensitive exploration of the nature of conflict is integral to an education for emancipation.

Insulating learners from the existence of conflict, so endemic to our societies, puts brakes on the

locomotives for change. The great Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, (1970) postulated that

washing one’s hands of conflict, particularly between the powerful and the powerless, means to

side with the powerful and to not be neutral as many think they are being by walking away from

it.

Education also must address the systematic, structural causes of conflict – problems like

illiteracy, unemployment, and ignorance over which serious dilemmas and divides exist in many

societies. This understanding needs to fuel new educational practices that enable students to

learn from conflict.

At its foundation, making the world safe for difference requires that from a young age

individuals are taught to expect, tolerate, and even enjoy difference. Educational institutions

must give students a chance at every imaginable idea, every possible avenue of inventiveness.

Faculty and academic administrators must be open to the sometimes difficult reverberations

21 Peace studies graduate programs in United States U.S.A. Retrieved May 30, 2014, from <http://programs.gradschools.com/usa/peace_studies,html

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involved in the living concept of academic freedom between faculty, and between faculty and

their students. Academic administrators need to eschew structures that enforce a spurious or

sterile harmony in situations where ambiguities or tensions exist. A conflict resolution

educator’s search for common ground involves recognizing differences and building on

commonalities.

In social terms, academic freedom and the invitation for conflict that real freedoms – for

teachers and students alike - imply, involves flux and the collision of ideas. In response, those

not ready for what might be experienced as chaos may retreat to the security of fixed positions

and ready-made identities. However, teaching students to do the opposite, that of cultivating

openness, is the necessity here. Again, in the words of Freire (1970):

Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world. (p. 34)

Developing Critical Thinkers

The critical inquiry that is so crucial to the vitality of education is also essential to encourage

the cultural disposition needed for peace in our societies. Education for peace sets the teaching-

learning process on a liberatory - as opposed to a domesticating - trajectory. Between the

“prescribed texts” and “proscribed discourse,” educational spaces, especially in the countries of

the global South, are being nudged into reinforcing monocultures of the mind and foreclosing

alternatives.

What goes on in most post-colonial societies in the name of learning is what Freire criticized as

the “banking” concept of education where, with the teacher as narrator, education becomes an

act of “depositing.”22 Such education reinforces the hierarchy of authority. Rather, education

must be a process of inquiry in which the student recognizes her own individual experience and

engenders critical self-consciousness or swaraj (understanding of the self and containment of

22 Freire first put forth this now legendary point, perhaps the one he is most known for, in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

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the ego) as Gandhi so effectively put it.23 It is education where multiple intelligences are

recognized and where hand, head and heart have the space to learn in unison. It is education

where social responsibility to the community harnesses merit in the service of the least

advantaged, and where the mind is liberated from all forms of fear.

Critical thinking needs imagination where students and teachers as co-learners practice

anticipating a new social reality. This involves creating a discourse of ethics and hope on the

one hand, and making the ongoing struggle for democratic public spheres both in and outside

schools and universities a primary focus of education. It engages with the joys and

responsibilities of full civic participation. Critical thinking requires a pedagogy that can shatter

myths, break free of rhetoric and rescue imagination and intuition, using them as resources to

conceive and initiate change. This frees learners from the gentle manufacturing of consent

implicit in received curricula and the opacity of prescriptive, outmoded systems of learning and

assessment.

The absence of self-reflexivity engenders a safe terrain for the legitimization of illiberal

discourse. Education must permanently shake us out of complacency and the arrogance of

certitude based on received opinion, custom and convention. In true Socratic spirit, this involves

rigorous self-questioning and a fearless interrogation of the supposed truths that we live by. It is

a call to break out of the monocultures of the mind, and deconstruct creatively the illusions of

our epoch. It is in inventing possibilities for the culture of peace that schools and universities

become central – particularly as a form of knowledge that is beyond boundaries.

Dialogue and Dialogical Practices

An urgent need exists for the creation of traditions of democratic dialogue within educational

processes. Premium is often placed on the “debate” as a highly valued aspect of intellectual

reasoning. Even today, the “winning” of accolades for aggressive and articulate ‘reasoning’ is

prescribed as an ingredient of success and celebrated in most schools and universities. In India

too, the traditional communicative goshti (coming together to discuss) and Samvaad (Dialogue)

have been replaced by the more assertive vad-vivad (debate) of oratorical mastery. Debate and

competition go with the victory of one individual or side and the humiliation and exclusion of

23 For further detail on Gandhi’s conception of Hind Swaraj relative to his understanding of autonomy and domination, see Anthony J. Parel, Editor. Hind Swaraj and Other Writings.

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the other. Dialogue opens an entirely different set of possibilities from the “othering processes”

of debate.

Of all the techniques used by conflict resolution specialists – mediation, facilitation,

reconciliation, negotiation – the importance of dialogue cannot be stressed enough. Dialogue at

root involves breaking out of cacophony to build trust and understanding, active listening being

its crucial ingredient. Genuine listening and careful speaking are prerequisites for societies that

seek to nurture inclusivity and diversity. They offer a possible panacea for the crisis of civility

that affects many public spaces including schools today. Research in India has shown that the

likelihood of inter-community violent conflict in cities and towns is inversely proportional to the

extent that Hindus & Muslims for example have previously engaged in shared civic institutions

and activities and especially in collaborative learning.

Given their work with groups of individuals from diverse cultures, the community of teachers in

multi-ethnic, multi-religious societies, would especially be supported by receiving training in

active listening and dialogic methods of pedagogy to be active transmitters of the value of

nonviolent techniques as integral to civic education. This could go a long way in breaking

stereotypes and mental strait jackets. A transformative dialogue that engages with possibilities

rather than limits could facilitate the much needed paradigm shift. Schools and universities must

not merely preserve dissent and diversity, but must provide the impetus for a cultural encounter

of knowing the “other”, which should be its essence as a knowledge system.

By its very nature, educating for peace is at one level a deeply explosive exercise questioning

comforting, culturally embedded practices and beliefs. It is in this sense that education becomes

the politics that shapes the learning process, as in Paulo Freire’s statement that, “there is a

‘politicity’ of education in the same way that there is an ‘educability’ of the political; that is to

say that there is a political nature to education just as there is a pedagogical nature to the

political act.’ (Shor and Freire, 2002).

Curriculum transformation, in the context of the totalizing tendencies of the new global order, is

not simply about the insertion of some local or global content. It requires both rethinking

citizenship and the identity of the learner, and also a careful understanding of the way that

knowledge is produced and distributed. A Whole Mind education would be inextricably linked

to democracy and justice, and the recreation of vital community and positive peace.

20

Summary and Conclusion: Whole-Mind Education for the Century Ahead

Starting with the meeting of 20 highly accomplished, diverse women from around the world

who concluded that the most potent way to effect positive change for the century ahead is

through transformed educational systems on global levels, in this article we articulate the central

aspects of this vision through the term, Whole Mind education. Such an education is understood

as best preparing ‘whole humans’ with the knowledge and skills to meet the 21st century

challenges that await the children and adults of tomorrow. Three priority areas of Whole Mind

education are seen as having the greatest potential benefit for the 21st century: integration,

creativity, and peace.

Integration entails the emphasis of both left and right brain skills and incorporates findings in

neuroscience highlighting our understanding of experience-based neuroplasticity.24 It also calls

for the integration of nature into the educational process, and the integration of core values in

teaching methods and curriculum. Creativity and the arts are understood as vital for effective

learning. The Clara Barton School is noted as a shining example of a successful innovation in

creativity-based learning. Educating for peace requires highly engaged participation from

students and teachers alike, involving learning from conflict; critical inquiry, and dialogical

processes. Educating with the goal of students have the skills to successfully work with conflict

in their families, communities, and societies involves, at its base, radical rethinking of

comfortable assumptions.

Our assumption is that indeed, educators can offer effective responses to the `monotheism of

consciousness’ that threatens to invade life in the global village. For us, it is no longer an option to

continue with mass education that satisfies the market but dulls the mind. It is imperative that educators

around the world seize this opportunity to transform education to nurture compassionate, creative and

courageously responsible citizens who together can craft the emerging future in the shape of their finest

dreams.

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Author BIOS:

Scilla Elworthy of the UK, three times nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous peace activism, has participated in the innovative Bee Schools and Do Schools in the UK and Germany, which both foster self-sufficiency and encouragement for young people to develop social enterprises for societal benefit in their home countries. She is the founder of the organizations Oxford Research Group and Peace Direct, and has served as advisor to Peter Gabriel, Desmond Tutu, and Richard Branson in developing ‘The Elders’ project. The author of several books, she was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003 for her work with the Oxford Research Group.

Meenakshi Gopinath is President of India’s premier women’s college, Lady Shri Ram College, and has won India’s highest awards for her remarkable achievements in pioneering peace education and women’s education and empowerment. She was the first woman to serve on the National Security Board of India, and is involved in several peace initiatives, including the founding of the Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), an initiative to promote the leadership of South Asian women in the areas of international politics, peace, security, and diplomacy. She is responsible for the introduction of Conflict Resolution Studies at the University of Delhi, and lectures on these topics internationally, as well as having authored several books on these issues.

Jean Houston, scholar, philosopher and researcher in human capacities, is one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time, and one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement. Jean has worked intensively in 40 cultures and 100 countries helping global state leaders, leading educational institutions, business organizations, and millions of people to enhance and deepen their own uniqueness. She is a prolific writer and author of 28 books including A Passion for the Possible, Search for the Beloved, The Possible Human, Jump Time, and Manual of the Peacemaker. As advisor to UN agencies in human and cultural development, she has worked to implement some of their extensive educational and health programs. Since 2003, she has been working with the UN Development Program, training leaders in developing countries throughout the world in the new field of social artistry, as well as through a graduate program she directs at Meridian University in Leadership and Social Transformation.

Rama Mani is an internationally respected expert on peace, justice and human security, a Senior Research Associate of the University of Oxford’s Centre for International Studies, and directed the multi-disciplinary research project at the center: ‘Ending Mass Atrocities: Protect Southern Cultural Perspectives,’ culminating in the co-edited book, Responsibility to Protect: Cultural Perspectives from the Global South (Routledge 2011). Dr. Rami has found subtle ways to bring mindfulness, compassion and multi-cultural cooperation into the security training of diplomats and military officers on one hand, and into peace building education in countries in conflict on the other.

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Melissa Schwartz, psychologist and educator, is Vice President of Academic Affairs at Meridian University (USA), whose innovative mission emphasizes transformative learning and the development of human capacities. Formerly a faculty member in the California State University system, she has developed and chaired graduate programs in psychology and education that focus on student-centered learning, engaging the other, and identifying and liberating individual and systemic oppression.

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