VOLUME 21, NUMBER 4 • WINTER 2008

VOLUME 21, NUMBER 4 • WINTER 2008

“Educational alternatives will only truly thrive when the cultural sphere [which includes education] is freed from the undue influence and technocratic control of the economic and political spheres."

— Ron Miller

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Table of ContentsGuest Editorial. The Earth and Its Young:

Where Do the Children Play? Elizabeth Goodenough . . . 2

Symbols Don’t Wiggle in Your Hand. Lowell Monke . . . . . . 5

Second Wind for a Retired Police Horse. Peggy Ellsberg. . . . 8

Riding Out. A Poem by Peggy Ellsberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Hoof Prints: Equine Therapy for Autistic Children.Alexandra Dingman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

“Appareled in Celestial Light”: Transcendent NatureExperiences in Childhood. David Sobel . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Out of Bounds: Insights from Australian Children to SupportSustainable Cities. Paul Tranter and Karen Malone . . . . 20

Freedom in the Cultural Sphere. Ron Miller . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Chris’s Column. What’s in a Name? Chris Mercogliano . . . . . 31

Constructivism and the Bhagavad-Gita. Priya Kumari . . . . . 34

Conversations about Social Justice.Kelly Donnell, Li-Ling Yang, Annie Winfield,Alan Canestrari, Bruce Marlowe, and Mieko Kamii . . . . 37

My Father’s Garden. A Poem by Kate McReynolds . . . . . . . 39

Teaching World Religion in the Public Schools.James W. Peterson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Book Reviews

Against Schooling by StanleyAronowitz(Reviewed by William Crain) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

New York and Slavery by Alan J. Singer(Reviewed by Marlene S. Munn-Joseph). . . . . . . . . . . 44

Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips by Gene Glass(Reviewed by Scott Fletcher) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way by B. D. Schultz(Reviewed by Alicia A. Broderick) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Editor

William Crain

Book Review EditorJudith Kaufman

Editorial BoardSue Books

Riane EislerDavid Elkind

Diana M. FeigeMaxine Greene

Tobin HartJeffrey Kane

Kathleen KessonRob Koegel

Jonathan KozolJack MillerRon Miller

Nel NoddingsJack Petrash

Madhu Suri PrakashDavid PurpelMolly Quinn

Douglas SloanHuston Smith

Dale T. SnauwaertDavid Sobel

Shirley SteinbergJesse A. Stoff

Paul TheobauldDilafruz R. Williams

Atsuhiko Yoshida

Cover Design

Anything Graphic

Production Editor

Charles Jakiela

Encounter (ISSN 1094-3838) is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December by Holistic Education Press, P.O. Box 328, Brandon,VT 05733-0328. 1-800-639-4122. E-mail: <[email protected]> Website: <http://www.great-ideas.org>. Annual subscription rates are$39.95 for individuals and $100 for U.S. libraries and other multi-user environments. (Postage is extra for delivery to non-U.S. addresses.) Selectedback issues are available. Periodicals postage is paid at Brandon, VT, and at additional offices. This issue of ENCOUNTER was produced withCorel Ventura software and printed by Quickprint (www.quickprintvt.com) in Rutland, Vermont. POSTMASTER: Send address changes toENCOUNTER , P.O. Box 328, Brandon, VT 05733-0328. Copyright © 2008 by Psychology Press, Brandon, VT. All rights reserved.

EncounterEducation for Meaning and Social Justice

Volume 21, Number 4 Winter 2008

The Earth and Its YoungWhere Do the Children Play?

Elizabeth Goodenough

A Robin redbreast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a Rage.

William Blake,Auguries of Innocence 1803)

As a university teacher of literature for over thirtyyears, I may possess an atypical perspective.I’ve worked with academicians while remain-

ing in contact with children — who require outdoorplay for integrity, both physical and mental. Yet chil-dren are powerless to express their wishes when de-cisions about natural resources are made.

Children’s imprint on the land is light. Adultstread more heavily, etching their ambitions on the en-vironment.

As a sense of place marks itself on those growingup, the physical world is written upon by each gener-ation. This and the following issue of Encounter high-light play and the natural world in ways that suggesthow rapidly both are changing. Like Bill Crain, whohelped me select and edit the first six works in this is-sue, I watch with suspense. Focusing on the earthand its young, we must ask what mutual exchangecreates the best possibilities for each? How can weenhance multi-species living? How does caring foranimals protect the lives of all species, including ourown? Our contributors aim to engage in a conversa-tion about the relationship that children and the nat-ural world need so both can thrive.

Threats to Play and Nature

Simone Weil wrote, “To be rooted is perhaps themost important and least recognized need of the hu-man soul” (1978, 41). Yet our ruptured root systemhas been dragged to the brink: technology may haveoutrun us — not just in financial systems driven bysupercomputers but also in the demise of outdoorplay and direct experience with nature.

New research in New York and Los Angeles by theAlliance for Childhood (in press) suggests that manykindergarteners are spending two to three hours perday on literacy, math instruction, and standardizedtesting, and 30 minutes or less engaged in play. In re-cent decades, the distance an average 12-year-oldcan travel independently by bike or foot has shrunkdramatically (Chipeniuk 1995). Recess threatens tobecome extinct. Eight- to 18-year-olds spend on aver-age 6.5 hours per day looking at a screen (Roberts,Foehr & Rideout 2005).

People in daily contact with children know lessand less about unscripted play in unstructured set-tings. Estranged from this vital activity, the next gen-eration loses touch with places that teach them howto become creative, flexible, and alive. Will growingup minimally engaged with living things result instress-related diseases and an accelerated destruc-tion of nature itself?

Not enough has been written about two essen-tials: contact with animals and universal access toplay. William Blake, the first English picture bookartist, illustrates the interdependence of creaturesand the physical landscape in “Auguries of Inno-cence” (1988). His Songs of Innocence and Songs of Ex-perience — each plate engraved and water coloredby hand — portray pastoral frolic. He capitalized

Guest Editorial

ELIZABETH GOODENOUGH helped produce“Where Do the Children Play?” a projectthat includes an award-winning PBSdocumentary written and directed byChristopher Cook and Mark Harris, athree-volume anthology, and an outreachcampaign to promote outdoor play. Sheteaches at the University of Michigan<[email protected]>.

Imagination, a divine quality that originates insideus. The poet’s words take root in the ground, butthey dance up like flames. They convey what WalterBenjamin terms the liberatory potential to encoun-ter the world without preconceived notions. Play isnot as much about imitating previous use of materi-als as about bringing these elements into new rela-tionships with each other.

Behavioral neural scientists aided by MRI tech-nology are beginning to provide proof of the impor-tance of play to learning and wellbeing. Supportingthe intuitive knowledge of astute preschool and pri-mary grade teachers, scientists are now better un-derstanding the impact of play — from neo-natalhandling to laughter and rough and tumble — onthe chemistry of the brain. As psychiatrist StuartBrown, founder of the National Institute for Play,puts it (2008), play fulfills a need as fundamental asvitamins or sleep. This core affect of mammals isshared by humans first in activities such aspeek-a-boo, hide and seek, and fort building.

Secret Spaces

In 1998, teaching at the University of Michigan, Ibegan to think about the secret spaces of childhood.Delving into localities of cultural memory, I won-dered how idyllic sites in classic works — a raft inHuck Finn or the locked turf in The Secret Garden —shape our identities. Fantasy and insight in suchhidden locales often inspire works of art. Questionsabout how the young process their own ecology ex-panded into an exhibition and a two-day confer-ence. A thousand children explored Nichols Arbore-tum and found performances and storytellers in thewoods. Architects, children’s authors, educators,and artists convened at the Residential College todiscuss issues of environmental justice, property re-lations, and the need to preserve and recreate sanc-tuaries for free play. Biologist E. O. Wilson (2008,110) defined the quest for secret hideaways as a fun-damental trait of human nature of “ultimate valuein survival.”

Brought to life in the displays and installations, in-doors and outside, were the inchoate and the ineffa-ble: the excitement of collecting booty or finding a re-membered retreat. “Secret” is the special meaningchildren give to a place when they own it deeply.

Such a place persists in memory like love. These sitesare captured by many of the best childhood books. Inrepresenting hiding games, fort building, toy mak-ing, and the possession that comes from the hands,these texts liberate learning. Embedded in them areunique but forgotten ways of shaping and inhabitingthe world. Just as hide-and-seek brings our bodiesinto a synchronous relationship with an environ-ment, the intimacy of a secret space reverses scaleand expands a sense of place.

Where Do the Children Play?

From compiling and editing Secret Spaces of Child-hood (2003), I became aware of the profound changesaffecting childhood over the last twenty years. Todocument this story from the perspective of thosegrowing up today, I began raising funds for theMichigan Television production, Where Do theChildren Play?, its two companion volumes, and anoutreach center at University of Michigan (www.michigantelevision.org/childrenplay). Directed andwritten by Christopher Cook with consulting pro-ducer Mark Harris, this PBS documentary won fiveEmmys and a top award at the Eugene Oregon Inter-national Film Festival. It airs nationally on AmericanPublic television through May 2010. We are nowworking with the National Wildlife Federation, theChildren & Nature Network, and the Alliance forChildhood to establish roundtables to identify localobstacles to universal access to recreation —whether these involve safety or transportation is-sues, a dearth of time and space, or the disinclinationto play outside.

New Possibilities

Although the six pieces selected for inclusion inthis issue of Encounter are varied, they examine pos-sibilities at the heart of every encounter of childrenwith their landscape. Assigning words to the deepestdesires takes time. “Might I,” quavered Mary, “mightI have a bit of earth?” This stammering request, half-way through The Secret Garden (Burnett 1951, 103),startles the speaking girl and her listening uncle. Butit engenders instinctual understanding of the childecology in the tale. In this issue, writers also point tonew directions. Poetry and narratives like those ofPeggy Ellsberg and David Sobel and programs like

Volume 21, Number 4 (Winter 2008) 3

Alexandra Dingman’s reach mysterious placeslocked away from conventional awareness. Their of-ferings exemplify what is missing when we employauthority and compulsion in dealing with childrenand other creatures. As Edward Hoagland (1975, 26)once said, “In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn’tmerely try to train him to be semi-human. The pointof it is to open oneself to the possibility of becomingpartly a dog.”

In this issue Lowell Monke, Paul Tranter and Ka-ren Malone help us see how schools and cities shutdown the spirit of the next generation. These authorsshow how children need contact with nature andhow technologies and built environments cut themoff. I am reminded of Bill McKibben’s (2008) com-ment that in the “endless rows of individual houses,each opening out onto the same ribbon of sterile con-crete,” there is “a sort of invasive individualism, ahyper-individualism that makes us a new species.”Inspired by the solutions these essays offer, I’d like tosuggest how an early years agenda chimes with anoutdoor learning and play manifesto — one relevantto citizenship, geography, and spiritual soundness.In this issue, Ron Miller’s essay describes the possi-ble roots of a broad new revolution that is emerging.

Readers also will get a sense that connections tothe natural world are ultimately personal. For exam-ple, Peggy Ellsberg’s poem “Riding Out,” about herhorse Leroy, conveys how the elegiac cycles of seasonand mortality cannot be virtual. As Stephen Talbotthas observed, “special effects wonder” does not leadto the same reverent curiosity that accompanies pro-longed contact with nature. The latter develops“from a sense that the inner essence of what one islooking at is somehow connected to the inner essenceof oneself” (Talbott 1995, 146).

Policymakers, city planners, and landscape archi-tects need to learn from interdisciplinary childhoodstudies to challenge some deep rock-hard assump-tions. Too often as former children, we believe we’ve“been there” and merely regard the young as lesscomplete versions of ourselves. I believe that readerswill find in this issue glimpses into the world ofchildhood that are new to them. As Barrie Thorne(1987, 125) has said, “When adults seek to learnabout and from children, the challenge is to take theclosely familiar and to render it strange.”

Play as an autonomous mode of experiencingemotion must be nurtured and persist in adult life. InHomo Ludens (1970, 4, 5) Johan Huizinga says playtakes place in a dimension distinct from “‘ordinary’life.” It creates “a second, poetic world alongside theworld of nature.” With high stakes testing, we maybe losing not just recess but also those psychic spaceswhere imagination and confidence grow. Operatingwithin schools and universities, we need collabora-tive programs that look at the places where childrenand adults learn best. The only way educators are go-ing to create a good environment for children isthrough partnerships that enable our global villageto understand that, in the words commonly attrib-uted to Gary Snyder, “Nature is not a place to visit. Itis home.”

References

Alliance for Childhood. In press. Let the children play: Re-versing the loss of play in early education. College Park,MD: Alliance for Childhood.

Blake, W. 1988. Auguries of innocence. In William Blake: Se-lected poetry, edited by W. H. Stevenson. London: Penguin.Originally published 1803.

Brown, S. 2008, November 1. Scientific retreat. Stanford Uni-versity.

Burnett, F. H. 1951. The secret garden. London: Penguin.Chipeniuk, R. 1995. Childhood foraging as a means of acquir-

ing competent human cognition about biodiversity. Envi-ronment and Behavior 27 (2): 490-512.

Goodenough, E. 2003. Secret spaces of childhood. Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press.

Hoagland, E. 1975, February. The tug of life at the end of theleash. Harper’s.

Huizinga, J. 1970. Homo ludens: A study of the play-element inculture. Boston: Beacon Press. (Originally published in1938.)

McKibben, B. 2008. Introduction. In MacLean, A. Over: TheAmerican landscape at the tipping point. New York: Abrams.

Roberts, D., U. Foehr, and V. Rideout. 2005. Generation M: Me-dia in the lives of 8-18 year-olds. Washington D.C.: HenryKaiser Foundation.

Talbott, S. 1995. The future does not compute: Transcending themachines in our midst. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.

Thorne, B. 1987. Learning from children. In Hess, B., E.Markson, and P. Stein. Introductory sociology, 3rd and 4theds. New York: Macmillan.

Weil, S. 1978. The need for roots: Prelude to a declaration of dutiestoward mankind. Translated by Arthur Wills, with a prefaceby T. S. Eliot. New York: Routledge.

Wilson, E. O. 2003. Symposium. In Secret spaces of childhood,edited by E. Goodenough. Ann Arbor: University of Mich-igan Press.

4 ENCOUNTER: Education for Meaning and Social Justice

Symbols Don’t Wiggle in Your HandLowell Monke

One of the most significant, but widely misun-derstood, changes of the past fifty years hasbeen the shift from an environment steeped in

physical things to one saturated with symbolic rep-resentations. This shift has not been too pro-nounced for those of us who grew up early in theera because we brought with us a huge backlog ofexperience with actual objects that we have beenable to connect imaginatively to their symbols. Letme give just one example.

The term “night crawler” is a literary symbol of aparticular animal. Readers who have dug in the soil,pulled a night crawler out of its hole, felt it wigglearound in one’s hand, perhaps tried to thread it ontoa fishing hook, will experience an explosion of mem-ories and maybe even feelings at the sight of thatword (or a picture). You may even recall the sensa-tion of dirt under your fingernails, or teasing youryounger brother or sister with it (or being teased).Your knowledge of night crawlers is bound up withyour earlier direct experiences with them.

But what happens if we present a child with asymbol of a night crawler who has never even seen areal one, or any other worm-like animal, before? Thisdisconnect between symbol and what it represents isa rapidly growing problem. As symbols flood ourchildren from every kind of electronic and printsource, there has been a drought of actual experi-ences with real things. Kids now spend on averagefive hours a day in front of screens, including thoseof the TV and the computer (Roberts, Foehr, &Rideout 2005). That doesn’t leave much time to en-counter real objects.

Mistaking the Virtual for the Real

As the physical world becomes increasingly aliento children, some of the consequences are predict-able: confusion, distorted understandings, and bore-dom. But there has also been a not-so-predictable re-

LOWELL MONKE, a founding Board member ofthe Alliance for Childhood, is Associate Pro-fessor of Education at Wittenberg University.He has written numerous articles on the roleof technology in education and is coauthor(with R. W. Burniske) of Breaking Down theDigital Walls: Learning to Teach in aPost-Modem World (SUNY Press, 2001).

Today’s children typicallyspend so much time dealingwith symbols on screens thatthey miss out on directexperiences with the real world,and their intellectual andemotional development suffers.

sult: More and more it appears that children are actu-ally mistaking the representations for the real thing.Again, let me give an example.

A few years ago students from a fifth grade class inJohnston, Iowa, (I was teaching near there at thetime) participated in a program call Africa Quest, inwhich they communicated via a video and audio sat-ellite link with a man riding his bicycle across theGreat Rift Valley in Kenya. A reporter came to theschool to do a story on the activity and the headlinethe next day read: “Students Visit Africa WithoutLeaving Home” (Villanueva 1998). Toward the endof the article the reporter quotes one of the studentsas saying, “It was great to see first hand what washappening in Africa.” There is some curious lan-guage used by both the reporter and the student.“Visit” used to mean actually going somewhere.“First hand” used to mean actually being there, do-ing what actually was being done, not just sitting inan air conditioned classroom watching someoneelse’s excellent adventure.

Anthropologist Gregory Bateson called this kind ofconfusion, “Eating the menu instead of the meal”(Grof 1981). The metaphor is apt for this discussionbecause it conveys how little symbols alone nourish achild’s soul. No one prays over a menu. Reverencegrows out of first hand experience, as do such impor-tant human qualities as sympathy, respect, honor, andcompassion. All of these inner qualities are nourishedprimarily through direct encounters in the real world.All of them get flabby and tend to atrophy duringthose five hours a day children gaze into screens.

Seductive Power

So why are children so willing to isolate them-selves into the artificial world of screen media? Thereare many reasons, but when it comes to computers,children are compensated for their interior idlenessby gaining enormous external power through the useof a powerful machine. This is crucial to understandbecause it signifies a social condition we need tospend much more time contemplating: Power hasbecome the greatest gift our culture believes it cangive to a child.

I have lost count of how many times I have heardteachers, parents, school administrators, futurists,and politicians extol the educational value of the

computers and the Internet because it gives kids thepower to virtually go anywhere, at anytime, togather any information. What is overlooked in all ofthis hype is that this “go anywhere at anytime” capa-bility has been accompanied by an erosion of ourchildren’s sense of belonging anywhere, in any time,to anybody, for any reason. In general, what thesegreat symbol manipulators do for our children isgive them enormous power over a symbolic world,but at the cost of never getting to discover how theyfit into their real one.

Two Recommendations

So what do we do? In this short essay I will men-tion two actions that I consider of prime importance.

Delay Computer Use

When elementary teachers ask me what kinds ofgreat things they ought to do with the computers intheir classrooms I typically tell them to sell them tothe high school, where computers’ abstract process-ing capacities better fit the level of student thinking;then take the money they get, go out and buy someshovels, and send their children out to dig up nightcrawlers. What I’m trying to get across to them is theimportance of giving their students the vast back-ground in real, physical experiences they will needto give meaning to all of the symbols they are goingto encounter later in life. I honestly believe that themental and emotional health of our children wouldbe improved enormously if we declared our elemen-tary schools to be electronic-media free zones.

I know that lots of good teachers object to this rad-ical dismissal of high technology from the elemen-tary classroom. I do not dispute that there certainlyare many educational activities that can be per-formed with these machines, or that good teacherswill balance computer activities with time outdoors.But the crisis associated with the loss of first-handexperience for children has reached the point whereit really doesn’t matter if we balance things withinschools — we need to use schools to provide balanceto the seriously unbalanced, technologically satu-rated lives our kids live outside of school.

Realize that Children Aren’t Machines

My second recommendation is to convince our ed-ucation, business, and political leaders to stop looking


at schools as machinery that cranks out products —economic resources — and views the children themselvesas new machines to be assembled and fine-tuned. My por-trait might seem extreme, but consider the following:

• Only if we viewed kids as machines wouldwe believe that we can assess their knowl-edge, intelligence, and skills and predict theirfuture success based on a meager set of num-bers generated by a test itself graded by ma-chines.

• Only if we viewed kids as machines wouldwe believe that one standard curriculumserves a kid growing up in Harlem just aswell as a kid growing up in Jackson Hole,Wyoming.

• Only if we viewed children as machineswould we look at a small child who has prob-lems sitting in one place for an hour — whocan’t pay attention to all the disconnected, ab-stract symbols being thrust at him on paper,chalkboards, and screens to the point that hedisrupts the school operations — and decide

that all we need to do is apply a little chemi-cal grease (like Ritalin) to a malfunctioninggear inside his head.

Getting rid of the mechanical view of children andlearning will require us to move away from the tech-nological ideology that currently dominates the cul-tural landscape. We can only do so if we offer ourchildren opportunities to stand apart from all thepowerful tools around them and engage the worlddirectly. In the process, we can help them develop anecological orientation to the world that acknowl-edges the interrelatedness of all things; establisheslife, not machines, as the measure of value; andteaches them how to live in harmony with the worldas opposed to seeking power over it.

References

Grof, S. 1981. Nature, mind, and consciousness: GregorBateson and the new paradigm. Phoenix: Journal ofTranspersonal Anthropology 5, no. 2, 31-72.

Roberts, D., U. Foehr, and V. Rideout. 2005. Generation M: Me-dia in the lives of 8-18 year-olds. Menlo Park, CA: Henry J.Kaiser Family Foundation.

Villanueva, E. 1998, October 10. Students visit Africa withoutleaving home. Des Moines Register, M 1.


Second Wind for aRetired Police Horse

Peggy Ellsberg

I have seen this horse stand in the rain, the snow,the sun at 110 degrees, with the patience andequanimity he carries in the face of conditions

that send most people running for cover.(Linda Kohanov 2001)

In May of 2003, while supervising a 4-H meeting,I encountered a retired police horse namedLeroy from the White Plains, NY, mounted unit,

or maybe I should say he encountered me. In thethree years that have passed since then, I havenever been able to determine who initiated our re-lationship. I have since read an account that mir-rors my experience somewhat: In Henry Blake’sTalking with Horses (1975), Blake, an Englishfarmer, describes the moment when he met hischampion steeple-chaser, Jolly Roger. During thelean times after WWII, at a sheep market, Blake feltwhat he describes as a sensation of grief and de-spair hitting him from behind, between the shoul-der blades. He turned around, and there was a seri-ously emaciated horse being auctioned for slaugh-ter. The horse, named Roger, was weeping. Blakeimpulsively bought the horse and led it slowly upthe road to his barn, where he immediately begangrooming and feeding it. Soon Roger gainedweight and recovered his spirits, and went on tobecome the famous performance horse, JollyRoger.

On that May day in 2003, I had no idea that Iwould meet, and fall in love with, a horse. Leroy’spolice officer and daily companion of many yearshad retired and was hospitalized. Leroy, a smart, tal-ented, and beautifully trained animal, became de-pressed and stopped eating. He was famouslychild-friendly. Someone had the good idea of givinghim to the 4-H. On the day he arrived, Leroy badlyneeded a new home and, as it turned out, a new job,

PEGGY ELLSBERG teaches English at BarnardCollege in Manhattan and lives in theHudson Valley with her husband Robert,three children, and numerous animals, whohave included her 35-year-old adoptedpolice horse, Leroy.

The rescue of an old horsebrings many benefits.

and I, in a decision stunning for its apparent imprac-ticality, decided to adopt him.

Remarkable benefitsfollowed. I learned howto take care of a horse. Mytwo daughters, then eightand nine years old,learned to ride him. Even-tually I learned to ridehim. Recognizing his gen-tle gifts, I arranged forLeroy, an exceptionally in-telligent and sensitivehorse, to become certifiedfor Pegasus, a therapeuticriding program for chil-dren and adults with dis-abilities. My daughterChristina took him to chil-dren’s horse shows, andhe won three championships. At the age of 31, he wasvoted Schoolhorse of the Year for our region in 2004.Following these successes, he has appeared on thefront page of the county newspaper. He has main-tained a visiting relationship with his retired humanpolice companion, Officer William Archer of theWhite Plains Mounted Unit. Almost every week,visitors travel to see the sweet-natured and nowfairly distinguished old horse. And every day, Ispend hours with him, riding, grooming, grazing,gazing.

As a new horse owner with academic inclinations,I have undertaken for myself an extensive if randomcourse of reading. I started with Henry Blake’s book,and have moved on to Vicki Hearne’s Adam’s Task(2000); Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum’s Ani-mal Rights (2004); and Jane Smiley’s fresh treatmentsin A Year at the Races (2004) and Horse Heaven (2000).In addition, Linda Kohanov’s The Tao of Equus (2001)and Riding between the Worlds (2003) have been influ-ential in my thinking about the relationship betweenhorses and humans.

What Stanley Cavell calls “inordinate knowl-edge” and what St. Paul might have been thinkingwhen he said in 2 Corinthians, “Now I know in partas through a glass darkly,” describe the liminal na-ture of our connection with companion animals and

the difficulty we encounter in attempting to de-scribe it. Just as poetry, folktales, drama, and fiction

can evoke truths inac-cessible through formalnarrative, we often canmost effectively ap-proach a conversationon animals through sto-ries. In addition, filmprovides our culturewith many of its folktalesand archetypes abouthorses. In cinema, fromNational Velvet, BlackBeauty, and Flicka to morecontemporary movieslike Seabiscuit, Hidalgo,and Dreamer, horses ac-company and even em-body a human hero’s

moral or spiritual quest. Likewise, in written narra-tive, Henry Blake’s horse, Jolly Roger, Jane Smiley’sMr. T, and Linda Kohanov’s Noche and Rasa, teachand even save the human storytellers.

And so we should save them. Leroy has intro-duced me to the prospect of equine rescue. I havemet a number of women who, like Henry Blake, haverescued horses from the thoroughbred racetrack,from trail-riding businesses, and even on their wayto slaughter. Every region in the United States has or-ganizations that enable the rescue and adoption ofhorses who need a home, some fit for companion-ship, and many fit for riding.

References

Blake, H. 1975. Talking with horses. New York: Dutton.

Hearne, V. 2000. Adam’s task: Calling animals by name.Pleasantville, NY: Vintage. (Work originally published in1982).

Kohanov, L. 2001. The tao of equus. Navato, CA: New WorldLibrary.

Kohanov, L. 2003. Riding between the worlds. New York: NewWorld Library.

Smiley, J. 2000. Horse heaven. New York: Ballantine.

Smiley, J. 2004. A year at the races. New York: Anchor.

Sunstein, C. R., and M. C. Nussbaum, eds. 2004. Animal rights:Current debates and new directions. New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press.


At the age of 11, the author’s daughter Christina made this sketch ofLeroy while he was grazing.

Riding OutBy Peggy Ellsberg

1

Morning so early, stars stillpace the cold black sky,and we ride out togetherover the hard sleeping body of earth.Quiet is his swaying gait,and pure is the quietthat travels beside us.All mortal flesh keeps silence.So this is what it meansto be alive as a flame,the horse and his sweet cold breathblessing the air.

2

The blue face of dayat the open window of his stall,his white face at the gate,watching for me.He rests his muzzleon my shoulder.Brushed and combed,dressed and tacked,he is ready to take mesafely over fields.He wants to lumber up the hill,trudging, pushing, toward the lake.Between my thighs,he rocks like a boat.I feel, within him, the beatingcave of his big heart.All the way, his hoofbeats playthe ancient musicof this riding.

3

We enter the lake, water drips from his muzzle,and we swim together, neither father nor mother.He pumps his thin legs, and we dip.Then he drinks, and we are both drunk,from the deep sweet green fragrance of lake,its wet lips. Then the horse hauls us up,up and onto the bank, and he vehementlyshakes, sprays of lake water flying.On his back, I plunge forth holding hardto his mane, so slippery and wet,and smelling of balsam.Alone, still alone, we spot meadowsof green mustard grass.A poet would call them fields of praise.My horse walks forward into them.

4

Thursday nights, light just fading, we ride outand learn the earth underfoot like a prayer.How long have I neededto be held just like this.I want to touch the baseof your being, when,munching and cropping, you bow and kissthe earth again and again.

5

I remember yourone back hoof cockedin the ice-cast morningas you waited for me.Your good-natured faceclouded the air with cold breath.In your mind, it was summer,the orchard hung heavy with apples.In my mind, you would live on forever,never lie down and leave.Let earth turn her courseand let grey willows weep.Let woods, where together we chanced,fade and sleep.And let all mortal thingssacred silences keep.

PEGGY ELLSBERG is theauthor of “Second Wind fora Retired Polic Horse” alsoin this issue, about herhorse Leroy. Peggy wrotethis poem about Leroy afterhis recent death, at the ageof 35.

Hoof PrintsEquine Therapy for Autistic Children

Alexandra Dingman

A man on a horse is spiritually as wellas physically bigger than a man on foot.

John Steinbeck, The Red Pony (1994, 12)

He’ll be here in a few minutes. I can’t help feel-ing nervous. There is no guessing the mood hewill be in, or how he will react to the horses or

to me. Seven-year-old Jonah rarely makes eye con-tact and would rather be by himself. His speech ismumbled and often incoherent. Just one of the esti-mated 1½ million people diagnosed with autism inthe United States (Autism Society of America 2008),this boy displays few nonverbal cues, has poor so-cial skills, uses repetitive language and movements,and is inflexible with routines and schedules. ButJonah reacts differently with horses. Though it israre for Jonah to talk directly with humans, he willtalk to horses and even the barn dog. Last year, Jo-nah’s mother reported that Jonah picked up thetelephone and asked her to talk to Ginny, his favor-ite horse at Lake Auburn Equestrian Center. Duringthe last two years, Jonah has gradually becomemore interested in me; he now seeks me out in thebarn when he arrives, makes eye-contact and en-gages in games with me at the barn. For Jonah, rid-ing has been therapeutic.

Having worked with horses for over twenty years,I sometimes forget what it is like to see the ridingworld through the eyes of a novice. Horses are grace-ful, beautiful, and wild. Their movements inspireawe. “Riding a horse makes someone small feellarge, long-legged and powerful.” (Friends For To-morrow 1999). All too often children stay inside, playvideo games, listen to music, or watch TV, instead ofrunning around and socializing. Riding encourageschildren to work with their hands, exercise, connectwith horses and people of all ages, gain confidence,and learn new skills. As anyone who has spent time

The patience, loyalty, andquiet responsiveness of a horsefrequently engender positivefeelings in a child, making arelationship with a horseespecially helpful to a childwho is having difficulties inlife.

ALEXANDRA DINGMAN is a graduate of BatesCollege, Lewiston, ME, where she majoredin Special Education and wrote her thesison the effects of therapeutic riding onchildren with autism. She is currently theAssociate Director of the Friends forTomorrow Therapeutic Riding Centerin Lincoln, MA.

around a barn knows, there is always work to bedone, whether it is brushing a horse, cleaning leather,filling water buckets or sweeping. These activitiescan be physically challenging, but they frequentlyare also shared activities, creating easy social interac-tions. The focus is not on humans but on horses, andchildren can develop their strengths and relation-ships with creatures as alive as they are.

After a year collecting and analyzing data aboutmy students (in a program called ManeStreaming inAuburn, ME) and working with therapeutic riding

programs in Massachusetts (Friends for Tomorrowand Lovelane) and Maine (Riding to the Top andFlying Changes), I came to the firm conclusion thatthe special relationship between children and horseswas very real: Horseback riding for children, particu-larly those with autism, is therapeutic. Horses natu-rally have patience, loyalty, and a quiet way of listen-ing and responding that draws out children and en-courages engagement. But horses also require care,patience, and understanding from the people aroundthem, thus giving riders a sense of responsibility foranother creature. Temple Grandin (2005, 5) main-tains that “riding a horse isn’t what it looks like: it is-n’t a person sitting in a saddle telling the horse what todo by yanking on the reins. Real riding is a lot likeballroom dancing or maybe figure skating in pairs.”This special relationship between horse and rider canlead to increased confidence, patience, and self-es-teem. Learning how to trust and communicate with ahorse can help a child feel more comfortable with hu-mans. More importantly, these relationships providesafe opportunities for children to challenge them-selves and to try new things.

In 1994, Carolyn M. Gatty, Assistant Professor inthe Master of Occupational Therapy Program, Chat-

ham College, PA, studied 23 children with specialneeds from the age of 11 to 15 who showed a slightincrease of self-esteem after eight weeks of therapeu-tic riding (Gatty et al., 1994). These positive effectsmay have resulted from the development of uncon-ditional bonds with horses, confidence gained from“controlling” a creature ten to twenty times theirsize, and increased physical strength (Roberts 1997).

Horses are very sensitive and seem to understandwhen a person needs extra attention. One day lastwinter, Jonah arrived early for his lesson and, beforeanyone could catch him, he ran to the barn andducked under a stall guard, into my horse’s stall.This 1,000 pound high-strung ex-race horse namedRiley is quite territorial. I could only imagine whathe would think of this whirling dervish flying intohis stall. To my amazement, when I finally caught upwith Jonah, Riley was standing quietly alongside Jo-nah hanging his head by Jonah (a gesture of comfortand relaxation), just watching as this child played inthe hay. I have witnessed countless occasions inwhich horses have behaved in miraculous waysaround children with disabilities. For example, ahorse will stand perfectly still for a small child andeven shift their weight if a small rider is slipping toone side (see also Splinter-Watkins 2002).

In addition to social and emotional connections,research proves that a horse’s rhythmic, repetitivemovements work to improve a rider’s muscle tone,balance, posture, coordination, strength, and flexibil-ity (Borzo 2002). One mother told me about herseven-year-old daughter:

Being on the horse has improved her sense ofbalance tremendously. At one time she had tothink about sitting up, and if she relaxed shewould begin to tumble to one side. Sitting upstraight has become a natural response for hernow…. (MacNamara 2005, 2)

For children with physical disabilities, riding cor-rects abnormal muscle tone and improves coordina-tion, balance, and posture, and enhances sensorymotor skills (Borzo 2002). Brushing, carrying tackback and forth, picking up manure and sweeping aredemanding, but this work is considered fun by chil-dren and is great exercise.


For children with physicaldisabilities, riding corrects

abnormal muscle tone andimproves coordination, balance,and posture, and enhancessensory motor skills.

Children with autism and special needs are not theonly ones to benefit from work with horses. Ridersoften develop bonds with horses that alleviate loneli-ness, depression, and isolation. For Sarah, asix-year-old with low self-confidence and social anx-iety, identifying with a loyal equine friend was all sheneeded to open up to other riders at the barn. Thisunique setting, filled with friendly people of all ages,horses, and often barn cats and dogs, puts childrenand adults at ease with its simple focus and commu-nity. Sarah struggled to make friends in school, butthe barn was a safe place where she was never teasedand where all the horses listened to and accepted her.In response to a kind person, a horse will often offer agentle nuzzle or greeting. Children who have troublerelating to humans often learn through interactionswith horses how to communicate with peers. Manychildren who find it hard to make friends walk into abarn and become buddies with other children imme-diately as they converse about the daily updates onthe horses.

As prey to mountain lions, coyotes, and humans,horses can be fearful, untrustworthy, and shy.Children often behave the same way (Canfield 2003)because they don’t have much control over their livesand believe that no one listens to them. With two lov-ing but high-powered, controlling parents, Noahwas not used to being listened to until he came to thebarn. Noah’s parents admitted they did not give theirchild enough responsibility for decisions. Theythought he would like riding and that he should try anew activity now that his weekly Latin classes hadended. As this ten-year-old nervously arrived at thebarn, I introduced him to Captain, a Roan quarterhorse, and demonstrated how to lead Captain out ofhis stall and through the barn aisle. Noah lookedshocked and pleased when Captain followed himwithout hesitation. Children are constantly being re-minded of what they should be doing, how theyshould do it, and, of course, what they should avoiddoing. It is empowering to be handed a horse thatlooks to you for direction and guidance. This kind ofrecognition, though commonplace in adulthood, isinfrequent in childhood.

Therapeutic riding has an impact on the wholeperson: socially, emotionally, mentally, and physi-cally. Horses do not care how a child walks or talks or

performs in school; such a lack of judgment frees upall relationships. As Kathy Splinter-Watkins put it, “Iknow that therapeutic horseback riding works ––just look at the smiles!” (Splinter-Watkins 2002, 1).

References

Autism Society of America. 2008, January 1. About autism.Available online at <www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_home>.

Borzo, Greg. 2002. Horse power: When riding turns into treat-ment. Damascus, PA:American Hippotherapy Associa-tion. Online at <www.americanhippotherapyassociation.org/aha_hpot_a_horsepower.htm>.

Canfield, J., and M. V. Hansen. 2003. Chicken soup for thehorse lover’s soul : Inspirational stories about horses andthe people who love them. Deerfield, FL: Health Commu-nications.

Gatty, C., R. C. Cawley, D. J. Cawley, and K. Retter, K. 1994.Therapeutic horseback riding and self-concept in adoles-cents with special educational needs. Anthrozooes 7(2):129-134.

Friends For Tomorrow Therapeutic Riding Center. 1999. Astory of children and horses and The story continues. Video.Lincoln, MA: Friends for Tomorrow.

Grandin, T. 2005. Animals in translation: Using the mysteriesof autism to decode animal behavior. New York: TantorMedia.

MacNamara, C. 2005, February 12. Interview with mother ofautistic daughter who has participated in therapeutic rid-ing in New Hampshire for 3 years.

Roberts, M. 1997. The man who listens to horses. New York:Random House.

Splinter-Watkins, K. 2002. Research: Past to future? NARHAStrides Magazine Online. Available online at <www.narha.org/PDFfiles/research.pdf>.

Steinbeck, J. 1994. The red pony. New York: Penguin.


Therapeutic Riding Resources

North American Riding for the Handicapped Asso-ciation, Inc. NARHA Denver, Colorado <www.narha.org>.

Friends for Tomorrow Therapeutic Riding Center,Lincoln, MA <www.friendsfortomorrow.org>.

Friends For Tomorrow Therapeutic Riding Center.1999.A story of children and horses. Promotional video.

Riding to the Top:Therapeutic Riding Center Runningout of Pineland Farms Equestrian Center in Gray/New Gloucester, ME <www.ridingtothetop.org>.

Flying Changes Therapeutic Riding Center,Topsham, ME <www.flyingchanges.org>.

“Appareled in Celestial Light”Transcendent Nature Experiences in Childhood

David Sobel

I spend a lot of time these days talking with teachers,foundation directors, environmental educators,and evaluators about how to most effectively shape

environmental stewardship behavior. The $64,000question is — what’s the most effective way to edu-cate children who will grow up to behave in environ-mentally responsible ways? Or, more specifically,what kinds of learning, or what kinds of experiencewill most likely shape young adults who want to pro-tect the environment, participate on conservationcommissions, think about the implications of theirconsumer decisions and minimize the environmentalfootprint of their personal lives and the organizationswhere they work? There’s a surprising dearth of in-formation about exactly how this process works.

A number of researchers have studied environ-mentalists to try to determine if there were any simi-larities in their childhood experiences that contrib-uted to their having strong ecological values andpursuing an environmental career. When LouiseChawla (1992) of Kentucky State University reviewedthese studies, she found a striking pattern. Most en-vironmentalists attributed their commitment to acombination of two sources: many hours spent out-doors in a keenly remembered wild or semi-wildplace in childhood or adolescence, and an adult whotaught respect for nature. So children need lots of timerambling in neighborhood woods and fields and aparent or teacher who cares about nature.

In his autobiography about growing up in Denver,lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle (1993, xv-xix) de-scribes the urban semi-wild place that inspired him.

My own point of intimate contact with the landwas a ditch. Growing up on the wrong side ofDenver to reach the mountains easily and often,I resorted to the tattered edges of the Great

DAVID SOBEL is Director of the Center forPlace-based Education at Antioch Univer-sity New England in Keene, NH. He isthe author of Children’s Special Places,Mapmaking with Children, BeyondEcophobia, Placed-Based Education, and,most recently, Childhood and Nature:Design Principles for Educators.

Environmental stewardshipisn’t rooted in knowledge-based education, but isgrounded in early experiencesin which children feel love forand oneness with their naturalsurroundings.

Note: This article is reprinted with permission from Chapter 2 of theauthor’s book, Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators(Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2008).

Plains, on the back side of town. There I encoun-tered a century-old irrigation channel known asthe High Line Canal. Without a doubt, most ofthe elements of my life flowed from that canal.

From the time I was six, this weedy watercoursehad been my sanctuary, playground and sulk-ing walk. It was also my imaginary wilderness,escape hatch, and birthplace as a naturalist.Over the years, I studied its natural history, ex-plored much of its length, watched its habitatsshrink as the suburbs grew up around it, andtried to help save some of its best bits…. Evenwhen living in national parks, in exotic lands, intruly rural countryside, I’ve hankered to getback to the old ditch whenever I could….

Even if they don’t know “my ditch,” most peo-ple I speak with seem to have a ditch some-where — or a creek, meadow, wood lot ormarsh — that they hold in similar regard. Theseare places of initiation, where the borders be-tween ourselves and other creatures breakdown, where the earth gets under our nails anda sense of place gets under our skin…. It isthrough close and intimate contact with a par-ticular patch of ground that we learn to respondto the earth, to see that it really matters…. Ev-eryone has a ditch, or ought to. For only theditches — and the fields, the woods, the ra-vines — can teach us to care enough for theland.

One problem, of course, is that every child doesn’thave a ditch, or even if they do, they’re not allowedaccess to it. As more than half of the world’s childrenlive in urban settings, the availability of ditches, orjust urban parklands, is shrinking. Even in rural andsuburban settings where patches of woods andponds are available, parents’ concerns about pollu-tion and abduction make these places unavailable.And so the task of providing access to semi-wildplaces with the tutelage of caring adults often falls toenvironmental educators. But as environmental edu-cators seek to professionalize their endeavors andwork more closely with schools, they become assimi-lated into the world of standards, curriculum frame-works and high stakes tests. Learning about the envi-ronment becomes ingesting a sequence of facts and

concepts that create environmental knowledge. Theunderlying assumption is that knowledge leads tothe creation of attitudes that eventually lead tothoughtful environmental behaviors.

For instance, one early version of California’s cur-riculum guidelines for Understanding the Local En-vironment started out with the healthy notion that“direct experience in the environment also helps fos-ter the awareness and appreciation that motivatelearners to further questioning, better understand-ing and appropriate concern and action.” This is fol-lowed by content guidelines for different grade lev-els. Here’s an example of a set of related guidelinesthrough the curriculum.

• Grades K-4: Identify basic types of habitats(e.g., forests, wetlands, or lakes). Create ashort list of plants and animals found in each.

• Grades 5-8: Classify local ecosystems (e.g.,oak-hickory forest or sedge meadow). Createfood webs to show, or describe their functionin terms of the interaction of specific plantand animal species.

• Grades 9-12: Identify several plants and ani-mals common to local ecosystems. Describeconcepts such as succession, competition,predator/prey relationships and parasitism.

This is a developmentally appropriate sequence ofknowledge objectives, but there’s an inherent prob-lem. Because these curriculum guidelines are con-nected to state assessments, the focus often collapsesinto making sure the students can recite the informa-tion. They follow the old Dragnet maxim: “Just thefacts, ma’am.”As a result, providing direct experi-ence with the natural world falls to the wayside. Theopportunity to explore the ditch gets replaced bymemorizing lists of the plants you might find if youactually ever went to the ditch.

Go back to Pyle’s description above to see wherethe problem lies. From exploring the ditch, he be-came interested in natural history and then becamean advocate for preservation. Sounds like knowl-edge to attitudes to behavior. My contention, how-ever, is that the crucial element in his description is,“These are places of initiation, where the borders be-tween ourselves and other creatures break down,where the earth gets under our nails and a sense of


place gets under our skin.” What gets lost, when wefocus on facts, are the initiation experiences, the mo-ments of transcendence when the borders betweenthe natural world and ourselves break down. It’sthese experiences that provide the essential glue, thedeep motivational attitude and commitment, thesense of place. These in turn fuel the pursuit ofknowledge that leads to conservation behavior. JohnBurroughs (1919, 28) puts it simply when he says,“Knowledge without love will not stick. But if lovecomes first, knowledge is sure to follow.”

Which leads me to my controversial hypothesis:One transcendent experience in nature is worth 1000 na-ture facts. Stated in a slightly more positive form, itmay be that one transcendent experience in thelandscape has the potential for leading to 1000 na-ture facts. So the question becomes: How do we designfamily outings, school curriculum, and environmentallearning opportunities with an eye towards optimizingthe possibility of creating transcendent experiences? Ofcourse, first we have to get a sense of what thesetranscendent experiences are and if they reallymake a difference before we can decide that they’reimportant to pursue.

Nature Mysticism

Writing at the beginning of the 19th century, Wil-liam Wordsworth was the one of first poets to iden-tify the significance of children’s nature experiences.In his Intimations of Immortality from Recollections ofEarly Childhood, Wordsworth (1985) recalls his boy-hood wanderings saying,

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,The earth, and every common sight,To me did seemAppareled in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.

Wordsworth contended that children perceivednature differently from adults and that this mode ofperception was a gift rather than a delusion. Their ex-periences were transcendent in that the individualoften felt connected to or merged with the naturalworld in some highly compelling fashion.

Following Wordsworth’s lead, anthropologistEdith Cobb (1959, 538-539) reviewed the autobiogra-phies of 300 European geniuses and found that many

of them described similar kinds of experiences inchildhood.

My position is based upon the fact that thestudy of the child in nature, culture and societyreveals that there is a special period, the littleunderstood, pre pubertal, halcyon, middle ageof childhood, approximately from five or six toeleven or twelve, between the strivings of ani-mal infancy and the storms of adolescence —when the natural world is experienced in somehighly evocative way, producing in the child asense of some profound continuity with naturalprocesses….

It is principally to this middle-age range in theirearly life that these writers say they return inmemory in order to renew the power and im-pulse to create at its very source, a source whichthey describe as the experience of emerging notonly into the light of consciousness but into aliving sense of a dynamic relationship with theouter world. In these memories the child ap-pears to experience a sense of discontinuity, anawareness of his own unique separateness andidentity, and also a continuity, a renewal of rela-tionship with nature as process.

Cobb’s description of the renewal of relationshipwith nature as process is surprisingly ecological incharacter, especially when you recognize that shewas writing in the mid 1950s, well before any ecolog-ical theory had developed.

It turns out, however, that these experiences arenot limited to geniuses. Two similar, but uncon-nected studies document the widespread occurrenceof spiritual experiences in nature during childhood.The Original Vision: A Study of the Religious Experienceof Childhood by Edward Robinson (1983) was con-ducted by the Religious Experience Research Unit atOxford University in England in 1977. Visions of Inno-cence: Spiritual and Inspirational Experiences of Child-hood is a study completed by Edward Hoffman in1992, a practicing psychologist and university pro-fessor who solicited descriptions of childhood expe-riences from adults in the United States and aroundthe world. Hoffman does not reference Robinson’sstudy, so they appear to be quite independent,though their findings are absolutely resonant.


Robinson’s British study was based on adult re-sponses to a published query in newspapers askingpeople if they had ever “felt that their lives had inany way been affected by some power beyond them-selves.” Of 4000 responses, about 15% describedchildhood experiences and a significant proportionof these occurred in nature (Robinson 1983, 11). Rob-inson analyzes these in a chapter entitled NatureMysticism. Hoffman’s study (1992, 18) similarlyasked respondents if they could recall any experi-ences from their childhoods — before the age of four-teen — that could be called mystical or intenselyspiritual. Again, although no mention was made ofnature, a significant proportion of the experiencesdescribed are nature-based.

Both authors note that these are accounts writtenby adults describing their childhood experiences.Many of the writers suggest that though the child-hood experience was monumental in significance,they had no way of describing the experience as chil-dren. They were swept up in a wave of awe, but hadno way to tell their parents what they had felt. Robin-son and Hoffman both acknowledge the possibilityof the experience being reshaped by years of mem-ory, but the similarity of the descriptions suggests anintegrity to the original experience. Let’s dip intosome of the experiences.

When I was about eleven years old, I spent partof a summer holiday in the Wye Valley. Wakingup very early one bring morning, before any ofthe household was about, I left my bed andwent to kneel on the window-seat, to look outover the curve which the river took just belowthe house…. The morning sunlight shimmeredon the leaves of the trees and on the ripplingsurface of the river. The scene was very beauti-ful, and quite suddenly I felt myself on theverge of a great revelation. It was if I had stum-bled unwittingly on a place where I was not ex-pected, and was about to be initiated into somewonderful mystery, something of indescribablesignificance. Then, just as suddenly, the feelingfaded. But for the brief seconds while it lasted, Ihad known that in some strange way I, the es-sential “me,” was a part of the trees, of the sun-shine, and the river, that we all belonged tosome great unity. I was left filled with exhilara-

tion and exultation of spirit. This is one of themost memorable experiences of my life, of aquite different quality and greater intensitythan the sudden lift of the spirit one may oftenfeel when confronted with beauty in Nature.(40-year-old female) (Robinson 1983, 37).

The comments of the woman above illustrateEdith Cobb’s notion of discontinuity or unique sepa-rateness and continuity or oneness with nature. Thewoman sitting at the window describes “the essen-tial me” (her unique separateness) being unifiedwith the trees, the sunshine and the river, (continuitywith nature). I contend that this sense of deep empa-thy, of being saturated with nature, yet unique andseparate, is one of the core gifts of middle childhood.The sense of continuity provides the foundation foran empathic relationship with the natural world. Thesense of separateness provides a sense of agency, ofbeing able to take responsible action for the naturalworld. The deep bond creates a commitment to life-long protection. The next question then might be:Are these experiences really specific to childhood?These next two recollections suggest the discreetnessof the developmental window of opportunity.

The only aspect in which I think my childhoodexperience was more vivid than in later life wasin my contact with nature. I seemed to have amore direct relationship with flowers, trees andanimals, and there are certain particular occa-sions … in which I was overcome by a great joyas I saw the first irises opening or picked daisiesin the dew-covered lawn before breakfast.There seemed to be no barrier between theflowers and myself, and this was a source of un-utterable delight. As I grew older, I still had agreat love of nature and like to spend holidaysin solitary places, particularly in the mountains,but this direct contact seemed to fade, and I wassad about it. I was not quite able to grasp some-thing which was precious." (46-year-old female)(Robinson 1983, 49)

From a thirty-three year old German woman whogrew up an urban setting:

I can’t remember if my parents ever told me thatnature is alive or has a certain spirit. But I al-


ways felt that nature had a definite soul. In ourbackyard an old maple tree stood, and I used toclimb up it and spend many hours amid itsbranches. I would hug this old tree, and I al-ways felt that it spoke to me. Its branches andleaves were like arms hugging and touchingme, especially on windy days.

Not only the trees could speak to me, but also allthe plants, streams and even the stones….When I would find an especially beautiful rockon the road, I would take it, feel it, observe it,smell it, taste it and then listen to its voice. After-ward, I would return happily to my parents andrelate what the trees or flowers, rocks or brookhad told me. They would find this amusing, andwere proud of their daughter’s imagination….

Then school began, and everything changed.Because of my intense involvement with nature,I couldn’t relate well to other children whoseemed silly and babyish to me. They found mestrange and funny. But even harder was thechange at home. Now (my parents) denied ev-erything. “What nonsense! The rocks can’t talk!Don’t let anybody hear this, because they’llthink you’re crazy.”

How right my parents were. I found out one daywhen my classmates saw me talking to a bigchestnut tree in front of the schoolyard. Notonly did they ridicule me, but they told theteacher, who requested a meeting with my par-ents the next day….

My parents recounted the conversation to meand clearly showed how ashamed they were “tohave such a crazy child.” From that day on-ward, my magic was systemically ruined or de-stroyed…. So it happened, that I started believ-ing that nature was mute and couldn’t speak tome. (Hoffman 1992, 24-25)

The window of opportunity is both developmen-tal and cultural. Even when a child has a particulardisposition towards transcendent experiences, thecultural context only tolerates this kind of magicalthinking up through the end of early childhood. It’slike imaginary friends — up till about seven they’re

cute, after seven they become indicative of a child’savoidance of reality.

Both Robinson’s and Hoffman’s studies are filledwith similar descriptions. They become almost bor-ing in their similarity, but that’s the interesting part.They seem to reveal a frequent propensity towardstranscendent experiences during middle childhood.Certainly, no longitudinal studies have been done toassess whether these people behave in a more eco-logically responsible fashion in adulthood than thegeneral population. My speculation, however, is thatonce you’ve felt at one with the natural world, it willpowerfully compel you to environmental ethics andbehavior. It follows that if we want to develop envi-ronmental values, we should try to optimize the op-portunity for transcendent nature experiences inmiddle childhood.

Play and Religious Experience

The long term benefits of these transcendent expe-riences are suggested by cultural anthropologistPaul Shepard (1998, 199).

In play, to pretend is to take “as if” as provision-ally true: is this an escape from real life, a ven-ture into fantasy, which is more exciting and en-tertaining than the adult life routine? The an-swer is yes, it is more exciting; and no, it is notan escape from life. It is a preamble to a specialaspect of real life. Like language learning, playis programmed in the human genes and its de-velopmental expression is age-critical. It is es-sential for the growth of mental life. Apart fromits immediate joyful pleasure, it is preparationfor a special adult activity: the “as if” of play isthe heart of ritual and, eventually, formal reli-gious activity.... It is a marvelous example of thewisdom of the genes that religion functions andis made possible because of the completely in-stinctive childhood activity, in spite of all itscomplex intellectual and aesthetic splendor.The ritualizing activity of play is a biologicalprerequisite to formal religious experience.

Think about the “as if” of the Catholic sacrament.“Drink this wine, it is the blood of Christ. Eat thiswafer, it is his “body.” Taking the sacrament asksthe believer to suspend reality, to imagine that she is


taking in Christ’s body. It’s true in all forms of reli-gion. In Buddhist meditation, the challenge is tostep out of the flow of everyday reality, and into adeeper, quieter place. It’s like leaving all the noiseand arguing in your house and slipping into the pri-vate world of your fort. And how is praying to Godand asking for help any different than when yourfive-year-old daughter asks her imaginary friendfor advice. One prepares you for the other. The abil-ity to enter into play realities prepares you for themeditative state of prayer.

Do we sacrifice a child’s capacity to enter a medi-tative space by not letting them go outside to play inthe garden? And, instead, does it make it more likelythat they’ll use alcohol and drugs to find the alteredstate of consciousness that they didn’t find duringchildhood play? Regardless of whether you acceptthis line of argument or not, it’s important to recog-nize the everyday virtues of children’s nature play.

References

Burroughs, John. 1919. Field and study. Boston and New York:Houghton Mifflin.

Chawla, Louise. 1998. Significant life experiences revisited: Areview of research on sources of environmental sensitiv-ity. Journal of Environmental Education 29(3).

Cobb, E. 1959. The ecology of imagination in childhood.Daedalus 88(3).

Hoffman, Edward. 1992. Visions of innocence: Spiritual and in-spirational experiences of childhood. Boston: Shambala.

Pyle, Robert M. 1993. The thunder tree: Lessons from an urbanwildland. Boston: Houghton Miflin,

Robinson, Edward. 1983. The original vision: A study of the reli-gious experience of childhood. New York: Seabury Press.(Originally published in 1977).

Shepard, Paul. 1998, The tender carnivore and the sacred game.Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

Wells, Nancy M., and Kristi S. Leckies. 2006. Nature and thelife course: Pathways from childhood nature experiencesto adult environmentalism. Children, Youth and Environ-ments 16(1).

Wordworth, William. 1985 Ode: Intimations of immorality fromrecollections of early childhood. In Poems selected by W. E.Williams. London: Penguin. (Originally published in 1807).


Out of BoundsInsights from Australian Children

To Support Sustainable Cities

Paul Tranter and Karen Malone

The principles of the United Nations Conventionon the Rights of the Child (CRC) highlight the re-sponsibility of the parties to the Convention to

uphold the child’s right to live in a safe, clean, andhealthy environment and to engage in free play, lei-sure, and recreation. According to the CRC, a child’swell-being and quality of life are the ultimate in-dications of a healthy environment, good gover-nance, and sustainable development (UNICEF 1997).A key characteristic of a child-friendly city is its ca-pacity to provide opportunities for children to havefreedom of movement to explore, uninhibited byphysical, social, or cultural constraints. Using thiscriterion, Australian cities rate poorly. Large sectionsof Australian cities are now effectively “out ofbounds” for children.

When Australian parents are asked to reflect ontheir childhoods, they usually remember having farmore freedom than their own children have today(Cadzow 2004). A generation ago, children were farmore likely to be able to play independently in theirown neighborhoods. Children now have less timeavailable to play outside because they are engaged inmore indoor and adult-organized activities such assport and music. Children are also more likely to bedriven to these activities, partly because of thegreater distances involved, and partly because of theincreased fear of traffic and “stranger danger.” Other

Cities must give childrenopportunities to freely moveabout, explore, and interactwith others. To create suchcities, we need to give childrena voice in their design.

PAUL TRANTER is a Senior Lecturer inGeography in the School of Physical,Environmental and Mathematical Sciencesat UNSW@ADFA in Australia. Dr. Tranter’sresearch on children’s independent mobilityand children’s playful interactions withtheir environment has examined contextsfrom school grounds to cities.

KAREN MALONE is Professor of SocialSciences in the Faculty of Education atUniversity of Wollongong, Australia.She is Asia-Pacific Director of the globalUNESCO-MOST Growing Up In Cities(GUIC) project, which focuses on the qual-ity of life of children and youth. She is alsoan external consultant to UNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities (CFC) initiative.

reasons for the loss of children’s freedom include theerosion of natural or wild spaces to explore(Cunningham et al. 1994; 1996); increased social pres-sure to be “good parents” by driving their childrenrather than allowing them to walk or cycle (Tranter &Pawson 2001); the increasing choice of the “best”schools and childcare centers that require children tobe transported by car; and the trend to overoccupyand overorganize children’s lives (Honore 2004;Stanley et al. 2005).

While many Australian parents strive to providethe best possible upbringing for their children, theymay collectively be contributing to city environ-ments that are not child-friendly. This is particularlyclear in regard to children’s independent mobility,which is dependent on walking, cycling, and publictransport, all of which are more sustainable modesthan car-based transport. This paper explores thelinks between child-friendly cities and sustainablecities, where the provision of services, includingtransport, is based on principles of fairness and theprotection of the built and natural environment. TheUNICEF child-friendly cities initiative is discussedas one way in which a child-focused approach canhave benefits for the sustainability of whole cities.

Children’s Views of Sustainable Cities

The UNESCO Growing Up in Cities (GUIC) re-search developed a set of indicators of the quality oflife of children (Chawla 2002a). GUIC uses the partic-ipation principles of the Convention on the Rights ofthe Child to emphasize that cities should be evalu-ated not for children but by children themselves.

Research with children in cities throughout theworld shows that despite diversity of place, childrenvalue similar qualities in urban environments(Malone 2001; UNICEF 1997). The list of positivesociophysical indicators for urban environmentsidentified by children includes the provision of basicneeds, social integration, safety and free movement,peer gathering places, and safe green spaces. Thenegative indicators include social exclusion, violenceand crime, heavy traffic, lack of gathering places,boredom, and political powerlessness (Chawla2002b). For children, a child-friendly city supportssocial integration, where they feel welcome and arevalued as part of a caring community (Malone &

Hasluck 2002; Hart 1995). In such places children areable to freely explore and extend their range ofmovement as they mature.

A sustainable urban transport system should meeta range of criteria (Schiller & Kenworthy 2003; Cen-tre for Sustainable Transportation 2003). It shouldmeet the need for access and mobility in harmonywith the health of individuals and the environment;be equitable, both within and between generations;limit the consumption of resources; and avoid thedestruction of green or natural spaces within cities.The transport system should “enhance the liveabilityand human qualities” of cities (Schiller & Kenworthy2003) as well as provide affordable, efficient trans-port that supports economic goals.

Many of the features of a child-friendly city paral-lel the features of sustainable cities. In particular, theneed of children for safe and free movement aroundtheir neighborhoods and cities requires forms oftransport that are equitable and produce little envi-ronmental impact. Any transport strategy that de-votes large levels of resources (including urbanspace) to a system that serves the needs of a minorityof its population, and undermines the freedom ofother sections of the population, does not meet therequirements for a child-friendly city.

In Australian cities, along with many other west-ern countries, the advantages conferred on individ-ual children by the increased use of private motor ve-hicles are outweighed by the collective negative im-pact of these same vehicles. An increase in the reli-ance on private motor vehicles has decreased the via-bility of child-friendly transport: walking, cycling,and public transport. In contrast, the more adults usethe streets as pedestrians or cyclists, the more sup-portive streets become for children. The presence ofpeople provides the passive or natural surveillancethat makes cities feel safer (Jacobs 1972).

Assessing Children’s Freedom in Australian Cities

Children’s independent mobility, their freedom toexplore their own neighborhoods or city without anadult, is low in Australian cities compared to manyother countries, and will worsen if car travel contin-ues to rise. Many Australian children have less free-dom to explore their city than children in nationswith higher levels of absolute poverty. For example,


in Braybrook (suburban Melbourne), where youngpeople are seen as a problem and hence removedfrom the streets, they are less able to participate incommunity life than the disadvantaged young peo-ple of the very low income Boca-Baraccas area inBuenos Aires (Chawla 2002a).

In comparison with children in German cities,children in Australian cities have lower levels offreedom to walk to school alone, cycle on mainroads alone, visit friends alone, use public trans-port, cross main roads alone, and go out after dark.We can see each of these as “licences” that parentsgive their children. The age at which children aregranted these licences, or the percent of children ineach age group that possess these licences, is an in-dicator of the level of children’s independent mobil-ity. Data collected by Paul Tranter in the 1990sshows that children in Australian and New Zealandcities have much lower levels of freedom than chil-dren in German cities (Tranter 1996; Hillman et al.1990). For example, while 80% of 10-year-old chil-dren in German cities were allowed to travel toplaces other than school alone in 1990, only 37% of10-year-old children in the Australian schools sur-veyed were given this licence in 1992.

The decline in children’s freedom over the last twoor three decades is illustrated in data on children’slicences to walk or cycle to school. For example, dataon the journey to school for Essendon (suburbanMelbourne) show a pronounced shift to less child-friendly transport modes between 1974 and 2005. Re-cent data relating to the licence of children to walk orcycle to school indicates that the independent mobil-ity of Australian children continues to decline. Datafor Sydney show that the number of walk trips andthe mean time per day spent walking declined signif-icantly for all Sydney residents between 1991 and2001, and the biggest decreases were for the 5-14 yearage group (Corpuz et al. 2005).

Two important reasons for the restriction by par-ents of their children’s independent travel, particu-larly as pedestrians and cyclists, are traffic and“stranger danger.” Yet there may be an importantlink between traffic and fears of assault and molesta-tion in residential streets. As traffic levels increase,more and more people (adults as well as children)cease to use the streets as pedestrians. There is also a

loss of local shops and services. Residential streetsare perceived as being deserted, lonely, and danger-ous. There are few adults around on the streets toprovide surveillance and support for children. Incontrast, if traffic levels are low enough to allowstreets to be used for walking, cycling, social interac-tion and playing, neighborhoods would become re-invigorated with supportive community life(Engwicht 1992; 2005).

Another important consideration for parentswhen deciding whether their children can walk orcycle is the distance involved, for example to school.Primary school children are unlikely to be allowed towalk or cycle to school if they live more than onekilometre (about 0.6 miles) from school. However,government policies in Australia have led to the clo-sure of many local schools, with the narrow focus ofsaving money. As a result, parents must drive theirchildren to more distant schools, reducing children’sfreedom to walk or cycle to school, and further con-tributing to traffic danger and pollution.

Freedom on School Grounds

Growing numbers of urban primary school chil-dren lack access to natural or wild spaces in their lo-cal neighborhoods. School grounds provide some ofthe space left where children have independence toexplore and interact with their own environment.Consequently, school grounds have increasingly im-portant implications for children’s environmentallearning (Moore & Wong 1997). However, the restric-tion of children’s independent mobility in Australiancities may now be extending to green spaces inschools (Evans 1995b; Malone & Tranter 2003;Tranter & Malone 2004).

Despite a growing awareness of the importanceof children’s play, changes to some Australian pri-mary school grounds have reduced opportunitiesfor creative and diverse play. The most serious ofthese include the reduction in the time given to re-cess (lunch and other recess periods) (Evans 1997);the amalgamation of schools in the name of greatereconomic efficiency (Evans 1997; 1998); the removalof play equipment (Evans 1995a); and the imple-mentation of restrictive rules about children’s use ofschool grounds that force teachers into a policingrole (Evans 1995b).


Recent research on school grounds in Melbourneand Canberra (Malone & Tranter 2003; Tranter &Malone 2004) revealed that most schools surveyedhad strict limits on what activities they could engagein and where they could play. One of the techniquesused in this research involved tracking the spatialmovements of children during recess and lunch. Thistechnique illustrated how schools restrict the mobil-ity of children. Often the most interesting and valu-able parts of the school grounds were “out ofbounds” for the children, including areas of forest,walking tracks through shrubs, and gardens.

Not all schools restrict children’s play in this way.Orana School in Canberra, a Steiner school, stronglyencourages children to interact with their environ-ment in both formal teaching situations (e.g., usingthe educational garden in class activities) and in infor-mal play (e.g., building cubbies (dens) in the forest).This school allows children to be creatively untidy intheir play; to dig up their school grounds (or at least asection of them); to engage in “dirty” activities, suchas playing in water channels or gardening; and to useavailable materials to construct their own worlds.

The majority of children surveyed desired morefreedom to use their school grounds. Yet staff restrictuse of the playground for a number of reasons: easeof supervision; safety considerations, including traf-fic danger and bullying; keeping the school groundsneat and orderly and children clean and tidy. At thismicro-scale of school grounds, we can see some ofthe same processes operating that restrict children’sfreedom at the neighborhood or city-wide scales.Adults restrict children’s freedom on school groundsbecause this simplifies adult’s lives: It keeps childrenout of the way, or easily supervised; it keeps childrenin their place.

The conceptualisation of children in transportand environmental planning as “a problem”has resulted in an urban environment which isextremely hostile to their needs and aspirations.As problems, children are tidied away behindrailings, in parks, in gardens, and — best of all— indoors. (Davis & Jones 1997)

Value of Free Play in a Local Environment

Children’s freedom may not be compensated forby increased mobility of children in cars, or by access

to virtual worlds. Australian parents are now moreprotective of their children than ever before(Cadzow 2004). Could our concerns for our individ-ual children be making whole cities less child-friendly?

Parents of primary school children are concernedabout three main risks: traffic danger, “stranger dan-ger,” and injury while playing or getting to a play ac-tivity. However, the individualistic response of par-ents who protect their own children from these dan-

gers by driving them everywhere has the unintendedeffect of exposing children to a new set of risks, whichmay be far more damaging in the long term.

Children who are driven everywhere can miss outon regular exercise, important for optimal physicaldevelopment, which they once got from walking orcycling to school, to their friends, or to the local park.Medical experts describe increased levels of obesity asepidemic in Australia (Waters & Baur 2003; Stubbs &Lee 2004). Lack of exercise and obesity are also linkedto Type II diabetes and other “lifestyle” diseases(Lewis & Ker 2005). The extra traffic created by ferry-ing children to school, to sport, to music lessons or totheir friends’ houses also contributes to higher levelsof air pollution, including “in-car pollution” which isusually much higher than levels at the side of the road(Rank et al. 2001; International Center for TechnologyAssessment 2000). Children are more susceptible topollution because they breathe more air per unit ofbody weight than adults (O’Brien 2003).


If we wish to developsustainable, child-friendly

cities, then we must stop makinglarge sections of our cities out ofbounds to children. If we wish topromote a shift towardssustainable cities, a very usefulstarting point is to developpolicies that will give our citiesback to our children.

The saddest part of this “bubble-wrapping” ofchildren is that they miss out on the joy and wonderthat come from exploring their world at their ownpace (See Figure 1 below). Sports and other adult-organized activities are beneficial, but they are not asubstitute for spontaneous play. For children to de-velop a sense of place, they require direct contactwith vegetation, soils, and animals (Orr 1992).

Not only is it important that children be able to getto local play areas by themselves, but walking or cy-cling to school and other destinations provide vitalencounters with place. Cunningham et al. (1996, 37)found that when children are taken to school by car

there were no opportunities for kicking rocks ortoads, looking for dead birds, making friendswith animals, playing, or simply dawdlingalong with friends — all activities unremark-able in adult eyes but part of the experience anddevelopment of childhood.

UNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities Initiative

Ideally, towns and cities should be where childrensocialize and learn how society functions. The sitesalso should be places where children can find refuge,discover nature, and find tolerant and caring adultswho support them. If feeling secure, connected, andvalued are universal indicators of quality of life,what better place to evaluate cities than through theeyes of children?

The principles of sustainable development articu-late the importance of children’s voices in envision-

ing the future. UNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities ini-tiative has captured the essence of these principlesand has, through worldwide partnerships, endeav-ored to support mayors and municipal councils inencouraging children to participate in discussions ofenvironmental responsibility and learning.

The connection between children’s rights andsustainable cities has been formally articulated inglobal declarations and documents emerging frominter-governmental summits and meetings. Themost significant documents include The Plan forAction that resulted from the World Summit forChildren and the Rio Declaration and the actionplan of Agenda 21 both endorsed at the Earth Sum-mit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Principle 21 of the Riodeclaration clearly reinforces the role of youth insustainable development:

The creativity, ideals and courage of the youthof the world should be mobilised to forge aglobal partnership in order to achieve sustain-able development and ensure a better future forall. (United Nations 1992)

Chapter 25 of the Rio Declaration is entirely de-voted to this topic, as indicated by its introduction:

Youth comprise nearly 30% of the world’s pop-ulation. The involvement of today’s youth inenvironment and development decision-mak-ing and in the implementation of programmesis critical to the long-term success of Agenda 21.(United Nations 1992)

More recently, an emerging focus on urban envi-ronments has given rise to the development of theHabitat II Agenda and the Children’s Rights andHabitat Report. Presented by UNICEF at the UnitedNations Conference on Human Settlements at Istan-bul in 1996, the Children’s Rights and Habitat Reportdraws attention to the important role children havein sustainable cities:

Children have a special interest in the creationof sustainable human settlements that will sup-port long and fulfilling lives for themselves andfuture generations. They require opportunitiesto participate and contribute to a sustainable ur-ban future. (UNICEF 1997, preamble)


Figure 1. A child’s view of the world from the backseat of anautomobile. (Taken by Kaela, age 16).

The relationship between sustainable develop-ment and children’s lives is not just about adult stew-ards and their capacity to act on behalf of the child. Itis also about recognizing the capacity for childrenand youth to be authentic participants in planning,development, and implementation processes(Malone 1999). Democratic behavior is learnedthrough experience; children must be given a voicein their communities so they will be able to partici-pate fully in civil society (Malone and Hasluck 1998).Local governments have a role to ensure the princi-ples of Local Agenda 21 are respected, and the spiritof the Conventions on the Rights of the Child is theimpetus to create appropriate mechanisms for chil-dren’s participation in building a sustainable and eq-uitable urban future. Sustainable development interms of children’s rights is being supported throughUNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities Initiative.

UNICEF’s Child-Friendly Cities (CFC) initiativewas developed in response to meetings leading up tothe development of the Habitat 2 Agenda. At thesemeetings participants clearly recognized that the sit-uation of urban children around the world was ofcritical concern. The guiding principle behind theinitiative was that safe environments nurture chil-dren of all ages with opportunities for recreation,learning, social interaction, psychological develop-ment, and cultural expression.

Conclusion

If we wish to develop sustainable, child-friendlycities, then we must stop making large sections of ourcities out of bounds to children. If we wish to pro-mote a shift towards sustainable cities, a very usefulstarting point is to develop policies that will give ourcities back to our children. A cultural revolution (tocreate more child-friendly cities) can occur onlywhen marginalized and diverse voices are listened toand celebrated (Engwicht 1999). If we listen, we maybe able to learn from our children about more envi-ronmentally friendly modes of living.

Australian children prefer modes of transport thatare inherently sustainable (walking and cycling).Given the choice, children would prefer to be al-lowed to walk or cycle to school and to other loca-tions. Such modes of transport allow children to ex-perience the enjoyment and stimulation of interact-

ing with place — with people and with nature. Ifchildren are constantly driven everywhere, they canbecome conditioned to believe that the car is thebest — or the only — way to get anywhere.

Children may become the best advocates for sus-tainable transport. Research on a community-basedsocial marketing project in Toronto, Canada, sug-gests that “enthusiastic children may be the stron-gest force to get parent’s attention. Indeed … if chil-dren beseeched … their parents to let them walk,changes to routine could occur” (Greenest City2001).

The achievement of more child-friendly and moresustainable cities will require more than physicalchanges to our cities such as a traffic decrease or theprovision of a denser network of services (thoughthese may be important) (Tranter and Doyle 1996). Itwill require a deep-seated change in how we treatchildren. As Rushkoff (1997, 13) argues, “let’s appre-ciate the natural adaptive skills demonstrated by ourkids and look to them for answers to some of ourown problems.”

When parents focus on giving their offspring thebest chance to succeed in life, they often put them“on the fast track in everything — school, sports, artand music” (Honore 2004, 216). When children have“no time to be slow,” they have no time to “relax,play on their own, or let their imaginations wander”(Honore 2004, 218). Instead of cramming our chil-dren’s lives with adult-organized activities (school,sports, music, and ballet), we should allow our chil-dren the time they need to experience the joy andwonder of contact with their own neighborhood andcommunity. In fact, we could take time out to slowdown and play with our children, and perhaps evenrisk getting dirty in the process.

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Freedom in the Cultural SphereRon Miller

I believe that an educational revolution is takingshape, an expression of the postmodern culture ofsustainability and localism that is emerging

across many areas of society. I call this a “self-orga-nizing” revolution because there is no single leader,organization, or ideology directing it. Instead, arange of new educational ideas and approaches —from unschooling and democratic schools, to cre-ative adaptations of Montessori and Waldorf prin-ciples, to land-based programs emphasizing eco-logical literacy, and much more — are spontane-ously and organically arising across the U.S. andother parts of the world.

The Principle of Noninterference

We can identify some core principles that definethis revolution as a coherent movement, and link it tothe holistic worldview of the emerging postmodernculture. One of these principles is the need to distrib-ute power more evenly in society, with different so-cial endeavors given sufficient autonomy to fulfill theirspecific purposes. This principle of noninterference orseparation of powers across society was articulatedin the unconventional social theory of the Austrianphilosopher/spiritual explorer Rudolf Steiner, thefounder of Waldorf education, biodynamic agricul-ture, and other initiatives, who wrote and lecturedextensively in the early years of the twentieth cen-tury. Although I am not a devoted student of hiscomprehensive system of Anthroposophy (to behonest, I find most of it bewildering), I have alwaysbeen intrigued by his suggestion that a society ishealthiest when its three primary functions orspheres — economic, political, and cultural — areallowed to maintain their own integrity, without in-terference from the others.

Educational alternatives will only truly thrivewhen the sphere of culture is freed from the undueinfluence and technocratic control of the other two

The cultural sphere, whichincludes education and thespontaneous creative activity ofthe human mind, must be freedfrom political and economicintrusion.

RON MILLER, who founded this journal in1988, is an historian and activist in theeducational alternatives movement. He iseditor of Education Revolution magazine andco-founder of two holistic schools inVermont. He currently teaches history atChamplain College.

Note: This article is adapted by Ron Miller from his new book, TheSelf-Organizing Revolution (Holistic Education Press, 2008).

spheres, the economic and political. It is now widelyrecognized that we are living under the dominion ofa global corporate empire, and the source of itspower is the alliance between economic interests andthe coercive force of the state. These combined pow-ers enable the corporate empire to manipulate cul-tural institutions — the media, universities and re-search institutes (policy “think tanks” and scientificresearch), and schools — to further tighten its controlover the entire society.

Steiner and some of his students have described a“threefold” social order that, whatever its esoteric justi-fication, simply strikes me as a sensible, holistic re-sponse to technocracy and overpowering capitalism. Itis essentially a strategy of decentralization, analogousto the separation of governing powers written into theUnited States Constitution. Steiner argued that each ofthese spheres has a distinct role to play in society andcan only fulfill its purpose by remaining independentof the other two. The economic sphere, he said, is con-cerned with the production and distribution of com-modities, or more broadly with the relationship be-tween human society and the material world. The po-litical sphere is the domain of justice and human rights,or the proper relationships between people. The cul-tural sphere includes the spontaneous creative activityof the human mind, or the spirit at work in human life;the arts and sciences and the practice of education areexpressions of this free flow of spiritual energy.

Economic activity, which involves differential andfluctuating material values, should not influence po-litical judgment, which must be based on absoluteequality of legal rights, and neither of these modes ofsocial endeavor should interfere with the creativefreedom of the artist, scholar, or educator. As Steinersaw nearly a century ago, in modern society eco-nomic enterprise has spilled over its proper bound-aries, and the result is that every aspect of our lives,including education, has become a commodity —something with a market value rather than intrinsicvalue. He commented that people in modern societyare “so used up by the economic life that [they] canno longer feel [their] existence to be worthy of a hu-man being” (Steiner n.d., 82). This is an accurate de-scription of our alienation.

The invasion of the educational process by eco-nomic forces is clearly evident in the standards-and-

testing movement. The corporate state provides thefunding for education, considering it an economicinvestment and expecting a good return. Young peo-ple are considered to be intellectual capital, theirlearning a product with a certain value to the econ-omy. Knowledge is packaged and delivered, increas-ingly through textbooks and other materials pro-duced by corporations with political connections.Students and teachers are accountable to these inves-tors and must demonstrate their success in master-ing the authorized body of knowledge. There is littlerecognition of the student as a unique individual,motivated by a spiritual yearning to reach out to theworld for purposeful understanding. There is littlerecognition of learning as an organic, flowing rela-tionship between person and world, an encounter thatcannot be managed so tightly without being strangled.There is little recognition of teaching as an art form,requiring a carefully honed sensitivity and thought-ful responsiveness, because teachers increasingly be-come technicians tending to the authorized lessonsand administering the prescribed tests. In Steiner’sterms, education has been uprooted from the cul-tural sphere, where it belongs, and engulfed by theeconomic sphere, which turns it into a commodity, asoulless object to be bought and sold.

Steiner asserted that artistic and intellectual ex-pression are “the loftiest productions of the spirit”and must be allowed to enter social life spontane-ously, judged and managed only by the criteria oftheir own cultural sphere. Spiritual expression maymean, as it did for Steiner, the appearance of ideas orimages that literally come from a transcendentalrealm, a universal consciousness greater than ourown, or we may simply interpret it as the spontane-ous creativity of the human mind. Either way, theterm “spiritual” implies that ideas have a life of theirown, and the exchange, critique, or reframing ofideas requires intellectual autonomy, which eco-nomic or political interference can only subvert. AsSteiner (n.d., 83, 84) put it,

If the activities that spring from such aptitudesfind their outlet subjected to artificial influencesfrom the economic life or the political institu-tions, the true basis of their existence is to a greatextent cut away; for the power by which theylive must be evolved out of their own resources.


In other words, trying to apply economic or politi-cal criteria to spiritual expression can only reduce ordistort it. Economic and political endeavors use cate-gories and criteria that are adequate and appropriatefor dealing with the material world and social rela-tions, respectively, but they cannot fathom thedeeper sources of our ideas. This is why the principleof academic freedom on university campuses hasbeen held sacred, and it is why education at all levelsshould be independent of the state — especially thecorporate state.

The education revolution seeks to return teachingand learning to the sphere of freedom and creativity.The educators, parents, and young people whohave left public schooling for independent alterna-tive schools or homeschooling are not simply out toprivatize the educational system, for this is still totreat learning as a commodity in the marketplace.Rather, they are intuitively responding to the aware-ness that Steiner articulated a century ago, that gen-uine learning is an organic, spontaneous, anddeeply meaningful encounter that requires auton-omy from the political and economic forces thathave taken over public education.

There are many dedicated teachers in the publicschools, many schools with healthy roots in theircommunities, and many idealistic reformers who be-lieve that a public system is the only equitable anddemocratic way to provide learning opportunities toall. But this system has become increasingly domi-nated by forces that are not truly educational, and ithas become more and more difficult to realize thepublic school ideal in a technocratic empire. Theprinciple of noninterference between the distinctfunctions of society warns us that the corporate stateis not the proper provider of a truly nourishing edu-cation. School and state need to be separated, just aschurch and state were separated, to preserve the au-tonomy of each.

Still, this separation raises complicated questionsabout how society will provide educational opportu-nities to everyone. In the current economy, inde-pendent schools cost too much to be accessible to all,so in contrast to the original ideal of public educa-tion, they appear elitist. Steiner’s response was pro-foundly radical: He envisioned the economic spherefreely supporting the cultural sphere, with no strings

attached; funding for education would not be an in-vestment but would reflect authentic generosity to-ward this vital element of our common social life. Isthis possible? I believe we are seeing the seeds of arevolution that can make it happen.

A Vision for the Future: Philanthropy

Philanthropy — love for humanity — will play akey role in this revolution. One of the exciting devel-opments in recent years is a new, expanded aware-ness of social and ecological responsibility in the pro-fessional philanthropic community. An emerginggroup of activists in visionary philanthropy are ad-vocating a more democratic approach that goes be-yond wealthy individuals providing charity to theunfortunate, beyond short term remedies that ignorethe inequalities of class, race, gender, and other foun-dational issues. They propose that private wealth beplaced, voluntarily and joyfully, at the service of thehighest common good, addressing the roots of socialproblems and transforming rather than just helpingsociety (see Gary 2007).

This is precisely the basis for Steiner’s vision ofwealth freely and generously circulating to supportthe cultural domain. The emerging democratic phi-lanthropy puts this vision within reach for the firsttime. The bottom line of corporate and personalprofit is replaced by the “new bottom line,” as theprogressive rabbi Michael Lerner (2006) has ex-plained it: the goal of building a caring and lovingsociety that nourishes everyone.

As society moves in this direction, it becomes in-creasingly conceivable that we might work out thedetails of a decentralized educational system, freefrom control by state or corporate power, yet ade-quately and equitably funded. Instead of being sup-ported by mandatory taxation, which arouses end-less conflict over school budgets and requires stan-dardized accountability to the state, educationwould be generously supported by a new philan-thropic spirit that permeates the culture.

What might this look like? Perhaps communitiesor regional networks would establish local fundingagencies, supported by voluntary contributions andadministered by representatives (volunteer or pro-fessional) of the community. In principle, thesewould act like benevolent or mutual aid societies


that many religious and fraternal groups have estab-lished, with the important difference that their con-cern would embrace the entire community, not onlytheir own members. Or perhaps local or state govern-ment bodies could be entrusted with the task of ad-ministering funding, so long as they are prohibitedfrom interfering with the educational process itself.Or we might devise new forms, appropriate to a de-centralized postmodern society.

There will be many details to work out, manyphilosophical and political questions to address (forexample, are all types of educational endeavors, evensectarian schools, eligible for such funding?) — but Ithink it is worth the effort to start this work. State-funded, corporate-controlled schooling has fallen farshort of the democratic ideals that presumably gaverise to public education, and in the localist postmod-

ern culture now emerging, this top-down modelshows itself to be increasingly obsolete. We need toimagine what will come next. We can imagine an ed-ucational system fully supported through benevo-lence and generosity, accountable to young peopleand their families and communities, replacing a sys-tem that serves as an economic venture accountableto investors and technocrats.

References

Steiner, R. n.d. The threefold state: The true aspect of the socialquestion. London: London and Norwich Press; reprintedby Kessinger Publishing.

Gary, T. 2007. Inspired philanthropy: Your step-by-step guide tocreating a giving plan and leaving a legacy (3rd ed.). San Fran-cisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lerner, M. The left hand of God: Taking back our country from thereligious right. San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco.


What’s in a Name?Chris Mercogliano

In the weeks leading up to Barack Obama’s electionvictory there was much speculation and concernwithin the education circles in which I travel. What

is his vision of education and how far would hispromise of real change extend?

While his relative lack of clarity regarding theeducational policies he would pursue as Presidentwas a concern to many, I found myself thinking theless said the better; for seldom in this country’s150-or-so-year history of institutionalized educa-tion has heavy federal involvement come to muchgood. I started to consider the Supreme Court de-cision to eliminate segregated schools as an excep-tion because it was absolutely imperative that pow-ers above the state level intervene in that abomina-ble situation. But then I hesitated. I thought back tohow little the federal government’s edict has doneto solve the problem of racism in American educa-tion. And, I reflected, When has any mass solutionever truly made schools more responsive to theneeds of the individual children they are supposedto serve?

But the fact that President Obama came of age as aSaul Alinsky-style community organizer and that hiscampaign in many ways took the shape of a socialmovement has gotten some of us thinking againabout education in movement terms. We rememberthe force of the surging movement to fundamentallychange the nature of education in the 1960s and 70sand are wondering if perhaps the time is ripe for anew movement.

Certainly the seeds for such a movement have al-ready sprouted. Hundreds, perhaps even thousandsof new schools and resource centers have sprung upover the past decade with education practices thatare quite different from the mainstream version. Andso, now the conversation has turned to the questionof what to call a new movement.

Chris’s Column

CHRIS MERCOGLIANO writes a regularcolumn for Encounter. He was a teacher andadministrator at the Albany Free School for35 years and now devotes his time exclu-sively to writing and lecturing. Chris’s mostrecent book is In Defense of Childhood:Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness (BeaconPress 2007).

As innovative grassrootsschools sprout up, we needa good name for thiseducational movement.

Co-opting the “Alternative” Banner

The earlier movement was called the “alternativeeducation movement,” and “alternative” was theperfect adjective because it simply means “nontradi-tional” or “unconventional.” This term provided abroad umbrella for many people, including home-schoolers and public school educators anxious tobreak away from the anti-learning and anti-joy con-ventions that were strangling their creativity, and in-stead turn their classrooms into caring, exciting, em-powering communities. Feeling a part of the alterna-tive education movement was an important sourceof strength for them too.

Sadly, the term “alternative” was eventuallyco-opted by public school officials, who began to eu-phemistically use the term to refer to dumpinggrounds for the kids who weren’t fitting into theirregular schools. I say “euphemistically” becausethere was seldom anything nontraditional or uncon-ventional about these places. If anything, their meth-ods tended to be harsher and more controlling thanthe schools their students had been removed from.Around the country the name nonetheless came tosignify “schools for problem children,” so those of uswho really were practicing forms of education thatwere different in some basic way were forced to givethe label up.

Thus far we haven’t been able to come up with asuitably inclusive alternative. “Democratic educa-tion” is one replacement umbrella we’ve experi-mented with. Truth be told, I have never been all thatwild about it because its implications are mainly po-litical, and while I have always viewed education ashugely political on a global level, it’s hardly what’smost important at the level of the individual child,especially at the younger end of the age spectrum.

But then I recently came across some fascinatingresearch from the late 1930s and early 40s by psychol-ogist Kurt Lewin, who was one of the first to applyquantum principles to psychology and was a pioneerin the field of social psychology and group dynam-ics. Lewin heavily influenced Diana Baumrind’swork on parenting styles in the 1960s and 70s, as wellas R. D. Laing and M. Scott Peck. Lewin was a veryholistic, ecological thinker, way ahead of the curve.His work has helped me to see more value in the term“democratic,” so let me review a bit of it.

Lewin’s Work

Lewin and his associates (White & Lippitt 1960)conducted a number of unusual field experimentswith children, mainly in summer camps andafterschool programs. Their purpose was to studyhow the leadership style of the counselors affectedthe individual kids, the group of kids a whole, andthe counselors too. Because everyone at that timewas hyper-concerned with the rise of fascism aroundthe globe — for very good reason — Lewin chosepolitical terms for the three basic leaderships stylesthat he identified: autocratic, democratic, and lais-sez-faire. In her research on parenting styles,Baumrind would later adapt the names of the threetypes to authoritarian, authoritative, and permis-sive. The autocratic group leaders were strict andhighly controlling. They alone determined whatkind of crafts projects the kids would do, and tendedto closely supervise the kids to make sure they all fol-lowed the same uniform steps. These leaders alsotightly structured who worked with whom, and re-mained aloof from group participation except topraise or criticize the kids’ performance.

On the other end of the spectrum, the lais-sez-faire counselors gave the kids permission to dowhatever they wanted and generally didn’t partici-pate in any group process, other than to make itknown that they would supply information andmaterials when asked. Otherwise they limited theirrole to making infrequent comments on the activi-ties of the members.

In the democratic groups, the members decidedthe activities collectively, with the counselors en-couraging everyone to express their opinions. Thecounselors began with a general overview of the var-ious possible techniques and media and then al-lowed the kids to choose their own approaches, andleft it to the kids to work with whomever theypleased and to structure the tasks as they saw fit. Thecounselors functioned as group members “in spirit,”but let the kids do the actual work and generally onlygave criticism and praise to the group as a whole.

The results showed, among other things, that theautocratic groups expressed as much as 40 timesmore hostility between their members, who alsotended to be careless and leave their work unfin-ished, and to dissolve into chaos whenever the coun-


selor left the room. The morale of the leaders wasmuch lower as well.

At the same time, the aggression levels in the lais-sez-faire groups was as high as some of the autocraticgroups. Three out of ten boys also reported in indi-vidual interviews that they didn’t like their lais-sez-faire leader because “he was too easy-going, hadtoo few things for us to do, and let us figure outthings for ourselves too much.” Lewin concludedsomewhat paradoxically that the degree of freedomin the laissez-faire groups was lower because the lackof group coherence often interfered with the generalflow of activity.

The democratic groups showed a much higherlevel of enthusiasm and persistence, and a signifi-cantly higher degree of self-discipline. The quantityand quality of the children’s work was dramaticallyhigher, and they chose on their own to tackle chal-lenging long-range projects. The morale of the coun-selors, who reported that their jobs felt challengingand meaningful, was much higher, too. They particu-larly reported feeling more relaxed because the re-sponsibility for the group’s behavior didn’t fallsolely on them.

There’s a great deal more depth and detail to thesestudies; however, my reason for sharing them here isthat the way Lewin defined “democratic” to includeboth power sharing and a leadership/ teaching stylethat leaves initiative and creativity in the hands ofthe kids — with the adult fully present as a modeland advisor but not a controller — and that also pro-motes a real sense of community has significantlywarmed me to the democratic label.

The Search Continues

There is, unfortunately, a major downside to“democratic” as an umbrella term because it tends toexclude educational settings that are loving, nurtur-ing places and employ teaching practices that are un-conventional and highly creative, but where deci-sion-making power isn’t explicitly shared with thestudents. As a result the search for a name for thenew movement must continue.

Reference

White, R. K., and R. Lippitt. 1960. Autocracy and Democracy.New York: Harper.


Constructivism and the Bhagavad-GitaPriya Kumari

The verb “to construct” comes from the Latin construere, which means to arrange or give structure.Constructivism in education is an application of

Jean Piaget’s theory, initially through the work ofConstance Kamii (Kamii 1973; Kamii and DeVries1977). Ongoing structuring (organizing) processesare the conceptual heart of constructivism. Amongthe earliest recorded proponents of some form ofconstructivism are Lao Tzu (6th Century BCE), Bud-dha (560–477 BCE), and the philosopher of endlesschange, Herachitus (540–475 BCE). In Western cul-tures, constructivists often trace their intellectual ge-nealogy to Giambattista Vico (1668–1860), ImmanualKant (1724–1804), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), and Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) (Regoff1995). This paper attempts to reveal constructivismin the Bhagavad Gita.

Independent Learning

Constructivism emphasizes independent learn-ing. Teachers don’t hand down ready-made con-cepts; children must make their own discoveries andgrasp concepts themselves (Crain 2005, 139-141).

Similarly, the Gita initiates struggle for a higherlife in every individual, giving hints and suggestionsof how one can succeed, but asking the individualperson to achieve her own progress. Says Sanka-racharya in his the commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita verse 52, The nature of truth must be known byoneself with the clear eye of reason, but not by ascholar on your behalf.

Learning is Active

The constructivist approach highlights the activerole of the learner. Infants construct new ways ofdealing with the physical world by, for example, in-venting new ways of getting things. Later, childrencreate new cognitive structures through activitiessuch as the coordination of perspectives, counting,

Two seemingly differenteducational traditions havemuch in common.

PRIYA KUMARI is a Lecturer at the AMRITASchool of Education in Mysore, India. Herresearch interests focus on value educationand the relationship between education andIndian philosophy. She may be contacted at<[email protected]>.

and coming up with better arguments in debateswith peers (Crain 2005, ch. 6).

All the chapters of the Bhagavad-Gita, from theWay of Self Knowledge to the Wisdom of Renuncia-tion and Liberation, show different strategiesadopted by Sri Krisna as a facilitator to help Arjunaconstruct his knowledge. The Gita advises thelearner to use effort (6.5) and strive assiduously(6:45) — advice which reflects that learning comesthorough hard and dynamic work on the part of thenovice.

Teachers are Facilitators

Constructivism shifts our attention away fromthe instructor and the curriculum to the learner(Greene & Arkerman 1995). The teacher is a facilita-tor, and compared to the traditional teacher, shemust display a totally different set of skills. A facili-tator can present problems that may arouse thelearner’s interest, perhaps through questions, butthe learner is left to arrive at her own conclusions(Crain 2005, 139-141). A facilitator should also beable to adapt the learning experience in ‘mid air’ byusing her own initiative to steer it to where thelearner wants to create value (Di Vesta 1987).

Similarly in the Gita, a facilitator never dictateswhat a learner should do. Forced instructions are in-effective and create aversion. Sri Krishna tells Arjunaat the end of his conversation to “try to think overand decide for yourself your course of action” (18.63).

The Practical Precedes the Theoretical

As a general rule, Piaget believed that childrenfirst work out cognitive structures by interactingwith real things (and people) and then creating in-creasingly internal, theoretical structures. It is an ed-ucational mistake to introduce abstract concepts pre-maturely, before the child has had the chance to learnthrough direct experience (Crain 2005, ch. 6; Kamii1973; Piaget 1963).

Similarly, the Gita reflects the view that trueknowledge is based on experience. Theoreticalknowledge is not enough, it has to be experienced(Ranganathananda 2003). For lack of experience, oneknows yet does not know (Radhakrishnan 2003).

The Gita adds that theoretical knowledge isnever sufficient; jnana is knowledge and yoga is itspractical realization.

Inquiry

Constructivism, following Piaget, proposes thatthe child invents new cognitive structures in theprocess of exploration and inquiry. Curiosity ishighly desired. The learner becomes interested inproblems that she cannot quite solve with her exist-ing cognitive structures, and as she works on theproblems, she invents new structures (Crain 2005,115, 136). The learner also becomes critical of mate-rial that is falsely presented (Kamii 1989, 160). Thespirit of inquiry and critical thinking are essentialfor constructivist learning.

Verse 34 of the 4th Chapter of the Gita mentions“repeated questioning” to understand the truth.Questioning is needed for developing knowledge.And what is needed is not merely prashna or ques-tioning, but pariprashna, constant questioning. Alearner should ask: What is this? Why should it beso? What is the truth of a thing? An aspirant shouldask questions to resolve his doubts and gain clarityof mind (Rama 1996).

Social Interactions

Constructivism asserts that much cognitive devel-opment occurs through social negotiation and inter-action. Productive interactions often include debatesand disputes. Young people see that there is morethan one side to an issue. They develop a sense ofperspective. Arguments also point out deficienciesin the youngster’s positions, motivating her to de-velop better positions. In this way, her mind grows(Crain 2005, 137).

Verse 32 of the tenth chapter of the Gita talks aboutdiscussion, disputation, and argument. The objectiveis find the truth through such interactions. The in-quirer is not limited to the Vedic injunctions. He orshe needs to get into stimulating discussions.

Piaget and the constructivist also believe that mu-tuality — working together — is important. Learnersneed to coordinate efforts. This also is a kind of per-spective-taking; people resolve differences and workon strategies that consider different points of view(Kukla 2000; Crain 2005, 132). The Gita also recom-


mends interdependence and mutuality as a way to-ward progress (Ranganathananda 2001, 270).

Beyond Constructivism

The Gita sees ultimate knowledge as spiritual lib-eration. This goal has no real counterpart in construc-tivism. Constructivism assigns no role to the attain-ment of Supreme Peace or pure consciousness. Con-structivism, instead, focuses on what the Gita wouldconsider the first two of three levels of awareness —the physical and the psychological — prior to thespiritual. Nevertheless, the two approaches havemuch in common, including our responsibility totake charge of our own learning and determine thetruth for ourselves

References

Crain, W. 2005. Theories of development: Concepts and applica-tions. (5th edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Di Vesta, F. J. 1987. The effects of encoding variability, pro-cessing activity and rule example sequences on the transferof conceptual rules. Journal of Educational Psychology 73:108-119.

Greene, S & J. M. Ackerman. 1995. Expanding the construc-tivist metaphor: A rhetorical perspective on literacy re-search and practice. Review of Educational Research 65: 383-420.

Kamii, C. 1973. Pedagogical principles derived from Piaget’stheory: Relevance for educational practice. In Piaget in theclassroom, edited by M. Schwebel and J. Raph. New York:Basic Books.

Kamii, C. 1989. Young children continue to reinvent arithmetic:2nd grade. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kamii, C. K. & R. DeVries. 1977. Piaget for early education. InThe preschool in action (2nd edition), edited by M. C. Dayand R. K. Parker. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Kukla, A. 2000. Social constructivism and the philosophy of sci-ence. New York: Routledge.

Piaget, Jean. 1963. To understand is to invent. New York:Grossman.

Radhakrishnan, S. 2003. The Bhagavad-Gita. New Delhi:Harper Collins.

Rama, Swami. 1996. Perennial psychology of the Bhagavad-Gita.Philadelphia: Himalayan International Institute.

Ranganathananda, Swami. 2001. Universal message of theBhagavad-Gita, Vol. I. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama.

Ranganathananda, Swami. 2003. Universal message of theBhagavad-Gita, Vol. II. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama.

Rogoff, B. 1995. Apprenticeship in thinking. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

36 Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice

Conversations about Social JusticeKelly Donnell, Li-Ling Yang, Annie Winfield,

Alan Canestrari, Bruce Marlowe, and Mieko Kamii

The field of education has long been concernedwith social justice, but progress has been disap-pointing. Promises of the 1954 Brown v Board

decision, for example, have fallen woefully short.Perhaps, as Grumet (1988, xv) put it, we should con-sider that

If the world we give our children is differentfrom the one we envisioned for them, then weneed to discover the moments when we, weary,distracted, and conflicted, gave in, let the cur-tain fall back across the window, and settled fora little less light.

During the Fall 2007 semester, six of us in theRoger Williams University School of Education cametogether to examine some large and difficult ques-tions about what we can do. During our initial meet-ing, it took less than an hour to agree that we wantedsocial justice to be the focus of our inquiry and a fewminutes more to hammer out the question: How doesthe School of Education understand and operationalize so-cial justice? We have met 11 times since then, witheach meeting lasting about one and a half hours. Weaudio-taped the meetings and each of us took thetime to write down many of our thoughts. It has beenan exacting and emotional journey. Even though wehave only begun, we would like to share our experi-ence with you.

Our University and Its Setting

First, however, we need to set the context. RogerWilliams University is in New England, which somehave called the most segregated area of the country.All of us live in towns where less than five percent ofthe population is non-white, and the average incomeand level of education is substantially higher than

Senior author KELLY DONNELL is AssistantProfessor of Education at Roger WilliamsUniversity in Bristol, RI. Her researchinterests include the process of learning toteach in urban settings and social justice inteacher education. Her email is<[email protected]>.

Teachers commonly teachabout social justice, butteaching for socialjustice — teaching that hasaction-consequences — needsmuch greater attention.

Editor’s Note: ENCOUNTER invites letters to the editor on readers’ ex-periences with social justice activities and projects.

that of the rest of the country. Our students, too,come from communities that reflect this same demo-graphic reality and struggle to understand why theirprofessors continually ask them to examine it.Finally, an examination of the University itself sug-gests why: where issues of diversity are concerned,there exists a lack of exposure to questions of socialjustice. Less than 4% of the student body consists ofdomestic students of color and the yearly tuition iscomparable to that of nearby Harvard and Yale. Forsome of us, social justice seems like a far-off abstrac-tion, but we are committed to the struggle to achievean understanding of it. Here are some of the themesthat emerged in our discussions.

Definitions of Social Justice

Most of us defined social justice in terms of equalityof opportunity. As one of our group members put it:

From as early as I can remember, I thoughtschool should be the one place you could counton as a great equalizer. Not in the sense of mak-ing every one equal in ability or even in status.Instead, I had the notion that schools should pro-vide children the same opportunities, the samenurturance, and level of guidance, and theyshould also seek to develop the specific talents,interests, and passions of children and youngpeople. And as early as I remember, schools al-ways struck me as places where this just wasn’tgoing to happen, that in fact many young peopleget tagged, long before they even came to school,as destined for something “less than.”

Another member gave the concept of social justicea slightly different slant. “Very simply, to me, socialjustice is a mutual recognition of humanity unhin-dered by superimposition of gradations of perceivedworth.” Anything else, she insisted, is merely ver-biage that risks losing the essential element of hu-manity in social life.

Teaching About vs. Teaching For Social Justice

During our discussions, we realized that it is rela-tively easy to teach about social justice. Teachingabout social justice is ubiquitous. As one person inour group said, “We produce syllabi, curriculummaps, readings, and resources. Teaching for social

justice, however? Well, I’m not convinced that weunderstand or come very close to operationalizingthis at all.” In other words, how do we teach in a waythat actually translates into action toward a more justworld — either action by ourselves or our students?This is something we are only beginning to look at.

A Risky Business

Many in our group came to the conclusion thatteaching for justice often means taking a stand as ateacher — and that doing so is risky. Speaking outagainst the mainstream pursuit of standards, ac-countability, testing, and zero tolerance can label oneas a troublemaker or someone who doesn’t fit in.One of our members phrased it this way:

Taking a stand, actively opposing injustice,teaching for social justice is a highly politicized,controversial, and dangerous pursuit, espe-cially given the current political climate.

Similarly, dedicating a class to social justice actionis dangerous. One of our members asked,

Are we ready to make a statement of conscienceand teach for social justice or, instead, would werather simply teach about it? What are the im-plications of making such a choice? Taking astand is politicized, controversial, and danger-ous. How far are we willing to go? What are wewilling to risk?

By necessity, those without tenure will think dif-ferently about risk than those with tenure. Those ofus who are in fields that are more scripted by exter-nally imposed mandates have our own perspectiveson the extent to which we can actively resist. Westruggle with the fact that we work at the intersec-tion between compliance required for leading ourstudents to state certification and our individual be-liefs that are often in direct opposition to those samerequirements. Like marginalized students through-out history, we bring our lives, passions, and knowl-edge of humanity to the work we do, and yet we findwe must contend daily with a system that does notacknowledge the possibility of a better world.

Where do we go from here? We hope to take risks,challenge ourselves, do things we have not done be-fore, and continue engaging in this self study. We


also encourage others to form study groups like ours.There is much to be gained from small gatherings inwhich we can share ideas and provide one anotherwith feedback and social support. If you do formsuch a group, please take a moment to share your ex-periences with us. We all need to know if such groups

benefit educators in the long run, and if they provideadditional courage for the battles we face.

Reference

Grumet, M. 1988. Bitter milk: Women and teaching. Amherst,MA: University of Massachusetts Press.


My Father’s GardenBy Kate McReynolds

(1989)

He died before the hot weather cropHad been harvested.I came home with a bag full of tomatoesAnd a mouthful of dust.Day after dayI ate tomatoesMarveling that his gardenHad outlived him.Then one dayI stood looking for a long timeAt the last one.It was a small yellow Early-Girl.Its skin as smooth and translucent as a baby’s.Finally, I ate it.

It was exactly as he said it would beA touch mealy, but sweet.

As sweet a tomato as you’ll ever eat.

Kate McReynolds was the Associate Editor of Encounterprior to her death in September 2008.

Teaching World ReligionIn the Public Schools

James W. Peterson

Almost every political crisis in the world todayinvolves religious conflict. Just look atMyanmar, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Kashmir,

Indonesia, Ireland, and Thailand. Even in America,there are religious divides. For example, many peo-ple asked in 2007 whether we could trust a Mormonto be president.

Yet the subject of religion — so critical for under-standing culture, politics, and human nature — is ig-nored or even banned in the public schools.

The U.S. founding fathers insisted on the separationof church and state, and this separation has served uswell. Indeed, most of the world’s hot spots are coun-tries — some supposedly democratic — in which thereexits a state religion. And the separation of church andstate is the rationale behind the omission of religiousinstruction in schools. Teachers cannot reveal theirown religious ideas, and certainly do not wish to of-fend others in the school with alternative views.

But the founding fathers certainly never intended todeprive children of religious instruction. The earlyschools in America were filled with recited prayers andmoral lessons in the copybooks, and the McGuffeyEclectic Readers were full of religious references.

Yet today teachers are so concerned about beingreligiously neutral that even mentioning God isfrowned upon.

Such issues have puzzled me in my 40-year teach-ing career. My recent solution is the focus of the pres-ent article.

For twelve years I taught in private schools. Andin the private sector, the possibility of including reli-gious education is viable. In fact, in one school theteachers taught the lives of the prophets of all majorreligions (starting with Zoroaster in the third grade)as part of the social studies curriculum. But in 1989

Religion is a taboo topic in U.S.public schools, but teachersmust find ways to introducestudents to it. Students needexposure to the world’sreligions to understanddiverse cultures andinternational politics.

JAMES W. PETERSON has been teaching ele-mentary school for 40 years in both privateand public school settings. Experienced inboth Montessori and Waldorf educationalapproaches, Jim currently teaches in a small,rural public school in California. He is theauthor of The Secret Life of Kids.

when I returned to public education, I feared that Icould no longer teach the lives of Jesus or Moham-med, Rama or Buddha.

My Public School Experience

Actually, as I talked with other public school teach-ers at various schools, I found that in the month of De-cember there is plenty of religion brought into theschools. Teachers routinely have children draw Christ-mas trees, talk about Santa Claus, and even learnChristmas songs. And then, to make sure the Jewishchildren don’t feel left out, the children learn a Hanuk-kah song or two and perhaps paint a menorah. Thewhole business struck me as very hypocritical and odd.

In any case, I wanted children to know somethingabout the world religions, and wondered how was Ito introduce students to them in a way that would beacceptable. My answer developed gradually over myfirst two years in my new school. It occurred to methat many religions have a festival of worship on ornear the winter solstice. The winter solstice itself wasthe focal point of the sacred calendar of ancient, pan-theistic peoples around the world. And festivals oflight have continued during this solstice season inmany established religions. My plan began to crys-tallize. Why not tell stories of great prophets or saintsfrom different world religions and make Decembersort of World Religions Month?

I will admit that I’m in a unique public school. Mystraight-forward approach to this issue might not workin other settings. Canyon School is a small, rural schoollocated in a redwood forest, not far from Oakland, Cali-fornia. We have grades kindergarten through eighth,with four full-time teachers. I have been teaching acombined kindergarten, first, and second grade classfor eighteen years. Many parents from neighboringcommunities wish to enroll their children in CanyonSchool, because of its unique setting, small classes, andintimate, family feeling. Also, we integrate the arts intoacademic subjects and do not overemphasize the new“No Child Left Behind” impulse.

The teachers work collegially, and the five-mem-ber school board consists of my friends in the com-munity and parents at the school. I, therefore, tookmy plan to teach stories of religious figures in myclass directly to the school board for their consider-ation. They liked the proposal, but they were ner-

vous about how the diverse community of parentswould respond. They told me to write a letter tellingparents about my plan and the rationale for the De-cember study unit. And I was told to assure parentsthat I would not present religious ideas as facts or re-ality, but as notions that some people believe and sto-ries that some in the world tell their children.

The response was enthusiastic. My plan had manysupporters and no opposition. Even agnostic andatheistic parents could see the validity of exposingchildren to an ecumenical introduction to the reli-gions of the world.

My approach is to first locate three stories of thelives of spiritual figures from three different tradi-tions. I always pick stories from living religions, andI do not tell myths from ancient pantheistic societies.Some years I base my winter dramatic presentationon a religious story. One time, for example, I told thestory of Prince Siddhartha’s childhood and how herenounced the world to become the Buddha. Thismade for a stunning “Christmas” show.

After telling the story I develop it as a languagearts lesson. I have been a friend of Rudolf Steiner’sWaldorf approach to education for my entire career.In Steiner schools, images from stories are artisticallypresented to the children to suggest a letter of the al-phabet. Last year I told incidents from the HinduKrishna’s life, and our drawing of Krishna, with onehand up, made the letter K. Then we wrote, in ourlesson books, some of the material we had learnedabout Krishna’s life.

I try to pick interesting and exciting stories. Onesummer my son and I had traveled to Loch Ness inScotland; so that December I decided to present thelife of St. Columba who brought Christianity to Scot-land. But with the children I particularly focused onhis legendary confrontation with the Loch Nessmonster. As you can imagine St. Columba became avery admired figure in my class.

I pretty much leave the actual teachings of the reli-gions out of the unit. I just let the stories stand alone. Ido have a world religions table display set up in theclassroom, with statues and symbols of various reli-gions. And I have the kids copy the “secret sign” ofeach religion we discuss. We do drawings of the cross,the sanscrit om, yin and yang, or the star and crescent.


Sometimes small lessons do come up that draw at-tention to doctrinal issues. One year I told about Mo-hammed’s escape from Mecca. Ali, his son in law,bravely pretended to be Mohammed by disguisinghimself while Abu Bakr helped Mohammed to es-cape from town. I pointed out to the children that af-ter the prophet died, his followers split betweenthose who “liked” Ali and those who “liked” AbuBakr. Such simple understandings can help a lot incomprehending current events in the Middle East.Also, when discussing Christian saints, I expose thechildren to the fact that Protestants de-emphasizeany stories of saints.

One of my favorite activities during World Reli-gions Month is our annual field trip to a place of wor-ship. Over the years we have been to several Buddhisttemples and monasteries, a Mormon temple, the larg-est synagogue in Oakland, a Greek Orthodox churchand, my personal favorite, the Golden Temple of theSikhs. When we visited there, the Sikh guide put tur-bans on all the kids’ heads, and even fed us an Indianluncheon after our tour of the temple.

Such visits make religious education come to life forthe children. To see a building created to honor God,and to see folks who practice various religious ap-proaches, is the concrete learning that children need.

World Religions Month became so popular withthe parents and children in my class, that in the fol-lowing years the Canyon school board decided tomake this a school-wide focus each December. Allthe children in the school would study world reli-gions each year. Sometimes I told religious stories tothe entire student body during assemblies. On otheroccasions, representatives from different traditionsgave presentations in individual classes or assem-blies. Sometimes parents with strong or unusual reli-gious paths shared their experiences.

Older Students

In the higher grades at Canyon, religious tradi-tions are taught differently. The combined third,fourth and fifth grade teacher has created her ownunique approach. She takes a theme, such as creationstories, flood stories, or concepts of life after death,and leads her class in an examination of each themefrom the standpoint of different religious traditions.

These grades get a taste of the study of comparativereligion.

The class of sixth, seventh and eighth graders alsohas its own curriculum. Generally, the teacher’s ap-proach has been to relate the study of religion to so-cial studies, or to focus on current political issues.One year, for example, the class studied Islam indepth. It visited a mosque and had guest speakers,including the distinguished poet Deema Shehabi.Another year the class was discussing the Puritans inearly America, so the teacher decided during WorldReligions Month to analyze the differences betweenProtestant and Catholic approaches to Christianity.That year the students also focused on recent politi-cal developments in Northern Ireland. Basically, theupper grade teacher tries to connect religious studiesto current events so that the children can better un-derstand the larger world around them.

Concluding Comment

I would like to emphasize that I am hardly alonein seeing the need for the study of world religions inthe public schools. In particular, my friend and col-league, Dr. Charles Haynes, has written insightfullyon this matter. In Taking Religion Seriously Across theCurriculum (1998, 75), Warren Nord and Haynes say,

An elementary school curriculum that ignores re-ligion gives students the false message that reli-gion doesn’t matter to people — that we live in areligion-free world. This is neither fair nor accu-rate. Silence about religion also denies studentsthe promise of a good education. If they are to un-derstand the world they live in, they must be ex-posed at an early age to the religious dimensionsof society, history, literature, art and music.

In my public school we use the model of focusingon religion during the month of December. I’m surethere are many other ways of bring religious ideas topublic school students. As educators, we should notdeny children the right to learn about perhaps themost fascinating, complex, and mysterious compo-nent of the human psyche.

Reference

Nord, W., and C. C. Haynes. 1998. Taking religion seriouslyacross the curriculum. Nashville, TN: Association for Super-vision and Curriculum Development.


Book Reviews

Against Schooling:For an Education that MattersBy Stanley Aronowitz

Published by Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO,2008

Reviewed by William Crain

Mark Twain once said, “I never let my schoolinginterfere with my education” (1989, 66). Education,Twain implied, is something broader and more valu-able than mere book-learning. In Against Schooling,sociologist and union activist Stanley Aronowitzelaborates on this distinction.

Aronowitz sees contemporary schooling as a te-dious process that culminates in a credential and pre-pares the student for the job market. Schools put apremium on obedience and academic skills, and aredominated by standardized tests that “subordinateteachers to the role of drill masters” (p. 48). “Con-trary to their democratic pretensions,” schools “teachconformity to the social, cultural, and occupationalhierarchy” (p. 19).

Education, in Aronowitz’s view, is very different.Education not only includes learning that occurs out-side the school walls; it also is capable of fostering in-dependent, creative, and critical thinking. Areal edu-cation does not just adjust students to existing socialconditions; it enables people to criticize these condi-tions and envision alternatives. It is the essential in-gredient in the creation of a better world.

With this distinction in mind, Aronowitz takes upa wide variety of topics. He discusses, among otherthings, the union movement in higher education, dis-tance learning, the decline of the humanities and so-cial sciences, working class kids’ attitudes towardschool, popular culture, and the writings of AntonioGramsci and Paulo Friere. To my mind, however,nothing is more interesting than the book’s first sec-

tion: a brief memoir on the self-education ofAronowitz’s Russian immigrant family.

Aronowitz’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, and par-ents were skilled laborers who read philosophy andliterature, revered classical music, played musical in-struments, and spoke several languages. They alsoworked on union activities, and some wrote for im-migrant newspapers. They all were highly educated,but they acquired their knowledge in the course oftheir lives — not in school.

Working class intellectuals, Aronowitz adds, didtake some classes. These were union-sponsored Eng-lish literacy classes whose reading matter includedsocialist texts and world literature. Union newslet-ters also published poems and stories by workers,and unions and radical organizations sponsored lec-tures by distinguished scholars. The major sites ofeducation were the shop floor, union hall, and backroom bar.

Education was valued because it broadened one’ssocial perspective — and, I sense, simply for its in-trinsic pleasures. This certainly was the case forAronowitz’s mother. She attended public school inthe Bronx until the age of 14, but then her motherdied, forcing her to leave school to earn money. Sheworked in department stores for 25 years, and for thenext 25 years she was employed as a bookkeeper inunion textile shops. After her retirement she earned ahigh school equivalency diploma and attended TheCenter for Worker Education at the City College ofNew York. She had been a voracious reader, musi-cian, and painter throughout her life, but she wantedto attend college to discuss her favorite topics — lit-erature and politics — with students. For her, collegehad nothing to do career preparation. It had its ownreward: the pure enjoyment of sharing ideas.

Aronowitz himself obtained most of his educationoutside the classroom. He dropped out of college af-ter his freshman year, feeling that “further schoolingwas superfluous to my intellectual development” (p.5), and went to work in steel factories. When, 15

WILLIAM CRAIN is the Editor of Encounter.

years later, he returned to college to become a writerand teacher, he attended The New School, which cer-tified him as a bachelor of arts after writing a thesis.Aronowitz also earned a PhD through unconven-tional routes that required minimum time in schoolbuildings. He has since taught young people in alter-native high schools, experimented with innovativecollege programs, and is currently a DistinguishedProfessor of Sociology in The City University of NewYork’s Graduate Center. Aronowitz is widely re-garded as one of today’s top social theorists, and likehis family members before him, he is largely self-taught.

Aronowitz’s family history illustrates how educa-tion can be much deeper and more stimulating thatthat which typically occurs in today’s schools. ButAronowitz doesn’t recommend eliminating schoolsaltogether. Instead, he wants them to be “renderedbenign” (p. 50). They must be freed from the grip ofstandardized tests and the job-training mentality ofthe corporate state. They must become places whereteachers introduce all students, regardless of their so-cial class, to the liberal arts and sciences and criticalthinking. Teachers should be intellectuals who helpstudents understand the world in its cultural and his-torical context so students can critically evaluate so-cial conditions and begin to change them.

Aronowitz gives considerable attention to con-temporary higher education, which he criticizes forallotting a liberal education to “elite” students whileproviding vocational-oriented studies to the rest. Be-yond such specific claims, however, is a call for morethinking about what a college education should be.Aronowitz correctly points out that many facultymembers, facing right-wing assaults on the academy,have adopted a largely defensive posture. At the CityUniversity of New York (CUNY) many faculty havefought hard to defend past social gains, especiallyopportunities for low-income students and studentsof color to get a college education. But while trying todefend these opportunities, faculty members haveoverlooked the need to reflect on educational goals.Against Schooling is just the book to stimulate suchthinking. In fact, it has already become a springboardfor such discussions at CUNY.

My only criticism of Against Schooling is that ittends to be rather general and abstract. I hope that in

future writings Aronowitz will provide more spe-cific examples of the corporate model in education,as well as the experiences of students trapped in nar-row educational systems. Nevertheless, Aronowitzhas lucidly stated the basic task before us: “to fosterthe possibility of educational systems that can helppeople develop a sense of themselves in relation tothe larger world: a sense of history, a sense of struc-ture, and a sense of how they themselves can begin tore-create the world” (p. 57).

References

Twain, M. 1989. The wit and wisdom of Mark Twain. Edited byA. Ayres. New York: Meridian.

New York and Slavery,Time to Teach the TruthBy Alan J. Singer

Published by State University of New York Press(Albany, NY, 2008)

Reviewed by Marlene S. Munn-Joseph

As a professor of curriculum and teaching, I foundAlan Singer’s book, New York and Slavery, Time toTeach the Truth, to be an indispensable resource forpracticing teachers. The book presents an approachto teaching that can be described within the traditionof social reconstructionism in curriculum studies.Singer emphasizes the process of curriculum deci-sion-making for teachers, and highlights the litera-ture on student understanding and how it is criti-cally shaped by racial and ethnic identity. Like ear-lier historians such as Horace Mann Bond, Singer’swork moves the curriculum beyond a set of facts tobe delivered to students, to knowledge that needs tobe critiqued and discussed. With this approach,teachers must consider students’ connection to theknowledge brought into the classroom, which is whyfrom the beginning Singer addresses his own posi-tion as a white man.

Drawing from Banks’s (1993) typology of knowl-edge, this book is an excellent example of transfor-mative academic knowledge, an approach to knowl-


MARLENE MUNN-JOSEPH is an Assistant Professor in the De-partment of Curriculum and Teaching at Hofstra University.

edge construction that recognizes that no knowledgeis neutral, but influenced by social relations in soci-ety. This is illustrated when Singer introduces thereader to the complexity of the history of slavery byraising the question of New York State’s role in it. Hiswork challenges the conventional wisdom that onlythe South was involved in the slave trade. As an his-torian, Singer resurrects what he describes as thewastebasket of history: knowledge that has been ig-nored but is very relevant. Singer’s intent is to pre-pare the social studies teacher to be an agent of socialchange because, as he asserts, “the study of history isa powerful force for human understanding and so-cial change.” He explains that the idea for the bookarose out of his work with the award-winning NewYork and Slavery: Complicity and Resistance Guide(Singer & Carter 2004).

The book is organized into thirteen chapters.Seven of the chapters outline in careful detail thehistory of slavery in New York. Singer criticizes thetraditional social studies curriculum for obscuringimportant historical data and failing to tell the truth.The remaining five chapters provide teachers with arationale for this work, instructional ideas and re-sources, and an invaluable section on what studentsunderstand about slavery. Throughout, he offers adialectical understanding of history, and he looks atthe complicity and resistance to the institution ofslavery during the colonial period in New York.What is particularly impressive about this work ishow, through the historical data, Singer links theimportance of individual and collective choice tothe professional practice of teachers. He encouragesteachers to engage in pedagogy that fosters com-plexity.

In the chapter, “Erased from Memory,” Singer de-scribes his work with a New York City teacher’s so-cial studies class to create a walking tour of the his-torical sites in lower Manhattan that marked NewYork’s participation in slavery. The problem, he ex-plains, is that New York had “no museums or perma-nent exhibits on slavery in New York City or thecity’s role in the trans atlantic trade … except for a re-cent exhibit and monument of the African Americanburial ground site.” Singer’s walking tour, which canbe found at <http://people.hofstra.edu/alan_j_singer/slaverywebsite/slaverymain.html>, takes

participants through lower Manhattan and locatesfifteen historical sites related to the history of slaveryin New York.

In the chapter, “Teaching about Slavery,” Singerdescribes his commitment to helping teachers andstudents struggle through teaching and learningabout the institution of slavery. He suggests thatwhat was significant about this work was the dia-logue it fostered. Singer encourages the use of textsby African Americans, and he offers perspectivesfrom African American teachers on how they ap-proached the teaching of slavery.

One of the better approaches to teaching aboutslavery is through drama, and Singer describes hiswork with various students groups performingscenes from Martin B. Duberman’s (1964) documen-tary play, In White America. Additionally, he has hadstudents in both middle and high schools perform aversion of the book, A People Could Fly. In this exam-ple, Singer explains that two groups of students heworked with protested a scene which was particu-larly violent, and together they made decisions tonot cast the roles in the play according to the race ofthe characters.

The central theme of complicity and resistance,which Singer claims is erased from our historicalmemory, is central to the book. Singer carefully docu-ments New York’s role in the transatlantic slavetrade, and by tackling this “erased history,” he chal-lenges traditional historical renditions that locate theinstitution of slavery only in the South. He also illus-trates why the approach of regional compartmen-talization in the traditional social studies curriculumis problematic because of the connections betweenthe development of the Netherlands, the settlementof the Dutch North American colonies, and the trans-atlantic slave trade.

Singer raises a crucial question for teachers andstudents when he asks them to “examine why somepeople took a stand against injustice while other peo-ple, under similar circumstances, tolerated it or wereactively complicit.” He outlines the persistent con-tradiction that plagues American history, the prom-ise of freedom and the brutalizing institution of slav-ery and its aftermath, and observes that when stu-dents are studying this contradiction, it is critical thatAfricans not be reduced to objects but viewed with


the humanity they deserve. Readers are providedwith rich documentation of how repressive lawswere used to control Africans in New York and howAfricans in that historical period resisted their con-trol. In Chapter 5, runaway slave advertisements fromcolonial and revolutionary New York and New Jerseyare useful resources for visual representations of thebarbaric conditions Africans had to endure.

Singer also outlines how major historical figureswere complicit in the preservation of the institutionof slavery, and how Americans debated over the fu-ture of slavery. He describes how he facilitated a dis-cussion with a group of high school students aboutthe name of their school. Singer asked these studentsif they knew that the person for whom the school wasnamed was possibly a slave trader and whether theschool’s name should be changed. This example il-lustrated to students that history is not relegated tothe dustbin, but in fact, their perspectives mattered,insomuch as they are part of history making.

Overall, this work will be quite successful in help-ing teachers create classrooms where students canengage in the development of their critical con-sciousness. Through a host of practical examples,Singer’s work illustrates pedagogy that enablesteachers and students to learn about “erased” ideasand challenge mainstream depictions of the institu-tion of slavery.

References

Banks, J. A. 1993. The canon debate, knowledge construction,and multicultural education. Educational Researcher 22 (5):4-14.

Duberman, Martin. 1964. In white America. Boston: HoughtonMifflin.

Hamilton, Virginia. 1985. The people could fly: American blackfolktales. New York: Knopf.

Singer, A. J., and M. Carter. 2004. New York and slavery: Com-plicity and resistance curriculum guide. A document-basedcurriculum guide prepared for the “Gateway to the City”Teaching American History Grant Project. For more infor-mation see <www.nyscss.org/resources/publications/new-york-and-slavery.aspx>.

Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips:The Fate of Public Educationin AmericaBy Gene Glass

Published by Information Age Publishing(Charlotte, NC, 2008)

Reviewed by Scott Fletcher

Like Jared Diamond’s, Guns, Germs, and Steel: TheFates of Human Societies, Gene Glass’s new book,whose title consciously plays on this popular text, isa work of broad intellectual inquiry, drawing on theinsights of a researcher’s long experience in the field.It is also similar in its attempt to bring a variety ofcomplex disciplinary perspectives to bear on a press-ing social question for a general audience willing toengage the text, connecting the dots to create a pic-ture that ends up being bigger and more illuminat-ing than anyone might have imagined at the start.Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of PublicEducation in America lives up to this description, inlarge measure, even when some of the underlyingconceptual supports for the analysis get a littleblurry. Still, Glass brings the welcome clarity of hisunalloyed empiricism to questions that many others,perhaps better on the underlying social and politicaltheories, have left opaque to thus unmoved readers.

It might be best to begin with the central claim ofthe text, which is captured a number of times inbluntly worded passages of the following sort:

The major education reform proposals debatedtoday in the halls of legislatures, in the media,and in academic discourse arise from the cir-cumstances of an aging, White middle classwishing to reduce the costs they bear for publiceducation and secure some quasi-privateschool setting for their children and their chil-dren’s children. (p. 199)

This is the touchstone of the text and the thesisthat drives the analysis of demographic trends asso-ciated with urbanization (fertilizer), changes in thecomposition of society (pills), and patterns of con-sumption (magnetic strips). The explanation that


VisitENCOUNTERon the Web at

https://great-ideas.org E. SCOTT FLETCHER is Dean of the Graduate School ofEducation and Counseling at Lewis & Clark College.

Glass offers is richly textured with data that is gener-ally accessible (as he points out, “it is scarcely heavierthan that of USA Today,” p. xiv) in a text that is well-paced for a general audience. There is enough argu-ment to support the position being developed, withfew of the customary academic epicycles of qualifica-tion, unnecessary methodological detail, or over-zealous engagement with past critics. Glass de-scribes the emergence of a set of circumstances inwhich a single powerful group (the White middleand upper classes), threatened with a lower standardof living (through overconsumption and downwardswings in the economy), exert influence over publicpolicy (voucher programs, tuition tax credits, etc.) toreduce their transfer payments to others (often peo-ple of color), while maintaining access to servicesthat sustain their social dominance (schooling).

The power of the analysis lies in the careful work-ing through of each of these elements. The text is ef-fectively put together for the general reader, evensporting an image of the Fordson Model F Tractorand a portrait of the chemist Fritz Haber among themany charts and graphs. The writing is occasionallypersonal (cameos by Glass’s in-laws, father, and sur-geon), proudly well-footnoted, and always groundedin empirical measurements of birth rates, racial demo-graphics, census data, and the like. It has both thecurrency of a piece of policy research and the reflec-tive quality of a senior scholar surveying the field (orseveral fields, in this case).

Despite the beauty of the book’s balance, there aresome pieces of this complex empirical puzzle thatwould benefit from deeper grounding in the socialand political theories on which the analysis depends.Glass doesn’t always pursue these connections andsometimes his writing suggests an ambivalence to-ward possible interpretations. These are the issuesthat I’ll address in the remainder of this review.

Ideology and Educational Policy

Curiously, Glass makes no use of the concept of ide-ology in a text that otherwise seems preoccupied withits function. Beginning in the Preface, Glass describeshis coming to write this book as part of his recognitionthat the language of educational reform obscures thereal struggle for social control and privilege.

Eventually, I came to believe that debates in ed-ucation are not about achievement or test scoresor preparing tomorrow’s workforce at all. Theyare about gaining the political power to controlmoney and secure special privileges. Behindthe rhetoric lies material self-interest, a drive forcomfort, and a need for security. (p. xii)

Glass then goes on, in Chapters two, eight, andnine particularly, to offer an analysis of how putativereformers manipulate “choice,” “accountability,” andour ever-present educational “crisis” to promote poli-cies that defend the power of white middle class fami-lies and insulate them from responsibility for poorerand “browner” students who are often the children ofimmigrants. He demonstrates how the privilege ofwhite middle class families is consistently sustained,and often expanded, by voucher programs, tuition taxcredit plans, and other educational policies justifiedby what are ostensibly efforts to improve social effi-ciency or expand individual freedoms. Of course, thepolicies described do neither, but they do produce thekinds of cost reduction and quasi-private educationalbenefits that Glass describes above.

It’s not simply on academic grounds that I thinksome conception of ideology would be helpful here. Ithink such an explanation is necessary to moveahead with Glass’s central tasks — to explain whywe seem unable to let reason guide our educationalpolicy making and why demands for “freedom” inthe marketplace almost always bring the opposite ef-fect. Glass cites approvingly the work of Michael Ap-ple in a footnote on p. 8, but he misses the most im-portant connection to Apple’s analysis. Rather thanexplaining “how conservative education reformersare contributing to ethnicity, race, and class divi-sion,” the genius of both Apple and Glass is their ca-pacity to explain why well meaning people go alongwith such proposals — or even more startling, whypeople who are actually harmed by these policies of-ten serve as their advocates (recall Thomas Frank’s,What’s the Matter with Kansas?). Both Glass and Ap-ple seek to expose the underlying ideology of marketrationales for educational policies that ostensibly ap-peal to values such as equality of opportunity andparental choice as actually rooted in the race andclass solidarity of privileged groups. This is the rea-son that Glass would do well to call upon ideology,


or something similar, as a tool in his analysis. But thisisn’t the only reason. It would also help Glass betterexplain the relationship between class membership(the demographic data) and the motives of individ-ual social actors (their support for particular educa-tional policies).

Class Interests and Individual Actions

One reason that ideology doesn’t play an explicitrole in Glass’s analysis may be related to the ambiva-lence I see in his characterization of social groups inthe text and how best to understand their “motives.”Early in the book, Glass identifies himself as a cul-tural materialist (like Marvin Harris), especially in-sofar as the approach gives appropriate weight to theforces of production (Marx) and to the implicationsof population dynamics (Malthus). At times, this ap-pears to lead Glass to see the problem he’s describingas having a certain kind of historical and demo-graphic inevitability — the fate of public education.

For most of the rest of the book, however, it seemsclear that Glass considers the choices white middleclass people make to support particular educationalpolicies as evidence of their conscious efforts to de-fend (or extend) their economic interests and privi-lege of position. He appeals directly to individualmotives to explain such actions.

Policies widely advocated in democratic institu-tions ranging from local school boards to the U.S. Congress have been put forward as solutionsto a crisis in educational attainment that threat-ens national prosperity and security (indeed,national preeminence itself), when in fact thesepolicies have likely arisen from different, lesshonorable motives, namely, the desire of Whitevoters to preserve wealth, consume materialgoods, and provide a “quasi-private” educationfor their children at public expense. (p. 16)

What drives the advocates? What is the source oftheir partisan energies? It is clearly not a case of hav-ing discovered, say, a miraculous cure for a virulentdisease and wanting the world to benefit from it. Onemust look for the motives that drive the reformers.They are not hard to find: Reduce costs; make school-ing private at public expense for my children. (p. 147,emphasis in text)

The ambiguity here lies in the uneasy relationshipbetween individual motives and class interests.Glass is no doubt right to argue that “people’s ac-tions are scarcely comprehensible without thinkingabout what drives them and what personal interest isserved by their acting thus” (p. 12). But an account ofthe belief system that integrates perceptions of self-interest with class membership (and thus what ac-tions count as serving class interests in the first place)is exactly what’s needed here. Demographics, aspowerful as they are, are insufficient to explain thisrelationship. Indeed, Glass demonstrates all tooclearly that the effort to promote educational policiesthat benefit white middle class families requires thedeployment of sophisticated rhetorical structures(accountability, choice, educational crisis) to garnerthe political support necessary for their adoption.The irony here, as well as the conceptual difficulty, isthat these rhetorical structures depend on individu-als and their actions at the same time that they shapeindividuals’ motives and understanding. I thinkGlass would do well to say something more on thisissue, as it also has important implications for wherethe analysis would take a sympathetic reader inter-ested in raising the flag.

How Full is Your Glass?

In the end, it’s hard to answer Glass’s own ques-tion about whether he’s a pessimist (I agree with hisself-assessment as a cynic — of the best kind). On theone hand, he seems to have a hard time resisting thedetermination of demographic data:

It would be better to speak of possibilities orlikely scenarios for public education rather thanits fate in these pages were it not that the forcesbeing discussed have a sense of inevitabilityabout them. Thus we speak of demographic im-peratives (p. 235).

But it would take a true cynic indeed to put so mucherudition into a book of this kind, only to concludethat nothing can be done. I’m grateful that Glass can-not resist the careful reader’s conclusion that the in-sights conveyed here can help us change our currentcourse, to seek justice in the provision of public edu-cation, and unmask false attempts at reform thatbenefit few at the expense of many.


Will understanding — like that hopefully con-veyed here — lead to some degree of introspec-tion, some reflection by the very generations onwhom the future of public education depends?If indeed the motives driving school reform areas selfish as is here claimed, can good con-sciences be awakened? There are no likely solu-tions to problems possible without knowledgeof causes, even if it is partial knowledge. (p. 249)

Maybe that’s as optimistic as a hard-boiled empir-icist who looks at the figures and finds what Glassdoes in this book can be. I think it’s more thanenough motivation to tempt fate and pursue these ar-guments in the court of public opinion. This bookholds out the possibility of reaching a larger audi-ence far beyond the walls of the academy. I hope thatit does; I’ll certainly be recommending it.

Spectacular ThingsHappen Along the Way:Lessons from an Urban ClassroomBy B. D. Schultz

Published by Teachers College Press (New York,2008)

Reviewed by Alicia A. Broderick

I recently devoured Brian Schultz’s Spectacularthings happen along the way: Lessons from an urban class-room, because like so many classroom teachers andteacher-educators, I am hungry for counternarrativesto the dominant storyline of teachers as technicianswho implement received curricula. We are all inti-mately familiar with this dominant cultural narra-tive, the one in which teaching is something thatteachers do to students and in which students are ei-ther deemed successful or unsuccessful on the basisof high-stakes standardized testing instruments.Schultz’s text transgresses this narrative and paints avivid portrait of teaching as learning that teachers dowith students, and of curricula as meaningful, au-thentic issues-based content that students can ac-tively co-construct with their teachers. In the

Deweyan tradition, the disciplines are conceptual-ized not as received bodies of knowledge to be trans-mitted, but rather as active tools (e.g., literacy, math-ematical thinking, scientific inquiry, etc.) to be devel-oped and utilized in pursuit of broader questionsand issues of contemporary relevance. Thecounternarrative that emerges in Schultz’s text iscompelling and complex, and not at all in line withthe all-too-common narrative of white-middle-class-educator-as-savior-to-underpriviliged-black-youth,or with the similarly common and equally less-than-useful atheoretical autobiographical narrative pre-sented as an idealized example of a heroic “superteacher.”

Schultz’s text chronicles his experiences of a yearspent as a 5th-grade classroom teacher at Carr Com-munity Academy in Chicago’s Cabrini Green neigh-borhood. When Schultz asks his students to identifyan issue in their community that they want to ac-tively address, they quickly come to consensus that“Our school is a dump!” (p. 1), and for the remainderof the school year the students seek to rectify this sit-uation through their own social and political activ-ism. This emergent curriculum is powerful in its au-thenticity (it is derived from and entirely directed bystudents’ concerns and agendas), its interdisci-plinarity (students integrate reading, writing, math-ematics, and use tools of [social] scientific inquiry incomplex ways), and its active engagement of all stu-dents as meaning-makers (even historically truant,disengaged, and academically marginalized stu-dents have nearly perfect attendance, coming toschool early and staying late). This curriculum is notpassively received, applied, or implemented; ratherit is actively constructed, constituted, and enacted ona daily basis by the learners themselves.

Among the most valuable features of this text —relevant to preservice teachers as well as novice andexperienced inservice teachers — are the many waysin which Schultz makes his own thought processes,theorizing, and problem solving transparent to thereader. Throughout this book, Schultz articulates(and often uncannily anticipates) all of the “yes,but…” objections of teachers who may have diffi-culty visualizing themselves engaged in this emer-gent approach because of their own experiences inhighly regimented, often scripted, and heavily


ALICIA A. BRODERICK is Assistant Professor of Education atTeachers College, Columbia University.

surveilled classrooms. He also shares his struggles,uncertainties, fears, worries, questions, and doubtsquoted at length from his own journal. Many of thehabits of reflective thought that are so supportive ofbecoming a critical reflective educator are madetransparent. The educative value of Schultz’s writ-ing, like his teaching, is in the critical posing andthoughtful pursuit of the questions themselves, notin their answers.

Schultz includes a chapter entitled “Justice-Ori-ented Teaching,” where he revisits the broader issuesof what it means to be a teacher who recognizes one’sprofession as a political undertaking. He shows howthe need to take risks must be balanced by enlistingthe of support from administrators, colleagues, par-ents, community members, and appropriatelyenough, curriculum studies literature. In this discus-sion, Schultz makes clear not only the ways in whichhe theorizes his teaching, but also the ways in whichall teaching is theorized — even the scripted,canned, and ostensibly atheoretical packaged curric-ula that so many teachers have handed to them for“implementation.” Significantly, he also discussesthe ways in which he theorizes democratizing au-thority and power in the classroom with students. Hedoes not shy away from complex political discus-sions with his students and describes, for example,ways in which he engaged in theorizing with his stu-dents around the complexities of race, class, andprivilege in his classroom and beyond. He notes, “Isaw myself in many ways as a student of my stu-dents — able to learn from them by sharing author-ity in the classroom and allowing them to teach me”(p. 145). Schultz’s conceptualization of himself as alearner — and, in many ways, a struggling learner —helps to keep him conscious of the dangers of the po-tentially colonizing effects of a white middle classteacher working with working class and poor stu-dents of color.

Schultz argues that it is no wonder that classroomteachers so often avoid the risks inherent in demo-cratic teaching, particularly the “teachers in schoolsserving the poorest neighborhoods” that are “underthe most pressure to conform” to “constant andlooming probationary threats due to accountabilityfactors” (p. 140-141). He states, “With high-stakes ac-countability at the forefront in schools today, many

teachers and administrators believe democraticclassrooms to be impossible” (p. 139). However, heargues that “sustaining and supporting justice-ori-ented teaching is challenging, yet possible” (p. 148).

As a teacher-educator of both preservice andinservice teachers, one of the greatest challenges I faceis in convincing my students that justice-oriented, in-clusive teaching is possible. Two of my students’ favor-ite dismissals of this possibility are: “That’s great intheory but it’s largely divorced from the reality ofteaching in today’s schools,” and “I’m sure that waspossible in prior times when teachers had more au-tonomy, but it’s simply not possible in today’s climateof accountability.” Schultz offers both novice and ex-perienced teachers a vivid vision of what might bepossible in teaching if educators make a commitmentto teach for social justice in inclusive, democraticclassrooms (and yes, his students fared very well onthe standardized assessments). He does not shy awayfrom discussions of the risks and the challenges inher-ent in democratic, inclusive, social-justice-orientedteaching, yet his text stands as a compelling example.One of the greatest challenges in teacher education ishelping students dispense with the rhetorical fatalismof the “yes, but is it really possible?” debate, and thesecurity-blanket-like desires of the “ok, so it’s possi-ble, but now tell me how I’m supposed to go aboutdoing it?” conversation. Each of these attitudes eitherdelays or abdicates responsibility for democratic, ac-tive engagement with the curriculum of teacher edu-cation. I look forward to using Schultz’s text as a toolto engage my students (just as Schultz did with hisown students) in a democratic conversation about thepossibilities we can enact, both individually as well ascollectively, in our efforts to teach for democracy, so-cial justice, and a more inclusive society.


Teaching is learning thatteachers do with students;

curricula is meaningfulissues-based content thatstudents actively co-constructwith teachers .

ENCOUNTER is an independent journal that views education from a holistic perspective and focuses on its role in helping a student develop asense of personal meaning and social justice. Manuscripts (an original and two copies) should be submitted to the Editor, Bill Crain, Department ofPsychology, CCNY, 138th St and Convent Ave., New York, NY 10031, typed double spaced throughout with ample margins. Since a double blindreview process is used, no indications of the author’s identity should be included within the text after the title page. All manuscripts must be origi-nal work not being considered for publication elsewhere and prepared in accordance with the author-date format as described in chapter 16 of the14th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Statement of Ownership, Management, and Circulation

1. Publication Title: Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice 2. Publication Number: 1094-38383. Filing Date: 10/15/08 4. Issue Frequency: Quarterly 5. Number of Issues Published Annually: Four6. Annual Subscription Price: $39.95, Individuals; $95, Institutions7. Complete Mailing Address of Known Office of Publication: P.O. Box 328, Brandon (Rutland Cty), Vermont 05733-0328.Contact Person: Charles Jakiela. Telephone: 802-247-83128. Complete Mailing Address of Headquarters or General Business Office of Publisher: P.O. Box 328, Brandon, Vermont 05733-0328.9. Full Names and Complete Mailing Addresses of Publisher, Editor, and Managing Editor. Publisher: C. S. Jakiela, P.O. Box 328,Brandon, VT 05733-0328. Editor: William Crain, Dept. of Psychology, CCNY, 138th St. and Convent Ave, New York, NY 10031.Managing Editor: Charles Jakiela, P.O. Box 328, Brandon, VT.10. Owner: Psychology Press, Inc., Brandon, VT 05733; Charles and Nancy Jakiela, P.O. Box 358, Brandon, VT 05733.11. Known Bondholders, Mortagees, and Other Security Holders: None12. Tax Status: Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months.13. Title: Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice. 14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: Summer 200815. Extent and Nature of Circulation. Average of Last 12 Months, (Actual Number of Summer 2007 Issue):(a) Total Number of Copies (Net Press Run): 414 (380).(b) (1) Mailed Outside-County Paid Subscriptions: 354 (281). (b)(2) Mailed In-County Paid Subscriptions: 0 (0). (b)(3) Paid Distribution Out-side the Mails: 0 (0). (b)(4) Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail: 40 (40)(c) Total Paid Distribution: 394 (321).(d)(1) Free or Nominal Rate Distribution Outside-County Copies 0 (0). (d)(2) Free or Nominal Outside-County Copies: 0 (0). (d)(2) Free orNominal In-County Copies: 0 (0). (d)(3) Free or Nominal Rate Copies Mailed at Other Classes of Mail: 0 (0). Free or Nominal Rate Distribu-tion Outside the Mail: 0 (0). (e) Total Free or Nominal Rate Distribution: 0 (0).(f) Total Distribution: 394 (321). (g) Copies Not Distributed: 20 (51). (h) Total: 414 (380). (i) Percent Paid: 100% (100%).16. Publication of Statement of Ownership will be printed in the Winter 2008 issue of this publication.17. Signature and Title of Editor, Publisher, Business Manager, or Owner Certifying that All Information Furnished is True and Complete:Charles S. Jakiela, Publisher. 10/15/08.

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