The new education is seen as a spiritual process. That is to say, it is a complete unfolding and perfect functioning of the human soul. The traditional education has concerned itself chiefly with the intellect, which is after all merely one of the tools used by the human soul in its functioning upon this planet. This is a very limited view of education and necessarily has produced faulty and limited results.
(Stanwood Cobb: Thoughts and Education and Life:39)
A popular Youtube video on education by Sir Ken Robinson (www.ted.com) made in February 2006 is still making the rounds. Several of my friends have sent it to me, raving about it—and rightly so. I also see it promoted by friends on Facebook, and I am glad. He makes an entertaining and moving case for fashioning an education system that nurtures rather than stifles creativity. But I believe that challenges in education go deeper than this. Baha’u’llah says that lack of a proper education hath deprived us of that which we inherently possess. Creativity is certainly one power which we inherently possess and it is true to say that, in general, creativity is educated out of most people. Valerie Hunt, in her book, Infinite Mind, writes: “Using the best prediction tests of creative manipulation of objects, children age five have 100% of their creative capacity. By age seven their creativity has decreased 50%. And by forty years of age, creativity is reduced to 1% of one’s capacity.” If she is right, that is frightening.
But, really, enduring improvement in education requires more than unleashing the power of creativity within an old system of belief and understanding about ourselves, for this will cause havoc. Creativity is the bringing forth of novelty, and it can be a pretty unprincipled power unless properly guided. To give but one example: recall that those who came together near the end of the Second World War to create the first atomic bomb were creative individuals. But what they brought forth has unleashed unimaginable levels of anxiety and imperiled the future of humanity.
Thus, more fundamental than creativity is guiding that creativity into productive channels that bring greater peace and prosperity to all. There are two ways to do this.
First, business consultant Peter Drucker drew an important distinction between creativity, merely bringing something new into the world, and innovation, which advances an existing process is some way. Drucker counseled not to innovate for the future, but innovate for the present. The innovation may have long term impact, but if you can't get it adopted now there won’t be any future. To me, innovation supports Baha’u’llah’s admonition to: “Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.”(Gleanings:213) We must solve immediate challenges or there is no future. For example, we must dismantle civil laws that are prejudicial, or there is no hope for peace. But changing bad laws will not, by itself, remove prejudice from the heart, only make it harder to express. The shape of the future is just as much a process of envisioning a new context emerging from the inner requirements of human life, and getting outer things in place for new qualities to emerge safely. This brings us to the second form of guidance.
Sir Kenneth remarks that we don’t know what the future will look like even five years from now. True. But we are not totally in the dark. We know that the world is contracting into a neighborhood, that unifying processes are at work on every level, and that humanity must overcome entrenched prejudicial assumptions about its nature. We know that the principle of the oneness of humanity is taking hold in human consciousness. It will remove prejudice from the heart. Here is where education can be a source of both creativity and innovation, for spiritual education involves envisioning, building, and setting in motion new unifying spiritual, intellectual and social processes that will neutralize and eventually overcome forces of disintegration based on reaction to the principle of the oneness of humanity. It is building a new educational context for humanity within which it can continue its evolution: a context of an ever-advancing global civilization inhabited by “a new race of men.” This is seeing education, as Stanwood Cobb states in the opening quote “as a spiritual process.” This is guiding our creative capacities in new directions, not just advancing old ones, however good, by bringing the future into the present where it can act as a template for growth. Minds bent solely upon fixing up the world cannot recognize that it can’t be fixed. It must be regenerated. Baha’is call this divine guidance, and it comes from Revelation.
If, as the Baha’i Writings say, the purpose of every new revelation is to “effect a transformation in the whole character of mankind, a transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly, that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions”, then the whole character of education must, too, be transformed outwardly and inwardly.
Near the end of his talk Ken Robinson says that we must “rethink the fundamental principles upon which we educate our children.” I agree with this thought—and with of the general tenor of his talk. We must innovate in education, further develop what Cobb calls our intellectual education, and remedy some of our immediate problems and challenges. But we must also create a new education for a new world. To create spiritual education means not just enlightening the mind but educing the spirit. It is not just to rebuild education from the ground up, but also build it from the inside out; not reform education, but transform it; not just arrange the same pieces into new shape, but evoke new powers out of potentiality into actuality and within a social context that blesses not blasts them.
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