Edited by Steven Glazer
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1999, $15.95
ISBN-10 0-87477-955-3
Paperback, 265 pages, $15.95

There are few books that I would recommend more to administrators, teachers and students than this anthology on the vital subject of integrating spiritual education into our curricula in non-sectarian and non-dogmatic ways. On the very first page editor Steven Glazer remarks that this book “articulates an approach to integrating spiritual development and learning rooted neither in church, state, religion, nor politics. Instead, the heart of learning is revealed within each of us: rooted in the spirit.” This is a bold foray into what can be a touchy subject in our country, but he goes on to say that spirituality in education is about several things, including: 1) Reconnecting with personal experience; 2) Dealing with existential and spiritual issues such as anxiety, meaninglessness and alienation; 3) Showing us how such education can serve as the core of a lifelong journey towards wholeness.

Anthologies are potentially troublesome for both editors and readers. The entries may be too long or too short, overly scholarly or under researched, to the point--or ramble off the mark. This one, however, avoids these problems because each of the fourteen chapters is actually a selected, edited and revised version of a presentation given at the Spirituality in Education Conference hosted by the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado in the summer of 1997. The result is that they are alive, passionate and inspiring contributions—not dry, pedantic, academic essays. Presenters included spiritual teachers such as H.H. Dalai Lama and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, clinicians such as Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., and educators such as Ron Miller and John Taylor Gatto. The four conference themes make up the divisions of the book and serve as the internal structure for what might otherwise, given the subject matter, have been a vast and daunting project. Each part is introduced and framed by the editor, which provides a narrative thread that skillfully ties the text together into a greater whole. The following is a brief look at four sample chapters, one from each part.

In Part I: Sacredness: The Ground of Learning, Glazer notes that “American education has become grounded in disconnection, in particular, the separation between the spiritual and the material… Public and higher education have drawn a bold line between the world we experience and share, and the sacred.” Then Parker J. Palmer, in his talk “The Grace of Great Things: Reclaiming the Sacred in Knowing, Teaching and Learning,” says that education at its best “is not just about getting information or getting a job. Education is about healing and wholeness. It is about empowerment, liberation, transcendence, about renewing the vitality of life.”

In Part II: Identity, Glazer asks an important question for the 21st century: “How do we establish or support the formation of inner spiritual identity without resorting to indoctrination or imposition of ideology?” In her presentation “Embracing Freedom: Spirituality and Liberation,” bell hooks challenges teachers and students to discover their own “life in the spirit,” and then to embody that in daily life (including the classroom!). She also challenges us to move beyond fixed identities that limit our awareness and expressions of compassion: “Why do we first have the experience of the sea of whiteness and blackness rather than a sea of love? Why is the fire of love not burning so hot that we have not even a moment to think about race, class or gender?”

Part III: Relationship and Community begins with the editor asking a provocative and poignant question: “In what ways are these [educational] institutions themselves…harmful, even a hindrance?” He goes on to note that our public education generally values the global perspective over the local, the abstract rather than the concrete, and the conceptual above the experiential. Later, anthropologist Joan Halifax’s talk entitled “Learning as Initiation: Not-Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Healing” expounds upon the fact that within tribal cultures the complement of education as we know it in the West is spiritual initiation. She asks the questions: “What does it mean in our culture to be a wise woman or wise man?” And, “How might we educate our young people so that they return to their communities with vision renewed, with love and compassion present?” Her partial answer is that we need to bring back rites of passage into education. We need to help our students find and touch the mythic imagination, and by doing so we will educate for redemption and service, not just for information gathering and social adaptation.

Finally, in Part IV: Tradition and Innovation, we find Glazer stating that “spirituality in education requires us to continually approach the present from three perspectives: experiencing the specific qualities of the moment, seeing the past in the present, and seeing the future in the present.” The problem here is how to honor and balance both tradition and innovation—neither throwing the baby out with the bathwater, nor allowing the drag of the past to hinder constructive movement into the future. In one of my favorite chapters, “Spirituality in Education: A Dialogue,” Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Huston Smith debate the usefulness of religious tradition, and the relationship between science and religion in the contemporary world. Huston the academic makes the distinction between genuine science and its distorted younger brother, scientism. The latter holds two powerful opinions: 1) The scientific method is the most reliable method for getting at truth; 2) The material world is the most important thing for us to study and about which to make truth-claims. The main obstacle we face to spirituality in education then is that “there is nothing in the world right now that has the power to stop scientism.” When in doubt he sides with religious tradition, because it can engender compassion and dedication to service, and has resources that can feed us spiritually. Zalman the rabbi often argues against tradition. He suggests we study and apply transpersonal psychologies in order to increase our consciousness and affective capacity, and to develop more a more feminized, earthy and body-centered spirituality.

To sum up, in this single volume we can find discussed many if not most of the salient, yet often controversial and contentious, questions regarding the integration of spirituality into our classrooms. Lifelong learners will find here much to reflect upon and apply to their own spiritual journeys.