Love and compassion are necessities, not
luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. --Dalai
Lama
"I Teach To Learn": Compassion In Education
--by Nipun Mehta, syndicated from servicespace.org, Aug 14, 2015
When
Ward Mailliard’s students had a chance to visit Desmond Tutu in South Africa,
one of them asked, "Bishop Tutu, what was it like to hold Nelson Mandela's hand
as he was introduced as the first president of post-Apartheid South Africa?"
"Oooo, that's something you can't describe," Desmond Tutu spontaneously
remarked. And then quietly added, "I had a conversation with God and said, 'This
is enough. Thank you.'"
How
can we engage with that which can't be described? In our incredibly rich circle
of 40 educators, we probed into the question of "Cultivating Compassion
Quotient." The challenge with a question around compassion, or any such virtue
in our inner ecology, is that you can't answer it. It's not that it's too
complex for comprehension, but rather that our understanding is uniquely
dependent on our level of awareness. That is, there are a million correct
answers. And hence, it requires a very different mental framework to hold such
inquiries.
Learning,
today, is heavily rooted in the material realm. It's almost an assembly line to
get a job, to get money, to survive, and for the few who get past that -- to
conquer. Material world is predictable, quantifiable and scalable. Subsequently,
our focus shifts towards uniformity, our processes are prone to
commercialization, and our innovations look like MOOCs. Materialistic endeavors
are, of course, very useful to operate in the world, but it requires a very
different skill-set to engage with our inner values. Prasad described quite
well:
Conventional learning is the acquisition of knowledge
and skills to function efficiently in known and recurring situations. It is the
learning that allows us to add to what we knew before, develop a new skill
without having to change our perspective and helps us to solve problems that
have been recognized as problems. Conventional learning does not demand that we
shift who we are in terms of perspective, assumptions, beliefs and values and it
attempts to maintain the systems that we live in.
Our
internal values, like compassion, grow in a very different way. Instead of an
assembly line, it's more like gardening. You plant seeds and through the myriad
different inter-connections underneath the ground, the shrub sprouts when the
time ripens. It requires a kind of trust in the process, to water the ground
even when there is no sign of growth. When Yeats said, "Education is not the
filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire", he was referring to this
quality. Content is important, but context is its essence.
Today's
unilateral focus on content is adept at material conquest, but not at
cultivating our inner field of Compassion Quotient (CQ).
"I
boarded a plane one time, and a small shiny thing wrapped in golden foil somehow
fell on my lap. Initially, I was startled. Perhaps subconsciously programmed by
all those 'please report all suspicious packages' warnings, I called the
stewardess to warn her about it. But she smilingly said, 'No, M'aam, we didn't
clean that up, because there was a child with Cerebral Palsy in that seat, right
before you came, and he wanted to leave that chocolate for the person that came
after him.' I was so moved. It became the turning point in my life, when I
decided to dedicate my life to teaching special needs children," Vinya shared in
our CQ circle.
Every
teacher has such pivotal moments. And yet, as Vinya herself described, "But you
forget. It's one thing on the todo list after another, and instead of
reconnecting with that spirit, each meeting becomes a means to reach some
quantifiable metric. Not only do you feel like a cog in a wheel, but you
encourage others to become cogs too. It's dehumanizing."
Clearly,
such a culture is going to lead to burnout. "Over the last twenty years, more
than twenty thousand teachers have worked for Teach for America. More than half
leave after their two-year contract is up, and more than 80 percent are gone
after three years. About a third of TFA alumni walk away from education
altogether," Adam Grant reports in 'Give and Take'.
One
response to that burnout is technology. Two teachers in our CQ circle worked at
Silicon Valley's Summit
Prep -- voted in top 100 high
schools in the country -- where every student gets a laptop, and teachers aren't
allowed to lecture for more than 2 minutes. Two minutes?! Basically, they don't
want teachers teaching. Their faith lies in their "blended learning", led by
computerized curriculum. The upside to online, personalized learning is that it
can create dynamic lesson plans based on the student aptitude, and indeed,
Newsweek pegged Summit Prep in their 10 Miracle High Schools for "taking
students at all skill levels, from all strata, and turning out uniformly
qualified graduates."
Yet,
from the perspective of CQ, uniformity is actually a cost -- not a benefit.
Qualities like compassion, kindness, and generosity can only thrive in a context
of diversity, because inner transformation tread a unique journey for every
mind. Moreover, if we strip out the nurturing care and presence of an
intrinsically motivated teacher, what are we left with? Just content.
Simply
pouring content into student brains is a definite way to lose engagement. And
sure enough, every teacher has stories of how kids are paying lesser and lesser
attention in class. Do we use Ritalin to calm them down? We now gives medication
to 3.5 million children (up from 600,000 in 1990). Or do we gamify their
content, so it can feel more like video games they play? Yes, we do spend 9
billion person-hours every year just playing solitaire! Or should we just pay
kids to go to class, submit their homework (and eat their veggies), as many
schools are attempting?
When
we lose sight of CQ, we have no choice but to turn to these desperate measures.
Fear of not having a job can't be the best way to motivate students or teachers.
Addiction to an online terminal can't be the best way to engage a classroom.
Replacing dynamic teachers with algorithmic curriculum can't be the best way to
ignite a heart of learning.
Can
we imagine a different design?
When
the bell rings in the classroom, all the students race out. Can it be the other
way around? What does it take for students to race into the classroom, when the
bell rings?
In
our CQ circle at Mount Madonna High School, we brainstormed many new
possibilities. What if we saw each classroom as a space to catalyze inner
transformation? What if teachers were space holders that were rooted in WONK --
Wisdom of Not Knowing? What if we spent a bit more time understanding the power
of self learning? Anne spoke about Kindness Circles, Audrey spoke about her
experiment of spending a day with a vegetable seller in India, Min spoke about
Honesty Circles. Even during the breaks, stories and examples were abundant,
like this School in the Cloud vision:
"On
the other side of Sugata Mitra's office is a wall that connects to a local slum.
Sugata decided to place a high-speed computer in the wall, connect it to the
Internet, and watch what happens. To his delight, curious children were
immediately flocked. Within minutes, they figured out how to point and click. By
the end of the day they were browsing. In nine months, they had taught
themselves enough skills to get a job as a receptionist."
Pancho
loved Buddha's articulation of a teacher's role: "First, remove fear in student.
Second, impart knowledge. Third, don't give up until they learn." Ward similarly
elaborated on using "curiosity is a gateway to empathy", inspired by Dacher
Keltner's recent work on awe:
When you look up into these trees, and their peeling
bark and surrounding nimbus of greyish green light, goosebumps may ripple down
your neck, a sure sign of awe. So in the spirit of Emerson and Muir – who found
awe in nature and changed our understanding of the sublime – Paul Piff staged a
minor accident near that grove to see if awe would prompt greater kindness.
Participants first either looked up into the tall trees for one minute or
oriented 90 degrees away to look up at the facade of a large science building.
Participants then encountered a person who stumbled, dropping a handful of pens
into the soft dirt. Our participants filled with awe picked up more pens. In
subsequent studies, we have found that awe – more so than emotions like pride or
amusement – leads people to cooperate, share resources, and sacrifice for
others, all of which are requirements for our collective life. And still other
studies have explained the awe-altruism link; being in the presence of vast
things calls forth a more modest, less narcissistic self, which enables greater
kindness toward others.
In
many ways, ServiceSpace itself is a multi-faceted learning platform. You could
wake up to a DailyGood article in the morning, watch KarmaTube videos with your
kids, embark on a 21-day kindness challenge with your colleagues at work,
incubate a community project within a Laddership Circle, connect in stillness
via a local Awakin Circle, experience generosity at Karma Kitchen. But there are
no demarcations between students and teachers, and every space becomes a
classroom and a learning opportunity. Anchors learn how to hold the emptiness of
a circle, technology facilitates sharing of recordable content, and all
participants orient themselves around the dynamic quality inner transformation.
It doesn't require any marketing; our innate gratitude itself propels its
spread.
All
of this, though, is in stark contrast with what our dominant paradigm currently
amplifies. In a recent survey, kids were asked which of these three things would
they like to give up: internet, smartphone or sense of taste. 72% chose to give
up taste!
In
today's culture, we have started to resort to static, low-octane mediums to
restore our sense of connection -- but we can do better. Way better. We can
awaken our Compassion
Quotient.
It
was a telling serendipity that our dialogue was held at Mount Madonna School.
Back in 1971, a monk by the name of Baba Hari Dass came to the US at the
invitation of some spiritual seekers. In the popular "Be Here Now" book, Ram
Dass had named "this incredible fellow" as one of his teachers. By 1978, Baba
Hari Dass had started Mount Madonna Center in Santa Cruz mountains; every day,
he would offer his prayers in the form of physical labor, often just carrying
big stones from one place to another. Today, that 355 acre space has become a
pilgrimage spot for thousands around the globe. Everything about him was humble,
small, and invisible. And silent. He took a vow of silence in 1952 and has
managed to teach profound concepts of non-duality without uttering a single
word.
"I
teach to learn," he once wrote on his chalkboard.
If
we can teach to learn, and learn through silence, Compassion Quotient would
certainly rise -- and we'd revolutionize the education system.
ServiceSpace.org is an incubator of gift-economy projects
that is run by inspired volunteers. Its mission statement reads: "We believe in
the inherent goodness of others and aim to ignite that spirit of service.
Through our small, collective acts, we hope to transform ourselves and the
world."
Be The Change: Next time you
have the opportunity to teach something to another person, whether it be a
child, colleague, student, friend, or loved one, consider the possibility of
leading and ending with compassion.
Sourced From www.dailygood.org
