Spritituality 1
ESTABLISHING A GLOBAL SPIRITUALITY
Ι. Suggestions for a Global Spitituality
"What is needed is a shift in consciousness commensurate with the shift to a global society, emphasize global interdependence? Explore a major shift in belief systems with regard to our children and our future."
- Phil Gang, director of The Institute for Educational Studies
Peter stared at his contribution to a large scale mural of the earth. He had stopped for a moment to join a group of elementary students participating in a two-day art project called "Weaving the World Together". Like the others, Peter had chosen two distant parts of the world; then connected them with a piece of string. The message behind the project was obvious - it had already been drilled into his mind through multicultural and environmental teaching in his school: all the people and nations of the world are interconnected. All are joined together into one big global family.
From Peter's neck dangled a new amulet, a symbolic object traditionally worn as protection against evil spirits. He had just made it in a workshop called "Tribal Neck Ornaments" which promised to teach students how to design their own "personal amulets". Standing nearby, Peter's mother was carefully balancing the products of two previous workshops: a bright, feathery Amazon Rain Forest Bird and a grotesque tribal mask.
Earth Day had come and gone, but students from every elementary school in Sunnyvale, California, were still honoring Mother Earth and her indigenous people. At the annual Hands on the Arts Festival, which demonstrates the planned nationwide partnership between schools and communities, children could choose between 42 workshops teaching native art and rituals. Through tempting titles like "Indian Totem Poles", "Chinese Dragons", "South India Dances", and "African Drumming", the environmentally and politically correct expressions of the world's beliefs and practices beckoned, "Come, try, experience".
The students loved it. They wore their personalized Mexican Spirit Beads. They designed their own American Indian Dream-catchers, mystical spider webs inside sacred circles which supposedly would block bad dreams and welcome good dreams. They made Medicine Shields, Indian shields that identify and host their personal animal spirits. They created Panamanian "mythical figures and animals" and hugged their Southwest Indian "magical figures".
Oblivious to the occult dangers, they celebrated the return of the rhythms, rituals and religions that once animated cultures from Norway to Africa and Alaska to Australia. Multicultural things are fun! Why shouldn't the world be one?
"As we look for answers [to saving the planet], more and more peoples are looking at the traditional peoples of the planet. This is Indian history, our spiritualism, and we want to share it with the world." - Alan Ross, retired South Dakota school superintendent, author of Mitakuye Oyasin (We are All Related)
Unity in diversity
Partnership, celebration, oneness; these happy-sounding buzzwords that marked the Sunnyvale fair express the heart cry of today's cultural transformation. It seeks unity between nations, between cultures, between the school and the community, and between people and nature. No wonder students pledge their loyalty to a spiritualized Earth, sing anthems to a coming New Age of peace, and--in stark opposition to Biblical truth--celebrate a oneness that denies all religious barriers.
This oneness is central to the international education system. Everything must fit together. The old thoughts, ways, and beliefs that don't fit must be abolished. In a 1994 report on the Johnson City Central School District in New York, "a national model of instructional excellence", Dr. John Champlin calls for "a change agent" in every school, a "holistic system approach", and "revised beliefs, attitudes and relationships". No minor figure in the educational arena, Dr. Champlin is the Executive Director of the National Center for Outcome-Based Education and a member of the Board of Directors for Partners for Quality Learning. His "change project" in Johnson City summarizes a nationwide pattern,
“The effort to build a new culture by putting our beliefs, practices and values into written documents and policies that we constantly used as a basis for renewal and growth was crucial. We purged former practices as quickly as possible”.
Three student outcomes (demonstrated behaviors) sought in the Johnson City experiment were non-academic, affective results such as self-directed learners, creative thinkers, and group participants who could co-operate with others.
In 1992, the Kansas State Board of Education announced its official plan for change. It explained that "QPA [Quality Performance Accreditation, another name for OBE] is a process which demands new thinking, new strategies, new behavior, and new beliefs." Keep in mind almost every state has following suit. They cannot afford to break their link to the national purse strings.
Most change agents may not take their cues directly from the world's occult guides, but they follow the same well-trodden track. After all, people everywhere long for solutions to the world's moral decay and collapsing structures. They seek spiritual leaders who can pilot the world through these tumultuous times into the new millennium. More than ever, the noble sentiments of spiritual visionaries offer hope to those who have rejected biblical truth:
Noel Brown, Director, U.N. Environmental Programme, speaking to Minnesota students through a Global Education video:
"We need to develop a better sense of connectedness with all of life and when that reverence is developed, I think we'll find ourselves more at home and at ease in this world."