Education And The Soul

With emphasis on preparing students for jobs, standards, and achievement testing, many think that North American education has become inwardly deadening, yet this book provides a counterbalance as it offers a way to nurture the soul in classrooms and schools.

Education and the Soul is the first book to comprehensively address how the soul can be nourished in educational settings. The book explores the nature of the soul and offers teaching/learning approaches that can be used to nurture the development of students' souls. It also examines how institutions such as schools have souls and what can be done to care for a school's spiritual life.

With emphasis on preparing students for jobs, standards, and achievement testing, many think that North American education has become inwardly deadening, yet this book provides a counterbalance as it offers a way to nurture the soul in classrooms and schools.

Explores the spiritual dimension of education, and discusses ways to nourish the spiritual development of adolescents in public schools without violating anyone's legal rights.

The professor and historian delivers a major critique of how political and financial attacks on the academy are undermining our system of higher education. Making a provocative foray into the public debates over higher education, acclaimed historian Ellen Schrecker argues that the American university is under attack from two fronts. On the one hand, outside pressure groups have staged massive challenges to academic freedom, beginning in the 1960s with attacks on faculty who opposed the Vietnam War, and resurfacing more recently with well-funded campaigns against Middle Eastern Studies scholars. Connecting these dots, Schrecker reveals a distinct pattern of efforts to undermine the legitimacy of any scholarly study that threatens the status quo. At the same time, Schrecker deftly chronicles the erosion of university budgets and the encroachment of private-sector influence into academic life. From the dwindling numbers of full-time faculty to the collapse of library budgets, The Lost Soul of Higher Education depicts a system increasingly beholden to corporate America and starved of the resources it needs to educate the new generation of citizens. A sharp riposte to the conservative critics of the academy by the leading historian of the McCarthy-era witch hunts, The Lost Soul of Higher Education, reveals a system in peril—and defends the vital role of higher education in our democracy.

"This volume contributes to an understanding of the importance and implications of a contemplative grounding for higher education. It is the fourth in a series entitled Advances in Workplace Spirituality: Theory, Research and Application, which is intended to be an authoritative and comprehensive series in the field. The volume consists of chapters written by noted scholars from both Eastern and Western traditions that shed light on these questions"--

A Harvard professor and former Dean of Harvard College offers his provocative analysis of how America's great universities are failing students and the nation

The Soul of Learning is a groundbreaking book that bridges together cultural work, contemplative practices, and ancient scriptures. Inside each chapter, readers are challenged and inspired to come face-to-face with themselves as they encounter teachers in all forms—from spiritual sages to critical theorists, from prophets to poets, from hip-hop rappers to reggae artists. This book is multifaceted and multidisciplinary. It models the essence of education by offering multiple entry points into holistic learning: somatic, aesthetic, emotional, intellectual, ethical, relational, and spiritual. The Soul of Learning embodies a pedagogical disruption in pursuit of personal sovereignty. What process must we go through to reimagine ourselves in relation to each other and the world around us? This book offers a semblance of an answer. As a way to bring the sacred into schooling, Keator and Watson courageously connect spirituality, activism, and education through curated readings, guided activities, and intentional exercises. It’s a ready-to-go syllabus and hands-on workbook all in one! Altogether this book is revelatory and provides innovative ways to teach and learn, lead and live. The Soul of Learning documents a transformative journey, through the interiority of our being into a revolutionary call for collective belonging.

The school choice reform movement believes parents should have a choice of where they send their children to school. In this book the author, an educational sociologist, discusses the practice and politics of school choice objectively and comprehensively.

An absorbing memoir of one man’s path to understanding how we can learn to lead lives of greater blessing and to be sources of blessing and service for the world as a whole. For as long as he can remember, David Spangler has been physically aware of a spiritual world existing alongside this one. In 1965, David Spangler left college to follow an inner spiritual calling and encountered an extraordinary presence, which he named “John.” Over the next quarter-century John would assist David in exploring the “inner worlds” of the spirit, and would tutor him in some of the most basic mysteries of life and the nature of the human spirit. In Apprenticed to Spirit, Spangler recounts how John showed him the way to develop a spiritual intelligence—what Spangler calls “a mind of the soul”—and how to integrate it into everyday life. Spangler learned to think with his soul and embarked on the apprenticeship to understanding the sacredness of our world and of the realms beyond ours—a journey that continues to this day.