Education for a New Humanity Abstract for 2011 International Conference

Education for a New Humanity

In recent years, educators and policymakers have expressed concern regarding, not only the low ratings of our educational institutions on a global scale, but also the dearth of purpose and a holistic view of life in curricula. According to the website, Pedagogia 3000, "If we take the new ways of learning and of being of [today's] children as reference, as well as the new paradigms of the third millennium, we [discover] the subtle, holistic processes of learning and growth…pulling all of humanity to a level of superior consciousness." (www.pedagooogia3000.info. Paymal, Naomi).

The new education will be centered upon the flourishing of being and of becoming. The pyramidal approach of parent to child and teacher to child will be transformed into a more horizontal graphic wherein parent and teacher become "companions" to the process of the enrichment of humanity. This is not a new concept; it is one that has been urged by such intellectual mentors as Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, and Ivan Illich at Cuernavaca. But it is the immediacy of the current overall low performance of students in the United States, at all levels, which has added vehemence to a clarion call for change. An Episcopal Church in California (St. Jude the Apostle in Cupertino) has issued the mandate: "It is the transformation of the heart that will create a new humanity, a New World. This new humanity will no longer experience the dividing walls of hostility but rather will live in peace because the transformed heart operates from the principles of righteousness, justice, mercy, forgiveness, generosity, inclusivity, and compassion" (www.saintjudes.org).

The New Humanity, a Catholic international humanitarian organization in Milano, Italy,

proclaims its main mission as "…promoting education in order to contribute to the fight against all forms of poverty and exclusion, affirming the dignity and rights of every human being" (www.newhum.org). The goal of working toward that "transformed heart" is the challenge presented to all levels of society today.

At the level of higher education, a blatant challenge was presented recently by the publication of Hacker and Dreifus' Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting our Money and Failing our Kids and What We Can Do about it. The challenge was picked up almost immediately by the publication of Palmer and Zajonc's The Heart of Higher Education, A Call to Renewal -- Transforming the Academy through Collegial Conversations. The latter book urges the re-introduction of contemplation to the academy. The authors remind us that we evolve slowly into a new paradigm.