A Vision of Education as Transformation

A Vision of Education as Transformation
Reflection by Parker Palmer, panel response and roundtable discussion
Plenary Session I

"...higher education has developed its own orthodoxy, its own highly limited set of blinders through which to view the wonders and marvels that surround us--and it is an orthodoxy, I believe, that is as fully capable of trammeling inquiry as any of the orthodoxies found in the religious traditions."

-- Parker Palmer 

 

"The orthodoxy of objectivism insists that we can know the world only by distancing ourselves from it, separating our inner lives from the external objects we want to know. Such objectivism is morally deforming because its distancing us from knowledge prevents a moral engagement with the world we study and (prevents) a taking responsibility for it. One of the most important contributions our religious and spiritual traditions can make through dialogue on our campuses is in the alternative epistemologies they offer which are more capacious, more relational and more responsive than classic objectivism."

-- Parker Palmer

In speaking about his work to connect scientific inquiry with spirituality and morality Professor Zajonc responded, "I have been coming increasingly to the opinion that this is really an artificial division and that what life is about is coming to an undivided life...The openness to transformation, the commitment to new knowing, has to move from the head to the heart. We need a new alchemy, a synthesis, where the demands of spirit and matter are somehow brought together and we realize that they are undivided."

-- Arthur Zajonc, Professor of Physics at Amherst College