Tradition & Energy: Calculating Our Educational Power Bill
Seeing an orbital image of planet Earth at night you immediately
become aware of two things. Firstly, how much energy is used to
maintain the human experiment; secondly, how inequitably it is
distributed around the globe. As James Lovelock recently
observed, "civilisation is energy-intensive" yet the real energy
that is involved in human existence cannot be seen as easily as
the orbital photo of our nightly planet suggests.
The real energy driving the human experiment is psychic energy.
There is undoubtedly some correlation between the physical
energy emitted each night by our cities and the psychic forces
that are driving late-modernity, yet this tells only part of a
much bigger story.
Much of the psychic energy driving the human experiment is
bounded by traditions. In fact it is quite a plausible
proposition to claim that traditions are energy streams that
draw on energy from the past, condense and focus energy in the
present and, like a torch light, channel and project energy into
the future. The fibre optic cables and satellite transmissions
that bring speed and flexibility to the planet and its
globalising economy and culture, as well as the urban
incandescence of the Earth at night, are in fact the by products
of an invisible but clearly defined confluence of energy
generating traditions.
Roots & Rivers
Rabindranath Tagore, one of India's great poets, describes
creation as a waking up, an explosion of energy. Not the
traditional Big Bang, but something akin as Brahma awakens and
its joy is boundless. The roots of the Indic tradition lie in
this expression of boundless-joy. Today this story has merged
with many others like the course of the Ganges as it first meets
the great rivers of Yamuna, Ghaghara and Kosi and goes on
through twists and turns, finally spitting again and again in
the monsoonal Delta of Bengal.
Similarly, the turbine engines of culture are alive with the
dynamic dance of traditions, churning away like the great river
Ganges as it makes its (untidy) way to the sea. The stories
cultures tell themselves are the source of much energy, the
dreams (and nightmares) that inspire nations, drive business and
political leaders are more powerful than nuclear energy. The
myths and metaphors that frame our unconscious daily coming and
goings are what we need to turn to when seeking to rethink
civilisation and our role in its maintenance.
The Educational Power Bill
When you think of traditions as conduits of power it is possible
to look at any social structure and ask about it: What
traditions power it? Who pays? Are there alternative energy
sources?
Take one of societies most complex and contested institutions:
Education. Far from being monolithic education is a veritable
power grid generating huge energy for the expansive and
predatory economic and the cultural practices of a globalising
world.
The energy of this system draws on an array of traditions each
bringing to the current system energy in the form of values,
practices and beliefs. The humanism that drove education for
centuries has been absorbed by the utilitarian needs of a
rapidly globalising society. The pragmatic concerns of
utilitarianism are at least in part off set by an opening up of
democratic processes and a greening of the school. Furthermore,
we also have the romantic tradition placing the child at the
centre of the learning equation. Thus we find humanist,
utilitarian, democratic, environmental and romantic strands at
work; all provide energy and work to maintain the coherence of
the system.
And the cost? The humanist tradition privileged the old elites,
where culture and money and power coalesced, the poor payed; the
utilitarian, as power shifted from the old elites to the new, a
new form of education emerged and the user pays, ultimately the
poor are excluded and as money flows upwards, they pay again.
The democratic offers a way out, as does the environmental: both
stem from traditions that challenge hierarchies, yet both are
too fragmented to challenge the dominance of the utilitarian,
their effect is ameliorative but they contain the potential
energy to challenge this dominance should a shift in the
world-system cause a 'power failure' - such a shift could be
either social or environmental. And the romantic? Child
centredness is powerful, as it is the root of both soft and hard
individualism, but it is too easily coopted by the dominant
cultural elites, particularly those seeking a cultural 'off-set'
for the vacuum created by the loss of humanism to utilitarianism.
Alternative Energy
We have lived in a resource rich world that at the physical
level is coming to recognise its limits. What has been left
largely unharnessed is the natural capital essential to
traditions: human energy. To date human psychic capital has been
focussed on the control and manipulation of the physical world.
It has been largely shaped and directed by the materialism
inherent to the Enlightenment and the drive to generate capital.
Holistic solutions embrace spiritual energy. This is energy
locked in ancient traditions such as that Tagore describes
above. Captured by the so-called 'Protestant work ethic'
creation becomes an act of toil; schooling as a result is about
'hard' work, productivity and accountability. Add to this a
healthy dose of capitalist rhetoric with 'user pays' and
'choice' on the menu and we end up with an entropic system that
consumes energy, in the form of the lives, heart and
imaginations of people and communities, rather than generates
it.
This formula can be turned on its head with creation becoming an
act of joy. Creative, life-affirming neohumanist traditions
generate energy. If we infuse education with spiritual energy
drawn from the practices, values and commitments of the great
spiritual traditions we produce a system that channels powerful
creative forces into the future. The turn is inward and thus
saves us from the materialist despair inherent to the thinking
of James Lovelock who can only measure energy at the physical
finite level.
Physical energy is a measure of the psychic, but it is a symptom
not a driving force. This is so, despite the obvious fact that
both physical decline and technological advance, a la Moore's
Law, have momentums of their own once they gets beyond a
specific point.
To harness traditions of power and depth and focus them into
systems such as education is a powerful idea. Education that
generates rather than consumes energy has the potential to
return hope and creativity to the human experiment and enliven
our daily dealings with the pressing environmental concerns that
seem so overwhelming. Moore's law and environmental catastrophe
theories are certainly a pressing concern but they overlook the
largely untapped power that lies within us all.