A Call to Conscious Evolution:

Whatís missing from your petition is role that education plays in the consciousness shift you call for. School, as itís currently designed and enacted throughout the modern world is often an affront to lifeóitís anti-life! You donít need a biologist, though I happen to be one, to tell you that the essence of life is relationship! Ask anyone on his death bed what really matters at lifeís end and sheíll tell you thatómuch more than any material success or public recognitionóit is relationships that matter most. Tragically, the primacy of relationship is often ignored, even undermined, in schools. Subjected to the conditioning of schooling, young people turn away from a wholesome relationship with their feeling body, their questioning mind, their loving heart, as well as away from a relationship with the human ìother,î with the Earth that sustains them all and the mysterious cosmos that holds them in its embrace. In short, schools fail to engender relational intelligence in lifeís essential realms. The upshot: Teachers, unwittingly, teach as if life doesnít matter! Think about it: If schools were successful in equipping students with relational intelligence, it stands to reason that, as ìeducatedî adults, we would be at peace with ourselves (free of addictions and self loathing); at peace with each other (free of blame, anger, violence, war); at peace with the natural world (free of biological destruction, toxicity, extinction); and weíd be at peace with the cosmos (filled with awe and wonder). Yet, the realityóthat we are anything but a people at peaceósuggests that something in our relating, something in our relational intelligence is amiss. Could it be our socialization in society and school? In my work as a college professor I have come to see how the structure, theory and practice of modern schooling often separates young people from lifeís myriad relationships and how this, in turn, reduces their individual chances for genuine fulfillment in life, not to mention humankindís prospects for long-term survival. The overarching solution to the deadening relational separation handicapping teachers, limiting students, and crippling schools is to provide openings for lifeói.e., openings for relationship in all its formsóto thrive in classrooms and beyond. If the essence of life is RELATIONSHIP and the purpose of school is to help students be ìsuccessfulî in LIFE, then it stands to reason that schooling, first and foremost, should be aimed at helping young people become ever-more skilled in the art and science of relationship. In the final analysis the call is for teachers to become healersómending separationófixing the broken, dysfunctional relationships that permeate the fabric of contemporary life. This work of healing, as I am slowly discovering for myself, begins with ourselves. As we (teachers) heal ourselves, becoming awake and whole, we model a new way of being that cascades forth into the classroom and society as a whole.