How does a human being fit into the System?

 

So how does man fit in to the system that is Nature?

What is his role in that system? 

How do we educate for that role? 

These are all deeply philosophical questions and are difficult to address without some form of postulation. I begin by seeing education as being concerned with the whole being. Whatever the whole being is, it is something we are born with, nature gave it to us so if we know what the whole being is, then educating that whole being has to be part of nature.

 So what is this whole being? I intend to address 3 aspects of humanity - mind, energy and body, and initially not address the question of religion or spirituality (as I develop consideration of the mind that will become clearer).

Let us begin first by addressing the question of the body. In recent times in the West we have begun to see deterioration in the condition of the human body. Whilst science has made huge advances in medicine the human body has become subject to more and more diseases that many associate with lifestyle. Diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes have greatly increased, and although treatment has helped with cures the real educational concern has to be consideration of the source of the increase. Obesity has begun to be recognised as almost epidemic even amongst the children. I contend that healthy living could have a great impact on these diseases and obesity. What has changed that could have led to this? Food and stress.

Let us begin with food. The quality of our food intake has vastly declined over the last century. Children particularly are attracted by low quality foods with high sugar content to entice them. In addition corporations started to put chemical additives in our foods to help preserve them. High refined sugar content and chemicals have been pointed to as being significant in our increasing health issues. In our Nature paradigm, would either be considered "natural"? Of course not. So good education practice would make it clear that our foods should not contain either. Many teachers would say there is nothing new here, but that the children just don't listen. Whilst I agree there has to be greater emphasis on the need to move away from such unnatural foods.

The half-hearted approach (not from the active teachers) can be sourced in the corporate paradigm. 

Who produces the food that has the declining quality? The corporations commonly known as Big Food. Within a corporate paradigm for education, how would it be possible to change education so that the quality of food is recognised as the serious health problem it is when to educate about such goes against the prevailing educational paradigm. The word token is often thrown up as a criticism in education. Here is a clear example of a token attitude in education. Many teachers pay lipservice to the issue of food. Canteens are required to serve healthy options and blame the students (or the parents) for choosing unhealthy foods. Vehement teachers who understand more the relationship between food and ill-health are continually frustrated by this tokenism, but they cannot fight the paradigm, such vehemence often leads to discipline warnings and other career-threatening actions. The corporations do not directly step in to insist that Big Food is not criticised but the paradigm directs the hidden curriculum which is very powerful in its application. This approach characterises many aspects of good thinking which is frowned upon by the establishment in education.

Education needs to embrace the issue of good food. I contend that good health is a consequence of eating good food, and that in good education this functionality should be the byword. But we need to consider further what is good food, and the natural paradigm gives us the answer - food from nature. Food from the ground that had not been treated by chemicals, processed with preservatives, or cooked with unhealthy additives such as MSG. One could even go further with education concerning food by recognising that healthy eating of particular foods can improve specific health conditions. An education course based on Paul Pitchford's "Healing though whole foods" has a place in any good curriculum.

Whilst good eating functionally produces good health we have to consider another aspect of a healthy body, and that is exercise. Exercise has become perverted in our institutions and has become far too oriented to sports success. Whilst healthy sports competition can add to enjoyment in school, and help control misdirected disruptiveness, this has to be secondary. Exercise is a requirement for all children - and all adults, exercise and not achievement is for all. Somehow the machismo has to be taken out of sport but this type of competitiveness is so integral to the prevailing paradigm. Ideally teachers would take a lead in this education for the body through healthy eating and good exercise, but unfortunately many of our teachers suffer from the inadequacies of our system and don't see the value in such. Of course stress pays a big part in this as will be seen later.

Before we consider the realm of the mind, the main focus of education in both paradigms, let me talk about energy. Now energy is not a factor in western understanding of the whole being. In the East such energy is accepted by the populus under terms such as Chi or Prana, but in the West energy is scientifically often considered as non-existent. If it is brought into the West it is brought in through machismo in the martial arts. But I contend for the whole being we need to address the issue of developing Chi through exercises such as Chi Gung, through appropriate teaching of control of the breath - prana. These should be part of the curriculum that is now called physical education but needs to be recognised within a wider area of health within the curriculum; this will be addressed later.

In considering the development of a nature paradigm I have identified it educationally as self-realisation. Using Piaget as an indicator I have noted that our curriculum might not be applied at appropriate cognitive stages, and this is to be investigated later. To consider self-realisation there are three aspects of being we need to consider - body, energy and mind, and looked at how body and energy could be improved in a natural education.