School and Reality: Bridging the Gap

Findhorn is a huge sigh of relief from the flatlander education I’ve become so accustomed to. I am realizing more and more how frustrating the reality of institutionalized education is. You can take a class about “sustainability” or “diversity and conflict resolution”, but then you pack up your books, walk out the door and the Mexican immigrant mowing the lawn may still be invisible to you. It is not a character flaw so much as a lack of conceptual framework incorporating reality into school. It’s as if the classroom is somehow disconnected from an actual understanding of reality. I feel this is because institutional education values strict intellectualism—so much headiness, so much theory—we are never actually taught how to live knowledge, we simply know the knowledge.

So I guess what I’ve concluded is that institutional education lacks depth, it lacks a full acknowledgement of human experience—from emotions to dreams to spirituality to bodily functions—basically ANYTHING besides the intellectual is completely undermined.

For this reason, I am really beginning to appreciate the ways of the Findhorn Ecovillage. We do something called “tuning in”, for example. Before we enter into a new activity like starting a class or working in the kitchen, we stand in a circle and center ourselves into the present moment. Someone will say something like “let’s take a moment to think about what we’ve done today, maybe leave it behind, acknowledge what’s going on inside of you, and then try to become present in this new space and this new activity.” It’s so simple, so painless, so quick—yet so profound. It gives meaning to action; it is a practice in appreciation; it forces us to take a moment and smell the food before we eat it—to leave behind any past resentments and prepare to pick some tomatoes—to take a simple breath and remember that we are alive.

We also do interactive learning. For our first Group Dynamics class, our teacher had us build free-standing structures out of recycled newspapers. For our Sustainability class, we will be visiting local organic gardens and the living waste water purification system at the park. For our Worldviews and Consciousness class, we meditate and journal rather than reading theory after theory about worldviews and consciousness. Findhorn is a complete internalization of education. To me, Findhorn is a reminder of what learning actually is. As a good friend, Walt, once told me "Why learn? To live a more full and rich life. That's it."


P.S. Findhorn is very magical. Did I mention that yet?
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my housemate Jake took it from a tree right outside of the meditation sanctuary

the mystery continues...