The Soul of a Student

The Soul of a Student
 
 
"One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
                                                                        -- Albert Einstein
 
At the age of 18, I spent a post-graduate year in the UK at an Anglican “public” school on an English-Speaking Union scholarship.   Having attended a secular school in the States, I was curious to see how religion might feature in my new school. I didn’t have to wait long.
 
At the end of the first school day, all sixty of the boarders in my house assembled in their pajamas for the evening prayer. Our stern House Tutor entered, slowly scanned our motley crew, sniffed, and then intoned: “Let us pray.” We all bowed our heads. “Oh Lord. Please deliver us…”   And here he paused to reflect.  “… from all this FILTH! Amen.”
 
That was the entire prayer.  I heard many more throughout the year, though none more pointed. The Anglican version of Christianity permeated every aspect of the school. We studied Divinity. We said grace at every meal. We attended chapel every morning and twice on Sunday.   
 
Having been brought up in the simple routines of a New England Congregational Church, I found the Anglican ritual, especially the frequent kneeling, burdensome.   I could not bring myself to say the words, “We are not worthy so much as to gather the crumbs from under your table,” words I deemed too submissive for a self-respecting Christian. No wonder my ancestors left England!
 
Our school chapel was dominated by a large oil painting behind the altar, depicting a violent Crucifixion scene. Christ was shown carrying the Cross, not on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa, but down a modern-day British street, being abused by the general public.  (Art critics noted that the painter, Stanley Spencer, “faced his doubts and dreads on canvas.” No kidding.)
 
The message to us schoolboys was: You are part of that Christ-abusing crowd.
 
But, despite my early misgivings, I gradually relaxed my guard and found that the ritual, the music and even -- after I had absorbed its unsettling details -- the painting, actually helped my tumble-dryer mind to calm down and enter a different place, a place where it was possible to contemplate what Einstein calls “the marvelous structure of reality.” 
 
My British Anglican school was serious about spiritual education, about nurturing students’ souls in a way that my American secular school had not been. It helped me to grow in ways fundamental to my sense of who I was, and what the world, both seen and unseen, was about.
 
Which brings me to these questions: What are today’s secular schools doing about their students’ spiritual education? To what extent do we deliberately nurture the souls of our students?   Does our “holistic” education, educating the whole child, make enough room for the holy?
 
As a rule, secular schools shy away from anything that even remotely resembles a religious service. Understandably, they wish to avoid offending students of different faiths.   They might call for a moment of silent meditation at a school assembly; they might include the basic tenets of the world’s major religions as part of their curriculum. Public proselytising is out.  
 
But is the academic, God-kept-at-arm’s-length approach, enough?   Will students in a secular school be encouraged to grow spiritually?
 
The internationally renowned psychiatrist and best-selling author, Dr. M. Scott Peck, proposes four stages of spiritual development in his book Further Along The Road Less Travelled. In very brief summary:
 
Stage One is chaotic/antisocial stage and may be thought of as lawlessness, absent of spirituality. 
Stage Two is formal/institutional stage and involves a rigorous adherence to the letter of the law and attachment to the forms of religion.  
Stage Three is a sceptic/individual stage, with principled behaviour, but one characterized by religious doubt or disinterest, albeit accompanied by inquisitiveness about other areas of life. 
Stage Four, the most mature of the four stages, is a mystical/communal stage, where the spirit of the law is observed, as opposed to Stage Two, which tends to be one of the letter of the law. 
 
If most of our students are to be found somewhere among these four stages, I’d like to suggest that we educators in secular schools have some work to do.   Einstein says we must “never lose a holy curiosity”.   How might we satisfy the “holy curiosity” of our students? 
 
I’ll consider the possibilities in a future column.
 
Andrew Taylor is the Principal of the Maru-a-Pula School in Gaborone, Botswana.  His email address is: principal.map@gmail.com.  Maru-a-Pula’s website is: www.maruapula.org.