The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character at School

This book triggered angry feelings for me. I wished I had a teacher like Rachael Kessler when I was growing up. Indeed, so few young people do. I caught myself recollecting my teen years, when I asked the very same questions the youth explore in the "Council"-an integral part of the Passages program described in the book. The youth in my generation had no Council for raising these questions; no safe place to tell stories, reveal the mystical, ponder meaning, or explore differences. Yet, as I later learned in my undergraduate studies in philosophy, it is the exploration of precisely these questions that provides the insight, sensitivity, empathy, and wisdom that open the inner self to the path of a civil society and a meaningful life. This is the forerunner of virtue. A few examples from Rachael's book will illustrate the type of universal questions I mean: Why do I feel scared and confused about becoming an adult? What does it mean to accept that this is my life and I have responsibility for it?How do I know I am normal? What is normal?Why do people hate others-blacks, whites, Hispanics, etc.?What is our purpose in life?Why do people tire of life?How does one determine one's sexuality? Are there symptoms? Is it a decision or a natural "given"-are you stuck with it or is there a choice?Why are people so cold in taking care of the planet?How come people kill other people?Where do we go when we die?This is but a sample of a myriad of questions that young people explore in the Council in the search of the inner self and the connection to the outer world.Spirituality is a basic ingredient to our humanity with multiple domains and forms of expression, of which formal religion is but one. This book lays out an excellent discussion regarding the education of the soul: why it is needed in public schools and exactly how to teach it without violating the First Amendment or stomping on the toes of organized religious groups. In fact, any thoughtful review of this book will reveal that the type of spiritual development Rachael is proposing is "simpatico" with most organized religions. Further, and this is a critical point, she emphasizes the emptiness and frustration in individuals that results from spiritual paucity, and how this fact may lead to severe consequences for youth and community. In this discussion the author makes a connection between youth devoid of positive spirituality and acts of violence. It makes sense that Rachael Kessler writes and teaches about the need for spiritual education in our schools. Born to parents who learned the year of her birth that most of their families had been sacrificed to the Holocaust, the author writes, I was carried in the womb of that grief, I grew up in a family where suffering was imbued with nobility. . . it was noble both to suffer and mitigate the suffering of others. By her late teens Rachael had found a purpose to embrace: to reduce the suffering in this world to the

In my book,PRIMAL AWARENESS, I show how and why the great values were a part of indigenous learning and in WALKING THE TALK we will hopefully make this a reality again for all learners. Rachel's book courageously has set the stage for everyone to implement character education by reminding us that without a spiritual approach to learning, values have no relationship to reality.