Denise CushI Colin Johnson I Susan Horsfall

Denise Cush

In his article, Rasamandala dasa explores whether ISKCON education can benefit from theories and practices common in secular education, whether these are compatible with the principles of Vedic scripture, points out some weaknesses in current ISKCON practice and recommends some ways forward for the future. It is obviously the product of much reflection and considerable first hand experiences. It is my opinion that the most valuable progress in educational fields comes from those who have daily experience of the teaching and learning process and therefore know what works and what does not. This is an opinion shared by those who advocate 'action research' by practising educationalists (see Hitchcock and Hughes 1995). I also feel that it is a sign of maturity in a religious community to be able to be self-critical in this way, and Rasamandala dasa is to be commended for seeking to lead ISKCON into a new phase of development.

I would further like to explore issues of the methods of secular education, the importance of clarity about aims, objectives, content, methods, and assessment, the way in which other religious communities are facing these issues, and finally to suggest that religious communities and secular education should be 'critical friends' of one another.

Secular education and experiential learning
Rasamandala dasa, perhaps, gives an oversimplified picture of 'modem secular education' in that this is a very contested area, not helped by the polarisation into 'progressive' versus 'traditional' teachers, neither of which exist outside newspaper articles. However, the stress on skills and attitudes, the pupil as an active learner constructing knowledge from experiential learning and the teacher as facilitator rather than fount of knowledge, are common themes. This is partly because ideas about knowledge have changed and it is now seen as contested and provisional, rather than a fixed entity, with the teacher's only problem being how to transmit it. It is also because learning technology has changed. Traditional (for example, Vedic) learning took place in a context where the only resource was the teacher. We now have a wealth of resources- books, videos, interactive CD-ROMs-which means that the learner can be more independent of the teacher. I think both these issues need to be faced when exploring changes in educational methods. Yet even thousands of years ago, without these resources, good teachers knew that you cannot just tell people things, they have to be enabled to understand them for themselves. One thinks of the Buddha, who sent Kisagotami out to find a mustard seed from a house where no-one had ever died, or Uddalaka Aruni in the Chandogya Upanisad who had his son Svetaketu dissolve salt in water so that he could experience for himself the truth that the invisible can nonetheless be present everywhere. Thus, experiential learning is not a modern invention. I was fascinated but not surprised to see that concepts such as knowledge, skills and values had parallels in Vedic literature.

Aims, objectives, content, method and assessment
One of the things I have learned from my own experience is the importance of clear aims and objectives (the latest jargon here is 'learning outcomes'), separating content and method, as well as assessment and evaluation to determine whether the planned learning actually took place. New teachers, as Rasamandala dasa states, usually focus on content and possibly method, but often ignore aims. I have so often supervised the lessons of student teachers, with the question 'so what?' in my mind, and sadly also that of the pupils. Or student teachers will have grandiose aims such as creating harmony between religions, and then feel it has been achieved when at the end of the lesson their pupils are able to label the parts of a mosque. Thus, I applaud Rasamandala dasa for this emphasis.

One area where my experience has differed from Rasamandala's is that I would not necessarily agree that teacher directed knowledge input comes first and student-centred exploration second. In secular education it has almost become the other way round, with pupils in nursery classes encouraged to make their own choices and pupils in secondary school exam classes cramming by rote. I would claim that it should be a dialectical relationship between the two styles. Some topics lend themselves to starting with teacher input, and others to starting with pupil exploration of experience.

Another area that I have had reason to reflect on is the relationship between aims, content and methods. My own secular teacher training students often confuse the three, considering that a confessional aim must have a narrow content and traditional, didactic methods. Confessional teaching can employ experiential and exciting methods, and non-confessional teaching can be delivered in a dull and doctrinaire fashion. Of course, there are also times when methods can contradict aims, such as a lesson on democracy taught in a dictatorial fashion. I would support the idea that experiential methods need not conflict with the confessional aims of ISKCON.

Knowledge, concepts, skills and attitudes
As a young teacher, like my own students mentioned above, my main focus was on knowledge-I wanted to share my enthusiasm about religions by sharing my collection of facts with pupils. However, experience has taught me that interesting as facts may be, far more important is the acquisition of general concepts which can be applied to new situations, skills which can likewise be transferable to new contexts and, most of all, the inculcation of attitudes such as curiosity and respect for the opinions of others, which will outlast any facts remembered. In other words, the teacher helps the pupil develop the abilities needed to continue learning long after the teacher has departed; as the saying goes, rather than giving the hungry person fish, you teach that person how to fish. Thus, I would agree with Rasamandala dasa that attitudes and values should take priority of place in education, but suggest he might like to add 'concepts' to his list of knowledge, attitudes and skills.

The experience of other faith communities
Problems with education in a confessional context are not unique to ISKCON, and are indeed shared by other faith communities. In this country, there is in particular a wealth of experience in Christian education (see for example, Astley and Francis 1996, Francis and Thatcher 1990, Astley and Day 1992). Many contemporary writers (such as Capaldi, in Francis and Thatcher) are realising that Christian education cannot be a passive induction into a static tradition, but rooted in the concerns and experience of the pupils and in the realisation that those traditions themselves grow and change. Jeff Astley sensibly concludes that a balanced Christian education privileges neither the pupils' experience nor the teachings of the tradition, but is a dialectic where each criticises the other (Astley and Day). Thus my suggestion to ISKCON is that it may well be worth studying how other faith traditions are dealing with educational issues.

Secular education and religious communities: critical friends?
In educational research circles the notion of a 'critical friend' has taken root-someone who will point out your errors and make suggestions, but as a supportive equal. Thus I would suggest like Rasamandala dasa that confessional education can learn a lot from secular education, especially in the area of actual practical teaching strategies that work. On the other hand, confessional education can also offer something to secular education, in that it can query the often unexamined presuppositions underlying what goes on in contemporary schools.

It has to be admitted that in secular education there are certain tendencies that might seem to be in tension with education as traditionally found in religious communities. Modern secular education tends to be underpinned with liberal humanist values which may stress individual autonomy rather than 'submission', reject scriptural revelation and personal spiritual experience as valid sources of knowledge, and separate the intellectual from the personal, moral and spiritual. This does not mean that confessional and secular education need be enemies: secular education can through its questioning help to prevent religious communities becoming fossilised by over-stressing their claims to absolute knowledge, and religious communities can confront the implicit relativism of secular education with important questions of truth. One of the most valuable challenges to modern Western philosophy from Hindu philosophy is the age old idea that wisdom is shown by moral behaviour, as well as clever ideas. As Radhakrishnan (1950) put it 'A man is not learned simply because he talks much. He who is tranquil, free of hatred, free from fear, he is said to be learned' (in Morgan and Lawson 1996:63).

References

Astley, J. & Day, D.1992. The Contours of Christian Education. London: McCrimmon.

Astley, J. & Francis, L. (Eds). 1996. Christian Theology and Religious Educalion: Connections and Contradictions. London: SPCK.

Francis, L. & Thatcher, A. (Eds). 1990. Christian Perspectives for Religious Education. Leominster: Gracewing.

Hitchcock, G. & Hughes, D. 1995. Research and the Teacher. London: Routledge.

Morgan, P.d. & Lawton, C. (Eds).1996. Ethical Issues In Six Religious Traditions. Ediburgh: Edinburgh University Press

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Colin Johnson

I would like to offer comments on Rasamandala dasa's article 'Towards Principles and Values-An Analysis of Education Philosophy and Practice within ISKCON' in the last issue of the journal (Vol. 5, No. 2). I do so as the Publications Director of the Christian Education Movement, an educational charity firmly rooted in the Christian tradition, but committed to the teaching of the major world faiths as part of the religious education programme in schools.

There are clearly some elements in Rasamandala dasa's article on which I am not qualified to pass any opinion. I cannot comment on how far it is possible to reconcile twentieth century educational philosophies with Vedic texts, or the ways in which ISKCON, as an organisation, ought to develop. Having said that, I found the article fascinating because so much of what Rasamandala dasa had to say connected with my own experience and my own thinking, both as a religious educator in the secular education system, and as a member of my own faith community leading a Bible course for adults.

The first point with which I identify strongly is the current domination of knowledge-based teaching. Of course, no one in their right senses can deny the importance of knowledge, but knowledge is not an end in itself. It is what you do with knowledge that matters. In schools, religious education is just emerging from a long period in which the transmission of knowledge was totally dominant. There were good reasons for this. When it became apparent in the late 1960s and early 1970s that a religious education that focused exclusively on Christianity could not be educationally justified within a secular school system, it was replaced by the phenomenological approach. Put in very crude terms the philosophy behind this ran as follows. Whatever your own faith or non-faith stance, it is undeniable that religion has been vastly influential in the way human beings have lived their lives. Therefore, an education that does not attend to this phenomenon is incomplete. However, because it is not part of a secular education system to indoctrinate or convert pupils, we must confine ourselves to teaching the 'facts'.

The legacy of this phase of religious education is still very strong and is reflected in heavily content-laden agreed syllabuses of religious education, but there are signs nevertheless, that changes are on their way. The Model Syllabuses for Religious Education produced by the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) in 1994 refer to two types of learning: learning about religions and learning from religions. Thus, a pupil is no longer considered to be religiously educated who merely knows a lot of facts about different religions. Pupils are expected to 'respond to questions of meaning within religions' (my italics). Elsewhere the Model Syllabuses state that, 'Religious education should help pupils to . . . enhance their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development . . .' In short, while religious education as set out in the Model Syllabuses is not intended to indoctrinate or convert pupils, it is intended to change them. In other words, it is to do with being as well as knowing.

Here too I identify with Rasamandala dasa. Education in religion (whether religion in general or a specific religion) is about being and not just about knowing and doing. It is about what we are and what we are to become as well as what we know and how we behave. I thought as I read the earlier part of the article that Rasamandala dasa was putting forward a sequential view of learning in which knowledge comes first, to be followed by understanding, skills and values. I was pleased to see that he subsequently opted for a model that saw these as proceeding in parallel rather than sequentially, which is certainly true to my experience. I am sometimes amazed as I read the New Testament at how new believers seem to have been baptised into the faith after the briefest of encounters with a Christian evangelist. It seems that detailed instruction in the faith only occurred after the initial commitment had been made.

The adults who come to my classes on the Bible have only partial knowledge of the text in many cases, but their observations often reveal a secure grasp of the basic principles of Christianity and considerable insight into their application to the task of living a Christian life. Above all, they are highly motivated. This echoes the comment made in footnote 16 of Rasamandala dasa's article when he observes from experience that a student with no skills but the right attitude is far easier to teach than a student endowed with technique alone.

For these reasons I would not wish to put knowledge, understanding, skills and values in a rigid learning sequence. I believe they interact with one another and need to be developed in parallel.

As a final comment, I am encouraged by Rasamandala dasa's emphasis on principles and values because of the possibilities which these open up for inter-faith discussion and co-operation. At the level of principles and values, the major faiths have a great deal in common. It is in specific forms of belief, and even more so in specific practices, which often reflect the cultural origins of the faith, that they appear to be so very different. To take a very obvious example, all faiths appear to promote the so-called Golden Rule in one form or another: 'Do to others as you would wish them to do to you.'

Hans Küng, the Swiss Roman Catholic theologian, has argued that it is possible to speak of a 'global ethic' which reflects the ethical concerns of the major world faiths. He has further argued that there is little hope for a peaceful world unless the faiths recognise and promote the values they share, which are often contrary to the values of the secular world. In short, he argues that the differences between the faiths are relatively small compared with the vast gulf between a religious understanding and a secular understanding of the world.

This takes us back to the beginning: knowledge by itself is not enough. It is certainly not enough if, in terms of religious education in schools, it only teaches children that different faiths have different holy books, different places of worship, different times of prayer, different forms of dress, different festivals and so on. They need to know that people of different faiths often live by the same, or similar, principles and values. And they need to be challenged to consider whether they should not adopt these values for themselves.

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Susan Horsfall

 Having read and digested what Rasamandala dasa has to say, I must admit to having great sympathy with his argument for a systematic approach towards training and education if ISKCON is to progress successfully into its 'third phase'. His choice of an experiential approach to teaching is not one upon which I would base an entire approach to teaching, preferring a mixture of methods.

My own experience is with Key Stage 2 and 3 Religious Education (RE) in British schools. School RE is, though, somewhat different as it must, by law be non-denominational and it cannot advocate the truth or otherwise of one particular faith. However, for the purpose of a faith group, Rasamandala dasa's choice of an experiential approach does have advantages.

Informed choice is essential to any decision-making process. Choosing to be a devotee of an ideological group should be no exception. Rasamandala dasa demonstrates that this is not at odds with ISKCON's tenets by citing from the eighteenth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita in support of his argument. In my view, a further advantage to his approach is that an overt educational process, which is capable of standing up to scrutiny externally as well as internally, would doubtless disabuse concerns about ISKCON's intentions, that is, 'brainwashing' or coercion of devotees.1 This can only assist in raising public awareness of ISKCON as a reputable and discerning group, as indeed would his idea of appropriate advertising materials. This is an area deserving greater debate. However, I intend to turn to another feature of his article.

Rasamandala dasa writes of the striking resemblance between secular management and the education processes, albeit acknowledging the different aims of each; secular management aims to achieve financial gain whilst education as applied to groups such as ISKCON is intended to develop greater spiritual awareness. He states, 'For this reason, the managerial function must serve the education processes, rather than vice versa'2. His ideal is that temples should be centres for education. He rightly recognises that a haphazard approach to education, no matter how well a particular teaching method may work in itself, is not acceptable. Indeed it would be doomed to failure, as it would fail to address many of the issues which it is intended to correct. His proposal is a clear management system within which the education processes can function, and one which is easily understood by devotees.

As a one time personnel executive in a national supermarket chain, I was responsible for ensuring that training and education were properly implemented within stores. Where failures occurred in stores, it was one of my responsibilities to investigate why. What Rasamandala dasa points out as some of the problems within ISKCON: confusion surrounding personal and institutional responsibilities; negative motivational tactics; failures of communication etc. could also be found in problem stores. The common reason for this failure was non-adherence to recognised management systems and an 'I know best' attitude from managers at various levels. The general effect on staff in this situation was one of a sense of unfairness and demoralisation. In stores which did work in accord with the system the difference was tangible. All staff understood their role, were confident in themselves and their own work. Moreover, such stores fulfilled their purpose-in this case making a profit. To go back to 'failing' supermarkets, in the main they still managed to function, but staff turnover was exceptionally high. Locally the store would have a generally poor reputation and ex-employees were often embittered at their experiences.

It may seem inappropriate to draw such an analogy between failures within ISKCON and secular approaches to management. After all, ISKCON is not seeking to become a commercial enterprise. But as Rasamandala dasa points out, a management function is a supporting factor. It is the purpose to which a system is employed that is the determining factor. Supermarkets, charities, educational institutions and religious institutions may all use similar management systems, but have different objectives. The fact that a secular management system is envisaged as a support for ISKCON's educational programmes, as defined by him, should not irk devotees; it is merely an expedient. The use of a systematic approach to education within the group will result in devotees confident in their own faith and able to grow in Krishna consciousness, these are the fruits which Rasamandala dasa's approach could potentially bring.

In this 'third phase' of ISKCON's progression it is imperative that this routinisation involves a positive and dynamic step forward. 'Short-termism' is a disastrous route. Rasamandala dasa's approach is long-term, forward thinking and one which deserves the full backing of the leadership. It is for them to decide whether they will take this opportunity to realise ISKCON's full potential. For the sake of all ISKCON devotees, current and future, I sincerely hope that they do.

Notes

1. Sefton Davis realised that this was not the case but his was a concern common to general conceptions regarding non-mainstream religious groups. See Sefton Davies, A Response to Dhyana-kunda devi dasi's Article, 'Devotees and their Parents' ISKCON Communications Journal, 4(2), (1996), p.95.
2. Ibid. p.25.

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