Introduction
Educational Transformation
Individual Transformation
Community Transformation
Capacities for Transformation
Sustainability
Conclusion
Bibliography
A Eudaimonistic Approach to Community Learning Centers By Michael Reber
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Introduction
Around the time of the Declaration of Independence bicentennial celebration, philosopher David Norton published Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism. It is a remarkable book that explores the pre-Hellenic Greek notion of self-actualization ethics or eudaimonism as well as presents his theory of eudaimonism.
The implications of Norton’s eudaimonism for education are great. To begin, Norton establishes that every individual is unique, that each person has inclinations toward certain human activities which society deems worthy. This concept of innate excellence helps us in understanding the nature of personhood and the role of education in personal development. It also helps us to reconceptualize our educational institutions. Instead of viewing educational institutions as organizations that transfer knowledge, they are considered to be integral parts of a community that assist individuals with the discovery and development of their innate potentials.
Finally, Norton’s concepts of love, justice, and work establish principles by which individual and community interact and grow. Though each of us is different and requires an environment that is conducive to self-actualization, ethical individualism should not be confused with egoism or narcissism. Under the principles of love, justice, and work, “the individual’s concern for his own self-development…leads to a concern for the self-fulfillment of others, and thereby to social morality as a necessary condition for the complete realization of the potentials of individuals.”
If we consider Norton’s eudaimonism as an ethical foundation for the community learning center, we have an entirely different concept of this educational structure than the ones that are currently being discussed. Under eudaimonism, the community learning center is viewed as an educational institution that is established for individual and community transformation. On an individual level, it assists with the discovery and development of one’s innate potential at each stage of life. On a community level, it helps a community to identify itself and develop to its fullest potentials.
In this chapter I will discuss educational transformation and its two levels: individual and community and will refer to David Norton’s self-actualization ethics to consider aspects of personhood and community. I will also refer to Rick Smyre’s capacities for transformation as it relates to community transformation. Then, I will discuss the community learning center and its relationship to sustainability. Educational Transformation
The community learning center is viewed as a social structure that fosters and is fostered by educational transformation. David Conrad states that education should “help transform human beings and societies from hatefulness to love; from ugliness to beauty; from compulsive competitiveness to freely-chosen cooperation; from destructive power to constructive, life-enhancing power” (1976, 2). Rick Smyre elaborates and states that since we now live in a world that is in a constant state of flux, we will require an education that develops
- core competencies in key fields of knowledge
- the ability to ask appropriate questions
- the ability to connect apparently disparate factors and ideas to be able to innovate continuously. (1998)
Furthermore, educational transformation is different from traditional education. Whereas the traditional style focuses on transmitting specific kinds of knowledge and skills for jobs of today, transformational education focuses on learners’ needs. Table 1 illustrates the differences between traditional and transformational education.
Traditional Education Transformational Education
Standardized knowledge Lecturing
Textbooks Finding the right answer
Standardized testing to determine content retention of specific knowledge Core competencies
Individualized instruction Multiple methods of learning centered around use of technology
Knowing how to ask the right question Multiple methods of assessment Table 1. Comparison of Traditional and Transformational Education (Smyre 1998)
It should also be emphasized that educational transformation is not educational reform. Educational reform is changes that occur within a system but do not alter the structure of the system, such as changing textbooks but not changing the structure within which those textbooks are taught. Transformation, however, is an alteration of the system and its internal functions, such as a focus from a curriculum that transfers knowledge to one that fosters an individual’s innate potential.
Finally, educational transformation occurs on the individual and community levels. Individual transformation is the journey through the stages of life: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and old age, respectfully. Community transformation is the process by which a community develops capacities for transformation so it can concomitantly plan and do those things that allow the community to actualize its true potentials.
In order to develop a community learning center that is a structure for educational transformation, the following preconditions must exist. First and foremost is the recognition that each individual is unique and that he has something to contribute to society. Second, each individual should be allowed to do the work that is his to do in life. In other words, work should be viewed as something for the individual to satisfy his life time goals, not something to satisfy some abstract nationalistic agenda. Individual Transformation
Individual transformation occurs for all individuals; each one of us proceeds through the stages of life. However, it is the journey through these stages that is unique for each individual.
The process of individual transformation is governed by what Norton refers to as an ethics of self-actualization or eudaimonism. Several elements or principles comprise eudaimonism. These are daimon, eudaimonia, stages of life, socialization, complementarity of excellences, love, justice, and work.
Daimon is the ancient Greek term for innate potential or excellence, one’s true identity. It originally referred to the demi-god Silenus in pre-Hellenic Greece. In this period Greek sculptors made busts of Silenus with a golden idol inside the figurine. The golden idol represented the true identity of Silenus. The Greeks believed that like the demi-God Silenus, every individual had within him “a golden idol” or daimon, the individual’s true potential.
The notion of innate excellence was not restricted to Greek culture. The Romans, too, believed in this, but instead of calling it daimon they coined the term geni or genius. Thus, Norton asserts, every individual is a genius. That is, every individual has inclinations toward some human activities that are appreciated or deemed worthy by one or more cultures.
The ancient philosophy of innate excellence is more than a philosophical concept; it has been confirmed as real by modern research and scholarship in the area of multiple intelligences. In Frames of Mind, Howard Gardner defines intelligence as “the ability to solve problems, or to create products, that are valued within one or more cultural settings"(1993, x). Gardner (1999) has identified eight kinds of intelligences: musical, linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. Furthermore, these intelligences are found working in combination throughout the spectrum of human avocations and vocations.
Living in accordance with one’s true identity is what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia (Greek prefix eu- means “living well”). Thus, eudaimonia means living well with one’s daimon. Norton elaborates,
Eudaimonia is both a feeling and a condition. As a feeling it distinguishes right from wrong desire. Moreover it attends right desire, not only upon its gratification, but from its first appearance. Because eudaimonia is fully present to right living at every stage of development, it cannot constitute the aim of living, but serves as merely a mark, a sign. It signals that the present activity of the individual is in harmony with the daimon that is his true being. (1976, 5)
In other words, it is that feeling upon the individual that says, “I am where I want to be! I am doing what I want to do!”
Eudaimonia can be thought of as an internal compass that guides the individual toward his true identity. When the compass points toward that feeling of rightful living, the individual is said to be in a state of eudaimonia. He feels that he is living his life the way he should live it, and he is living it toward rightful living. If his compass is off, then he is living a life that is incommensurate with his true self, dysdaimonia.
In order to assist an individual with bringing forth his true potential, the Greeks believed that a person had to go through educere—a process that brings forth the true character that is within the individual. In terms of multiple intelligences (MI), this means identifying those intelligences or combination of intelligences that an individual has strengths in and fostering them. Research in MI assessment assists adult guides and caretakers with accomplishing this task.
A third element of eudaimonism is the stages of life. Each stage of life is incommensurable with other stages. In other words, each stage is its own world and operates by its own principles. If one were to try to impose principles of one stage upon another, he would be committing a fallacy of anachronism (Norton 1976, 161). Other aspects of these stages are the changes that occur: evolutionary and revolutionary. Evolutionary changes are the “continuous explication of implications of the stage’s principles by means of progressive clarification, extrapolation, and refinement” (ibid., 159). In other words, changes are occurring within a stage, but they are changes that are governed by the principles of the stage without changing the stage itself. Revolutionary changes are the “exchange of incommensurable sets of principles” (ibid.). In other words, one stage transforms into another, such as a transformation from childhood to adolescence. In addition to these changes, it should be noted that an individual cannot skip from one stage to the next, he must proceed through all stages. Also, if one refuses to go onto the next stage of his life and continues to follow the principles of a previous stage, then he is in a state of developmental arrest.
In sum, Norton describes the stages of life as follows: Childhood: “Nature subsisting for the most part in the mode of a potentiality whose time for actualization is not yet” (1976, 172). In other words, the individual does not, nor can he, know who he truly is at this point in his life. Thus, education should assist the child with learning about himself (this is different from helping him to find his identity; at this stage he is learning about his feelings and emotions) and by interacting with the world around him. In addition, the child requires an autonomous-dependent relationship with his parents and adult guides.
Adolescence: A time for self-discovery. The adolescent attempts to answer the question “Who am I?” by experiencing the world. Because of this experimentation, he cannot and should not be held responsible to his promises. Doing so would only cripple his life experiences.
Maturity: A time to decide what it is one will do in life and then do it. This doing that one decides in one’s life is called work. Work is viewed as an essential mechanism that fosters self-actualization. In addition, work is not something done to satisfy abstract economic goals or something people hate to do because they have to do it to make a living. Finally, though an individual will never reach his ultimate possibility through the work that is his to do, it is the journey to achieve that possibility which defines an individual.
Old Age: A time for reflection and synthesis. The mature person comes to respect the wisdom of the elder; for is or her story of life can serve as an instrument for other self-actualizing individuals who are trying to do the work that is theirs to do in life. Community Transformation
The individual relates to society via the following elements: socialization, principle of complementarity of excellences, love, justice, and work. According to Norton, socialization occurs in two ways, antecedent sociality and consequent sociality. He states that antecedent sociality is “a received sociality to which the person (as child and adolescent) is responsible” (1976, 253). This means children and adolescents are shaped by their culture and are responsible for learning the symbols of the culture, such as language. Consequent sociality, on the other hand, is “a constituted sociality for which [one] shares responsibility” (ibid.). In other words, after one learns who he is and decides what it is he shall do in his life, he then decides how he will serve as a member of the community. This decision in no way deters his self-actualization, but fulfills it. In addition, he doesn’t sacrifice his individuality to the collective interest of the group. Instead, the community that he decides to be apart of exemplifies the principle of complementarity of excellences.
The principle of complementarity of excellences is the reciprocal relationship between self-actualizing individuals that compliments their unique excellences. If I am an educator and know nothing about physics, but suddenly have a need to understand chaos theory, a physicist specializing in chaos theory will compliment me, and at the same time I compliment other individuals. This complementation already occurs in our daily lives. The only difference from complementation in modern terms and complementation in eudaimonistic terms is that in modern culture complementation is governed by the maximizing principle of material benefit, that states, “Get all you can when you can.” In a self-actualizing society, individuals are valued for their uniqueness, and love and justice guide the complementarity process.
Love is structured like a hierarchy such as in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Hierarchy of Love
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At the bottom of the hierarchy is eros—respect for oneself. Before one can come to love another, he first needs to respect himself. Following eros is reciprocal love. Reciprocal love is divided into two hierarchical categories: romantic love and friendship. Romantic love is an intense love between two individuals, and only two. It is a blind sort of love because it is a love for that individual’s uniqueness. As a result, romantic love has the possibility of affecting one’s objectiveness regarding the character of the person one love’s. Because of the intensity of romantic love, it is not adequate for bridging the gap between the individual and the larger community. A third kind of love is required—friendship. Friendship is a love that voluntarily suspends the individual’s “own perspective with its attendant needs and interests” in order to discover the true identity of another (Norton 1976, 304). Though it leads an individual toward universal love, it lacks the passion that romantic love has.
Universal love is a love for the uniqueness of all members in the larger community. It exists on the condition that antecedent sociality and the principle of congeniality of excellences is prevalent. Norton states that antecedent sociality in terms of universal love is a sociality that
Achieves the harmony that sociality requires by emphasizing resemblance of persons at the expense of differences. It teaches individuals to regard themselves as fundamentally alike, and only epiphenomenally diverse. (ibid., 305)
The principle of congeniality of excellences holds that
The condition of friendship is neither pure resemblance nor pure difference, but is instead the “congeniality” that obtains between persons who are alike in loving the good, but different in respect to the particular good each loves. (ibid., 306)
In other words, in order for complementary of excellences to work, it must be based upon a principle that calls for people to respect their differences and to live together congenially. Resolving conflict does not come through the end of a gun barrel in a eudaimonistic society. Conflict resolution occurs by individuals looking toward the good that resides in their enemies.
This universal love gives rise to justice. Justice in a eudaimonistic society is not the same as justice in our modern times—an external force that imposes upon individuals rights and obligations. Justice in eudaimonistic terms can be stated as follows:
Justice is the paramount virtue of society, as integrity is the cardinal virtue of personal life. Justice, in the first instance, subsists in the principles for the allocation of goods and responsibilities with a social grouping. Concerning the source of these principles, normative individualism [self-actualization ethics] contends that they subsist implicitly within every person, rising to explicitness as the person attains integral individuation. (Norton 1976, 310)
In other words, justice is defined in terms of the individual, not in terms of the state or any other group. If an individual is living a life that commensurates with his true being, then he will only make claim to those things that commensurate with that being. He will not engage in excess, and by doing so, he will respect other self-actualizing individuals for the worth that they possess and may contribute to the society. Thus, by living in truth to ourselves, we in effect are making explicit the principles that underlie justice. It is only when an individual is living a dysdaimonic life that the state or others implement measures to assist them with an understanding of who they are and how they are valued in society.
Work is the final element in Norton’s eudaimonistic community. It is the activity that makes explicit one’s true self. If people are allowed to do the work that is theirs to do in their lives, justice and the common good will arise. Work in a eudaimonistic context does not mean something that one needs to do to make a living or something that needs to be done to satisfy some abstract nationalistic economic agenda. Work is the activity that fosters the self-actualization process. Capacities for Transformation
An understanding of Norton’s eudaimonism will permit a community to transform itself. One could argue that it is not necessary to have an understanding of these principles in order to transform community; however, this kind of transformation will not be a sustainable transformation. A sustainable transformation is one that provides the individual opportunity to transform both self and community so they may create and maintain a sustainable world for future generations. Again, we must adhere to the definition of community transformation that I stated previously: “the process by which a community develops capacities for transformation so it can concomitantly plan and do those things that allow the community to actualize its true potentials.” The key phrase here is “self-actualization,” and this implies those principles that have already been put forward.
Another key phrase is “capacities for transformation.” Capacities for transformation, as discussed by Rick Smyre, are futures context, electronic infrastructure, process leadership, a concept of the common good, and skills for neighborhood leaders.
A futures context is knowing what the future trends are and thinking about how they will impact the community. It is developed by the community actively thinking about and having generative dialog about future issues and possible approaches to address those issues.
An electronic infrastructure is also vital for community transformation when considering life in the twenty-first century. Smyre states that in the future
Citizens will need to interact on line to build a shared vision for important community decisions. Entrepreneurs will need to connect with other entrepreneurs to develop new products and services …Virtual schools will allow life long learning from anywhere at anytime. (COTF 1998)
Process Leadership “focuses on the ability to develop a shared vision among diverse people within a futures context.” This includes
- The ability to think within a futures context
- The ability to understand how to develop trusting relationships, network diverse people, and establish “process projects” to help institutions in local communities transform themselves, and
- Develop personal attributes important to [the time]. (Smyre 1998, 6)
Process leadership helps people to identify
- New underlying assumptions which support institutional transformation
- New ways to make connections among apparently dissimilar ideas
- New approaches for creating network groups which develop process projects. (ibid.)
A concept of the common good is a third important capacity for community transformation. Smyre is in alignment with Norton when he states that the common good is “the full development of the individual with interaction of others so that the individual can be committed to the common good while in support of one’s fulfillment and self actualization” (11). Smyre proposes three pragmatic steps that communities can take to assure this:
Establish local Councils for the Common Good which would focus attention on this idea and create new ways to think about what is good for all citizens…develop “process projects” and other processes to involve many people in thinking about how to develop “common goods” in any community.
Focus on the concept of Direct Consensus Democracy which would involve many different citizens in a) surveying to define what are key issues in the community, thus setting the agenda b) holding a “citizen congress” to establish a framework of factors within which the key issue can be considered, and c) using diverse teams of citizens to develop strategies for the future.
Create the position of “community coordinator” in a local community. The roles would be to build relationships among diverse groups, to play a facilitators role in disputes and issues of conflict, and to help develop and facilitate processes of consensus to evolve a shared vision among the diversity of the community. (1998, 12)
A final capacity for transformation is building citizen skills for community. Realizing that skills will change as the community changes, it is important for the community to create some sort of support system for assisting with this transformational process. Smyre suggests that the most practical approach would be for “neighborhood associations to develop networks of people coached in these skills and integrate the development of these skills into the program of work of existing civic organizations” (1998, 11). Community Learning Center
A community learning center that is founded upon an ethics of self-actualization and employs “capacities for transformation” should have the following characteristics:
- Serves as a nerve center for a community learning network.
- Serves as a laboratory for learning. Even the structure of the facility would help with learning about systems, holism, and the fragility and wonder of life, the earth, and the universe.
- Employs organic architectural principles, principles that are concerned with “the building, the community the building is set in, and the architect, builder, and patron’s vision about the facility,” for example, developing community learning centers within walking distance to people's homes (Conrad 1976, 56). It would also include searching for techniques that create a self-sustaining facility that employ renewable resources (Solar Survival Architecture Homepage).
- Employs principles of consensus democracy, for example, requiring that a community board of directors who in turn hire the administrators govern a community learning center.
- Supports community research and development in order to help better facilitate learning and communication throughout the universal learning network, such as research and development of electronic learning devices.
- Supports the training of its professional and non-professional educators, resource managers, and administrators.
Other educational attributes of the community learning center should be holistic educational principles, learning goals based upon the stages of life, a learning cycle as opposed to the traditional hierarchical structure of learning, and individualized curricular development.
Holistic educational principles are:
- Education for human development;
- Honoring students as individuals;
- Learning through experience;
- Emphasis on the wholeness of human experience;
- Teacher as educator, coach, advisor, and friend;
- Freedom of choice;
- Education for participatory democracy;
- Education for cultural diversity and global citizenship;
- Education for earth literacy; and
- A spiritual worldview (Flake 1993; Miller 1992).
Educational goals for an individualized curricular program in a community learning center could be something like the following: Childhood
- Acquaint the child with her immediate environment and the world.
- Foster in her a sense of wonder and awe about the world.
- Help her to learn cooperation and sharing.
- Help her to understand how things are related to one another.
Adolescence
- Help the adolescent to answer the question “Who am I?”
- Provide for her a multitude of learning/living experiences.
Maturity
- Help the mature individual to “become who she is.”
- Help her to determine what work is hers to do in her life.
- Assist her with doing that work.
Old Age
- Help the senior reflect upon her life journey.
- Provide for her opportunities and resources to share her life experiences with others so those experiences may assist others with their self-actualization.
A learning cycle in a community learning center could be something like Figure 2.
Figure 2. Learning Cycle
In a community learning center learning cycle all learning begins with the individual. The individual first meets with an advisor at a neighborhood community learning center who helps her to determine her educational needs based upon a “needs analysis.” Factors involved in this analysis would be
- Stage of Life
- Prior self-actualization experiences
- Multiple intelligences assessment
- Identification of possible personal inclinations
- Other learning experiences
After the needs analysis, a report is sent to an individualized program developer who helps her create an individualized curriculum. The job of the curriculum developer is to help the learner to create a program that commensurates with her true self in order not to provide what John Dewey calls “mis-educative” experiences. Factors taken into consideration by the program developer when designing a curriculum would be:
- Results of needs analysis
- Disciplines of knowledge (What things the individual wants to learn)
- Types of learning (How the individual best learns via her multiple intelligences)
- Learning locations
- Kinds of and availability of professional and non-professional educators
- Scope of learning experiences (Length of time she wants to spend on a learning activity)
Next, she is assigned to different professional and non-professional educators who will then help her develop learning contracts (learning objective statements) for specified learning activities. When a learning activity is completed, the learner meets her advisor again to determine if her needs were met. The advisor then submits another report to the program developer and the program developer meets with the learner to evaluate her learning program and make the necessary revisions. Sustainability
It was stated earlier that the community learning center could contribute greatly to community sustainability. It does this by providing opportunities to individuals to transform both themselves and their community so that together they and their community may create and maintain a healthy world for future generations. Several approaches are available for community learning centers to do this:
- They can hold community seminars on sustainable communities and the role the community learning center plays.
- They can be involved with the research, design, and development of organic technology and architecture in order to help better facilitate learning and communication throughout the universal learning network.
- They can help communities research, design, and develop sustainable economies and energy resources, such as home energy supplies, domestic food production, at-home learning aids, and the community market.
- They can help facilitate participatory democracy.
Conclusion
David Norton’s eudaimonism greatly helps us in developing a community learning center that can truly serve individuals and their communities. The problem that we face today when discussing the concept of the community learning center is that many proposed models do not consider the significance of an ethical foundation such as eudaimonism. Furthermore, the models do not offer us any opportunities for creating sustainable communities because they do not serve as vehicles for creating “capacities for transformation.” As a result of neglecting both a vision of ethics and a vision for the future, we have community learning centers that offer us a technocratic view of community or stifle the spirit of the individual, such as the U.S. Department of Education’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program (U.S. Dept. of Ed. Homepage).
In the years to come, more dialogue concerning the community learning center will be created because more people are recognizing the importance education plays in the development of the individual and community. Therefore, I cannot underscore the necessity of people exploring the principles that underlie eudaimonism. If we ignore this exploration, then we will probably create a social structure that will continue to do the same things that schools are already doing. But if we do explore, then we will have created the possibility of developing sustainable communities that honor individuals for who they are.
* * * * * Bibliography
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Conrad, David R. Education for Transformation: Implications in Lewis Mumford’s Ecohumanism. Palm Springs, California: ETC Publications, 1976.
Dewey, John. Experience & Education: The Kappa Delta Pi Lecture Series. 1938 Reprint, New York: Touchstone, 1997.
Flake, Carol L., ed. Holistic Education: Principles, Perspectives and Practices. Brandon, Vermont: Holistic Education Press, 1993.
Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 10th Anniversary Edition. New York: Basic Books, 1993.
---. “Who Owns Intelligences.” The Atlantic Monthly. February 1999.
Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1970.
Knowles, Malcolm. Creating Lifelong Learning Communities. Working paper, UNESCO Institute for Education, Hamburg, Germany, January, 1983.
Miller, Ron. What Are Schools For?: Holistic Education in American Culture. Brandon, Vermont: Holistic Education Press, 1992.
Moffett, James. The Universal Schoolhouse: Spiritual Awakening through Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994.
Norton, David L. Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976.
Smyre, Rick. Beyond the Deck Chairs. Chaos Newsletter. 1998. http://www.bev.net/cotf/articles/deck_chairs.html (2 June 1999).
Solar Survival Architecture. Earthship Global Operations Website. http://www.earthship.org (8 May 1998)
U.S. Department of Education. 21st Century Community Learning Centers: After-school, Weekend and Summer Programs for Youth. http://www.ed.gov/offices/OERI/21stCCLC (3 March 1999).
Whitehead, Alfred North. The Aims of Education and Other Essays. Reprint, New York: The Free Press, 1985.
In actuality, the Greeks restricted this belief only to male Greek citizens. The philosophy did not apply to slaves or women.
James Moffett describes a community learning network as “a far-flung learning network giving all people of all ages access to any learning resource at anytime…Subjects and methods are reorganized around individual learners forging their personal curricula in interaction with others doing the same across a whole spectrum of learning sites, situations, and technologies” (1994, xvi).
Refer to Alfred North Whitehead (1929), Ivan D. Illich (1970), John Dewey (1938), and Malcolm Knowles (1983).
Dewey states that “The belief that all genuine education comes through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative…Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience” (1938, 25).
Organic technology is technology that assists with the learning process, transforms thinking, and helps people to have control over their learning. David Conrad states that they should “fulfill the criterion for the positive, life-promoting, constructive side of technology…and not hamper human values, but…contribute to them, in some cases even make them possible” (1976, 47).
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© Copyright 2000. Michael Reber - All Rights Reserved.
reber@neptune.kanazawa-it.ac.jp
