WE ARE ALL ONE MUSIC
IRWIN FRIEDMAN
Full Flower Education Center
| Song of the Month For Your Enjoyment | |
| This Month's Title "We Are One" |
 |
|
WE ARE ALL ONE MUSIC Full Flower Education Center |
|
 Home |
 Contact Irwin |
 Blog |
 Songs & CDs |
 Articles |
 Biography |
 Links |
 Download Lyrics |
|
Full Flower Education Center In 1985, I founded and directed Full Flower School. Full Flower was a K-8 school with about 45 students and was in operation from 1985 until 2001. The school was inspired by the educational philosophy of J. Krishnamurti. Some of the key philosophical elements of the school. 1) Fearful students do not learn. They learn how to give a teacher what they think the teacher wants, but we don't call that learning. 2) Understanding oneself is a fundamental part of education. 3) Challenging everything that one perceives as false in oneself and in society is the function of the school. 4) Doing what one loves to do not just in the future, but now is also fundamentally important. 5) Punishment in any form creates fear in the student and the teacher. 6) Learning for oneself what is love, truth or god. Full Flower closed down in 2001. During these past 10 years I have been wondering how to restructure it. I thought of making it an education center for young people and adults who are interested in exploring what I wrote about in the previous paragraph. Maybe it could be a kind of K-12 school for young people, again with these guidelines. I wonder if I put this out to the world, what response I might get. Our Guiding Principle Once we observe a fact, we act on it, live it. If we continue with the same behaviors, find out why and change! If we discover truth and do not act on it, then it becomes a poison. We want to create an environment where everything is questioned and everyone, both staff and students, have permission to point things out to each other. For example, we see as a fact that punishment creates fear and distorts perception, so as an educational community, we reject it. However, if we still punish, then we must discover why and not keep going back in circles to punishment. It's a psychological waste of energy and teaches the student how to cunningly hide and run away from behavior that they do not want to deal with. Our Premise Our first premise is that every institution that human beings (human thought) have put together in our society has bred conflict, fear and violence. We are a society that solves conflict with war and violence. We treat women and children as second class citizens. We treat minorities as second class citizens. Children are not a priority. We allow citizens of our communities to live in poverty. We have a very unhealthy view on sexuality that creates sexual predators and we often blame victims of sexual assault. As we look into the fact of our social world we see corruption, greed, hatred, arrogance, war and all this is a reflection of the individuals who make up and sustain this world, that is, you and me. So if we change ourselves fundamentally, we might be able to change the world. So I see a school as a place where we not only learn about the world around us but also do an inner exploration of who we are. Breaking through our conditioning is a fundamental purpose of education for each individual. Finding out for oneself what we call god, truth or love is another vital part of life. That is, finding the true meaning of religion which is to gather all one's energy to find truth, not truth according to this book or that book, but the truth which resides within each of us; in this we are both own teacher and student. Finally, if we help the student and ourselves discover what we truly love to do, then we may create a new world. One cannot learn about life tethered to a method or a formula Before proceeding, we must acknowledge that we thread dangerous territory. Creating a method or a formula for dealing with children or with life is to be avoided. A training manual with rules of "how to teach" will not lead a person to freedom or thinking for oneself. Every child is changing moment to moment and it requires a swift mind and heart full of love to deal with this ever changing present, not a mind that is confused and tethered to a formula or method. We can come to depend on the book or a person to tell us how to deal with the child in many different circumstances. We are the living educators, parents and students and must discover for ourselves what is right education. However, we need a way to convey what we are attempting to do and we only have words, which translate into these guidelines, something to discuss and explore together. The words are not the things, emotions or images that they describe or invoke and therefore have inherent limitations. Yet it is all we have to communicate what we feel is right education and share this with others Dealing with one's own conditioning is a most difficult task. This journey requires constant vigilance. Whatever I have done with my life, and mostly I have given in to the easiness of not fighting society or my own conditioning, I keep coming back to this challenge. It seems to me a fundamental way to change the world, by changing myself.
|
Clouds over Wakulla Beach, Florida _____________________________________
Chief concern of this kind of school "The chief concern of a school of this kind must be to create an atmosphere in which there is no fear, in which students are not compelled or coerced or compared with another, so that there is freedom. This doesn’t mean that the students are free to do what they want to do, but they have the freedom to grow, to understand, to think, to live so that the mind can never function in habit so that the mind becomes very active, not with the activity of gossip, not with the activity of mere reading, but with the activity of enquiry, of finding out, of searching for what is real, for what is true. So that the mind becomes an astonishing thing, a creative thing." |
