Wisdom/Education

Contents:

Articles, Videos, Recommended Reading

There is both wisdom and foolishness on our present planet. On our future planet, will we be wiser?

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" - George Santayana

In 1992, over 1,500 scientists signed a Warning to Humanity. 17 years later, it is clear that humans have not used this wisdom. Are humans wise enough to use it during the next 17 years?

This warning included a majority of the Nobel laureates in the sciences. 69 nations from all parts of Earth were represented, including each of the 12 most populous nations and 19 of the largest economic powers.

They said "human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about."

View the World Scientists' Warning to Humanity

"There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking" - Alfred Korzybski

Reports: 
Evidence of Impact of Sustainable Schools; Department, Children, Schools and Families Evidence of the impact of sustainable schools is supported by growing research, policy, and practitioner literature, in the main from the UK but also internationally. Multiple sources of evidence now show that being a sustainable school raises standards and enhances well-being.

Earth Survey Report: Executive Summary by Peter Forrest CEO, The Holistic Education Foundation Co. Ltd. http://www.tgl.tv/
Earth Survey Report

Videos:

12 year old Severn Suzuki speaking at the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil (06.41 mins)

A Day in the Life of a Student at a 21st-Century School

A Day in the Life of a Teacher at a 21st-Century School

We are the people we've been waiting for
This full-length feature film on education which was inspired and guided by Oscar-winning producer Lord Puttnam. The film is supported by various sponsors including independent education foundation, Edge. The film follows the experiences of five Swindon-based teenagers.

Recommend Reading:

Getting a Grip 2 By Frances Moore Lappe
Why are we as societies creating a world that we as individuals abhor?
This is the question at the heart of Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want. This book shatters tired, right–versus–left dogma and affirms readers' basic sanity — their intuition that it is possible to stop grasping at straws and to grasp instead the real roots of today's crises. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology and anthropology, it addresses topics from the impact of the Obama presidency and the global financial crisis.

God and the New Physics - Paul Davies
This book deals fundamentally with cosmology although throughout the text several sciences are mentioned, such as: physics, mathematics, neurology, and philosophy. It deals with a wide variety of philosophical problems, such as the nature of God, miracles, free will, time, and consciousness. Davis seeks to explain the changing roles of religion and science, and the way in which physics is giving insights into what were once considered solely religious or philosophical questions.

A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Hawking attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes and light cones, to the non-specialist reader. Its main goal is to give an overview of the subject but, unusual for a popular science book, it also attempts to explain some complex mathematics. The book also simplifies matters by means of illustrations throughout the text, depicting complex models and diagrams.

The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler
It is a study of the processes of creativity and imagination in which Koestler explains that humans are most creative when rational thought is abandoned during dreams and trances. Koestler affirms that all creatures have the capacity for creative activity, frequently suppressed by the automatic routines of thought and behaviour that dominate their lives.

A World Waiting to be Born – The Search for Civility By M Scott Peck
This book offers a needed prescription for our ailing society. Our illness is incivility: destructive patterns of self-absorption, callousness, manipulativeness, and materialism so ingrained in our routine behaviour that we do not recognise them. Using examples from his own life, case histories, and dramatic scenarios, Dr. Peck demonstrates how change can be effected and how we and our organizations can be restored to health. Why are we as societies creating a world that we as individuals abhor?

The Road Less Travelled - By M Scott Peck
Peck suggests ways in which confronting and resolving our problems, and suffering through the changes, can enable us to reach a higher level of self-understanding. Dr. Peck discusses the nature of loving relationships: how to recognise true compatibility, how to distinguish dependency from love, how to become one's own person and how to be a more sensitive parent.

The Center of the Cyclone By John C Lilly, MD
John Lilly gives a sensitive and insightful overview of his work on transcendent consciousness and its ramifications for society. The book looks at the inner life of a dedicated scientist experimenting and exploring inner space - the teeming universe of the human mind!

Janus: A Summing Up By Arthur Koestler
Koestler develops his philosophical idea of the holarchy introduced in his 1967 book, The Ghost in the Machine. The holarchy provides a coherent way of organising knowledge and nature all together. The idea of the holarchy is that everything we can think of is composed of holons (simultaneously both part and whole), so that each holon is always a constituent of a larger one and yet also contains other holons that are constituents of a lower level system within. Koestler believed that everything in a healthy system is organised this way, from the human body, to chemistry to the history of philosophy.

Prolongevity II By Albert Rosenfeld
This book provides a report on the scientific discoveries now being made about aging and dying, and their promise of an extended human lifespan, without old age.

This I Believe - And Other Essays By E F Schumacher
Schumacher saw the need to give societies, communities, and individuals practical tools for change. This book brings together Schumacher's ideas on a variety of subjects. Twenty-one previously unpublished articles promise to introduce a new audience to the freshness, clarity, and profundity of Schumacher's thinking.

The Discovery of the Child By Maria Montessori
Describing the nature of the child and her method, Maria Montessori explains in this text her beliefs - that once the general principles of her method have been grasped, the parts dealing with its material application are extremely simple. Gone are teachers who wear out their lungs maintaining discipline, and verbal instruction is replaced by "material for development", which affords children the opportunity of teaching themselves by their own efforts. The teacher thus becomes a director of the children's own spontaneous work.

The Child in the Family By Maria Montessori
This book explains the Montessori philosophy. Emphasising that children from birth on should be treated with respect, the same respect we would have when we have a guest in the house. She talks about the newborn period and one wishes our kids doctors would read it, then she writes about kids and teens and their relationship with their parents.

Person/Planet By Thomas Roszak
Roszak brings together the insights of deep ecology and humanistic psychology. The result is a powerful reassertion of Personalism, the philosophy that has most stubbornly resisted the dehumanising forces of industrial society. As bleak as the environmental fate of the Earth may seem, "Person/Planet" offers a daringly original and hopeful hypothesis: that the Earth herself is already working in the depths of the human psyche to heal our troubled urban-industrial culture. Google Books Preview

The Rise of the Creative Class By Richard Florida
Florida looks at the forces reshaping our economy and how companies, communities and people can survive and prosper in uncertain times. He gives us a provocative new way to think about why we live as we do today – and where we might be headed. Weaving storytelling with reams of cutting-edge research, Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy.

Earth Pilgrim By Satish Kamur
Satish Kumar draws on his personal experience of making pilgrimages and also his understanding of the spiritual traditions of both East and West. The book takes the form of conversations about both the inner and outer aspects of pilgrimage. If we want to tread the pilgrim’s path, we need to go beyond ideas of good and evil, and to be dedicated to our quest to our natural calling. We need to shed not only our unnecessary material possessions, but also our burdens of fear, anxiety, doubt and worry. Being on a pilgrimage doesn’t necessarily mean travelling from one place to another: it means a state of mind, a state of consciousness, a state of fearlessness.

God and the New Physics By Paul Davies
This book deals fundamentally with cosmology although throughout the text several sciences are mentioned, such as: physics, mathematics, neurology, and philosophy. It deals with a wide variety of philosophical problems, such as the nature of God, miracles, free will, time, and consciousness. Davis seeks to explain the changing roles of religion and science, and the way in which physics is giving insights into what were once considered solely religious or philosophical questions.

Why Does E = mc²? By Brian Cox & Jeff Forshaw
Professors Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw go on a journey to the frontier of twenty-first-century science to unpack Einstein's famous equation. The book is one of the most exciting and accessible explanations of the theory of relativity.