The Network of Spiritual Progressives

The Network of Spiritual Progressives
A Path to a World of Love and Justice
  • Who We Are
    • History
    • Volunteer or Intern
    • Our Magazine
    • Our Team
      • Contact Us
  • Philosophy
    • Vision
    • Unifying Principles
    • Mission Statement
    • A Path to a World of Love and Justice
      • Introduction
      • A New Bottom Line
      • A Shared Vision of the World We Want
      • Support Families and Build A Caring Economy
      • Personal Responsibility
      • Environmental Responsibility
      • A Love and Justice Oriented Education System
      • A Loving and Just Health Care System
      • Global Peace and Homeland Security Through Generosity
      • Separation of Church, State, and Science
      • A Cooperative and Caring Legal System
      • Ending Racism
      • Balancing Identity Group Struggles and Universal Solidarity
    • Strategy to Achieve a World of Love and Justice
    • Spiritual Leadership
    • Spiritual Activism
    • Empathic Communication
  • Visionary Strategies
    • A New Bottom Line
    • Environmental, Economic and Social Justice
      • Frequently Asked Questions
      • Full Text of the ESRA
      • Tools and Resources
    • Global Peace Plan
    • Israel/Palestine
      • Israel and Palestine Workshop
    • Black Lives Matter
    • Family Friendly Policies
      • The Crisis in Family Life
      • The Family Issue As Key To The Growth of the Right
      • What Really Undermines Family Life?
      • Strengthening the Family
      • Women in Families
      • "Non-Traditional" Family Forms
      • Family Support Networks
      • The Contribution of Religion
      • Political Education
      • The Program for Children
      • The Family Issue as Key to the Growth of the Right
  • Get Involved
    • Events
    • Spiritual Activism Training
      • Spiritual Activism Training for Spiritual Communities
    • Chapters
      • Starter Guide
      • Membership Calls
    • Professional Task-forces
    • Revolutionary Love Book Groups
    • Join the Network
    • Join our Email List
    • Online Petitions
      • Act to Help Reunite Refugee Children and Their Parents
    • Donate
  • Resources
    • Our Podcast
    • Revolutionary Love
    • Faith Training
    • Music
      • Everyone ‘Neath Her Vine and Fig Tree
      • Down By the Riverside
      • NSP Song
      • Imagine (TIKKUN Version)
      • Blessing after the Meal, Rabbi Hanna Tiferet Siegel
      • America the Beautiful
      • We Shall Overcome
      • This Land Is Your Land
      • Ode Yavoe
      • I Ain’t Marching Anymore (by Phil Ochs)
      • The New Internationale
      • Let There Be Peace on Earth (Sy Miller & Jill Jackson)
      • The Times They are a Changing
      • Changes (by Phil Ochs)
      • There but for Fortune (by Phil Ochs)
      • Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream (Ed McCurdy)
      • The Left Hand of God (by Sharon Abreu)
      • It’s Alright Ms (I’m Only Bleeding)
    • Blog
  • Contact Us
Home > Philosophy > A Path to a World of Love and Justice > A Love and Justice Oriented Education System

A Love and Justice Oriented Education System

We will reshape our education system so that it teaches values of love, caring, generosity, intellectual curiosity, tolerance, nonviolence, gratitude, wonder, democratic participation, and environmental responsibility.

We believe that schools need to be an environment where students are supported and encouraged to be loving, kind, and generous; to understand the systemic social, political and environmental injustices, and the threat to the well-being of our planet due to the capitalist ethos that values production, consumption and exploitation over well-being of the people and the planet. We know that our schools can teach these values without abandoning necessary reading and writing skills.

Currently, universities seek to prove their usefulness to government and the public by becoming service stations to society. Faced with a public seeking to reduce their own tax burdens by cutting funding for education, universities have reduced their historic function to introduce students to the richness of Western or global culture, philosophy, history, and social theory and instead have replaced it with a focus on developing the narrow set of skills needed by corporations with whom their graduates might receive employment. As they have become more and more dependent on the wealthy to sustain their existence, they have similarly become more and more detached from their highest educational, moral and spiritual essence. A new bottom line in education challenges this devaluation of our universities and the intellectual life that had once flourished there.

To this end,

  1. We will resist the corporate control of childhood as manifested in child-targeted media, branding, advertising, publishing, and manipulative school curricula. And we will insist that schools foster and support our children’s capacities to be playful, spontaneous, joyous, loving, excited by ideas, emotionally and spiritually intelligent, creative, and compassionate.
  2. We will promote a New Bottom Line in our education system that would foster students’ intellectual, ethical, spiritual, and psychological lives and consciousness, while carefully avoiding the imposition of any particular religious or spiritual tradition.
  3. We will promote teaching of empathy, compassion, psychological self-awareness, understanding of the world and the ways it needs to be healed and changed, the importance of social, economic and environmental justice, the preservation of democracy and human rights, freedom from tyranny, and skills in caring for others.
  4. We will also promote classes that help students celebrate the awe and wonder of the universe we live in such that science classes focus not only on the technical aspects of physics, chemistry and biology, but also on the ability to celebrate and appreciate the incredible planet and universe.

CONTRAST: LIBERAL AGENDA — Liberals focus on getting better pay for teachers and more money for building schools with lower teacher-student ratios without challenging the competitive nature of education and its implicit reinforcement of the meritocratic fantasy that those who are smartest and work the hardest will receive the greatest rewards in adulthood. They’d be far more effective in getting support for these important demands if they gave more attention to the ethical content of what is being taught and the emotional and spiritual environment in which it is taught.

CONTRAST: CONSERVATIVE AGENDA — Conservatives correctly criticize the values that are being taught in our schools (materialism and competitiveness) but fail to note that these values reflect the values of the marketplace that conservatives champion. They propose false solutions whose underlying intent is to dismantle the public school system or at least wildly underfund it and thereby “prove” that everything “public” must be a failure and that the only good thing is the private sector.

Read on to #5, A Loving and Just Health Care System

  • Vision
  • Unifying Principles
  • Mission Statement
  • A Path to a World of Love and Justice
    • Introduction
    • A New Bottom Line
    • A Shared Vision of the World We Want
    • Support Families and Build A Caring Economy
    • Personal Responsibility
    • Environmental Responsibility
    • A Love and Justice Oriented Education System
    • A Loving and Just Health Care System
    • Global Peace and Homeland Security Through Generosity
    • Separation of Church, State, and Science
    • A Cooperative and Caring Legal System
    • Ending Racism
    • Balancing Identity Group Struggles and Universal Solidarity
  • Strategy to Achieve a World of Love and Justice
  • Spiritual Leadership
  • Spiritual Activism
  • Empathic Communication
Connect with UsDonateJoin
Our Megazine - Tikkun
2342 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 1200
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-644-1200
info@spiritualprogressives.org
  • Who We Are
  • Philosophy
  • Visionary Strategies
  • Get Involved
  • Resources
  • Contact Us
SoundcloudPodcastsInstagramYouTubeTwitterFacebook
Copyright © 2023 The Network of Spiritual Progressives. All rights reserved.
Web Design by Chicago's ePageCity.com