Quaker Education
QUAKER EDUCATION
About the Author—Paul A. Lacey was born in Philadelphia in 1934; he joined Philadelphia YM in 1953, having met Quakers through weekend workcamps. He has been in civil liberties, civil rights, peace & East-West concerns. He has published articles on teaching, literary criticism & faculty development. This pamphlet more fully develops themes examined in the pamphlets Quakers & the Use of Power (#241) & Leading & Being Led (#264). The author believes that the Inward Teacher is a powerful metaphor for understanding the experience of leading & being led & thus the order of power Quakers should use in shaping their institutional lives.
How good a society does human nature permit? How good a human nature does society permit? Abraham Maslow
“Every healthy effort is directed from the inward to the outward world.” Johann W. von Goethe
“A man possesses of learning only so much as comes out of him in action.” Francis of Assisi
[Introduction]—Very little comes to us solely by instinct, and even where we have innate capacities, we must be taught how to use them. Teaching and learning make up a single intricate process of interchange in relationship, interplay between people and with content. Because we must learn virtually everything we know, the image of the teacher is a powerful one. If the truth makes us free, our liberators are teachers.
Perhaps in no tradition is [seeing] God as Teacher more central than in Quakerism. George Fox describes his ministry as turning people toward the Teacher within. This is the Inward Christ, imprisoned until we set Him free. What can we know about the nature of the Teacher? The Teaching? What is the content & method of the Teaching? How can we take the reality of the Inward Teacher seriously, in how we teach & learn? What relevance does the Inward Teacher metaphor have for all forms of education, the disciplines and basic skills which are needed to live effectively in the world?
The Inward Teacher is the only Teacher; preaching, silence, scripture are all valuable, but each can only prepare & point the way to the true Teacher. The Teacher & teaching are known directly, experimentally or experientially. To know experientially is to find correspondence between the law written on our hearts & put in our minds & what is happening in our daily lives. Though arriving at the power to act is painful & long-delayed, when one has capacity to follow the Teacher, the teaching itself is simple. Rather than looking down on the sin, which will only swallow us up, we are to look to the Light, which will let us see over the sins & transgressions.
2 strenuous actions are associated with worship or waiting on the Lord: minding and answering. To mind the spirit is to yield up to it, to be corrected and guided by it, to test actions and impulses against its leading. To answer “that of God” or “the witness” in others is to behave in such a way that they are turned toward their Inward Teacher; it is not the conscience. The conscience must be taught by the Inward Teacher. Answering that of God in another comes through minding it in oneself. Minding and answering are reciprocal, dialogic actions. They reflect the social or communal nature of the Inward Teacher’s work.
The Inward Teacher and the Community of Faith—The community gathered together for the purpose of being led could and must practice discernment to test when an individual or the group was rightly led. [In communal power] there is: the power of knowledge, confirmed by a common witness; the power of unity, mutual support and encouragement; and the capacity [and confidence] to act, because the worshipping community affirms it. [Community] decision-making is, 1st of all, a search for clearness, a full understanding of what the Teacher calls us to do. Individuals may be making a stock response to a situation they believe they know all about, but where further information would point to new responses.
The Quaker business method is looking for the gathered wisdom of the worshipping community, both the practical experience & good sense of the meeting, & the insights of those seasoned in placing matters in the Light or before the Teacher. [Is the individual/group ready to put self-will aside? Is the leading consistent with other past leadings of the spirit, which “isn’t changeable”? Will the proposed action deepen the fruits of the spirit? We are enabled to turn our attention to the Teacher when we are among people who are already minding Him. The Teacher teaches us individually & collectively. The teaching differs from person to person, because people are in different stages of understanding, or are called to respond differently to what is being taught; [people receive different “measures” of the Light]. By being channels through which the Teacher may reach others, by minding & answering the witness within, we participate in the teachings of the Inward Christ.
Natural and Spiritual Learning—Higher and lower knowledge (sacred and secular knowledge) are not contradictory but complementary goals for education. Fox objects that the foundations of the [medicine], divinity, and law professions are false, so that what can be built on them cannot be true. They are in need of reformation, turning to the wisdom, equity & perfect law of God. [Fox says] that being bred at Oxford is not enough to make one a minister. Ministry is a gift from Christ, the result of turning to the Teacher & the true teaching. The educated Penington distinguishes what he calls the “knowledge & comprehension of things” from the feeling life, which he believes we can only come to by letting go of reasoning and disputing. Robert Barclay, [likewise educated] says that “when the self has been silenced, God may speak, and the good seed may arise.”
The features of schools organized in accord with Quaker principles were community based on the model of family, sharing practical work, simplicity & a spirit of reverence & sincerity, peaceable living, some degree of equality among student & faculty, & on education as a means to the end of growth in the religious life. The most common feature of Friends schools was that children were regarded as having the potential to be nurtured. The Inward Teacher lives in them as a birthright. Quaker schools will have an ethos in which respect and cooperation are valued, in which formal learning will be embedded in deep spiritual milieu. Nothing in Quaker expectations led them to expect what we would call creativity from their students. They had no philosophical or theological foundation for connecting the “natural” sources of inspiration with the inspiration of the Inward Teacher.
Witnesses to the Voice—Are there other kinds of learning where it’s necessary to assert the work of an Inward Teacher to explain how the learning happened? Donald Hall says in every human there’s what he calls the vatic [oracular] voice. For most people this voice speaks only in dreams, & mostly unremembered dreams. The vatic voice takes us by surprise; what it gives us is incomplete but original. It’s within us; we don’t own it or determine it. Its speaking activates processes within which have 2 results—concrete products & changed lives. It also leads to health, feeling good, self-understanding and the capacity to love other people.
Denise Levertov writes that there is an inner voice, a reader within who must be spoken to, in order for a poem to be well done. [This] reader is that aspect of the self which can be detached about what one has produced. The poet is enabled to meet the needs of the reader out there by facing her own deepest needs. A triple communion takes place between: maker & needer within; maker & needer without; human & divine in both poet & reader. The divine is called forth, “summoned by needing & making.” Hall’s vatic voice is an inward teacher. Levertov focuses on the labor to achieve communion between needer & maker as the means by which the divine is called.
[Hall and Levertov use non-Judeo-Christian language to avoid obscuring the wonder of the creative process]. With both poets, something must occur akin to the minding and answering which Friends describe as the appropriate response to Christ the Inward Teacher. Socrates says that the dialogue in pursuit of wisdom, can only be pursued among friends, so [it is natural that] he should frequently discuss the nature of friendship and love. He is the champion of the examined life, the life of dialogue, and the life of love. Many other philosophers, scientists, and artists speak in similar ways about how the germinal insight or the finished work come into being. [Through the work of psychologists] we have come to anticipate that messages, leadings, creation can come from the depths of our being and from the wells of knowledge which the common human heritage. The voice calls us to knowledge of [and connection with] both world out there and the world in here.
One Voice or Many?—How can we best prepare ourselves to hear & respond to the inner voice which may be available to each of us? Is every voice the same voice? The content of teaching which Fox, Barclay, or Penington identify with Inward Teacher gives us little warrant for imagining a poem, a scientific discovery or a philosophical insight as the product of such an encounter with Him. I am aware that identification of the divine exclusively with the Christian revelation is both difficult and offensive for many people. For example, I can practice conceiving of God as feminine, but perhaps this will always feel like translation for me. I may not correct my companion’s experience by substituting my favorite pronouns for hers. Nor may she correct my pronouns. Neither may we evade the challenge of these contrasting ways by claiming that they do not matter.
Metaphors, especially those for the divine seem to choose us, for they come as our discovery about ultimate reality, and how we understand our purposes in life. Metaphors have the force of truth but not the whole truth, for by giving emphasis they also omit. Perhaps we can be content with saying that wherever people experience an inner voice which unites Truth and Love, Guidance and Comfort, which makes those who hear it know joy, peace, kindness, care for others and a sense of their own value, this Spirit is what Christians understand by Christ, though it is authentic under [whatever] name people have used to enter into dialogue with it.
These [approaches] have in common: a powerful encounter which has the character of a conversation; that humans are capable to hear and respond to the inner voice, to participate in a dialogue with what is frequently perceived to be the divine; a similarity with other important experiences having to do with relationships; producing a work, a calling, a changed relationship with others. When we are open to the Inward Teacher, we know joy, wholeness and renewed capacity to love other people.
Leading in and Drawing Out—We hope our students can find personal fulfillment and satisfaction, can discover creative powers in themselves, can come to love learning for its own sake, and be prepared for doing well eventually in the world of work. Approaches to educational goals and pedagogical methods tend to divide according to 2 emphases; one approach stresses the integrity of the discipline and the truth-content of the material; the other holds before us the issues of accommodating a subject to the condition of the learner. [From different researchers we learn different aspects of educational development]. Developmental education continually asks what the student is ready for now, how content and discipline can be best accommodated to her or his needs and abilities. As teachers we try to be both student- and discipline-centered, and both our satisfactions and our frustration grow from attempting to meet these 2 sets of complex demands simultaneously. When it is faithful to its foundations, Quaker education is neither student-centered nor disciplined centered; it is inward centered. The child will learn by having the knowledge led into its consciousness, and then through having it drawn out.
Welcoming the Inward Teacher—The most significant question for teaching in Quaker education is: What can we do to open our classrooms, our schools, ourselves, to the possibility of such an encounter? 1st, hold out the expectation that human beings can hear and follow the inner voice, that it is an expression of our deepest hopes, the response to our truest needs. [It is possible] to discern the true from the false voice, which does not bring us into more loving relations with others. 2nd, provide occasions [i.e. meetings for worship, where we can invite the Inward Teacher]. Those times will require planning and perhaps even the introduction of music, singing or reading as aids to center down. Being still is a way we can better attend to what someone else has to say or to let our minds give us images and ideas worth attending to.
3rd, we can fill the curriculum with works & activities which reveal the Inward Teacher’s presence in their fabric. John Yungblut says that a critical aspect of religious education is teaching a child its inter-relatedness with all of nature. And to learn how a world-wide community of scientists works with integrity & cooperation is to be richly prepared for discovering the ethical imperatives of one’s own life. Social science has similar benefits. Abraham Maslow asks: How good a society does human nature permit? How good a human nature does society permit? Without neglecting the content & methods of any discipline taught, the Quaker school curriculum must also allow connections to be made with ethical question & in relation to the spiritual dimensions of life.
4th, the faculty, staff, and administration should be people who live their lives in opening to the Inward Teacher and obedience to His or Her leadings. We encourage our students to listen for the Inward Teacher by showing them living examples of people who do. And faculty and staff should be supported in finding the practices and disciplines which enrich their inner lives and the [means to practice] what enriches them. The good [outward] teacher tries hard to be available to students’ needs without making them dependent.
5th, we can search for the methods & disciplines which best open us to the inner voice. [It could be] writing letters to spiritual companions, poems essays, personal journals. The journal must be one which does not demand to be written in every day, nor pursue set themes; it is important not to over-solemnize writing. Learning to look at art & listening to music can aid in writing. Thomas Merton knew the importance of warming the intellect through the senses. The individual’s appropriate rhythm of leading in and drawing out needs to be found.
6th, we can look for ways balancing inwardness with useful outward activity. Meister Eckhart says we can only spend in good works what we earn in contemplation. [One problem that arises] is we have become the self-made man who worships his creator. Goethe reminds us that “every healthy effort is directed from inward to out-ward world.” Schools requiring community participation in food preparation, dish washing & school maintenance, & those which require a service project outside of school are addressing balance between inward & out-ward. Francis of Assissi says “A man possesses of learning only so much as comes out of him in action.” Self knowledge must bear fruit; it isn’t enough to face honestly that one is selfish & cruel; one must resolve not to be so in the future. [These teaching practices will help students] touch the deepest well-springs of education.
Returning to the Source—It is all so simple. For every complex problem there is a simple solution, it has been said, usually wrong. [But] learning goes from the simple to the complex, and we are suspicious of anyone who would tell us that all we need to know is simple. How then can we deal with the embarrassingly simple truths on which Quakerism rests? All we need know about the living the centered spiritual life we can learn by turning within ourselves, where Christ the Inward Teacher waits to instruct us.
We must begin at the beginning, with an unfamiliar alphabet, the rudiments of vocabulary & grammar for which we have nothing to compare it to. We must work hard to translate other pages in the book, & as we do, we learn the context for our single page. How is the Inward Teacher known? In joy & health, in loneliness & alienation, but also in community. Wherever we are is the starting place for encountering the voice that can speak to our condition. Fortunately it is our nature as human beings, & it is God’s nature, that we reach what Levertov calls triple communion, within ourselves, with other people, and with that of God within each of us. Taking those promises seriously is the work of Quaker education. It is the bright page which leads us into all books.
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9. Quaker Education Theory and Practice (by Howard H. Brinton; 1940 [1967 reprint])
About the Author—Howard & Anna Brinton arrived at Pendle Hill in the summer of 1936 with a solid background of academic achievement at the colleges of Mills & Earlham, & became co-directors of a Quaker fusion of school & community. They retired in the 1950s & lived on campus as Directors Emeriti. Anna died in 1969; Howard continued to serve by lecturing, writing, and simply being; he died in 1973.
Preface to the 3rd Edition—Quaker Education in Theory & Practice was written & published in 1940, [perhaps between the author's 4th & 5th school year as Pendle Hill's co-Director with his wife Anna]. It is reissued for the 4th time at the request of Friends' Council on Education. The clear-cut philosophy of education worked out by the Society of Friends was based solidly on religious faith & practice. We must seek today in a changed world for suitable applications of old principles, though in some instances the original applications are still valid.
Quaker schools should exhibit something of the unique character [& principles] of their predecessors or admit they no longer represent the Society of Friends. Quaker educational principles grow out of a special type of community different from [the communities] of the world around it. The Society of Friend's 3 communal activities are meeting for worship, meeting for business, & the school. The author's Swarthmore Lecture (London, 1931) covers the 1st activity; his William Penn lecture (PA, 1939) the 2nd; and the 3rd in this [booklet].
CHAPTER I: The Aims of Education—What kind of life is most worth living? What constitutes the best preparation for it? Education more than any other undertaking requires an answer to these questions. If we are educating young people for the best possible kind of life, that life must be defined, which includes a complete philosophy of life. [Goal-labels of] "good citizen," "worthy character," "proper [role] in society," & "success in life," are met with the questions: By what standard do we judge someone to be any of these things? Why should one strive for any of these things when those with visible status [strive for different things]?
Confucianism, Judaism, Calvinism, Catholicism, Communism, & Fascism are examples of social & religious [patterns of thought] in which education hasn't lacked philosophies of life adequate to define its purpose. Quakerism's philosophy of life is what we will use here. American democracy [does not] have a [comprehensive] philosophy of life that will enable popular education to define its goal & develop its method. Democracy is confined to politics, & is generally absent in industry, commerce, most schools, bureaucracy, military and religion.
Education's express aims change with changing times, though there are certain constants. There have been minimum requirements like reading writing & arithmetic. Colonial schools of America recognized the interests of religion as primary. Vocational skills were handled in apprenticeships outside of school. Educational programs [took on] training skills as family & community cease to function in this area. Societal behavior, methods, knowledge, & intellectual development, have been educational goals. They don't of themselves define the good life.
Educators in schools have 2 objectives: tools for success; social efficiency. Sometimes success was applied in a broad sense [to the intangible aspects of life]. Too often this motive degenerates into a concentration upon material rewards, [and a corresponding application of industrial methods] to achieve [success measureable in statistics]. The school building became too obviously like a factory and pupils like a product.
Progressive education was the reaction to this. Book-learning, demonstrations and lectures were de-emphasized, & age appropriate procedures, and "self-directed spontaneous, preferably group activities were introduced. Opportunities for the release of creative powers, original thought and action are provided. In the new curriculum the school itself aims to become a real, life-like community. Freedom and individuality that are consistent with cooperation in a democratic society are developed. The newer education emphasizes social efficiency.
Catholic, Christian education is God-centered and church-centered, not child-centered and democracy-centered. Friends believe that youth should be brought up in obedience to inward divine guidance. The new education centers the will in the collective will of human society. The Quaker view is that standards of behavior ought to be derived from society as it ought to be, not as it is. Currently, the goal of education is determined by the scale of values which prevails at the moment. The student may learn in school that dishonesty does not pay, while the larger community [teaches a modified version of that lesson]. [Pure] democracy may prove impracticable when put to the test of [community] experience.
To the social goal is often added the somewhat inconsistent individual goal that education must promote individual development. [The life philosophy] sought is whatever the often immature individual conceives of as satisfying one's desires & interests. Such anarchy calls forth its opposite: authoritative & scientific control. Without an implicit goal, current education must rely on external mechanical standards like credits & grades. The Quaker school prepared for a special kind of life embodied by the Society of Friends. However imperfectly it was exemplified by the Quaker community, it was rendered sufficiently definite to be aimed at.
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The Quaker school 1st taught the fundamental subjects. Such useful subjects were means & not ends. The end was a life modeled after the ways of God's Kingdom, not the ways of the world. This life's source is in obedience not to man nor the voice of society, but to hints which heedful human spirits derive from the Infinite Spirit. Quakers didn't train children to adjust themselves to society but to stand apart from it & even to bear witness against it. These principles were concretely though partially expressed as a pattern of divine & human relation-ship in a living religious group which was in close contact with the school. The school was both the vehicle for the transmission of the cultural heritage of this specialized community & a means of exploring it & bettering it.
Werner Jaeger defines education as "the process by which a community perceives and transmits its physical and intellectual character. For the individual passes away but the type remains ... Its history is affected by changes in the values current within the community. When these values are stable, education is firmly based; when they are [weakened the educational process gradually becomes inoperative]." Quakerism and Puritanism have both shared in the general collapse of standards in American life. The Quaker school does not quite know what it ought to be doing. There was a time when Quakerism had a definite philosophy of life and a definite standard of living. The purpose of education was to provide training for that kind of living. To define that purpose we must 1st define the nature of Quakerism.
CHAPTER II: The Nature of Quakerism—The Society of Friends' primary doctrine concerns Inward Light; secondary is meeting for worship & business; tertiary is social outreach implications of the meeting's community. God's presence is felt at the human soul's apex as both immanent, God sharing in one's life, & transcendent, infinitely beyond, above all human life. Human endeavor should be to merge one's will with Divine Will as far as possible, & by obedience become an instrument of God's power in the world. Such a doctrine has existed in all great religions. Human beings are infinitely valuable & capable of right action. [There is a timely & a eternal gospel]. Only when the eye of time & eternity see a single picture does Truth acquire depth.
Secondary doctrines of Quakerism are unique & different from other sects. In Quakerism's meetings, individual experience of God's light & leading becomes a group experience by which Divine Presence is a uniting, coordinating Power. It unifies the group into an organic whole in which various parts work toward a single end. In meeting for worship, Godward direction of attention is emphasized; in meeting for business the human-ward. The best meetings for worship dissolve hard shells of self-centeredness & life flows inward & outward, Godward & human-ward. Anything said comes from a deep source & is a simple, brief statement of insight born in silence.
In the meeting for business the Society of Friends makes its decisions regarding its own affairs and its work in the world around it. The only official is a clerk whose duty is to record the decisions of the meeting; there is no voting. If unity is not reached no decision is made. The final decision is often a new and unexpected result brought about by the synthesis of different points of view and submitting to a harmonizing power operating from a superhuman level. The search for truth and unity is sometimes a long and difficult one, but the goal when achieved is worth the patient effort. Unity is always possible to those who go deep enough.
The tertiary or social doctrines of the Society of Friends evolve out of the 1st 2 sets of doctrine. The relationships developed thus far in the process, tend to become a complete pattern of life to be lived outside the meeting as well as within it. The meeting both creates and exemplifies the kind of behavior which ought to prevail. All the social doctrines can be derived from Inward Light and teachings of Jesus. The particular sequence of primary producing secondary, and secondary conditioning the tertiary social testimonies results in the social actions characteristic of the Society of Friends. The individual becomes slowly sensitized to the world's needs. When one is strong enough, one can be set out to grow in a less favorable environment.
Community, harmony, equality and simplicity are here singled out for consideration. COMMUNITY is present in the attempt of the meeting to become a unified closely integrated group of persons, a living whole which is more than the sum of its parts. There is spiritual and intellectual group life, and sometimes material interdependence. HARMONY is perhaps a better word than "pacifism." It might be called creative peaceableness. It exists as a positive power by which an inner appeal is made to the best that is in one.
EQUALITY is the opportunity for all to take part in the worship or business regardless of age sex, or official position. There are obvious differences. Every opinion must be taken into account according to truth & not to the status of the person who offers it. SIMPLICITY, as Friends have used the word, has had various meanings at different times in Quaker history. Mainly, it is the absence of superfluity, It often means sincerity, integrity, practicality and consistency. Simplicity in speech meant the use of simple, direct, unadorned statements.
COMMUNITY becomes a testimony which aims to increase the interdependence of people everywhere. This has expressed itself in aiding the poor & improving the conditions of depressed elements in society. For the past 3 centuries, Friends have been engaged in some form of relief work in war or industrial conflict. Aid is given for physical relief & with a view to restoring human relationships destroyed by conflict. Today Friends look at the social order & what experimental measures to use to right a particular wrong as way opens. HARMONY appeared at an early date in the refusal to take part in war. Friends are still far from agreement as to the extent to which this principle can be applied. God's will in the conscience must take precedence over the state's laws.
EQUALITY of sex, race & class was a doctrine that developed early. It included not showing deference to social "superiors" in word or actions, the wife not vowing obedience, giving up slaves, & working for women's, Negro's, & Indian's rights. It meant that the rights & opportunities of all should be equalized, for aren't all temples of the living God. SIMPLICITY is a more personal & less social doctrine. Judicial oaths, implying 2 standards of truth-telling, weren't in accordance with "the simplicity of Truth." Friends succeeded in altering the law to permit affirmations. Simplicity was exhibited in simple, direct statements. Plainness of living included plain dress, which became formalized during the 18th & 19th centuries. Music & painting, drama & works of fiction are no longer considered inconsistent with the simplicity of truth as well as time-wasting; art has a peculiar kind of truth of its own. Simplicity is applied to the concern about the increasing busy-ness & complexity of life.
To what extent can a type of behavior, developed within a small comparatively homogeneous community, become a standard for action outside that community? Others live by a double standard. Quakers have 1st built up the small community of the meeting, in which they can be fairly consistent. From that point they have gone into the world depending on divine guidance to indicate how much consistency is required of them. To what extent can a Quaker do business & still adhere strictly to the standards of one's religion? Can a Quaker educational community be conducted on principles of the Quaker meeting for worship or business with the community, harmony, equality & simplicity doctrines that go along with them? Must a community of immature persons be assumed incapable of these standards, & be dealt with by a different standard?
CHAPTER III: Outline History of Quaker Education—In 1668, George Fox advised setting up 2 schools, 1 boys', 1 girls'. In 1691, there were 15 Friends schools. By 1700, sending children to Friends day or boarding school was an established practice; children were in care of the meeting. Help was early & continuously given to poor Friends to have their children at Friends' schools or apprenticed to Friends. It appears in 1759 that there were 20 boarding schools (16 boys, 4 girls), not all just for Friends; Ireland had some also. The need for a boarding school for those "not in affluence" led in 1779 to establishing Ackworth school, co-ed with 300 students, under Yearly Meeting (YM) care. English Quarterly Meetings (QM) & American YMs did the same.
Some of the English schools, with their dates of founding and 1967 enrollment are: Saffron Walden, 1702-2017 (380), co-ed; Ackworth, 1779 (420), co-ed; Bootham, 1829 (260), boys; The Mount, 1831 (250), girls, and Lancaster (260), boys. Overseas are Hobart Friends School in Tasmania, 1850 (1,000), under Australia YM; Wanganui in New Zealand, 1920 (110); separate boys' and girls' schools in Itarsi, India.
The most characteristically Quaker education institution in England is Woodbrooke Settlement near Birmingham, established 1903 for adults. Lectures are on religious, social & international subjects. The curriculum is meant to help students be better fitted for responsibility in the Society of Friends. Adult education is promoted through summer schools, week-end lecture schools, & travelling lecturers. In the Adult School Movement, initiated in 1845, English Friends contributed significantly. There is now a larger scale of Adult Education provided publicly; Friends are involved with this program too. 70 of 1,400 Friends teachers are serving Friends' Schools.
Friends Education Council is a representative body of London YM, concerned with many Friends' educational activities. It controls Friends' School & University grants. It is concerned with religious education among the Society's children. It tries to keep in touch with Friend teachers. Surviving Irish Friends' boarding schools are Waterford in Eire (230), co-ed; Lisburn in Northern Ireland (600). English, Dutch, & German Friends established a co-ed International School (Quakerschool Eerde) at Beverweerd, Werkhoven, Netherlands, 1934 (140).
[Quaker Education in America]: 1. THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL—Pioneer Quaker communities frequently set up schools immediately after setting up meetings. London advices on education and apprentice-ship had a strong influence in the New World; schools were in homes, meeting houses, or a building near meeting. RI, NY, NJ, PA, MD, VA, NC, SC meetings record educational concerns in the early 1700's. In 1701, William Penn granted a charter to an already existing school for the rich and poor.
When Friends began to migrate into Ohio and Indiana early in the 19th century, schoolhouses were built as early as meeting houses, sometimes earlier. Indiana YM reported 96 Friends schools in 1850, with an enrollment of 3,482; by 1890, no Friends' elementary schools were left in Indiana; they were transferred to public authority. Western Friends turned to academies and high schools years before the state did.
[Quaker Education in America]: 2. THE ACADEMY OR SECONDARY SCHOOL—The 2nd stage in Quaker education was the academy, seminary or higher school. These higher schools presented wide variation in the subjects taught and the degree of advancement for which they provided. Sometimes an elementary school developed into an academy because of teachers trained and interested in certain higher subjects. Most YM schools still survive or they have become colleges.
[The more notable ones are]: Friends' School, Providence, RI, now known as Moses Brown School, 1784 in Portsmouth, 1819 in Providence (543 enrollment); Westtown School, PA, 1799 (511); Friends' Boarding School [a.k.a. Olney Friend's School], 1875 (100); New Garden Boarding School, now Guilford College; Richmond Boarding School, IN, 1847, now Earlham College; George School, 1893, at Newtown, PA (453). Scattergood Boarding School, 1890-1931, at West Branch, IA, reopened as Scattergood School in 1944, (62). New ones have been set up in Sandy Springs, MD; Argenta, B.C.; and John Woolman School at Nevada City, CA.
QMs occasionally set up boarding school [4 cited]. MM set up some [1 cited]. Others are owned by individuals or groups of Friends [9 cited]. Chester County, PA had at least 8 personally owned Quaker academies. In the west, Friends' academies originated in the 2nd half of the 19th century. About 1880, there were 20 in IN. In their best days, western academies were important focal points for intellectual life in the Society. In the South also there were many Quaker academies, most of them under QM. By 1885 there were at least 10 in NC. There are 8 in Philadelphia [schools cited]. [These 8] day schools maintain an excellent standard of instruction as college preparatory institutions. The total 1967 enrollment in all Friends schools of all grades is about 13,020 pupils, with a higher percentage of boys than girls. More than 12% are members of the Society of Friends or have at least one parent who is a member. The Friends' Council on Education in Philadelphia acts as an Advisory coordinating body for all Friends' educational institutions in America and facilitates the exchange of information.
3. THE COLLEGE—The 3rd stage in the development of education for the Society was the foundation of colleges. American colonial colleges existed mainly for the clergy. [Friend's development of ministers took a different path] than an institutional program [and so] felt no immediate need for colleges. The great need among Friends for higher institutions of learning led in 1830 to 5 anonymous essays in "The Friend" and in 1833 to the establishment of Haverford School which became Haverford College in 1856 (535 enrollment). Guilford, NC, became a college in 1889 (892); Earlham at Richmond, IN became a college in 1859 (1,132). Swarthmore in PA began in 1869 (1,010), as did William Penn College in Iowa in 1873 (858); George Fox College, Newburg, OR, 1891 (376); Whittier College, Whittier, CA, 1901 (1,995). [6 others were cited]. These colleges are under the direction of Boards of Manager appointed by YM with the exception of the independent Haverford, Swarthmore, and Whittier. Joseph Taylor endowed Bryn Mawr in 1873, intending it to be fully in the Quaker tradition.
4. THE SCHOOL FOR ADULTS—The 4th stage of Quaker education in America was development in the 20th century of centers of study for those beyond more formal education. This stage of adult education began in America with the Haverford summer schools of 1900 and 1904. In 1918 the John Woolman School at Swarthmore was founded to be somewhat like Woodbrooke in England, with courses in religious and social subjects; it was discontinued in 1927.
CHAPTER IV: Quaker Educational Policies in the Past—Friends social or tertiary testimonies are extensions of behaviors cultivated in meetings for worship or business, & applied to areas outside the meetings, like school, college, or center for study. It is noteworthy that community, harmony, equality, & simplicity have in varying degrees persisted throughout. They have resulted in the definite educational policies of: sense of belonging; religiously guarded education; dedicated, concerned teachers; non-violent discipline; inward sense of rightness; equality of sexes, races, and classes; moderation; scholastic integrity; practical subjects.
1. Development in the Students of a Sense of Belonging to the Quaker Community—The Society of Friends in the 18th and 19th centuries resembled a large family in its internal intimacy and interdependence. Students had various opportunities to witness this first-hand and to attend meeting for worship. At year end students were examined in the presence of, if not by committee members. The Quaker child came to have a sense of belonging to a "peculiar people." Co-education made possible acquaintances, resulting in marriage.
Quaker communities sought to reproduce itself; the school was one means in the perpetuating process. New Garden Boarding School's plan addressed this in 1831. They admitted non-Friends in 1841, but gave it up because students were ignorant of Quaker principles & had habits fixed in customs different from Friends. Non-Friends were readmitted to New Garden, Haverford & other Friends' Schools for financial reasons; other reasons include decreasing birth rate with a decreasing membership. As the uniqueness waned in the evangelical west & sense of community waned in the east outside the school, schools lost one of their main reasons for existence. Sense of community is still a factor in some Friends' schools, most notably [Olney] Friends' School in Barnesville, OH & Scattergood at West Branch, IA. Sense of community was allied with a sense of security & continuity. As an individual, the Quaker could do little, but by working in & through a group, which was one's larger self, this same individual could do much. Quaker education related individual life to a more than individual purpose.
2. A Religiously Guarded Education—Haverford School in 1830, stated a need for "a guarded education in the higher branches of learning, combining requisite literary instruction with a religious care over the morals & manners of the scholars." Quaker schools must shield the children from contrary influences, such as the wrong teacher or the wrong text book. Some Friends went into the field of textbook authorship. George Fox with Ellis Hookes wrote some. Anthony Benezet wrote a "1st book for children," the rules of which became the rules of many Friends' schools. Goold Brown in 1823 wrote the same kind, & it was used in NY until 1900. George Fox the younger, John Woolman, & the Ackworth school also wrote this kind of book [22 others cited]. By far the most popular Quaker writer of grammars, spellers & readers was Lindley Murray (1745-1826), called "the father of English grammar," whose books went through from 50 to more than 100 editions. At least 6 textbooks used in NY Friends' School were by Quaker authors. A history textbook in which war wasn't emphasized was urgently needed, but it wasn't until 1900 that Allen C. Thomas, wrote one. Barclay's Apology & Catechism, Penn's Reflections and Maxims & Advice to His Children were used as readers.
A "guarded education" meant, for more than 150 years, exclusion of music, drama, dancing & the fine arts as "vain customs of this world." Light & frivolous conversation was reproved. Restrictions originally arose in middle class society. They came to be an expression of what might be called Quaker realism, dependence on fact rather than emotion & imagination. This realism was evident throughout Quaker educational policy. Fiction portrayed a non-existent world. Music wasn't "in the Truth" for it stirred up feelings that corresponded to no objective facts & resulted in no action. They feared teaching music was "preparation of our young folk to practice it in our meetings." It is said of Dolly Madison that she was taught to ignore graceful accomplishment most thought necessary. Sincerity & simplicity produced [grace & dignity] which were essential elements in Quaker character.
Quaker teachers have now discovered the necessity of educating feeling, imagination, & aesthetics within school experience. The child of today who lives too much of the time in a fictitious world may find it difficult to "submit to the operation of Truth." The emphasis of the Society of Friends' religion upon direct experience rather than on [solely products of the reasoning mind] presents a difficult teaching problem. The Quaker school, although it made no pretense of preparing ministers, did tend to develop concerned Friends, some of whom would become more competent ministers because of their Bible, Quaker literature & practice education. The religious motive in education was hidden & seldom explicitly stated until late in the history of Quaker education.
Some meetings would hold "Youths' Meetings" at irregular intervals; some meetings held them quarterly. [1 17th century, 3 19th century and 4 early- to mid-20th century books were cited]. The memorizing of Biblical passages was intimately connected with the method of Quaker worship. In the silence the language of scripture would rise up in one's mind fraught with a meaning more compelling and illuminating than if it had been presented from lectern or pulpit. This method of teaching has been around a long time. Religion truly was one of the 4 R's of Quaker education but its teacher was not mortal. Divine intimations could not be heard unless the student was protected from influences arising out of a lower source. Anthony Benezet writes: "Ought not the educating and training of the youth, both with relation to time and eternity, next to our more immediate duty to God, be the chief concern of every one that really desires the welfare and enlargement of the borders of Zion?"
Beginning teachers are prepared by teaching and study at the school under the guidance of experienced teachers as apprentices. The scarcity of properly qualified teachers in Friends' schools was one factor leading to the establishment 1st of boarding schools and later of teacher colleges. Swarthmore College was created with this in mind. 100 of the 1st 400 students at New Garden Boarding School became teachers; other boarding schools had similar results. There are now as many as 1,000 teachers in the membership of London YM. Anthony Benezet wrote: "It seems to me that our principles, which in the [midst of corruption] seems to prohibit our meddling in offices, naturally point out to us as a people rather than others, to serve God & country in education of youth."
4. Non-violent Discipline & Methods—In early Friends' schools severe discipline was rigidly enforced, sometimes by corporal punishment. [Westtown & Haverford were examples of that style of discipline]. Authoritarian methods conformed to educational theories of the time in schools & families. They were used in the primitive Indiana Friends' school, which were 1st to put aside the rod. In 1839 Friends in England reported that corporal punishment was no longer used in Friends' schools. Sarah Grubb advocated workability of the law of love.
John Lancaster put most of the instruction in the care of the older pupils. He advises: "The teacher should be only a silent spectator and overseer. The less the pupils hear the voice of the teacher the better they obey him." The Lancastrian system was used widely, in New York, Baltimore, and Russia. Prizes & awards as inducement to study were seen as "cherishing the spirit of pride & love of praise," & were discouraged in Quaker schools. For Friends reward was the heavenly experience & was something to be enjoyed here & now. Friends' schools should be calm, unhurried & free from strain; nearly all Friends' schools were.
5. Appeal to the Inward Sense of Rightness—Inward Light shines into the conscience of children & adults. As the individual becomes sensitive & obedient to Divine Light, reliability & insight develops. Sarah Grubb writes: "Religious concerns can't be carried forward without order & method. When [right rules & method] are found they call for great care ... to keep them [from being something] not in the spirit ... but [something] made perfect in the flesh ... a finespun system of positive rules, untinctured with faith in divine aid's sufficiency." Most Friends' schools have been [slow] to keep abreast with allowances for individuality & less regimentation.
Conscience, as informed by the Light within, is a collective as well as individual phenomenon. The individual student must test one's own insight through the insights of the whole Society of Friends. The Calvinistic "human depravity" resulted in an attempt to make children righteous by the application of moral rules & religious creeds. Edward Parrish wrote: "The innate innocence of children as distinguished from the dogma of original sin ... furnishes the key to that method of development which is [being] recognized by enlightened educators."
The historic Quaker position is between the extremes of Calvinism & Progressivism. A child is simply innocent, having evil propensities which pull one down & good propensities which pull one up. The basis for "religiously guarded education" is to give every opportunity for the good principle in the soul to be heard and followed and as little opportunity as possible for the evil principle to be heard and followed. Quaker autobiographies show 1st memories of hearing the Divine Voice between the ages of 7 and 10. A mother is imagined to say: "Thou must mind, my dear, that within thee, [the Spirit of God], that secretly inclines thee to be good and warns thee of the evil thou art going to do in time for thee to let it alone." John Woolman writes: "Conduct toward children that tends toward their Acquaintance with Divine Light and strengthens them in Obedience therein, appears to me to be a Duty on all of us." John Bellers wrote: "They are capable of being saints on earth and angels in heaven."
[In considering morality, Quakers envision] humans hovering in their reason between Light of God and evil desires. To help one's pupils overcome evil, the educator must know how to help them turn their attention that way. [In this regard Phipps believes reason isn't enough, & sees the need for] "the application of a superior Principle." Quaker schools should be neither authoritarian like the Puritans nor anarchistic like ultra-progressives. It begins with rules & regulations, keeping in mind that the object of moral education is to make external rules unnecessary. The higher way can only be achieved with small units & thoroughly dedicated, enlightened teachers.
6. Equal Education of Both Sexes—Friends' equality of the sexes carried over to the schools. Boys & girls were at 1st instructed separately in a single school. Friends noted difficulties in conducting a coed school when a very small percentage of the patronage and enrollment are Friends. The YM Boarding School was simply a family on a large scale, where the usual Quaker family customs were faithfully carried out. Friends were for a long time almost alone in solving the difficult problems associated with coed boarding schools. All Quaker colleges are coed except Haverford, of which Bryn Mawr College was designed to be the feminine counterpart.
Friends early employed women as teachers. It was the hardships of maintaining "one-room schools ... rather than discrimination that kept men teachers in the majority of Quaker communities. [Quaker women's position on the public platform] had undoubtedly a liberalizing effect on women's position in the 19th century. Until very recently it was customary in Friends' boarding schools to enlist a husband & wife as superintendent & matron, as well as representatives of the school committee. The same tendency is seen today in AFSC workcamps.
7. Equality in Education of Races and Classes—George Fox wrote: "Let your Light shine among the Indians, the Blacks and the Whites that ye may answer the truth in them." Fox asked Friends in Barbadoes to "teach, instruct and admonish Negroes, Tawnies and Indians." Freed slaves of Friends were being educated either in Friends' homes, in Friends schools with white children, or in Negro schools like those Philadelphia set up in 1770 and 1786, or Haddonfield in 1794. From 1760 on Virginia and Baltimore YM regularly contain references to the religious instruction of Negroes. Maryland began the same process in 1778.
Quakers were very involved with the Freedmen's Association after the Civil War. In Baltimore a meeting house was used as a Negro Normal School. What Philadelphia did in 1786, Indiana did between 1834-1869; in 1837 the Institute for Colored Youth was founded in Cheyney, PA; it became the Training School for Teachers and was transferred to state control in 1921. In 1870 Philadelphia maintained 46 school for Negroes. Friends have not always carried their doctrine of race equality to its logical conclusion. The contact of members of different races has obvious educational advantages. After 17 months of severe persecution, Prudence Crandall of Canterbury, CT, had to close her Female Boarding School, her school having been almost destroyed by a mob.
[Seeking] equality of educational opportunity for poor & rich was done before the rise of public schools by educational endowments. Many YMs still have an annual query regarding the number of members educated in Friends' schools. Unless Friends' schools offer something distinctive in carrying out Friends' doctrine, they may be strengthening the sense of class consciousness. If there is no difference between standards of the small religious community & the general community, or if the difference doesn't appear in the school, the main reason for Friends' school has ceased to exist. The private school may exist in order to permit educational pioneering.
8. Moderation in Dress, Speech and Behavior—Friends' schools used to insist upon the "plain language" and the "plain dress" [Scattergood Boarding School's admonition at the end of its dress regulations is cited]. Great importance was attached to these "minor testimonies" long after their original importance and significance was lost; they became badges and symbols of membership in the Quaker community. Dr. John Fothergill writes: "When they cease to be distinguished from others by garb and deportment, they too often cease to be distinguished ... by their morals and the rectitude of their conduct." The last to keep the formal plain dress was the Friends Boarding School at Barnesville, OH (Olney Friends' School), which gave it up about 1928. But the testimony of simplicity is needed more than ever in our schools today. It has been wisely said that tradition is the condensed originality of a people. The Quaker tradition of simplicity is in reality far deeper than 18th and 19th century manifestations. Pendle Hill provides an example of simplicity of living. The newer schools such as Scattergood and Pacific Ackworth are good examples of Quaker simplicity.
9. Scholastic Integrity/ 10. Emphasis on Practical Subjects in the Curriculum—Only that is simple which is genuine & sincere & not elaborated beyond what is its own inner nature & function. "Scholastic integrity" describes a characteristic quality of nearly all Quaker schools, & a quality shared by many other educational institutions as well. Early on in America (1790) PA's requirements were that masters & mistresses should: have high moral character; be members of the Society of Friends; be competent to teach the subjects taught; 60 to 70 schools met that requirement. Friends' schools & colleges continue to maintain high scholastic standards.
Simplicity required no superfluous or ornamental subjects be taught. [Simplicity was] command of basic processes needed to be useful in society. Religious & moral instruction was practical as needed for the good life. Latin, Greek, & French were taught in some schools. Since most learned books were written in Latin, Latin was a practical subject. Teaching scientific & semi-vocational subjects began with Fox & Bellers. Fox & Penn planned a "garden schoolhouse" near London. Thomas Lawson writes: [God's] works within & without, even the least of plants, preaches forth the power & wisdom of the Creator, & eyed in the spaces of eternity humbles man.
Penn writes: "We are in pain to make them scholars not men, to talk rather than to know...We press their memory too soon, puzzle, strain & load them with words & rules [for] grammar & rhetoric. A strange tongue that [likely will] never be useful, leaving natural genius to mechanical, & physical or natural knowledge uncultivated & neglected...It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things, & acted according to nature."
A school for manual labor at Clerkenwell was established in 1695; it was not entirely a success, there being too much work and not enough play. The Meeting for Sufferings recommended schools in which children can learn languages & other sciences & also some remunerative trade or skill... which will ... combat ... the temptations ... to idleness. Because of fines & persecution, [personal wealth was scarce] & the teaching of useful arts was the more necessary subject. Before his death at 31 years-old, Jonathan Dymond wrote: "Science is preferable to literature, the knowledge of things to the knowledge of words." Classical languages have no cultural value, for they aren't really learned except by a few nor are they useful mental exercises.
Dymond holds that not only correct grammatical speaking but also spelling and writing should be learned by students while engaged in tasks which are interesting and useful in themselves. He also writes: "While our children are pouring over lessons which disgust them we allow the magazine of wonders which Heaven has stored up to lie unexplored." His Essays on the Principles of Morality had a profound influence on the thought of the Society of Friends. As a result many Friends became scientists or at least pursued scientific hobbies. At least 18 Quakers published botanical works before 1850. Swarthmore proposed "to give greater prominence to the physical sciences than is common in ordinary colleges."
Today the educational pendulum in America has swung far over toward the practical and experimental type based on our modern mechanistic and materialistic culture, which has little to do with the Quaker teaching theory, [for which inclusion of experience in the spirit's world is essential]. Christopher Taylor writes in 1676: "We deny nothing for children's learning that may be honest and useful for them to know, whether relating to divine principles or what may be outwardly serviceable for them to learn in regard to the outward creation."
[Physical Labor and Book/Lab-learning]—London YM writes: "There is a concern on us ... that your children may not only be instructed in the languages and sciences, in the way of Truth, but likewise in some profitable and commendable labor or industrious exercises ... to prevent many temptations." English Friends established 3 boarding schools intended for "mixing manual labor and literary instruction" (Rawdon, 1832; Penketh, 1833; Ayton, 1841). Philadelphia YM writes: "The tendency of manual labor is to preserve the health of the students by furnishing regular and steady exercise and forming habits of industry and regularity which are applied to their studies." Mose Brown, New Garden Boarding School, [later Guilford College], and West Lake School in Canada, [later Pickering College] also endorsed manual labor [as part of the program].
CHAPTER V: Direction of Further Developments:—The philosophy of education which arose out of Quaker principles was applied most effectively in the period between 1750 & 1850. Before 1750 this philosophy was slowly taking shape & after 1850 it gradually became less effective due to decay of older forms & the changes & instability in society. To recapitulate, the Society of Friends' primary doctrine concerns Inward Light; secondary is meeting for worship & business; tertiary is social outreach implications & doctrines of the meeting's community. The school is a special community in which these social doctrines can be embodied. The embodiment gives rise to the policies of: sense of belonging; religiously guarded education; dedicated, concerned teachers; non-violent discipline; inward sense of rightness; equality of sexes, races, & classes; moderation; scholastic integrity; practical subjects. Here are suggestions as to the further development of some of these policies.
Sense of Belonging & Religiously Guarded Education/ Search for Dedicated and Qualified Teachers—The schools of olden times knew what they were trying to do because the Quaker way was fairly definite; today there is bewilderment. The "Quaker" objective is no longer clear & there is doubt arising [from concerns] that such an objective is exclusive & undemocratic. If Quaker schools are to have a right to exist they must have an objective not shared with public schools, a peculiar mission. Those of us who have lived in the fading twilight of [Quakers as a "peculiar people" in their dress, speech, honest directness, avoiding compromise, and strong social convictions] may experience a nostalgic longing for it but old days and ways will not come back.
Since the mid-19th century the Quaker cultural pattern has been slowly weakening partly because of influences from the outside. A narrow evangelical religion pulled in one direction; rationalistic & materialistic thought pulled in another. [Technology] breaks through privacy walls & [takes us to] places far away; easy transportation scatters communities & families. [Even our subconscious isn't refuge] from psychological inquiry. [All this] tended to efface the boundary between the Society of Friends' specialized divine-human community & the great secular community of this world. Quaker schools can't prepare for a special community that no longer exists distinctively enough to be an educational goal. [On the other hand], perhaps the schools can be central in working out a way of life for the Society of Friends, a way which will be as distinctive for our day & as much a product of fundamental Quaker principles as was that of an earlier time; perhaps the schools can lead the Society. The school's character is within our control to a greater degree than is the larger community's character.
Sects have cycles of creativity and organization/consolidation. 17th century was creative; 18th was organization/consolidation; 19th century was structural fading. Let us now hope we are entering on a new creative age. Our meetings for worship or business and our schools may be laboratories in which the new way of life is both discovered and elaborated. It is a central doctrine of the Society of Friends that only religion can dissolve the hard crust of self-centeredness and permit the group to grow together in a genuine organic community life. The Quaker school community, if it is to lead into further developments of ancient procedures must learn how to become welded together through worship into a cooperating whole. Education must still be religiously guarded. [There should be protection from exposure to excessive propaganda leading to wanting thrills and luxuries]. Also, an understanding of propaganda methods especially as used in advertising and politics must be taught.
Obtaining dedicated & qualified teachers now is more difficult now than it was in the beginning. [It is expected that there will be continuing education]. Some of this study should help the teacher better understand the ideals of the Society of Friends and of Quaker education. A study group of teachers should form a small genuine community which has some of the characteristics of the larger school community for which they are preparing, including worship, discussion, and work. It may help to strengthen and direct qualifications already present.
Non-Violent Discipline; Appeal to an Inward Sense of Rightness—These address the concern to create in the student non-belligerent, peaceable habits & attitudes, based on a spirit of understanding & cooperation. Quaker schools & colleges try to help students be internationally minded. School must train for tolerance, understanding & cooperation. School should approximate cooperative life similar to meeting for worship.
Aldous Huxley writes: " The decline of democracy has coincided with the rise to ... political power of the 2nd generation of compulsorily educated proletariat." Authoritarian education produces a submissive attitude toward superiors and a bullying attitude toward inferiors. Absorption of more and more people into an authoritarian and pitiless industrialism, with it mass-mindedness and loss of respect for individuality, has had more effect than mass education; big businesses are swallowing little businesses. If education is to be practical student must be prepared for this authoritarian world. Students want subjects of study which enable them to succeed financially and socially. Religion and ethics are no help to such success.
The Quaker school should prepare for a special kind of life which is in the world, not of it; its methods must conform to that special kind of life. The teacher would be able to use a technique similar to Friends' meeting for business by which the meeting arrives at united judgment from a synthesis of many judgments. This is valuable training in the use of non-violent power. Methods which cultivate cooperative peaceableness are opposed to self-centered & competitive attitudes required for conventional success. They are creative of the new & unforeseen & hence they can educate the pioneers of a better society. The Quaker meeting seeks light from a level higher than the human & the Quaker classroom shouldn't neglect this source. A human finds their highest freedom & deepest knowledge in submission to the authority of Truth, Beauty & Goodness & the stern discipline of facts.
Equality of Education for Gender, Race, and Class/ Simplicity—When we consider how much has been sacrificed for minor testimonies, further sacrifice in behalf of a major testimony cannot be shirked. A more active obedience to Divine admonitions may again make the Quakers pioneers in social developments.
Simplicity is one of the most difficult tenets to apply today. How shall we distinguish between necessity and luxuries? We cannot and should not revive the standards of the past. We should not give up trying to establish through choice a more self-denying discipline in our homes and schools. Well-to-do non-Friends and Friends themselves support making the school more like the students' home in equipment and activities. As a result Friends' schools are becoming more costly & sometimes exhibit no more simplicity than do other schools. Simplicity involves a kind of life which does not depend for happiness on the abundance of material things but rather on inner serenity of soul. In times like these when worldly possessions seem more uncertain and perishable many are suffering from an anxiety which robs of their joy in life. The school must learn how to create for its pupil a set of inner dimensions large enough for a habitation of the soul, a center of life somewhat detached from outward changes and independent of changing fortunes. "Other worldliness" was based on a distinction between this temporal world and the eternal realm all around it. It gave to social activity its power and goal.
Curriculum of Practical Subjects—The words "practical" and "useful" as employed in Quaker education applied quite as much to the spiritual as to the intellectual and utilitarian; education must minister to the needs of the whole man. Material success might even be regarded as ornamental and superfluous compared to spiritual development. In the medieval curriculum there was useful arts, liberal arts and divine arts. In Western education, education was 1st religiously centered; then it was intellectually centered; now it is socially and economically centered. America has gone through the same process in a short 300 years. An education that does not develop personality on the superhuman (divine), human, and sub-human levels is incomplete and insufficient.
Gerald Heard shows that early Friends discovered the power which can be developed in small groups devoted to silent worship and meditation. Friends lost this power by misunderstanding the means by which it was produced. New educational procedures based on Friends' original discoveries are the means to recover the Friends' lost power. The subconscious and the means to educate the sources of the will need to be taken into account along with the rest of the mind. [A school with these new procedures and this new focus] must detect how this power was generated, and how it may be generated today to transform both individuals and society.
If the needs of the whole person are to be met, substantial portions of time should be devoted to body and spirit. We have overdeveloped the intellect and its tool-making capacity and are being ruined by the tools we have created. Political dictators have realized this lack of balance, but they seek the kind of balance which was attained in primitive society, not the kind which is attained in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The democratic society glimpsed by American educators, where human personality is respected as sacred, inviolable and capable of genuine self-sacrifice is essentially a Christian society. Only religion can overcome selfishness enough for men and nations to work together willingly. Many Americans expect religious results by secular means and education; this is impossible. There is a power other than religion which enables people to work together unselfishly in a cooperative society; it is patriotism. As a quasi-religion it possesses remarkable effectiveness. Patriotism is more likely in the long run to lead toward authoritarianism than toward democracy, as the average patriot desires a strong state. There is a higher patriotism which is not in disagreement with internationalism. Religion teaches that there is Higher Power than the state which can and will judge the states, and to which the states must submit in order to live in peace. A spirit which admits no narrow self-interest, no narrow national interest [must be sought and nurtured by education].
[Lifelong Education of the Spirit/ Conclusion]—Education of the spirit must come through slow development. Throughout life there should be ongoing development in religious insight. Friedrich von Hügel suggests that the child's religion is based on tradition & institutions; the youth's religion is based on questions & arguments; the adult's religion is based on intuitions, feelings & volitions. The child doesn't choose a religious or moral code. It comes from environment [i.e.] family, church, or school. The youth rationalizes what one received as a child. When one's reasoning, argumentative, abstracting faculties develop, they challenge one's childhood religion. One may marginalize it, or discard it. If one's religion answers one's demand for clear thinking & arguments, one can keep it, strengthen it, & let it grow. Approaching adulthood, the youth finds reason & science insufficient as a basis for life. Religion becomes a matter of inner experience. Intuition replaces authority or reason as a basis for truth. Suffering is transformed into strength & insight. This adult religion is pragmatic & mystical.
Many children today aren't received into any system of religious & moral ideas either at home or at school; they are spiritually & morally homeless. The child has a right to be offered something positive, the very best of the group into which one is born or placed. One will take bad food for one's soul rather than no food. Children need a "religiously guarded education," with some dependence on the inward. On the whole teachers must realize that in childhood religious feelings will more likely be aroused by precepts & examples than by the inward.
Colleges must minister to the newly-won ability to think and reason. Often the student is unable to choose. The general effect of college training in criticism and analysis is to destroy the old without developing power to build the new; sometimes there are genuine discoveries in the religious. With adulthood there is an increasing ability to attain a mature religion based on deep inward experience as well as on authority and reason. The adult school [should focus on synthesis, integration, meaning, insight, and meditation with deep inward, spiritual experience, rather than applying the minds tools without any spiritual connection]. There should be a deliberate attempt to cultivate sensitivity to Inward Light and to that which unites people to God and to one another. Mystical religion needs to be encouraged to grow. There will be no grades, credits, or degrees here.
Such a school will not be essentially new in Quaker education, but rather fruition of educational policies which have long existed [only partially expressed and developed]. The history of the present time shows that the older forms of education have failed to develop the whole man. A form of education must be made available which enables us to the discover the Divine and through it to sense our goal.
Quaker education must be mainly authoritative in childhood education, rational in youth education, & mystical in [adult education]. All 3 approaches must always, in some degree be present. [The Quaker process] is 1st authority of the group which has discovered a way of life which is good & which it seeks to extend by passing it to its children. The school is a small community preparing for the larger religious community. 2nd , it is criticism & rationality in college which either harmonizes the old with new self-knowledge, or it preserves [as much of the old as seems worth saving]. 3rd, [there is seeking the mystical], sensitizing ones inner life through study, worship, work & community life. Here past & the present are transformed in by inner & outer searching which looks to the future. Quaker education needn't change old objectives. It need only seek higher measure in their achievement. William Penn wrote: " Men not living to what they know, cannot blame God that they know no more."
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[Youthful Dialog; Campus revolt]—If I am impelled to a dialog with today’s youth, it is not because I believe my truth is superior, but because I believe in the possibility of real dialog. [I have had] a ¼ century of concern with the absence of an image of authentic personal and social existence that might help us find a meaningful direction. By 1958 the [complacency of students] changed with the civil rights movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the beginnings of the “freedom rides” in the South.
The most notorious element in the “youth scene” is the drug cult, which spread out from Greenwich Village & San Francisco’s North Beach & Haight-Ashbury. Perhaps 1 reason why young people take drugs is in order not to communicate with their parents, teachers, & the Establishment. [This not communicating] is a negative rebellion behind a desire to have ground of their own. Today there is such a rapid change in all essentials of culture & society, there is little way parents can pass down their lifestyle to their children. An LSD-user said to me, “You’re taking time & death much too seriously… Those who have had enough trips tell me neither are real.”
The congealed violence that lies just beneath the surface in family life, civic administration, government, and international relations, gives glaring evidence of how much the alternatives “violent” and “nonviolent” falsify the concrete situation. One may use nonviolence as a technique, without dialog & without love. One Eastern college president characterized the revolt on campus with one word: “hostility.” It is in the great Multiversities—the Berkeleys and Columbias—that the revolt on campus has erupted into sit-ins and “confrontations.”
The large and impersonal nature of the multiversity plus the atmosphere of mutual mistrust are quite as important factors in the student rebellions that arise as any specific issues. The very essence of multiversity is an expansion of education coupled with a contraction of mutual contact between teacher and student. [There is a] growing trend of “education for openness.” There are dynamic group processes that take place and that may be recognized and understood without manipulation of or threat to the students. The [pending] revolution may lead to the release of untold potential for learning and understanding. It may also lead to a new mindlessness in which careful thought and learning are put down in favor of easy insight or “spontaneous” feeling.
The world that today’s youth has inherited is [one in which humanity] no longer knows what it means to be human and we are aware that we do not. The death of man has come riding into our century, and each successive holocaust (Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam, Biafra) has set the stage for a still more abysmal one. The brutal murders in France and Germany have been paralleled in our days by the assassinations of Trotsky, Gandhi, Malcolm X, Medger Evers, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy.
The degradation of man is both fruit & root of life in relationship's degeneration. The Jews’ & gypsies’ dehumanizing by the Nazis was as terrible as their extermination. [Common questions used when people interrelate is:] “What’s your line? What do you really want out of me & why?” An even more potent source of mistrust is the polarizing of concrete reality into catchwords [that force an either/or, for/against choice].
No reconciliation was ever achieved through ignoring real differences, or attempting to impose a sense of unity where there is none. [There is a growing sense] of a new authoritarianism of premature certainties. [What] today’s youth is passing through is not just an identity crisis, but a crisis of confirmation and the image of man. [The confirmation is] of one’s right to exist as the unique person that one is and can become. Most parents have probably never been able to give this confirmation to the children because their own needs and anxieties in a world of depression and war have distorted [unconditional] affirmation into a [parent/child] contract.
There is a dualism of thought [vs.] feeling. In reacting against the overwhelming mass of information, some resort to “pure feeling.” But the sickness of thought divided from feeling is not cured by turning the psyche upside-down. “Pure feeling” is as much a symptom of this illness as detached intellectuality. There is also a cult of self-realization, [in which] the relation to others and the response to life situations [become] means to that goal.
[Modern Man Archetypes]—Modern Vitalists=liberating vitality; Modern Mystic= personal experience of the mystical; Modern Pragmatist= [the effects of an object/thought are the same as the object/thought]; Problematic Rebel=rebelling against existence. Modern Vitalist believes that the release of vitality and energy into life [is the ultimate goal]. The Modern Mystic [places the personal mystical experience as the primary concern]. The current fascination with mind-transforming drugs as a source of “religious experience” is an excellent example of this trend. The Problematic Rebel’s [resistance] is a complex, contradictory set of attitudes and actions that reflects the problem; it is one’s reaction to one’s alienation and inner division. The Modern Rebel has neither the Greek, Biblical Judaic, or Christian base on which to stand. The Problematic Rebel is a Prometheus without the order that supports Prometheus in his struggle with Zeus; he is a Job without trust in God. He must find his calling without knowing even that he is being called. There is the haunting fear that his rebellion may be merely neurotic reaction rather than a courageous witness of man against his destroyer.
[Modern Promethean; Modern Job]—There is a choice between postures which deepen our alienation & [those] postures which withstand & transform. Modern Prometheans try to recover the true existence from which he has been alienated by denying the reality of the independent other that confronts him. The Problematic Rebel’s self-affirmation undermines the ground of his own existence by emptying the reality that confronts him of any meaning. One alternative to denial of the absurd is the Dialog with the Absurd which finds meaning in the very encounter. [Doctor Rieux of Camus’ The Plague &] his affirmation is a witness to humanity wrested from the heart of the inhuman. Rieux is a Modern Job, who as an atheist, contends with the Absurd [rather than God].
At Biblical faith’s center stands trust. Job rebels when life becomes insupportable to him. Job’s temptations are that he may find it impossible to bring his suffering into his dialog with God, [&] that he won't stand his ground & witness for his own innocence when no one else will. In the end Job withstands both temptations. His protest becomes a protest against the suffering of all people. At the heart of the Book of Job stands trusting & contending, recognizing his dependence on God yet standing firm on the ground of his created freedom.
Standing one’s ground before what confronts one, & not giving way before it or trying to escape it mark the Modern Job. The Modern Job neither accepts evil nor cuts himself off from history to avoid it. In each new situation, Job affirms where one can affirm & withstands where one must withstand. Openness & dialog lead inevitably to rebellion, but one that does not reject the reality or value of the independent other that confronts one.
Our contrast between the Modern Promethean and the Modern Job sheds light on the basic paradox of self-realization, namely, that it is something that cannot be aimed at directly. The Modern Promethean attempts to find meaning and value in his own subjectivity. The Modern Job finds meaning even in his meeting with the absurd. We know our potentiality only as it becomes actuality in our response to each new situation. The choice again and again is between responding to the demands of the situation with the resources that are available to us, and failing to do so. We ought not aim directly at becoming a certain sort of man or even at finding and realizing an image of man. We must not obscure the sober reality that an imperfect society must produce imperfect men.
In this time of abstractions, this “vast conspiracy of silence,” some one is needed to give a meaning [and dialog] to everyday life. The Modern Job speaks so concretely from his historical situation that he expresses in the same action the duty of man as man. I also celebrate the Problematic Rebel because of what he can become. I trust in his courage to persevere through the dark times ahead—affirming where he can affirm and withstanding where he must withstand. From the gropings and contradictions of the Problematic Rebel there may yet emerge a new trust in existence, a new image of man.
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Rufus Jones (born January 25, 1863)—Rufus Jones devoted himself to understanding and clarifying his living tradition’s meaning, to seeing its implication for the present and future, and to putting his knowledge and insight at the service of his fellow. His uncovering of the story of firsthand, primary religious experience is of permanent value, as is his insistence that each new generation of Christian should face its own situation afresh.
We are the unlucky generation, [caught] between parents who believed children should do what they’re told, & children who believe that parents should do what they’re told. Our parents [softened the strict & brutal methods of their parents, but still expected] to be believed & obeyed. The parents of this generation [softened their methods even further,] & have sought to let their children come to the realities of the world for themselves. Rousseau said: “Let the child live; let the child reach out under the spell of the child’s own nature, and grasp reality [as a child].” [Parents seek to strike a balance between Rousseau’s advice and the need to provide some guidance]. Childhood has its own meaning and its own demands, and they cannot be denied without grave loss.
The freedom we planned was freedom in a familiar world; the freedom they have is freedom in chaos [and rapid change]. To our children motor cars, radio, television, and space travel are part of their mental furniture. They take it for granted, as well as their right to go ahead from where we stop. We don't know what to teach our children that will help them when they grow up. In trying to draw the line between our authority & their freedom, between their now and their future, between proper control and improper tyranny, we are still full of doubt.
The Problem of Religious Education—There is a peculiar difficulty for those who seek to bring up their children to “be themselves,” and to recognize their calling to be [children of God]. [How do we as parents balance the old Quaker advices of “example,” “self-control,” and “obedience to law” with the current philosophy of “freedom of self-expression?” Where do we find support to do this in the absence of close-knit Christian communities of the past, where a “guarded education” was possible?] The guarded education is no longer available. Our children move out into what we now call the peer-group; they forge a culture for themselves. There is no great hostility toward us, but there is a simple need for a fresh start, a need to be different.
A Questioning Generation—On the way to this difference, they begin to ask us questions like the following: Why is the Christian idea not very widely accepted now? Why should I be Christian if I can be good without? How far is it right for Christians to impose beliefs on others? How do you prove God’s presence? What is man’s purpose on earth? For many of these questions there is no simple answer. [How then are we to answer Christianity’s difficult questions?] What can our children understand? Are there stages of development which we may learn to wait for, and to take advantage of?
Religious Readiness—There are some things we can say about the growth of the child towards religious awareness. We can say that the small child (4 or 5) does not possess the mental equipment for dealing in any true sense with the concept of God. A child’s moral judgment proceeds from a high personalized, specific and rule-bound phase (7-8), to general concepts (9-10), to true moral insight [11-12), to a sense of responsibility to others (13-14). [Children’s heroes evolve from being most often parents to historical, literary, or Biblical characters at 12 years]. Some [14 year-olds seem to be] struggling to emerge from the “old man with long hair and a beard, wearing white robes” [image]. They interpret our [God language] not in terms of our experience but of their own [e.g. Fatherhood of God= our experience of our father; wrath of God= our father’s wrath; justice of God=no tangible experience]. Interpreting concepts in childish terms distorts for the child our central affirmations and the biblical narratives we present as part of the child’s preparation for insight.
The 1st danger in attempts to teach religious ideas before our children have mental equipment to cope with them is that they may acquire religious vocabulary with no conceptual substance. The other danger is that they may be led to believe & trust in a false god. What are we to do [to present God to our children]? Rufus Jones says that he was surrounded by a wordless witness to God’s reality, in the “hush of thanksgiving” before meals, & in the “weighty silences” after Bible readings. [It was left for him to grow into it]. There is trust here, the waiting spirit of childhood, and the readiness to accept second hand what will one day become first hand.
Experience of Fatherhood—Though we cannot convey religious concepts to our children, this doesn’t mean we can't offer the beginnings of religious experience. The offering of the experience of being loved is the beginning of Christian education. The Incarnation is an assertion [of God’s love], & that though man is corrupt, his humanity still has divine potential. [Further], God's love is unshakable; it is to that love that man is called. The mark of the Christian home is the quality of its love, which is other-willing, an unwavering resolve that spirits shall find room to grow, & minds shall be lit & nurtured by the light and nourishment we have to bestow.
Things and Words—If they are to love their children like this, parents must have the same love for one another. [Any tension between parents will be felt by the children]. Love shown in the home leads to the love of God. [It is best to] lay aside our anxiety about rushing our children into the presence of God, and for recognizing that they are in the presence of God. We can tell them about people in the Bible, in the church, and in the Quaker community, even if the stories are a little above our children’s heads. We can let them share in worship, [but the “saying prayers” at bedtime is questionable, a habit that may teach the wrong lessons about what God is and what prayer is]. If our children share in our humbling silences, they have the possibility of discovering the true meaning of prayer. We cannot “teach” our children to pray; we can only let them learn it from us.
Conflict in Adolescence—[So far we have described how children up to 10 or 11 learn] from the way in which their parents & friends, present them a selection of reality. We must now turn to the age of conflict, when our selection of reality is tested by the unselected reality of the [“outside”] world. Those with true, ordered, & loving homes aren't shaken very deeply. [Other homes may see adolescents turn to aggression, withdrawal, or conformity]. Adolescence offers a new opportunity, not for complete change of personal structure, but for choosing a new direction. We should look to a slow maturing of personality, a gradual enlightenment as the person sees God’s hand upon the complexities of the person’s life. The adolescent is a role-player. [Eventually] the adolescent settles for the most efficient [role or] life-style, the image of self that can be [most bearably] lived with.
Aspects of Maturing—[The adolescent is faced with developmental tasks of dealing with a new image, relationships independent of parents, future work, economic independence, and developing a sex-role. Among these developmental tasks is that of attaining a set of moral values and a view of the meaning of life that will make sense of the rest of experience. [It is tempting to treat this task] in isolation, but Friends [have a concern for] “true godliness” that enables one to live in the world [i.e. the other tasks that will act out that godliness].
The adolescent wants to ask, “Why do we have to live,” & then wants to hear us talk about it. [If there are questions about self-worth & work, we offer verbal & non-verbal affirmation of worth, & experience, ideas, & enthusiasm about possibilities and challenges facing our child in finding the best place to make a contribution. The issue of independence from us and forming independent relationships, is naturally the most difficult one for us to help with. For a time they may lose touch with us in the depths. We can help in a more general sense with] the rapid intellectual advance of adolescence, by speaking of what we believe to be the meaning of life. What have we to offer them from the faith that we live by, but whose formulation is now so far in the past?
The Need for Honesty; Maturity—When children put smart questions to us about God, they are asking: What does God mean in your personal decision & action? What do you mean by obeying God? Do you really make sense of the world by your belief in God? [If God, Christ, & God’s vision of humankind is really meaningful, then we shall have truth to convey, however badly we put it over. It may not reach our listener at the moment of asking, [& there may] come a time of doubt and testing. Someone may even reject the outward signs of commitment to the strong Quaker atmosphere they were brought up in. We mustn't order them to go to Meeting. [If they leave], many of them will soon be back, when they [can] go as persons, & not as conscripts.
Maturity in divine will to life is the intention behind Christian education. Quakers have always tried to view their task [as seeking] creative & personal expressions of vision. For this task they rejected others’ creeds, others’ moral codes, & affirmed that each must encounter divine love in the heart of one’s own situation. The way to maturity is through immaturity. If we try to ignore nature in encouraging religious insight, we lose our efforts [to guide our children towards spiritual maturity] as surely as if we try to make a child read before they are ready.
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225. The Peculiar Mission of a Quaker School (by Douglas H. Heath; 1979)
About the Author—Douglas Heath went to Swarthmore College & received his B.A, from Amherst, & his Ph.D. from Harvard in Social Relations. He taught at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard; he is Professor & Head of the Psychology Department, Haverford College. He is studying the development of adults & predictors of their effectiveness. This pamphlet reflects a continued interest in the meaning of a Friends education.
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164. Why a Friends School (by Douglas H. Heath; 1969)
About the Author—Douglas Heath studied at Amherst, and got his doctoral degree from Harvard, and did post-doctoral work at the University of Michigan. He is Professor of Psychology at Haverford College. This pamphlet grew out of a deep concern about current trends in education, [as well as about growth and maturing]. The author feels that Friends' schools can contribute to conditions that promote healthy growth.
I. Contemporary Threats to Friends Schools—I and others have been skeptical about the value of Friends Schools. Intensive study of a Quaker college has convinced me that the educational philosophy of Friends is more relevant than it has been for many years. My concern is that Friends schools and colleges, in abandoning their Quaker identities, lose their power to educate for the needs of today. 3 threats to Quaker school identity are: secularization of society; homogenization of values; preoccupation with materialistic value criteria.
The Quaker presence has diminished in most Friends schools. Students reject all religious forms and myths as irrelevant. Religious tradition, buttressed by the progressive education philosophy, [concerned itself with developing the "whole" child in terms of character, ethical and social values, and maturity. Intellectual excellence gradually usurped our country's goal of human excellence. No one has [questioned the effect of the drive to excel] on our students as human beings. Test scores have replaced a student's maturity as criteria for success.
The heavy academic emphasis in prestigious schools & colleges is reaping more & more student resistance. Genuine intellectual devotion may not emerge for students until they have matured in social & emotional relationships. The shift to intellectual excellence has been aided by the displacement of the humanities by science & technology. The intellectual standards & way of life of the scientist have overshadowed & subdued the humanist's ability to locate science within the context of human & spiritual values. Schools often refer to teachers in terms of their professional field & not about developing intellectual & moral excellence. The only barrier I see to the progressive narrowing of students by secularization is the student's increasing resistance to narrowing. What should the Quaker response be to secularization? Howard Brinton said a Quaker education "should be devoted to ... synthesis ... integration ... sensing the meaning and goal of life ... insight and meditation." We should keep our sciences strong but we should keep our humanities, our religious and ethical traditions, stronger.
Another cultural change is the homogenization of values; it destroys distinctive group and communal values. [It can be an unintended side effect of]: being more ecumenical; being more international; intellectualizing our schools; mass communication; automation. The effect of this insipid homogenization is to undermine communal identification and devotion. I fear that many Friends schools and colleges may be open to such cultural forces that could undermine the power of their religious tradition to leaven the individualistic and anarchistic demands of the times. What is the enduring psychological strength of Quakerism? Meeting for worship, while it begins with each person searching for truth in one's own way, is an effort to experience a divine corporateness. The enduring strength of Quakerism lies in the reciprocal and integral combination of individualistic and communal traditions. A Friends school, deeply aware of the Quaker assumption that a mature individuality develops out of corporate experiences, will not abandon too readily its customs and institutions.
The 3rd trend is the seductive philosophy of bigger & bigger, & more & more [is better & better]. Too many of us believe schools stagnate if they don't grow, that is, become bigger & more complicated. Too often there is no coherent unity between our means & our goals. Our means become the measure of quality when we aren't clear what our purposes are. The power of the Quaker tradition to give a distinctive character to a school is effectively diminished when the school becomes so large it no longer is a coherent community. Most Friends schools don't have enough dedicated but qualified Quaker educators & students to serve as the "critical mass" that brings communal coherence into being. If we allow alleged economics of expanding size & seductiveness of affluence determine our criteria of value, we may destroy the educative potential of a Quaker sense of community.
II. Quaker Schools and the Cool Generation—[Students are demanding changes in Friends' Schools, and] our schools do need to change. How should Friends' Schools change to better assist their students to become more easily educated and mature human beings? 3 interrelated personality developments seem to describe how the graduates of secondary schools have changed since the 1940's in response to modern society: inhibitions and overcontrol; self-centered intellectualism; overcompensation into uninhibited living in love-in groups. In the 1st development of inhibitions, the immaturing effects are seen in ones growing alienation from spontaneous emotional expression, and in rejection of dependent, tender, and affectionate needs and feelings.
The scope of the current student's world seen through television is scarcely less limited than that of adults of many years of experience. They are having vicarious emotional experience before they are mature enough to integrate such experience into their own personalities. To protect themselves from the ungovernable intensity of their overstimulated adolescent impulses, they learn to cool them down. They are knowledgeable about adult-hood secrets but emotionally naive about their meanings.
In their self-centered intellectualism, they value their own intellectual talents & develop magical beliefs in their power to solve the world's problem. They are more willing to accept an isolated & lonely life. Academic activity, suburban anonymity, impersonal educational process, mobility, family activity fragmentation, church's loss of influence all keep a young person from having sustained productive & cooperative other-centered relations. The current student restlessness & discontent in the colleges & increasingly in secondary schools may represent a strong reaction against "more of the same" type of development. College students are increasingly unwilling to continue to suppress their emotional & social needs to work long hours academically. One graduating senior said: "There is something precious in the unenlightened man; something valuable in his ignorance. And that something ... is his unsophisticated, unreflected-upon vulnerability to emotion. His ability to forget himself."
Liberal Non-Quakers vs. Quaker Students—What is it our students need to be able to grow into their full powers? We should listen closely to those most sensitive to their own inner restlessness: our young artists & singers, designers, hippies, & political dissidents. The extreme secularization of their great distrust of traditional political & social theologies of those over 30 perhaps testifies to the young persons' deeply suppressed needs to believe, to participate in & devote themselves to some thing, their "own thing," some genuine cause or belief that is self-transcendent. How do students learn to be fully & trustingly with another human being?
Quaker students seem to value an experiential religious rather than aesthetic way of life. They are less inhibited, intellectual, and more practical. [They are realistic in self-assessment of their importance and their knowing. The most dramatic difference between liberal, religious non-Quaker students, and Quakers is the quality of their personal relationships; Quaker students were less cynical, distrustful, and defensive in them. In the case of Haverford College, its principal educational effect was to encourage its young men to organize their identities around a concept of themselves as deeply ethical and principled human beings through the college's Quaker tradition. I suggest the Friends' schools may have developed or not discouraged, a greater sensitivity to ethical values and high ideals. Friends' school students seem to have stronger needs to test their knowledge in action. What educational ideas and innovations could Friends schools make that might make them more relevant to the needs of the [sensitive, restless student]?
III. For What Should a Friends School Educate?—I believe that the wisdom & full power of our Quaker tradition could creatively speak to the need for educational experiences that help express emotions, encourage devotion to work & service, & an increasing sense of loving corporateness & belongingness. The uniqueness of Quaker educational philosophy is found in ways it has been implemented, not in its basic assumptions.
To become more mature is to become more able to know one's self and other persons. A Quaker education should be a deeply reflective experience that confronts students with themselves and their values. More maturity means a more other-centered person who learns to tolerate, appreciate, love and communicate clearly with others. Friends assume that one is basically a corporate or social person who matures not in opposition to but through his relationships with others. The Quaker meetings for worship and business is founded on the principle that all are one in the truth. An education should humanize; it should draw out of one a potential for a more embracing identification with and respect for other human beings. A Quaker education should be a corporate experience in which a person senses one is part of a living community that values and respects one and other persons as persons. More maturity means a more harmonious and integrated person, continually open, flexible, curious and actively engaged. One seeks to act out of wholeness, to act as one believes, to believe as one acts. It is an experiential approach to life that protects Friends from being encrusted by their past and which makes them deeply experiential in their life attitude. A Quaker educator should seek to develop those attitudes and skills that will help one's students to become more easily educated to experience the truth.
Cultivating maturity requires individual to become a more stable or centered-down person, certain of one's identity, basic values & direction. Friends would certainly reject views which assume one's self is composed of only those attitudes & beliefs which others have of one. If one is acting within the truth, then one will be tomorrow what one is today. A Quaker education should encourage students to shape their basic identity around the values of integrity & honesty. A more mature person becomes more autonomous person, who can inhibit one's egocentric & impulsive desires, & prevent blandishments of society from conforming them; there are no longer any irrelevant influences. To be able to grow beyond the limits of one's personal history & one's culture in order to live affirmative life that is autonomous of everything including one's self is most religious persons' goal.
A Quaker educator should encourage his students to develop the inner strength to dissent maturely, and to allow themselves to be used by the enormously powerful affirmative forces that are sealed up within their unconscious lives, in order to live lives of intense passion, religious devotion, and corporate commitment. [As it now stands], intellectual excellence is supplanting human excellence. [An "intellectual" educator] dehumanizes the educational process, and creates resistances in students to more intense intellectual development. We should strive for intellectual excellence [as part of our goal; it should never become the goal]. Intellectual excellence strives for truth; personal maturity is learning how to live fully in the truth.
IV. The Educative Power of a Quaker Meeting: [Compulsion]—I suggest that a Friends school's most powerful means for maturing students is its meeting for worship. Quaker educators are always confronted by 2 irrelevant issues when meeting becomes an issue: compulsory attendance & age appropriateness. Compulsion becomes a meaningful [main] issue only when we no longer feel in harmony with the basic values or spirit of the group to which we feel we must adjust. When someone reacts to compulsion, we overreact, narrow our perspective, and tend to accept compulsion at face value, failing to examine it for deeper psychological roots. When defending compulsory attendance, I would base my arguments on educational and not religious grounds.
IV. The Educative Power of a Quaker Meeting: [Age Appropriate]—There is an argument that this meeting is inappropriate for students because they don't have capacity to use quiet worship service & that reflective worship is irrelevant & meaningless now; if treated as insignificant, it becomes insignificant. Educators must be clear why they require it & devote energy & thought in preparation for it. How can educators lead young people into meditative use of silence? Friends have always sought to educate for the world needed for the future. Our children should learn to turn off the world's ceaseless noise to secure a measure of peace & tranquility. We don't educate our children in how to become sensitive to & then verbalize their thoughts & feelings.
Meeting also provides a time to learn how to enjoy daydreaming, how to form inner pictures. Perhaps younger children could share their daydreams in meeting. Could folk music lyrics be used to speak to young people's hopes and fear? Perhaps a spontaneous, reverent use of music could help bind the meeting together. Quakers need to learn how to go beyond words to communicate their joys and sorrows as well as insights and leadings. More creative use of the form of meeting could well help some of them become more open and responsive to their inner lives. It provides opportunities to learn how to reflect about one's self and what one believes. Perhaps a freer form of meeting can occasionally be spontaneously converted into a meditative discussion in which a student problem is confronted. Indirect guidance for children about how to worship in meeting may sensitize them more clearly to the process of a Friends meeting. If students are to know that they are worshiping or near it, they need to experience the process at the level of their own religious maturity. Larger problems can be interpreted at a different level of experience and meaning than is usually possible in any other situation. Meeting, if we will let it, expands the boundaries of self.
[Meeting Experiences]—Meeting provides an opportunity to experience the basic Quaker values of respect, loving-kindedness, equality of individual worth, corporateness. A student can learn that when students speak their teachers listen. Even negative sharing can be used to teach. Could not meeting provide an experience for both students and teachers to participate in the lives of one another on a radically different basis between generations? Students need experiences that help them know one another more spontaneously and intimately.
A Friends meeting strips away the seductive external irrelevancies on which children, depend. Integrity grows out of the courage to live our principles. Ask the students: "What is most important in your life? What is it important to be? What would you be willing to give up to remain faithful to your convictions? [Ask the questions not only in words, but] in the way you live. Meeting can help a student learn how to become an instrument of the divine forces within rather than to be dependent on the secular ones without. Non-Quaker Haverford alumni have had revelations & conversion experiences in meeting. The cool kid's philosophy won't let one abandon one's control to have an emotional experience, but one's repressed need to understand the nature of one's being leads one instead into philosophy & religion. Educators need to educate their students about how to use the form of the meeting. We need a meaningful psychological curricular plan through the age span for religious & ethical development. A Quaker meeting reconciles the freedom that comes from individual meditation with the responsibility required of corporate listening and sharing, involving both individualizing & socializing.
V. The Maturing Effects of a "Sense of Quaker Community"—What educates and matures young people? Haverford's ability to create maturing effects depended upon the combination of: openness to learning specific, maturing demands; coherence of goals and educational means based on Quaker assumptions on the students that result from those goals; quality of communal life. A sense of community is more important than the size of the meeting and its surroundings. In community students deeply prize belonging to their school and feel personally responsible for its continued vitality. How powerful are our Friends educational communities?
The potential of Quaker school community life is unexampled but we aren't clear about how to realize it. The focal conflict for most Friends schools is how decisions are to be made in a Quaker community. I wonder if we couldn't be more sensitive to the wisdom contained in how monthly business meetings are conducted. We say students aren't "mature" enough to participate in meaningful communal decisions for the school. Student participation in such decisions might help them mature more responsibly & honestly. Otherwise Quaker schools will suffer communal divisiveness, an enfeebled religious life, & unenthusiastic students, less able to learn.
I believe that just as we must help students to learn how to worship, so we must help students to learn how to be responsible communal members if the educative potential of a "sense of community" are to be realized. I am concerned that students learn how to take into account the views of all members of the school community in the manner of Friends in their decision-making. I suggest we find practicable ways to involve everyone in crucial communal decision-making. A fundamental principle of Friends, and violated in most Friends schools, is that the ultimate responsibility for decisions rests with the communal group itself. The School Committee should not meet separately from students and faculty to decide issues about student life.
Students need contact with wisdom 2 generations removed from them, & older Friends must learn to listen genuinely to contemporary students. This is the only way students will learn to resolve conflicts & search for truth, the only way staff & committee members will understand generation under 20. If we are really open to the truth, then we have nothing to fear by sharing some decisions with others. It may be necessary that business meeting's form be varied to be more relevant to the developmental maturity of the decision-making skills of different-aged children. We should experiment with & learn to use the form of business meeting as educational means & opportunity for students to participate in communal decision-making; it will help them gain in maturity.
[Business Meetings and Decision-Making]—Meeting issues should include: potential conflict in basic values whose corporate discussion might enhance the maturing of the whole community; relevance to the developmental maturity of the participating students; those for which business meeting members have competence and involvement; only those concerns which affect the student members for the years they will be at the school. The community needs to clarify what its ethical expectations will be for the school year. Lack of clarity leads to student disorganization and moral confusion. Lack of clarity about our educational priorities leads to decision-making conflicts. How are Friends schools helping students mature in how to listen to others, how to find mutually accommodating solutions to conflicts, and how to make choices?
The practical limitations of Friends business meetings are real, and solvable if we don't wed ourselves rigidly to one ideal form of decision-making. Much frustration and conflict of opinion can be tolerated when there is a genuine Quaker sense of community where diversity of belief flourishes. The community should agree about how and when to limit its meetings. What is really keeping us from arriving at some consensus? Are there other types of procedures with which we could experiment to bring better understanding?
Headmasters are the focal point of complex and demanding pressures. They are held responsible by every other group for what happens in their schools, and most may not be very comfortable sharing decision-making powers for which only they will be held responsible by others. They may find sharing decision-making frees them from making decisions that fractures the school's sense of community [and hurts the learning and maturing process]. Communal decision-making on some issues could help students and educators understand the how and the why of each other's beliefs. Through working corporately for the community's welfare, students may learn how to have meaningful corporate experiences, to feel they belong somewhere, and grow out of their self-centeredness into an other-centered way of life, learning "skills of being" in the process.
VI. The Maturing Effects of Quaker Outreach—The danger that confronts any mystic is that one may abandon fragile ties to the outer world, & lose one's desire & will to return into the lives of other people. Encouraging too much inwardness in young persons risks intensifying their self-centeredness & precipitating permanent withdrawal from others. Drugs help young people to experience suppressed feelings & have "mystical" experiences. Drugs also encourage privatism & dropping out of involvement with others & the world's problems.
Friends have always expected religious experiences will lead to reaching outward into others' lives. They have a psychological assumption that growth occurs from extending one's life inwardly beyond one's defined self & outwardly beyond one's personal community. A Friends school must help its students develop the desire to form strong caring ties to other persons as well as to the world outside their school community.
The type of community we are developing makes it harder to learn how to care for another. Bigness so impersonalizes our relationships that we know each other only in terms of specialized roles, in bits & pieces, not as whole persons. The educational experiences they need most are those that have the potential for healing: alienation from emotional needs; separation from any transcendent meaning or ideal; & emotional isolation. When students make self-transcendence or self-fulfillment a goal, one becomes more aware of one's self & magnifies one's own narcissism. Educators need to help young people devote themselves unselfconsciously to some transcending cause where they will experience a wholeness that will free them to care for others even more deeply.
[Action-Educational Projects]—Students need: action-educational projects that demand the whole person's participation; to face real problems, & help solve them; sustained involvement with others to increase awareness of the human problems' complexity; the project to be reflectively assimilated into ongoing curricular work of the school; the project to be a corporate one. One such is where students live in a Negro neighborhood & work as school-community assistants to provide individual attention to the children. They learn about a wide of issues around race, education, economics, bureaucracy, and so on.
Perhaps the American Friends Service Committee could work with schools to set up an on-site program integrated into a modified on-going academic program. Schools could sponsor a Fall or Spring semester nature-woods educational camp in some marginal rural area to learn 1st-hand about nature and humankind's ability to adjust to it. There could also be field work that provided educational and reconstruction service to the local community. Are educators so fixated on traditional school concepts they can't consider departures that might increase a student's ability to learn? My hunch is that if a group of Friends schools developed an imaginative, action-educational program that turned on students and made them better able to learn, colleges would demand more of our students, regardless of their formal academic course deficiencies.
There are limited action-educational experiences that could be introduced within one's own school, like older students helping younger students. For projects out in the community, I would insist on group-organized and conducted projects; we need to socialize the educational process with cooperative projects. Let's find ways to apprentice our youth to the discipline and romance of real problems that involve much more of them than just the cerebral parts of their brain. They are given much more than they have the opportunity to give.
In the Negro neighborhood project mentioned earlier, The students lost their "cool" very early, and became angry at the injustice they saw. They became resentful of their own white exploitative heritage, and affectionately tender with the needy children they served. The intensity of their communal living experience, combined with their encompassing emotional involvement in their work, welded the students together in personal ways they had never experienced before. They experienced more of themselves, their feelings, prejudices, fears. They began to learn how to care for others and find ways to express such love. Never again will these students passively respond to school and society. They have developed a vision of what needs to be done and what living can be like. We Friends must witness more forcefully and creatively to our convictions about how one learns to live as a full human being in the truth. That is the why for a Friends school today.
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55. The Pendle Hill Idea (by Howard Haines Brinton; 1950)
About the Author (1970 ed.)—Howard & Anna Brinton arrived at Pendle Hill (PH) in the summer of 1936 with a solid background of academic achievement at the colleges of Mills & Earlham, & became co-directors of a new sort of education enterprise, a Quaker fusion of school & community. They retired in the 50's & lived on campus as Directors Emeriti. Anna died in 1969; Howard continues to lecture, write, & simply live.
Introduction (1970 ed.)—40 years of failure and success have demonstrated, at least to some extent, what is possible and what is impossible in an institution like PH. No 2 years of PH experience have been the same; the character of each depends on the personalities of those in residence. PH’s future will be different than PH’s past, but there are certain fundamental principles which will remain unchanged. This pamphlet describes those principles. [It is because of all those who participated at PH that these principles found expression].
[Pre-historic & early education]—PH, [among others] makes use of 2 basic Quaker principles involving the importance of: the small integrated, religiously centered community as a starting point for a social order higher than that of the world in general; immediate experience as a necessary supplement to beliefs & theories.
The community is the oldest instrument of education, as old as the human race & older. Long before instruction through words began, primitive society’s youth watched their elders engaged in hunting, gardening, tool-making, & religious exercises. Humans have [most often] lived in small, closely integrated groups united by kinship, economy, moral code, & 1 religion. Communities most likely varied in size from 50-100 persons. Now, the family is too small, & the state too large to meet our needs, so we create groups such as church & club.
The community small enough to permit every one in it to know everyone else intimately is by its very nature an educational instrument. From birth to death the individual is moulded by the group, not so much through words as through shared actions. Such an education pierces below the surface of conscious thought to the springs of the will in the hidden depths of the soul. Religion is taught by participation in religious exercises.
Such education may be too successful, resulting in conservatism & little change from 1 generation to the next. With words came conscious thought; with thought came rebellion against tribal patterns. Myth & legend, recited or sung, became an early teaching form. They conveyed through symbolic elements a complete philosophy of life. Humans began to question old legends & traditions, beginning a long process [where education became] very verbal in character & affected only the mind's surface, ignoring the [will’s inner depths & springs].
The 3 arts—[Education in Europe’s middle ages began with proto-universities, which focused 1st on theology, with philosophy as ancilla]. The instruments of instruction were the Bible and Aristotle. There was also training in reason. The instruments of this instruction were the Trivium (Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric), and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy). In the Monastery there was also training with the Hall and the Farm. The 3 levels were Chapel (Divine Arts), Library (Liberal Arts), and Hall (Useful Arts). Eventually Theology faded from the general curriculum.
Today we find that Human (Liberal) Arts are giving way to the Useful Arts. In all but seminary the Divine Arts have either vanished or greatly diminished, and now concern only a few. The universe is becoming a mechanistic one, where there is no moral order, no ultimate purpose, no absolute truth. This stage in education is leading us to destruction by the very science which we have created to assure survival. [Humankind is becoming] a homeless, frightened wanderer, going nowhere.
The 4th art—The early Christian groups were small communities, [similar to tribal communities in being educational], but they taught a universal religion independent of kinship. A tribal character fused with the universal [message], but the [original] primitive Christianity couldn’t be suppressed. The Quaker movement of the 17th century was evidence of this. The sense of the Spirit’s presence inspiring & uniting the group [was the central focus [in their efforts to educate]. To seek for & be inspired by the Spirit might be called a 4th art different from, but not excluding or the other 3. There is no community more powerful in its educational effect than the God-indwelt society. This 4th art is in evidence in silent, expectant waiting for a sense of Divine Presence & Guidance.
A complete, well-rounded education includes all arts: the Divine, the Liberal, the Useful, & the Spiritual. The University of Kamazawa in Tokyo, Japan, belongs to Zen Buddhism. The university has a meditation hall; instruction is given in the use of silence. In Zen Buddhism education on its highest level has to do not with books, lectures or scientific apparatus but with silence & the immediate experience of Life. Zen won’t fit into our western culture, but it isn’t completely alien to scientific method or Catholic or Quaker meditative practices.
Pendle Hill, an Educational Community—Now in its 40th year, PH endeavors to supply a small intimate, integrated community and an education based on the 3 ancient arts, Divine, Liberal, and Useful, and the Spiritual as understood and interpreted by the Society of Friends. Other institutions outside the conventional educational system are Iona in Scotland, Sigtuna in Sweden, Cluny and Essertines in France, Dreibergen in Holland, Bad Boll in Germany, and Chateau de Bossey in Switzerland.
PH is a small community; it numbers about 60 persons. Each person must have full opportunity to develop one’s unique personality as well as one’s communal personality. PH is a community of the family type. [Some students bring their children; a few have brought their parents; we relate to & care for one another as in a family]. PH is an integrated community; there is no formal distinction between staff & students. Decisions are on the basis of unanimity without voting. PH is a representative community, including a variety of races and nationalities; it is not isolated from the world around it. Members are encouraged to undertake regular field work. Each year more than 100 persons besides the teaching staff have lectured and led discussions.
In seeking to heal the inward confusion that is so much a part of the world’s disturbances, PH pamphlets & bulletins further emphasize the ideals of PH. The social studies are directed toward the present need for peace, industrial and racial as well as international. In an atmosphere of peaceful searching the road to truth, to justice, & perhaps even to love may be discovered. Psychiatrists agree to [the neurotic effects of] one-sided development, often of the intellectual at the expense of the spiritual. The normal length of stay at PH is from October to mid-June. Hints for their lifelong self-education are what the seeker receives at PH. Spiritual Arts= spiritual exercises toward union with God; Divine Arts= study of a religious philosophy of life; Liberal Arts=study of the human; Useful Arts=[creative] work & play in the physical world around us.
Spiritual Life/Useful Arts and Recreation—The resident group at PH gathers daily for period of meditation and worship each morning after breakfast [after the manner of Friends]. It is assumed that there is a Divine Life within and beyond, from which strength and guidance will come to the soul willing and open to receive it. Sometimes a thought will come with peculiar force which marks it as intended for the group. True worship enables the members to center down to that area of the soul [which is] that divine Spring of Eternal Life.
The Physical activity in cooperative work & recreation is an important supplement to [the other aspects of life at PH]. Each member takes part in the common tasks in the household, garden, grounds, office, or library. Work itself may be sacramental, the outward evidence of inward grace; work & meditation may go happily together, each aiding the other. Deliberate, self-conscious intention is not always as creative as an attitude of mind which permits the new to emerge unexpectedly & uninvited. Co-operative work is subordinate to study.
Divinities and Humanities—These subjects are so inter-related that it is difficult to separate them. It is important to consider the courses at PH in relation to the whole pattern of community life. [Ideas are important, but] the inward life which deals with human relation to their selves and to God is equally important. Education may be a 2-dimensional undertaking, concerned only with the surface of the mind, or it may have a third dimension of depth through which life acquires meaning and significance. [People come to PH for many different reasons: personal problems; a satisfying religion; re-directing a life; renewal.
Courses at PH present a balance between the inward and the outward aspects of religion and society. Some of the most valuable projects have arisen out apparently aimless browsing in the library. Term papers often develop into publications as books, pamphlets, or less ambitious articles in periodicals. Some of these papers pass all the tests of scholarship. Others present a few simple but fundamental ideas of vital importance to the writer, thoughts sometimes arrived at after a struggle and accepted as a guide to life.
Characteristics of Pendle Hill—The advantages of grades, credits, and examinations, however useful in the case of immature students cannot be supported in the case of adults. Students sometimes leave PH wondering what they have gained, and have to wait for more life experience to evaluate their time at PH. Time spent at PH should be evaluated as a segment of life lived for its own sake, independent of results.
The difference between organisms & mechanisms is often disregarded in education. High pressure production may succeed in industry; acceleration in education may prove disastrous. A healthy mind must grow at it own [individual], appropriate rate. Minds do not grow on facts; there must be meaning as well. PH endeavors to afford each student an opportunity to spend the time they need in reading a book or writing a paper, [allowing more time for] a growing insight into fundamental values. The only requirement is that the time not be wasted.
PH [has a] minimum of procedures to free up the mind from attention to what might more properly be relegated to routine, [freeing up more time for the creative faculties]. PH endeavors to stimulate self-discipline by facilitating recognizable achievement. The Quaker position appeals to the good in one but does not assume that such an appeal will necessarily be successful. At PH many details of living are worked out by common consent in the weekly community meeting. Others are assumed as a result of experience. In intellectual & spiritual experiment, right result can only be achieved when right conditions are created & maintained.
The religious doctrine of the Society of Friends tends to make those who are convinced of it somewhat independent of external teachers. For this we wait together in corporate silence. Each student is assigned a staff adviser with whom he or she consults at least once a week. Pendle Hill may sometimes be the right setting in which to arrive at the resolution of minor complications or to find the way out of a quandary.
The Integrating Idea—[An integrating idea] operates as a field which produces in the group a certain pattern of behavior. It is not necessary that the concept be sharply defined. The power of the idea should reside in its potentiality rather than in its actuality. The integrating idea at PH is that aspect of the faith of the Society of Friends which created PH. Quakerism might be characterized as a type of Christianity based primarily on experience and secondarily on historical events. The temporal comes to its full meaning through the Eternal, a living, moving Reality which cannot be caught and contained in a verbal formula or an intellectual concept. The curve of the spiritual life [is such that] human relations with God reinforces their relationship to one another.
Equality in an educational group means equality of respect, opportunity, sex, race, and economic status. Wisdom is a joint search in which all take part in proportion to their ability, experience, and dedication. Simplicity in education means absence of superfluity. Knowledge is sought for its practical contribution to a good life. Simplicity guards from excess of words, from exaltation of [speech-making] regardless of its value.
Harmony results from absence of pressure, psychological or physical. Life at PH is largely concerned with the discovery of the means for developing peace among individuals, nations, race & classes.
Community refers to all the ways & means by which human beings recognize & realize their interdependence. PH is seeking to make possible within itself the kind of life which should prevail throughout the world. It tries to be a minority which has withdrawn for the very purpose of returning with greater power & knowledge.
There are other educational communities like PH, “watch towers,” where one can step aside, take bearings, and become aware of directions and goals. They afford time and opportunity to draw strength for one’s soul from the Inner Source of Divine Life.
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223. The Roots of Pendle Hill (by Carol R. Murphy; 1979)
About the Author/ PREFATORY NOTE/ PROLOGUE—She was born in Boston, MA., Dec. 1916 (died 1994). After a childhood of home schooling in rural Massachusetts, the family moved to the Philadelphia area; Carol attended Quaker schools. In 1928 the family became convinced Friends. She graduated Swarthmore Class of 1937 & earned an M.A. in International Affairs at American University in 1941. She began her association with Pendle Hill in 1947, eventually writing 17 pamphlets.
This is the 14th. This is essentially the 1st 3 chapters of a history of Pendle Hill up to 1950. Pendle Hill was the 1st place to which Carol Murphy turned to nurture her renewed religious faith. She drew on Pendle Hill files and: Joseph Platt; Douglas Steere; Justice Williams; Howard and Anna Brinton; John Forbes; Anna Broomell and PH staff.
When you come to Pendle Hill, you drive up a tree-lined drive, past the Director’s house to a home-like colonial style building where life is centered. [It may seem very worldly, until something reminds you of other-worldly concerns that brought people here]. You may find students making bread & carrying animated discussions [with varying degrees of foreign accents in their English]. You think on people that gathered here, & wonder what brought them, what work they're doing, & what common purpose binds them together in fellowship.
I. A CHALLENGE AND AN ANSWER—In the course of the 19th century, scientific thought was forcing religion to return to its roots and realize freshly its own ultimate truth. Few Quakers then were impassioned mystics or prophets. They did not always or everywhere give a clear answer to the challenge of scientific thought, including the newer Biblical criticism. The more fearless Quaker minds saw that adult education was one way to better equip Friends to face the doubts and questionings of the times. Though called “a religiously guarded education,” Quaker schools were among the 1st to introduce practical and scientific studies.
In England, an adult educational center was suggested at Manchester conference in 1895. John W. Rowntree wrote an essay “A Plea for a Quaker Settlement.” The 1st step was Biblical courses held at Summer Schools in 1897. George Cadbury joined trying to establish permanent training center. He offered Woodbrooke, an old family residence near Birmingham as the school-site. The Woodbrooke Committee invited Dr. J. Rendel Harris to be Director of Studies (1903). Woodbrooke eventually had foreign students & non-Friends as well as Quakers.
In America several experiments were made, each contributing something of value to Society. [The American situation was complicated by several separations that took place & cut resulting groups off from one another]. Rufus Jones sought to reconcile backward elements of 2 groups to modern advances. He wrote: “There are few weaker & pitiable chapters in our Quaker literature than the ones which have been written against present-day thought. They are so full of errors that they convince no man of intelligence.”
America’s 1st Summer School was held at Haverford College in 1900; Rufus Jones gave 5 lectures. Similar schools were held in even years, usually at Haverford. The College set up a Graduate School in 1917 with Isaac Sharpless as Dean; the Director of Studies was Elihu Grant. [At one time] the funds provided by T. Wistar Brown’s estate were used for 8 scholarships of $600 each. It long contributed to Pendle Hill’s [student body].
II. WOOLMAN SCHOOL—It was born as a concern of the Advancement Committee of the Friends General Conference that religious workers needed more than a summer training. It was located at Swarthmore. The name of Woolman was “least likely to limit the usefulness to one branch of Friends.” It opened in 1915. 11 students, mostly women, were taught courses on the Bible, Quakerism, religious education, psychology, and social welfare and reform. In the fall 1917, came 15 trainees for reconstruction work with the American Friends Service Committee in France, which set a precedent for the later collaboration of the Service Committee with Pendle Hill. Henry Hodgkins, future Pendle Hill Director spoke at Woolman in 1922.
Caroline G. Norment came as hostess in 1923, [& served 4 years in different roles]. The Woolman School Board noted: “Her untiring devotion & her eager vision of the School possibilities have been a source of inspiration to the Board.” Woolman School moved to Wyncote in 1925. Joan Fry wrote of Woolman School: “Because Friends consider that it isn’t the absence of differences, but the power to reconcile, which constitutes the peace-maker’s secret, it’s clear that we need training which embraces as many varieties of experiences as possible.”
The move to larger quarters seemed to open a door for future expansion and greater responsibilities. A larger budget was needed for maintenance; students were seldom able to pay their own way. It was no longer located near the library & teaching facilities of Swarthmore College. Between its move & its closing in 1927, the School held one winter term, and 2 summer terms. Caroline Norment wrote: “We have got to get it quite freshly to the Society with a plan of a bigger thing than we are doing, rather than to go and attempt to get the Society to support the small thing we have done.” The Woolman School board envisioned “a cooperative enterprise of all Friends … a Quaker Educational Center adequate to the purpose, adequately staffed and financed.”
Certainly the need for such a school was a real one. Caroline Norment wrote [of the approaching end of Woolman: “Perhaps we have gone from the worm stage into the chrysalis and some day may come out a full-fledged moth with a beauty that is as yet unsuspected.” Alexander Purdy thought that: “We have to do 2 things at once, if we are to grasp the problem of our common life today: see life as a whole and avoid all easy solutions of its perplexities; see life in its specific, immediate, and hand-to-hand relationships.” Mura Murayama wrote: “You have given me a key, which I have lost sight of many years, to open the door between spontaneous enjoyment and conscientious effort and control, and to find a unity between them.”
[Some felt the curriculum of the school was too broad, and questioned whether] it was possible for a small school to do more than one thing well. In the last class there was 21 students and a $5,000 deficit. This showed both the need and the failure of Woolman School to speak clearly enough to it. Even before Woolman closed, plans were being laid for a school that would be larger, more representative of all Friends, and more intensive in its scholarship. Caroline Norment wrote: “There is light ahead if we know how to go after it.”
III. FOUNDING OF PENDLE HILL—Many Friends felt the concern that the good work might go on. A conference was called by Rufus M. Jones, Clement M. Biddle, & George A. Walton among others. This conference stated that “Woolman School, while it sees more clearly than ever the need & opportunity, it sees clearly too, that it isn't in its present form sufficient to the performance of the task.” The conference met at Haverford. Agnes Tierney presided; Haverford President Comfort, Paul Furnas, Alexander Purdy, & Henry Cadbury spoke.
A continuation committee was appointed. Their deliberations concluded that: “there is a need for an educational center in which a type of special study and research can be carried on which is not done at present in our existing Quaker educational center. The center can and should stimulate Quaker thought and life in our present schools. [Here] students can live together who desire to make a study of the application of Christianity to life. The center should be quite free from the usual academic organization …”
A certain amount affiliation and cooperation with colleges was envisaged. The staff would include at least 2 full-time instructors (one as director of studies), a director of extensions, and a hostess. It was necessary to obtain the spiritual and financial backing of the Society of Friends. The plan suggested did not receive definite enough support to assure its carrying out. 5 men met to select an inspiring leader to direct the school in its formative years. They put Henry T. Hodgkin at the head of their list.
Henry Hodgkin was born in 1877 of a Quaker family in Darlington in northern England. Henry was a missionary to China, secretary of the Friends Foreign Missionary Association, one of the founder of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and secretary China’s National Christian Council. Henry Hodgkin was interested primarily in students and young people, and he was eager for work which would bring him into closer personal contact with smaller groups. H. G. Wood wrote: “
[Hodgkin] knew a good deal of the problems and possibilities alike of the US and of Friends. He had many close friends in the States, and he had constantly worked with Americans.” Hodgkin thought of the “Woodbrooke in America” as serving the Society of Friends by developing the meeting for worship and the ministry, working out educational policy, and developing the wider service of Friends. “No student should pass out from the institution without a really international point of view and the power to think into the points of view of nations other than his own … thorough knowledge and fearless facing of all facts should be assumed as the foundation for every line of study.” Hodgkin accepted November 2, 1928.
Pendle Hill Board's nucleus was: Henry Cadbury, Elizabeth Furnas, Edith S. Platt, Joseph Platt, Grace Rhoads, Wilbur Thomas, Agnes Tierney, James Vail, Bernard Walton, & Frank D. Watson. [Careful consideration was made of the character of the instruction]. Its natural development wasn't restricted to any one narrow channel; [the school didn’t have a name at this time]. In March 1929 Henry Hodgkin made a brief trip to America. Henry outlined his ideals in a paper entitled “A Dream to Be Realized.” He wrote: “To me it seemed, from the very beginning that a door was being opened to wider service. [I envision]: a haven of Rest (the spirit's deep quiet] wherein our roots go down into spiritual subsoil); a school of Prophets (thorough [instruction] along a few well-chosen lines rather than widely diffused teaching); a laboratory of Ideas (opportunity to test ideas in practice); a fellowship around Christ (true fellowship among & between staff & student). Those at the retreat agreed with his statement of ideals. They hoped that non-Friends would also be attracted to study or to teach there.
At the retreat Vincent D. Nicholson wrote: “I feel that for the 1st time it has become a necessity to make this school the expression of certain seeking elements in all groups of the Society.” Grace E. Rhoads, Jr. wrote: “ I don’t think of this as a school solely for Friends, but for a group which is working together to serve the whole world.” Douglas Steere wrote: “I look forward to a day when [the notable thing will be when] you have gotten some magnetizing enrichment of life that you can share with young people.” Hornell Hart wrote: “If we have prepared to call them to follow in the footsteps of the prophets we have an opportunity which transcends the rational attitude. Homer Morris wrote: “The proposed school has little chance of success unless it does something distinctive and entirely different from what the other Friends colleges are doing and what is being done in existing graduate schools.” Henry Hodgkin met with the Board before going back to England. Consultations with meetings and Friends colleges, and investigation of possible locations for the school were planned.
PLANTING THE ROOTS—On the way home Henry Hodgkin wrote: We are setting out to something new. Even Woodbrooke with its rich experience isn't to be simply repeated … [The name “Pendle Hill’s”] suggestion of the waiting harvest & the mount of vision is all to the good; it can be used without the word ‘school.’ ” Woolman School was eventually sold for $80,000. Henry Hodgkin met with the Board to discuss the site, [between the 2 choices of Lansdowne & Wallingford. [The question of who the school was to be geared to was dis-cussed]. Henry advised having 3 or 4 permanent staff members instead of 2, & accommodations for 25 students by the 2nd or 3rd year. The new venture [finally] had its own name of Pendle Hill [on November 21, 1929].
S. Archibald Smith wrote: “There is need for a school that does not so much aim to explain life as to impart a reasonable and inspiring motive to live.” The Christian Century hailed the coming of Henry Hodgkin to America with the words: It will mean [a lot] to have Dr. Hodgkin in charge of the precise sort of school the Quakers have in mind.” As of December 12th, 1929, prospective students were already beginning to register.
On February 23, 1930, the Board of the old Woolman School turned over its assets to Pendle Hill, and merged the membership of the Boards. In March, the finance committee offered $75,000 for the Herman Wirz property near Wallingford; Pendle Hill opened in September 1930. The land was part of a tract acquired by John Sharpless from William Penn in 1682. It had only 2 different owners in the 1st 175 years, and 5 more in the next 65. Herman Wirz bought the property in 1922. He built the house which is now Main House. The Barn, built in 1890, was transformed at a cost of $20,000 into a meeting room, offices and dormitory space. Henry Hodgkin reported: “We all know that this ‘IT’. ” And so the roots of Pendle Hill were firmly planted.
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464. Pendle Hill (PH), A Place to Be and Become: Reflections on the 1st 90 Years (by Doug Gwyn; 2020)
About the Author—Doug Gwyn grew up in the pastoral stream of Friends in IN. He began to know un-programmed Friends while he attended Union Theological Seminary. He wrote for AFSC, and taught mainly biblical studies at PH and Woodbrooke in England. He called himself "bispiritual" to describe being engaged and nurtured by both pastoral and unprogrammed Friends. He wrote PHP # 426 But Who do You Say that I Am (2014), 6 books, including Conversation with Christ: Quaker Meditations on the Gospel of John (2011).
Foreword: Sacrament of Hope—In PH's 1st history book, Eleanor Price Mather defined PH as: "Quaker experiment in education & community." Friends showed courage & faithful openness in founding PH in 1930, the Great Depression's beginning. Now, we have similar complex challenges & uncertainties that overwhelm our capacity to address them: injustices; inequalities; war; racism; abusing the environment. These things & the pandemic present us with a very obscured historical passage. PH is a place where faith, experiential learning & actions intertwine as we open to Light. We offer a firm testimony. [While reading this pamphlet], be open to the living dynamic behind PH, & to the Spirit that motivated this place's creation. It's a place to find "reasons for hope" as hope is found in silence, work & community. PH is a small retreat, study, & conference center seeking to be a space for personal & communal renewal, a space for inspiration to create a better world. Francisco . Burgos
Preface—PH is closed for now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It faced uncertain times in its opening, & other hard times since. PH has a future & urgent purpose in the world. Climate concerns raise questions whether people should travel very far to be there. More programming may be online. 500 registered for an online lecture, "Love in a Time of Coronavirus," by John Calvi; 1,600 viewed it on YouTube. PH is slowly discovering how deeply runs exclusive white cultural standards that marginalize people of color. Francisco Burgos is the 1st person of color to serve as PH's executive director, beginning this year. The focus here is on building & grounds, which provides the background & scene for some beautiful & powerful things, [involving generous portions of] faith, hope and love.
[Introduction]—PH is a place of hospitality, with 24 acres & over 150 tree species. Diverse people come to renew spirits, learn, dialogue, find direction, rest & retreat. Hospitality offers space where change takes place, & is grounded in Quaker spirituality, beginning with morning worship. There are peaceful, caring interactions with staff, sojourners, people, & other life. Quaker testimonies: peace; truth; equality; community; simplicity; & stewardship undergird interactions. Structure & program change; spiritual practices remain consistent.
Founding—By the early 20th century Friends were abandoning isolation & adopting a more engaged activist profile. In 1917, Woolman School helped prepare Friends from humanitarian service at home & overseas. When the School closed in 1927, Rufus Jones led a group of Friends in planning another experiment in adult education. The large founding board included a spectrum of Friends from evangelical to liberal progressive. Pendle Hill was named after the English site where George Fox had his vision. Henry T. Hodgkin, a British Evangelical, wanted PH to be a: "haven of rest" and respite; "school of prophets," to strengthen convictions; "laboratory of ideas" to apply science to faith; "fellowship 'round Christ" to take PH lessons out into the world.
PH started in Wallingford, with 7½ acres of arboretum, a large, recently built house & an 1890's brick barn. The neighborhood was not as racially mixed as hoped. Chester nearby provided ample opportunities for service and witness. The Barn became meeting space, offices, and dormitory. PH's resident program was 3 10-week terms with 3 classes each. It's philosophy was that of work study & worship. PH would be a place where adults could put social ideals on a stronger spiritual basis for a more resilient life of faith, witness, and service. [To paraphrase Penn]: "I thought it an error to have no retreats for [those depleted in spirit to, without disturbance], pass through religious exercises, be strengthened, [gain] power over their spirit and enter the world again.
PH also provided spiritual grounding for AFSC's service, peacemaking & economic empowerment projects. This collaboration was at its height during Anna & Howard Brinton's tenure as director and studies' director (1936-52). PH launched in 1930 with 18 students; Marshall Shephard & Richard McKinney, 2 African-Americans were among them. PH had limited success recruiting more African Americans later, [affected as it was by] depression, war, financial crises, and the predominantly white makeup of constituency and neighborhood.
Some Deeper Roots: The Beech & the Elm/ Main House—Behind the original house stands a large American beech tree well over 300 years old, perhaps starting around the time Penn 1st purchased land. 50 yards from it stands a scion of Philadelphia's treaty elm. Buildings and land were added since PH's beginning. A little further west is Main House from 1st purchase, enlarged in 1940 & again in 1989. PH was crowded during the 30's and 40's. Some resorted to the attic for a private place of prayer. PH attracted Aldous Huxley among others. Inspired by PH, Gerald Heard went on to found a Hindu ashram in southern California. Paul Robeson attended a weekend conference advocating better relations with Russia. Martin Buber came to talk to Howard Brinton. PH's library was scattered throughout Main House & the Barn. Henry Burton Sharman started PH's distinct Gospel study method, that was carried on by Dora Wilson, Mary Morrison, Rebecca Kratz Mays, & Christ Ravndal. Henry Hodgkin led a year-long class examining the good & bad outcomes of the Russian revolution.
Main House kitchen developed early the tradition & hospitality of delicious, healthy food & engaging conversation that continues today. PH's large garden was near its entrance in the 30's & 40's. 1944 saw more than 4 tons of fruits & vegetables (717 quarts of tomatoes). The now-organic garden is at the back of the property.
The Barn—PH's unbroken sequence of daily meetings for worship for 90 years has almost always taken place in the Barn. The large sliding doors go back to the original building's use as a stable. Even in the temporary shutdown, daily morning worship continues in the Barn with a few socially-distanced staff, but with an average of well over 100 attenders [nationwide, from Canada & all over the world], participating via Zoom. Its other uses include: class sessions, Monday evening lectures, plays, concerts & "Festival Week" presentations.
Memorable speakers have included: Rabindranath Tagore, A. J. Muste, Bayard Rustin, Elise & Kenneth Boulding, Wendell Berry, Vincent Harding, & Jean-Paul Sartre (1945). Jack Shephard put on plays, which star-ted out orthodox & ended up with improvisation & audience participation. Beginning in the late 1970's, Jackie Coren organized group singing, which led to the PH Chorus in 1993, practicing & performing in the Barn space. George Lakey, civil rights & environmental activist, has led group-sings of Broadway standards from the piano.
In 1933, Douglas Steere suggested PH start publishing short, readable "tracts for the times"; PH Pamphlets began in 1934. At their peak in 1950, each pamphlet had total distribution of 3,500 copies. By now there are over 460 pamphlets. By 1997, the meeting room's ceiling was raised, & more attractive lighting was put in. The book-store was expanded, and the upstairs dormitory was turned into offices for staff and technology. Chuck Fager in 1995 established a fledgling PH web page.
Upmeads/ Waysmeet—When Anna & Howard Brinton started as directors in 1936, 3 houses were built along Plush Mill Road, 1936-37. Upmeads was a residence with an adjoining library-classroom. General George Marshall, met with Civilian Public Service administrators in Upmeads library. PH had conscientious objectors & pacifists, whom the FBI investigated. Lecture teas were held in late afternoons in the house library. Dorothy Day came on retreat & visited Anna at Upmeads. A student who was slow in leaving PH was moved to Upmeads' top floor, where Anna gently encouraged a search for next steps. PH's hospitality has been offering space for people to blossom & expand, in trust they will find renewed faith & direction. Anna resigned in 1949 to work for AFSC; Howard continued as sole director; they lived at PH for many more years. Governance became more consultative & participatory over following decades. A fundamental tension between the students/ staff community & the external board of a non-profit simmered until the resident plan was discontinued in Spring 2014.
AFSC built a house next to Upmeads for its director Clarence Pickett & his family; Brinton & Pickett influenced one another's vision in a useful symbiosis; Eleanor Roosevelt stayed at least 1 night at Waysmeet. PH's rush-seat chairs were made by laid-off WV coal miners; some are still in use. AFSC also built Edgehill next to Waysmeet for their social & industrial affairs secretary. Both houses were bought by PH in the 60's. Edgehill was the home of Parker & Sally Palmer & their 3 children; Parker was dean of studies in 1975. Palmer brought Bill & Fran Taber, Elaine Prevallet, Sandra Cronk, to PH as resident teachers. They helped reclaim the deeper registers of Quaker spirituality [in a shift from] 60's radicalism; the inward turn of the 80's was vital for its time.
Firbank—PH purchased a large mid-19th century house with 7 acres south & west of Main House to handle an influx of AFSC trainees. PH's library was consolidated in the house's east end. PH's collaboration on post-war relief & reconstruction contributed to British & American Friends receiving the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize. Arts & Crafts saw their beginnings at PH with creative writing & drawing classes in the mid-1950's. A craft studio was started in the basement in 1960, led by Stan Zielinski, a weaver. In 1992-93, Firbank was renovated, with rooms for students & visitors, & a ground-floor art studio. Its library hosted term course sessions, weekend & 10-day workshops, on Bible, spirituality, & [discernment]. Richard Stenhouse, PH's 1st African-American resident teacher in 1961, taught social activism classes. He left after 2 years in frustration over PH's failure to attract Black students. Stenhouse wrote "Some Barriers to the Community of Peoples within the Society of Friends," a critique of Friends and accepting white preferences and practices as the cultural norm for everyone.
Chace & Cadbury Court/ Blue Route, Brinton House, Perimeter Path, Owen's Garden—After a ¼-century of packing students, staff, and sojourners into every available space, Chace dormitory was built in 1958, adjacent to the Barn; it included 24 single rooms. 7 new staff apartments were also added. The apartments developed structural problems and were razed in 2016. George Willoughby & George Lakey taught non-violent action for social change in the 60's. The board felt a need for a spiritual change, so they chose not to renew Willoughby's contract in 1970; there were difficult feelings on all sides of this action.
A new "Beltline" interstate was suggested; the chosen "Blue Route" originally ran right through Pendle Hill. A large letter-writing campaign helped Pendle Hill shift the route to the east & south enough to cut off only a small peace of property, for which the government paid $100,000; a large house & 5.5 acres was bought & im-proved with the purchase money. The conference center was named Brinton House in honor of Howard & Anna. The Steere Wing & Conlon room were added later. The Blue Route cut off wooded trails connecting PH & Swarthmore College. Grounds-manager (for 34 years as of 2020) Lloyd Guindon initiated the wood-chipped "Perimeter Path" plan in 1989. Approximately a mile long, the Path circles the property on both sides of Plush Mill Road; neighbors surrounding the property make frequent use of it. Blue Route traffic noise hasn't proved PH's ruin after all; an earthen berm aids in noise abatement. An enclosed garden with a small waterfall & pool, benches & a screened shelter was created 2003-04, & named Owen's Garden in memory of Owen Richmond.
New House/ A Great People to be Scattered—Before a neighboring family put their 6-bedroom house on the market, they gave PH the chance to buy it. The new house fit well with PH's spirit & style of hospitality; it doesn't have a permanent name yet. The Greek word for "house" is oikos, which is also the root for "economy," "ecology" & "ecumenical." These 3 words describe 3 dimensions of PH's hospitality. It has taken economy & stewardship to get PH through changing times. Hodgkin's open-ended Christian faith & Brinton's dialog with Eastern tradition's provided an ecumenical, inter-faith dimension. PH's sensitivity to the land it occupies, its organic garden, & permaculture classes it has taught reflects it ecological dimension.
PH is a place where visions are received & followed. Thousands have been renewed, refreshed & sent back out into the world. Vincent Harding, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s friend & ally was invited to PH in 1979. He finished There is a River at PH. He taught nonviolent social change, Black liberation & other movements. He was at Iliff Theological Seminary & directed the Veterans of Hope project before coming back to PH in 2014. He was an inspiration to the community, affirming this nation will continue living into its constitution and its ideals.
As I write this, demonstrations have taken place nationwide. Interim director Traci Hjelt Sullivan wrote: "PH strives to support agents of change ... to strengthen classes related to overcoming racism ... & those classes for & led by people of color ... Let us become the ancestors deserving of our great-grandchildren's pride." PH intends to be part of the recovery that [goes beyond the pandemic & effects a lasting transformation of the world].
[Excerpts from] Pendle Hill Timeline—1930: Opening of Pendle Hill (PH) on 7 acres, Main House & Barn; Henry T. Hodgkin, Director. 1932: Hodgkin forced to leave by failing health; John Hughes, acting director. 1934: PH Pamphlet series begins. 1934-35; 1936-52: Howard Brinton, director (acting, 1 year; 13 years co-director with wife Anna; 3 years, sole director). 1936-37: Upmeads, Waysmeet, Edgehill built.
1940: Wakefield built. 1942-48: Training service in Friends Ambulance Unit and later AFSC relief and reconstruction. 1945: Firbank & 7 acres of land purchased.
1952-70: Dan Wilson, director (acting, 3 years; 15 executive, with Gilbert Kilpack, dean of studies (DOS)). 1958: Chace dormitory built.
1960: PH's 1st art studio in Firbank basement. 1965: Crosslands built. 1968: Cadbury Court & maintenance shop/ garage built. 1969: Brinton House property (conference center; on 5.4. acres).
1971-4: Colin Bell (1 year, director); Bob Scholz (1 year, DOS; 2 years, director. 1974-81: Edwin Sanders, director ("executive clerk" (EC)). 1975-85: Parker Palmer (5 years, DOS; 5 years, teacher, writer in residence).
1981-6: Robert Lyon serves as EC. 1986-91: Margery Walker, executive secretary (ES). 1989-90: Perimeter Path is established. 1989-2003: expansion & renovations.
1991-2011: Daniel Seeger, ES (9 Years); Steve Baumgartner, director (5+ years); Barbara Parsons, Ken & Katherine Jacobsen (collectively, 2+ years as interim); Lauri Perman, director (4 Years).
2003-04: Owen's Garden developed.
2011-19: Jennifer Karsten, director. 2014: Resident program ends in Spring. 2019: Traci Hjelt Sullivan becomes interim. 2020- : Francisco Burgos begins as director.
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190. Memories and Meditations of a Workcamper (by David S. Richie; 1973)
About the Author—David Richie may be [one of] the last Americans to retire in the house where his life began, in 1908 in Moorestown, New Jersey. In 1934, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) sponsored the 1st American workcamp. David Richie & his soon-wife, Mary Wright of Norristown worked there. After directing camps in several later summers, David Richie invented weekend workcamp. In weekend work-camps, leadership & community relations were ongoing; personnel constantly changes. It has been David’s great gift to be able to center whole experience in a very practical & dauntless love. MILDRED BINNS YOUNG
“You can count the seeds in an apple, but you cannot count the apples in a seed.”
I. HOW IT ALL BEGAN—[If the thoughts that follow] carry meaning & challenge to others, I can only be glad. A loving father & mother got me started, & 3 lively brothers with whom I rubbed off some of the rough spots. At Christmas we stuffed stockings, & went to the Bedford Street Mission to give stockings & serve turkey dinner. It made me aware that all wasn’t right with the world, & how lucky I was. I had other exposures to the realities of our cruelly unequal & unjust society. Most happy was a summer living & working with unemployed men on a Quaker farm which produced & canned food for 2 North Philadelphia breadlines. We Quakers were asked to arbitrate a dispute over distribution, which we listened to, & then offered a compromise at 2 am.
There had been volunteer workcamps in Europe since 1921, inspired by Pierre Ceresole. The AFSC, in 1934, sought to provide educational opportunity for pacifist & non-pacifists students to better understand economic & social injustices which cause violence, & the plight of people trapped by injustice. Hard & healthy physical work & joyous, though rugged camp living made a great impact. That & a spirited, black-haired, bright-eyed young woman. On the camp’s last night, I asked her to be my wife, which she became on a rainy June 8th, 1935.
Mary & I were called from our honeymoon to help cope with the crisis that resulted when the Hosiery Workers Union realized the workcamp group was interracial & we had to renovate & stay at the Stephen Decatur Mansion ruins. The 2nd summer camp was held at Bedford Street Center on Kater Street. The next summer, 1936, the AFSC asked us to lead the 1st workcamp for high school girls. The camp was at the Tunesassa Friends Indian Boarding School, where we painted & did rehab on the buildings.
In 1937, we visited Wilmer & Mildred Young at the Delta Cooperative Farm near Clarksdale, MS. In 1938, I joined the AFSC workcamp there, clearing land & building a bridge across a swamp. In 1940, Mary & I were drawn back to the urban scene, to Reading, PA, to build a playground & to help students understand union-management issues in the hosiery industry. In 1942, one of the hosiery workers invited us to bring a work-camp to help build a coop at Twin Pines Homestead Community. I told the Draft Board I felt “called” to continue weekend workcamps, and would refuse any other service, no matter how constructive. I felt that accepting even alternative service would be accepting conscriptive service. The testimony of a returned war veteran as to my sincerity moved the Board to stretch the law & classify me as a minister, which I was not.
A meditation came to Mary & I about how Simon of Cyrene reacted to having to carry Jesus’ cross. For the most part it was no big deal, until: “I suddenly saw something else. I’d made his journey easier, but it was a journey to his death. By doing the soldier’s command, I had helped to crucify him.” [Later I performed a service for an arrested Lutheran minister that led to the headlines]: “Quaker Bails Out Draft Dodger with Defense Bonds.”
II. WEEKEND WORKCAMPING—In 1940, after the 1st Reading camp, my once-in-a-lifetime idea dawned—weekend workcamp, organized to attract less socially conscious young people and helping them to grow in awareness and commitment to social justice and brotherhood through work that is “love made visible,” crowded into a weekend. [Wilmer Young was very impressed with the idea]. Miss Claudia Grant, director of Wharton Settlement in North Philadelphia welcomed the 1st weekend workcamp to the nursery school; the 1st campers were veteran summer volunteers. The stream of volunteers ebbed and flowed but never stopped.
It later led one former Dutch volunteer to move in with a mentally challenged mother of 5 in Australia, to ease the family’s burden, and to become radiantly happy in the process. Another foreign volunteer said: “The purpose of workcamp is to weave the web of the social work net stronger so that no one will fall through.” A tough, local, gum-chewing teenager joined our 1943 High School Farm Labor Camp, went to Friends College and eventually became director of a municipal center. Marriages resulted from workcamp. I am sure that having a deep joint concern for others is one of the best assurances that a marriage will be a lasting one.
[We would work in the homes of difficult children with amazing results; we would help a sober alcoholic fix up his house. I invited a big, menacing teenager to break up wooden boxes for his own firewood, and turned his sullen disbelief into pride when the wood was delivered to his house. He eagerly did the same work for the next 4 weeks. We worked with a] family whose 2 boys were going to be taken away for burning down a nearby house after a beating from their drunken father. I doubt if that family was ever happier than those weekends we worked together fixing their home. Once we struggled to lay 100 yards of pipe for running water all in 1 week-end. The supervising plumber said, “I couldn’t get anyone to work that hard for love nor money.” A camper digging the ditch replied: “Most likely you never tried love.” OUR WEEKEND WORK PRAYER: May the Will of God be done by us./ May the Love of God be shared by us./ May the sons of God be served by us./ May this be our honest prayer each day./ To work in love is our way to pray.
III. QUOTES FROM MY POLISH LOG—In February, 1946, I was suddenly asked by AFSC to go overseas to organize workcamps in Poland. They said: “Friends need you to do what you deeply believe in.” Someone [highly] qualified was found to help with the weekend workcamps at home. God works in wondrous ways when we allow ourselves to be used. I wrote: “I must really test out preaching about loving and helping others to see if I can still believe in it, even when the going gets tough … All about are evidences of man’s search in the darkness for the secrets of physical life and laws … The results have been astounding to anyone with even half a mind to be grateful. Have we tried as hard to bring our purposes and practices into harmony with the universe’s spiritual laws [as we have with its physical laws]? When will we clarify our purpose, discipline our selfishness, and wholeheartedly love the Good … and obey the law of love?”
“Rad Kossowski, a Polish refugee returning from 7 years of exile in Canada poured out a most moving account of years in Russian prison camps, and the ordeal during the German occupation … I must never blame anyone for whatever reaction they make to such brutality, or for their infliction of brutality on others when manipulated by the coercion and propaganda of warped minds.” [We arrived in Gdansk harbor, and the ship was in danger of being ransacked. In my broken Polish I persuaded the looters to leave the children’s clothes we had brought and even return what they had already taken].
“Instead of workcamps, I was assigned instead to truck-driving, delivering relief supplies. At each day’s end, children too old to get relief rations planted & cultivated a garden with me. They were rewarded by all the Quaker cocoa they could drink & bread covered with peanut butter; I was rewarded with their friendship. The identification bracelet my wife gave me on departure said on the visible side “Bóg Jest Milo, "God is love. It helped disarm hostility, bring cordial welcome, & make young friends. There was hardly a crisis to challenge my basic faith. I long for the day when my work is an eloquent act of worship that those lives I touch are really touched.
IV. FINLAND—“[In November, 1946, I went to Finland] with a sense it would be wrong for me not to go, rather than a clear sense of calling. [I have failed] to live close enough to the Source to know clearly what is right for me to do. I know that discovering this Source is what the world needs. I prayed to Jesus: ‘Strengthen my resolve not to speak, not to act, not to fall asleep, until it is right that I should—thoroughly right because I too, have drunk deep with thee of the beauty the love & the yearning and suffering of this spirit-filled universe.”
[How do I evaluate the past 3 months in Finland: emotional joyride; escape from reality; an actual experience of Reality? An amazing number of young people have rallied round the weekend workcamps, and have felt themselves drawn into a more unselfish, loving, happier fellowship than any of us have ever experienced before. After inviting Russian students to join them next time, a student said: “Who has once been truly happy wants to lead everyone to happiness. He is glad to give his most precious treasures.”
It was a far cry from the American “Rubbing their faces in the dirt” approach of our workcamps. I persuaded one group of workcampers to experiment with the value of an early morning “quiet time.” At least a beautiful and holy love has been aroused and where that will lead I guess we can trust to the Source of that love. In their silent searching and the love of God they will be rightly led. A Finnish friend lovingly criticized me, saying, “David, your camps have been too much David-centered and not enough Christ-centered.” There is nothing more significant I can contribute to the peace of Europe than what I contributed to the strengthening of the [intra-European] workcamp movement. It in turn contributed: a witness against war and for social justice and brotherhood economics; an incarnation of the democratic spirit; affirmation of the religious hypothesis as the only hypothesis [that addresses the other contributions].
Sampa Tolsa wrote an interpretation of workcamping the following Christmas: “Our comradeship in the workcamps has brought the ultimate melody of our existence to come near to me … Each of us has been given the unique talent to make God live, by our every deed and doing which we perform unconditioned and without reservation as a natural act of our heart ... Do not keep your candle covered. Do not be shy to love. You have been given the potential to shine as a Christmas candle all the way through.”
V. LUCIMIA AND THE POISON OF HATRED—“More than a year after I had left home, the Polish workcamp I had hoped to set up on arrival, became a reality on the Vistula riverbanks south of Warszawa in July 1947. [I managed to] produce a collection of 19 volunteers from Polish universities, to be joined later by Swiss and English campers. We were located near the completely destroyed village of Lucimia. We built a barrack school and 6 homes for war widows. We organized a youth club, a medical clinic, and a 10-class outdoor school. The community was generous with food and labor.”
“We had crisis involving Polish Communists and Germans. One of our campers and “co-leaders-in-training” [persuaded and charmed] the Polish Communist officer to provide us with supplies for our outdoor school. I suggested that they invite a German Catholic to visit the camp, but feeling in the camp against Germans was still too bitter. One camper did meet with the priest months later and had “a lot to tell.”
“When I stopped at the German pacifist Wilhelm Mensching's Freundschaftsheim, his daughter Hanna asked me for the name of a possible Polish pen pal. [She received an understandably bitter reply from the person I suggested. That same person, Wanda, became the 1st Polish staff member in the Freundschaftsheim family. At a German workcamp I met Anneke from Holland. [At 1st, she physically & emotionally] had trouble associating with the other campers. By the time I had arrived she had gotten the poison of hatred out of her system as well.”
[As I was riding in a car] down a quiet rural road, we caught up with a young boy on a bicycle. I was gripped by a powerful urge … to jump out & strangle that boy. I shook physically for seconds afterward. I had been conditioned, poisoned, by the Poles’ agonies that I had only “witnessed” 2nd-hand. [I later protested that no one seemed to care what had happened in Poland, & no one had apologized]. Just before I left, one of them addressed me in the company of the others: “David … we don’t think you meant that you wanted us to say we were sorry. It is much too terrible for that. We think that … [we must] get right with God, & then do what that requires of us.” A crippled ex-Nazi quoted Miester Eckhardt: “A joyful heart filled with love is everywhere at home.”
VI. THE WORLD A FRIENDLY HOME—The AFSC asked me to return to Europe for the summer of 1948 to provide leadership “from alongside” in Poland, Finland, and Germany. Most likely as a direct result of rearming of West Germany in 1949, Quakers were not allowed to hold more workcamps in Poland. I was work-camping in Finland when the Korean War broke out in 1950. Fortunately, total darkness hasn't yet come, though the awful war in Vietnam has brought us perilously close to it. In Germany I asked a French workcamper why he had come. His answer amazed me: “To be among hopeful people.”
My German interpreter said: “You do not know how long I have prayed for an American who believes as you do.” In 1957, I was asked to serve as co-leader of a Finnish camp in Lapland helping isolated refugee families clearing land and building barns. In the fall of 1957 I was given the opportunity to fly to India to visit 11 very different workcamps. I tried to change the undemocratic and poorly planned aspects of most of the camps. Fortunately for me enough Friends know that “the whole world is a friendly home,” to support me in keeping the weekend workcamps operating for more than 3 decades. They have financed splendid youthful leadership, both black and white, which provided 2 camps on most weekends and even 3 on some weekends.
“We can find a basis for peace and fellowship with the Russian people. This does not mean we must trust people we know we cannot trust. It does mean that we must try to love people whom we think we cannot trust and trust God. “Our hope for a better future is not based on our doing, or not doing, this or that. It is based on the revelation of God’s Eternal Love in the life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Christ loved like that because God loves like that. God’s love in Christ, Christ’s love in us—here is our ultimate hope.”
VII. AFRICA/ VIII. THE SPIRIT IN THE GARDEN-—The 1st of 6 wonder-filled tours of Africa came in 1960, promoting & participating in multi-racial workcamps, even in South Africa. [When I found out that the subject I was speaking on] was “Quakerism & Prejudice,” I meditated on it and came up with the insight: “We are all inescapably prejudiced! We must always base our attitudes and actions on our previous experience without knowing, therefore pre-judging the results. We need to broaden our experience, through workcamps, and deepen it, if the results of our actions are to be helpful.
[In South Africa, there was a minister who invited a black choir into their white church in spite of resignations & threats, & a minister who gave up their pulpit in a large, all white church to start a new, mixed race church. I had an all white Afrikanner workcamp play volleyball with black converts, & invite them to their camp worship service. I said to another white Afrikanner group that I did come to preach the good news of young people of all nations, races and colors of skin, working together in workcamps for world peace and justice.
Just about the only way that we in America can help the non-white majority in South Africa is to make our own America an inspiring example of a just and democratic multi-racial society achieved non-violently. Arnold Toynbee said: “In the next 25 years the extremely privileged white minority will decide whether to try to defend their privilege by force, or to care and share enough with the colored majority to wipe out world poverty.”
In poverty-stricken Lesotho I felt deeply the suspicion, if not the hatred, on the part of the black student campers toward the white volunteers. Only in the 2nd week did we begin to become a united workcamp, and begin to comprehend what is required of each of us to make a success of our voyage on our one and only spaceship, earth. God’s will is to live in closest possible cooperation and harmony with all God’s creatures and all God’s creation. Is it any wonder that I lost a good fraction of my heart to those brave souls, whatever their color of skin, who are pioneering in Southern Africa toward the Kingdom of God on earth?
The suffering that Jesus took upon himself was suffering that resulted from man’s animalistic selfishness, his callous exploitation of his fellows, his ruthless violence. Jesus could rightly pray, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This suffering continues today and much more needlessly. We should know better. Regardless of what others do, each of us can be stripped and purified of at least a fraction of our animal selfish-ness by exposing ourselves to God’s love as revealed in Jesus. Thus we can become usable, thus we can each have a share in building the city that has lain too long a dream … this I have come to know in workcamp.
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About the Author—Joseph graduated from MIT in 1940 with a B.S. in Business & Engineering Administration. He took his Masters in Social Studies, and his doctorate from the University of Chicago in Religion and Personality. He is a psychologist in a University Health Service. He has worked in jails, mental hospitals, & colleges and counseled others often. He has developed a knowledge of the spiritual exploration of American youth.
Note to the Reader—The writer of this Journal is hypothetical; the experiences are real, out of the lives of today's students in our colleges & universities. The pilgrimage here depicted represents a minority of students. Evidence substantiates both dismantling of religious belief and of deeply-stirring "peak experiences" in college.
Dear Mr. Havens: Some of [this] may seem pretty way-out to be called "spiritual." That's the way I see it.
January 1959—I was sitting in my library hideout, & something kept nudging me from inside. I glanced up at the stars & then the Nietzsche I had read hit me. Nietzsche wrote: "We have killed [God] ... What did we do when we unchained this earth from the sun? ... Away from all suns?... [Do] we not stray through infinite nothing? Do we not smell ... God's decomposition? How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?
[Later reaction]—Empty space, coldness, infinite nothing, night, what do they mean? Is that the real world? (To Mr. Havens): I recall stopping here & thinking a long time. I think I grieved & cried a bit. Nietzsche's deed was distant from him in 1882, but much closer to me; it touches something deep in me. I sometimes thought I agreed with [self-proclaimed] atheists; we enjoyed shocking the pious. Being agnostic let me look like I was way-out & took account of questions that came up. (To Mr. Havens): The rest of this long entry refers to how I got out of this fright, how it came back, how "alcohol helped some, but resulted in some unpleasantness."
General Confession at church felt right to me, & I repeated it with deep feeling; the Prayer of Forgiveness came through strong & clear. [College talks about building foundations]; they have more talent with dissection than resurrection. [I omitted part of the Creed and had a] running inner argument with minister and sermon. The feelings of Christianity are still with me—confession and absolution, Psalms. But the ideas of Christianity seem to be slipping by the wayside—they don't fit with so much I am learning and thinking about. If the scientific experimental method is the only sure way to truth, I don't see where God has a leg to stand on. In feelings I'm a religious man; in my mind I'm an unbeliever—God help me.
February & April 1959—I've started shopping around. I went to Friends' Meeting—next week I'll see what Unitarians have to offer. (Then maybe the fundamentalist group). The silent meeting messages weren't very profound. I like the freedom of belief & some of the kids that go there; some are pacifists & do service projects. I don't know how deep a religion it is. I hear that Unitarians are more intellectual, & searching in their discussions.
Tremendous discussion at Liberal Religious Fellowship this evening. For Prof. Blaney "liberal religion" means a rejection of all traditional theology and a critical, skeptical attitude. We discussed the fact that all of us inherited a skepticism as well as a Jewish or Christian faith. Our thinking has been permeated by agnostic attitudes of our scientific-humanistic-naturalistic culture. Maybe I'll join the Unitarians some day.
Remarkable how much the Hellenistic period was like ours. Old gods dying, new ones being born and currents of thought from Asia minor, Palestine mingling and confusing, absolutes being questioned. People were loosed from their inherited spiritual moorings, forced to find a new spiritual anchorage or be submerged in doubt or nihilism. These parallels between the Hellenistic age and our own are terrifically exciting to me.
(To Mr. Havens): Here end the freshman entries. I continued with the Unitarian group through sophomore year. Fall of sophomore year I went to Professor Horak's Literature bull-sessions. When I started the group Mrs. Horak started also. She brought a feeling into the group which made things happen among people, not just ideas.
December 1959—We were struggling with Laurence Durrell's Justine. Mr. Horak saw love as Justine's simultaneous "firing" of 2 persons or spirits, each autonomously growing up. Mrs. Horak saw love as Nessim's means by which closed-in persons were "expelled from their own selves," and made to grow. She told of an unruly crocus growing outside the boundaries set for it. [Upon reflection], she realized that Nature embraced the maverick as well as the docile and harmonious. She admired the crocus' insistent beingness. She realized that each person, being part of Nature, has a beingness which one should not underestimate. The depth of her convictions and her straightforwardness dramatized for us the beingness of Mrs. Horak. For Ginny, Peter, Alison and I, Mrs. Horak and her image of the crocus struck home. I guess we were ripe for this encounter.
1960—Ginny, Peter & I had another long talk. Peter talked about a revolution in values. He was an Episcopal minister's son & an aspiring minister. He'd felt for about a year that he doesn't have the conviction to preach the Gospel. He's gone through an experience similar to mine. He has conflicting feelings about his girlfriend & broke it off. We got some feeling of the struggle to understand & to be honest with himself and with Alison.
Ginny just discovered Martin Buber & found a quote that expressed what had gone on with the 3 of us. Buber writes about the interhuman realm and says: "It doesn't depend on one letting one's self go before another, but on one granting to those to whom one communicates a share of one's being. Peter did that with us & [I pray that I may do that with those I am close to]. (To Mr. Havens): That's all for the sophomore year.
There are relatively few for the junior year. [Camus currently speaks to my condition]. "Not eternal life but eternal veracity." As Camus says well, "Everything is ordered in such a way as to bring a poisoned peace produced by thoughtlessness, lack of heart or fatal renunciations." I have no idea where this will lead morally or religiously—that frightens me a little. But it is a path on which I have been placed.
April & May 1961—My 1st visit to the mental hospital was a moving experience. All is communication, Life is communication. Most people on this back ward have lost that essential gift. How necessary for our very sanity is communicating with one another. What can I do as a doctor to keep open the channels of communication in my patients? [I compared the ward's silence with the silence of meeting for worship]. On the ward, silence meant closed-up-ness, restriction of personality, hostility, anxiety & withdrawnness. In Meeting for Worship it meant an opening-out of one's self toward other persons & a transcending Person, a kind of communication. I felt the difference between the hospital ward & the Meeting. Maybe the Friends have something. I don't know.
(To Mr. Havens): It was through the mental hospital project that I got back in touch with Friends. In the Liberal Religious Fellowship, [I had begun to lose my favorite discussion partners and a sense of covering new ground]. I had to begin finding my religious roots by exploring new ideas about God and morality, but I had to go beyond ideas. I figured that since Friends tried to go beyond words, they were worth another try. The puzzle over communication & words sticks with me. Friends Meeting is a good place to work on it. What worship is supposed to be here is rather vague. I must "follow my own lights" in working through my religious doubts. It is not thinking but inner experiencing that will provide answers. Maybe I'm in the right place. I feel at home here.
October & November 1961—After a minor misunderstanding, Sam called me a son-of-a-bitch & I threw beer at him. He suggested we talk about what happened. Several months ago, I had taken a slightly superior attitude toward him. It had gradually built from there. We were closer after that. It was a kind of I-Thou growing out of hand-to-hand warfare. While I had 2 good reasons for leaving the mental hospital project, I think the lingering irritation over the fight with Sam, even after the good talk, swung the decision over to the negative.
After someone had given a brief message on George Fox's statement about an ocean of darkness, over which flowed an ocean of light & love, I began to visualize the 2 oceans; the image took off on its own. Dark began to filter up into the bright, luminous ocean, & some of the illumination made forays or probings into deep darkness. There were streaks of darkness all through the Light of all shades & shapes. The Dark's oppressive totalness was broken by shafts of benign luminousness. Darkness & Light weren't so separable as Fox implied. The semi-autonomous feeling of the changing image awed me. Was my meeting experience, mystical, emotional, or dream-like? What do I do with it? Now that I had my inner experience I am a little embarrassed by it.
Peter thinks my experience in Friends' Meeting is interesting Jungian symbolism, and a product of my argument with, [and mixed feelings about] Sam. A big part of me agrees with him, and yet it had a kind of "cosmic" significance. A girl in Friends Meeting said my experience reminded her of the yin and yang symbol in Chinese religion. She suggested I meditate more on it and see where it might lead.
(To Mr. Havens): I did try in an undisciplined way to meditate on it. The results were inclusive. [It had no life of its own this time]. Explaining it wholly by experiences I had had shortly before it occurred was unscientific; it reduced it to something less than it was. I was struck with the fact that we all have frameworks which we carry around with us in the hopes that experiences will all fit neatly into them. Gradually, I stopped trying to meditate on it, and sank back into thinking-analyzing activity in Sunday morning Meeting.
March and April 1962—In Contemporary Religious Thought, I've been stimulated by Bultmann's Kerygma & Myth. He makes a effort to "demythologize" the New Testament of supernatural miracles & its unbelievable world view, & to focus on the existential core of the Gospel, i.e. the personal & present reality of crucifixion & resurrection. Christian faith asserts that existential dying & rising which may happen in us is the same as the Gospels' historical event. Bultmann wants to set my everyday experiences of "crucifying" certain urges and the "freeing" which ensued in a cosmic or eschatological frame. Especially interested to follow out this idea.
Jamie was taken to a mental hospital this morning. He was much more hollow, scared, confused or something inside than any of us knew. I knew him & had no conscious inkling that he was even close to a break. I saw a movie about the Polish Underground at the end of German occupation, anticipating a Communist dictatorship. They begin to kill Communist Poles. The hero falls in love while planning & executing such a murder. He is shot by security police & dies in meaningless & horrible agony. WHERE IS GOD? I think of my Friends Meeting experience of the 2 oceans. Would my inner experience stand up to the hammer blows of harsh reality?
Jamie was successful last night. He slipped out, found a knife and slashed his wrist. Try to imagine the drive he had. I can't—it's too far from my love of life. He was like that when he was living down the hall from me. Why doesn't someone tell us about the depths of life, not just its niceties? I feel utterly confused and scared. Shades of Nietzsche again. It feels as though all religion, even hope has departed.
(To Mr. Havens): I remember I thought some about my own death. The next week-end I had a date with a fantastic woman. Here the Journal stops but the tales does not. Quakerism came the closest to staying with me—and me with it. Those end-of-year events as a senior cast into doubt a great deal of the positive gain I made; the strong agnosticism came back. The ocean of darkness/ ocean of light experience was not completely eclipsed. It even "contained" certain new experiences as they came. It was 1st-hand and existential.
[Post-Journal Experiences]—The 1st 2 years of med school were dingers. Religious concerns didn't top the list of "extra-curricular interests." I attended Friends Meeting, but my heart wasn't in it; I was too busy. There is scientific evidence that mood swings, physical states, available energies are to some extent dependent on the cyclical changes within days, months, seasons, and years, changes in the earth's electrical fields, electrical tides.
Later in November [1964, walking under snow-covered branches in the park], the phrases "Nature is all" & "God is Nature is all" bore in on me with great force. Then I felt as though the earth were a living creature, & that I was a constituent of this Totality, totally integrated. I was really grasped by it for a moment. It still refuses to be reduced to psychodynamics. It has become almost a habit to see these "openings" as a kind of divine Grace which I dare not neglect or forget. It feels deeply religious to me, and yet traditional Christian language or symbols figure surprising little in my communicating of it. I shudder at the demonic aspect to this experience, [that it led me a few steps down the road to turning this] into a new religion.
After this experience in the snow I went to meeting fairly regularly several weeks in a row. The messages in Meeting seemed hypocritical. Friends seemed terribly conscious of themselves & their beloved Society—as if other people didn't feel this about their churches. During March [1965] I had experienced a couple of minor recurrences of the "Totality experience"—clear enough to confirm my earlier understanding. [On a crowded] side-walk, I was looking intently at the faces flowing past me, & feeling what I had in the park, only these people were the focus; [we were intimately related]. The realization that we are deluded into seeing ourselves as separate beings, whereas in actuality our lives are interwoven in ways beyond our knowing was so strong that I felt an strong urge to actually throw my arms around those nearest me. [I was frightened by the intensity of my visions & started down the path of fearing mental dysfunction]. The conviction that something very positive had happened gave me pause. [In consulting a doctor on a profound inner experience], where could I find a doctor who appreciated its revelatory dimensions? Where could I find a genuine doctor of the soul?
April 24, 1965—Dear Mr. Havens: [By using] your excellent questions, it becomes ever more clear that experiencing anything as radically unfamiliar as I did, should cause some anxiety. I think you may not realize the formidable blocks to keeping one's connection with the Judeo-Christian tradition for many of my generation. Do we need a new profession of psychologist-priests or guru-psychologists to help people come to terms with [inner experience questions]? My analytic mind still very frequently admonishes my deeper self against continuing on this road of "experiencing"; I fear it will lose. I still feel the terrible danger of self-delusion, & it may be that I need to be pulled up short & brought back to terra firma. I have only just entered upon this way, with no end in sight. I want to give you an image of this Pilgrimage; Hesse's Siddhartha & Journey to the East [comes to mind]. Jesus' parable of the sower also comes up. The attention demanded by TV, newspapers, "social obligations" will be the parable's greedy birds, shallow topsoil, & thorny bushes. I hope I may be delivered from it.
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