Meaning, Purpose, and Connection: Spirituality in a Learning Society

Modern schooling has abandoned spirituality. Relegating matters of the spirit to other social spheres, modern schooling promotes allegiance to the State, basic analytical skills, individualized achievement, and exclusively rational approaches to knowledge. Driven to prepare students for state examinations, schools have become ensnared in the ‘measurement trap’, i.e., the belief that real learning is only learning that can be measured (Levinger, 1996). Yet new perspectives on learning suggest that, as wise women and men have long advised, that which escapes the trap of measurement may be the most real. Spirituality can be a powerful teacher about learning. This essay will briefly outline some possible points of convergence between spirituality and learning, identify the ways in which such understanding of learning goes against the grain of typical schooling practices, and then discuss the implications of this intersection for the development of a learning society. Spirituality has many definitions. For some, spirituality is a search for meaning, a desire to understand our lives in relation to Ultimate Being. It is, in the words of Catholic theologian David Steindl-Rast (1991), “an insight through which our restless search finds rest. ” For others, spirituality is a quest for self-transcendence, an encounter with mystery, or a feelin