Reflections on Ken Wilber and a Model of Religious Education

Rev. Dr Ian Mavor, OAM, FACE

C:\Documents and Settings\ianmavor\My Documents\Mavor-Hanna\Wilber\RECPandWilber07-01B.doc1

Rev. Dr Ian Mavor, OAM, FACE

Memories

The 1970’s were marked by major curriculum initiatives in Australian education. This flowed through to a range of attempts to implement new approaches to religious education in schools. Throughout Australia there were Committees of Inquiry and Curriculum Projects seeking to develop more effective ways of working with a component of the curriculum that had become increasingly problematic.

In Queensland, this led to a Religious Education Curriculum Project (RECP) that commenced in mid-1975, and that I had the privilege of leading for the next 10 years. The four members of the initial Team were highly qualified and set out to develop a solid theoretical basis for our work.

I had recently completed a doctoral program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Union Theological Seminary in New York, specialising in curriculum theory and religious education. Supervising professors/ mentors included Dwayne Huebner, Ellis Nelson, Robert Lynn and Philip Phenix.

Next to join was Garth Read, recently returned from graduate study with John Hull and Michael Grimmitt at the University of Birmingham, then at the forefront of work on RE in the UK. We were joined by Sr Gretchen Kelly RSCJ, whose specialist studies included education and developmental psychology, and Rev. Dr John Munro, philosopher and theologian, whose work included 10 years with the ABC. During that first year together as a Team we set the foundations for the following years of curriculum development and training programs.

It was quite a challenge, asked to (i) develop curriculum materials that could be used by all denominations; (ii) provide in-service programs for the clergy and laypersons conducting religious education in schools and (iii) organise pilot projects to trial alternative patterns of organisation. In the process, we developed a model of religious education that I believe continues to be relevant to those teaching in the field.

A Model for Religious Education

Our commission was to develop curriculum materials that could be used by all denominations. In general, this would have been understood as “all Christian denominations.” Our attitude, however, (and Garth’s passion) was to apply this to a much wider range of belief systems.

Through his study in Birmingham, with John and Michael, Garth had available a well developed model for the interface between two key areas of religious education. These were Traditional Belief Systems and Shared Human Experience.

Michael had published What Can I Do In RE? and together Michael and Garth had published RE resources using photographs to depict both human experience and people involved in practices to give expression to their beliefs. In particular, they had emphasised the distinction between the observable phenomena and the inner dimensions of each area.

In their model, Human Experience was identified as raising Ultimate Questions about life’s meaning and purpose, and the Traditional Belief Systems provided Doctrines and Teachings as responses to those questions.

This creative linkage gave a way of avoiding the moralising and sermonising that was all too common in religious education, where an issue would be named and the set answer would be given before students had been engaged in sharpening the questions behind the belief.

Through my own studies, I had been focusing on ‘religion’ from a more individual perspective, in terms of taking seriously the beliefs and experiences of the students themselves in RE. This emphasis on the role of the student was a reaction against the tendency to see RE as bringing ‘religion’ to the students and regarding them as passive recipients.

To integrate this perspective, we created a three-circle model, (the RECP Model) to cover Human Experience, Traditional Belief Systems and Individual Patterns of Belief. Each circle was then divided into an outer section to refer to observable phenomena and life contexts in which they might be found, and an inner core that related to beliefs, questions, attitudes and values associated with the external experiences and actions.

Mavor, et al, Religious Education: Its Nature and Aims, 1977

Aims of Religious Education

Religious education provides students with opportunities to develop their personal beliefs and their spiritual and moral capacities. This calls for the use of processes which:

  1. enable students to reflect on their own patterns of belief and spirituality, and the traditions in which they participate
  2. focus on aspects of human experience which have influenced the development and acceptance of religious interpretations of life
  3. provide understanding of different religious views in the communities to which they belong.

Insights from Ken Wilber

Part of my reason for revisiting that model developed over 30 years ago has been my more recent interest in the writings of Ken Wilber, and my desire to make others aware of his work. Wilber has a unique capacity to integrate insights from Eastern and Western traditions, from science and religion, psychology and spirituality, and has a passionate commitment to an integral perspective as a way of overcoming the divisions that afflict the academic sphere and the wider community.

Wilber is a prolific writer and his ideas cover such a wide range that each re-reading of any book seems to offer another flood of insights. For ten years I have been reading his books with great interest. These have included Up from Eden (1981), No Boundary (1979, 2001), Eye to Eye (1990), Grace and Grit (1991), Sex, Ecology and Spirituality (1995), A Brief History of Everything (1996), The Eye of the Spirit (1997), The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1998), One Taste (1999), IntegralPsychology (2000), A Theory of Everything (2000) Boomeritis (2002) and Integral Spirituality (2006).

These websitesprovide a wealth of information, including drafts of further documents that Wilber is developing:

Wilber describes his integral approach as being “All Quadrant/All Level” (AQAL), which over recent years has expanded to include: all quadrants, all levels (of development), all lines (of development), all states (of consciousness) and all types (as in typologies). In retrospect, it has been of interest to me to use Wilber’s model to revisit the approach developed by the RECP Team.

In this document, extensive use is made of the documents of the Religious Education Curriculum Project and of Wilber’s writings, without attempting to provide detailed references.

An All Quadrant Approach

In recent books, Wilber has developed a model that summarises diverse perceptions of reality and understandings of the nature of knowledge. He speaks of his approach as ‘integral’ in that it draws together, in a ‘both-and’ way, approaches to knowledge, research and action that are often regarded as opposites.

He also emphasises, however, that a model is a “map” and not the “territory”. This was also our experience, in that the RECP model we developed provided an understanding of an approach to religious education but did not, in itself, provide the content.

The AQAL model seeks to transcend some of the conflicts between different systems of thought by acknowledging both the mapping of reality that has been the dominant paradigm of modernism; and the hermeneutic task of becoming critically aware of the role of the ‘map-makers,’ as emphasised in the post-modernist agenda. It recognises that while ‘surfaces can be seen, depth must be interpreted.’ His analysis identifies four quadrants, each of which has a particular insight to offer. These are the external and internal perspectives on knowledge; and the individual and the communal dimensions.

In simple terms, he points out that most languages have terms equivalent to the pronouns “I”, “We”, “It” and “Its,” which can be used to identify these four perspectives. Together they provide the four quadrants:

  1. The Upper Right (UR) studies the individual person or thing from an external perspective, i.e. as an “It”
  2. The Lower Right (LR) studies groups of persons or things from an external perspective, i.e. as communal “Its”
  3. The UpperLeft (UL) studies the internal perspective of the person or thing (as far as that can be accessed), i.e. as an individual or “I”
  4. The Lower Left (LL) studies the internal perspective of a group or community of people or things, i.e. as “We”

The Four Quadrants
Internal: Lived experience; known through relationship / External: Known through objective observation
I - Internal-Individual / It - External-Individual
What are the inner attitudes and personal intentions? / What are the observable physical or biological factors?
What are the cultural influences or beliefs? / What are observable social or environmental factors?
We - Internal-Communal / Its - External-Communal

Using the four-quadrant model has provided a valuable approach for identifying factors to be considered when seeking holistic perspectives on topics such as suicide, health and illness, death and dying, grief and bereavement. In each case, a comprehensive analysis involves data relating to both individuals and communities, as well as data drawn from internal and external perspectives.

For example if studying an illness such as HIV/AIDS, account may be taken of:

  1. physical factors related to the individual (external - It)
  2. statistical analysis of frequency of occurrence in various communities and types of care available (external -Its)
  3. the emotional experiences of the individual sufferer (internal - I)
  4. the attitudes towards the particular illness within a community or the wider culture (internal - We).

Another example of the interplay of these perspectives can be seen in the impact of the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Through her research, she challenged the narrow objectivity of her medical colleagues and helped change attitudes within the community in regard to death and dying. She did this by actually taking time to ask dying people about their experience and regarding those experiences as data to be taken into account, along with objective tests, in making treatment decisions. In the process, she also helped change community perspectives about the dying process and systems of health care.

Wilber has identified significant ways in which the failure to take adequate account of both the internal and external perspectives has had unhelpful consequences for the development of human knowledge. Examples of the tensions he explores include those between religion and science, between liberals and conservatives, and between the pre-modern, modern and postmodern perspectives.

Developmental Levels

The AQAL model includes Wilber’s developmental concepts by identifying an evolutionary process in each quadrant, even if not all at the same rate.

  1. Thus, the biological functioning of each individual, as well as the development of brain functioning from childhood to adulthood, is set in an evolutionary context (UR).
  2. There is an evolution of social systems (LR) that includes changes in means of production, forms of government, medical services, and access to hygiene and nutrition.
  3. There are identifiable stages of individual development and changes in social-emotional-cognitive functioning (UL), including development of self-awareness and intentionality.
  4. There is an evolution of cultural perspectives (LL) as these interact with developments in the other quadrants, e.g. the changes in gender identity and relationships (LL) linked to changes in socio-economic structures (LR).

In Wilber’s terms, each level of development can ‘transcend and include’ what went before. That is, each wave goes beyond (or transcends) its predecessor, and yet it includes or embraces it in its own makeup.

For example, a cell transcends but includes molecules, which transcend but include atoms. To say that a molecule goes beyond an atom is not to say that molecules hate atoms, but that they love them: they embrace them in their own makeup; they include them, they don’t marginalise them. Just so, each wave of existence is a fundamental ingredient of all subsequent waves, and thus each is to be cherished and embraced.

Moreover, each wave can itself be activated or reactivated as life circumstances warrant. In emergency situations, we can activate power drives; in response to chaos, we might need to activate a sense of order; in looking for a new job, we might need achievement drives; in marriage and with friends, close personal bonding. All of these levels have something important to contribute.

The problem is that the some levels of development, while necessary, tend to act as if they are the right way to be, and to react against the other levels. Each tends to think that its worldview is the correct or best perspective. As people move from egocentric, to ethnocentric to world-centric, however, they become more able to appreciate the value of a range of beliefs and worldviews.

A higher-level consciousness, being fully aware of the interior stages of development - even if it cannot articulate them in a technical fashion - steps back and grasps the big picture, and thus appreciates the necessary role that all of the various levels play. This involves moving from relativism to holism, or from pluralism to integralism.

Integral Perspectives

One of the main conclusions of an all-level, all-quadrant approach is that each level of consciousness and wave of existence is, in its healthy form, an absolutely necessary and desirable element of the overall spectrum of consciousness. The health of the entire spiral is the prime directive, not preferential treatment for any one level.

A developmentalapproach accepts that there are many different values and worldviews; that some are more complex than others; that many of the problems at one stage of development can only be defused by evolving to a higher level; and that only by recognising and facilitating this evolution can social justice be finally served. The health of the entire spiral, and particularly its earlier waves, is the major ethical demand.

Moreover, by seeing that every individual has all of these levels potentially available, the lines of social tension are redrawn: not based on skin colour, economic class or political clout, but on the type of worldview from which a person, group of persons, clan, tribe, business, government, educational system or nation is operating..

Nonetheless, the advantage of higher level vision-logic awareness is that it more creatively helps with the solutions to those pressing problems. In grasping big pictures, it can help suggest more cogent solutions.

Range of Awareness

  1. egocentric – ‘me’
  2. ethnocentric – ‘us’ - family, group, tribe, nation
  3. worldcentric – ‘all of us’ – all humans without exception
  4. theocentric -

Cognitive Levels

  1. preconventional
  2. conventional
  3. postconventional
  4. post-postconventional

The Quadrants and Religious Education

In reading Ken Wilber, I have gained many new insights and have gradually clarified parallels with our earlier model. In retrospect, the three-circle model contains the elements of Wilber’s quadrants.

The outer circles fit with the objective right hand quadrants - “What do they do?” - and the inner circles with the subjective left hand quadrants - “What does it mean?” Further, the Human Experience and Traditional Belief System circles link to the Lower or Communal quadrants and the Individual Patterns of Belief circle links to the Upper or Individual quadrants.

In the Lower Left Quadrant, the sequence from pre-modern (mythic belief) to modern (rational, scientific belief) to postmodern (pluralistic/relativistic belief) has been influential in approaches and debates within religious education throughout the past century.

At each of these stages, people tend to regard their point of view as correct and use it as a basis for criticising the views of others. For example, mythic believers tend to absolutise their path to ‘salvation’ and defend literal interpretations of the myths as being the essence of religion. In contrast, scientific rationalists want to debunk the myths and tend to equate religion with the myths, so reject both. Postmodernists, however, want to relativise all truths as ‘interpretations,’ including religious beliefs and the conclusions of science.

Beyond these conflicts, some achieve a level of consciousness, in which they are able to acknowledge the sequence of growth and development that takes place in people’s lives and to affirm the importance of each stage as part of an expanding spiral. In them, pre-modern, modern and postmodern perspectives can co-exist and they can affirm them in others. Each stage can be seen as building on what came before it, without idealising any one level.

The key factor in this model of development is the process of differentiation, transcendence and inclusion that takes place when a particular view of the world is outgrown and used as a basis for a more inclusive point of view. This is seen, for example when development takes place from egocentric to family-centric, to tribe-centric, to ethnocentric, to nation-centric, to world-centric, to cosmos-centric.

Intended to embarrass Jesus, the question “Who is my neighbour?” could be given different answers from each of these levels. His response with the story of the Good Samaritan continues to serve as a challenge to ethnocentric outlooks.

Building on this insight, Wilber seeks to encourage an integral practice that encourages the healthy expression of each stage of development and promotes a movement towards higher levels of consciousness. Such practices can be incorporated into everyday life (including activities such as meditation, exercise, devotions, intellectual and emotional growth, community service, social action and care for the earth.)

The Field of Religious Education

Using the RECP Model as a framework, sources of content from which the processes of religious education might draw include:

Examples from
Traditional
Belief Systems / Examples
from
Human Experience
Key Doctrinesand
Teachings / Issues or Ultimate
Questions
Examples from
Participants’
Individual
Experiences
Personal Beliefs,
Values and
Attitudes
Based on the model developed through the Queensland Religious Education Curriculum Project, 1975-87. Refer Religious Education: Teaching Approaches, Education Queensland, 1987.

Components that the RECP Model draws together as both/and have often been treated in either/or terms. These include:

  • focus on both the religious traditions and human experience
  • focus on both beliefs and practices
  • focus on both concrete experiences and the abstract questions and beliefs they embody
  • focus on knowledge both as a human construct that exists over against the individual and as a personal involvement in the process of knowing - both the objective and the subjective.

Sources of Content

Religious education, as viewed here, draws content from three distinct sources, and explores inter-relationships among them.