the flourishing of humanity

a real pleasure today to listen to bart mcgettrick (emeritus professor of education at glasgow university) stimulating debate at a national conference on 'leading by values in education' - as always, bart was thoroughly provocative and entertaining - a man of many wonderful stories - amazingly, listening to him today was even more inspiring than usual - bigstuff has kind of made its name around the issue of raising spiritually nourished children and a lot of relational investment has gone into helping grown ups to understand that it takes a spiritually nourished adult to raise a spiritually nourished child - so much of what bart was talking about today affirmed the importance of holding true to that vision - faced with almost 200 professionals from health, education, local authority policy makers, leaders of government initiatives etc, bart spoke about the purpose of education being 'the flourishing of humanity'; schools that are fundamentally concerned with raising children of hope, wisdom, justice and compassion; the creation of environments and communities for learning that have the formation of people at their heart - people of love, care and compassion, with a deep sense of hope, who appreciate beauty and wonder and who will serve the world by their gifts - at one point he actually used the phrase 'values need to be incarnated in our relationships with children' and made reference to the many ways that formal schooling can be relationally destructive and can serve to 'deform' people - i haven't heard anyone in education speak about that kind of stuff for such a long time - it all resonated really strongly with me and made me glad that, even against all the odds and through many struggles, i have continued to promote and pursue a vision of education as a wholly spiritual enterprise - maybe things are becoming easier ???