Abstract
The concluding chapter offers concrete proposals to higher education professionals and internationalisation practitioners aimed at addressing key issues flagged in previous chapters. The straightforward test for a spiritual approach to study abroad programmes is checking for intentionality, enhanced appreciation of glocalisation, and personal, spiritual growth. Beginner’s mind and non-dualistic thinking are key attitudes essential to such a learning experience and negative capability or the ability to be at ease amid ambiguity is proposed as a worthy learning outcome. Thereafter, the chapter explores how reintroducing spiritual learning can aid the project of decolonising knowledge. The spiritual approach allows us to relax the key assumption of human reason being designed to dominate nature and opens the way for science and education to be radically supportive of environmental conservation. On a promising note, we find that an understanding of well-being that is no longer restricted to material acquisition is garnering favour globally. The chapter concludes by proposing a study abroad programme—a flâneurship—modelled on the spiritual approach to internationalisation, and some ways by which we can assess impact for further learning.
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Notes
- 1.
Kolb D.A., Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984.
- 2.
Perry L.G., A naturalistic inquiry of service-learning in New Zealand university classrooms: determining and illuminating the influence on student engagement: a thesis presented to the Faculty of the College of Education, University of Canterbury, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. University of Canterbury, 2011.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 2.
- 4.
Strange H. and Gibson H.J., An investigation of experiential and transformative learning in study abroad programs, Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, Vol. XXIX, Issue 1, 2017, pp. 85–100.
- 5.
According to the Indira Gandhi National Open University’s Egyankosha, the Mimansa school of Indian philosophy “was founded by Jaimini in 400 B.C. He was the author of ‘Mimansa sutra’. […] The word ‘mimansa’ means ‘revered thought’, which is to be applied originally in the interpretation of the vedic rituals.”
- 6.
Azariah V.S. and Farquhar J.N., The Heritage of India, Forgotten Books, 2016, p. 23.
- 7.
http://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/38172/1/Unit-5.pdf. Accessed June 21, 2019.
- 8.
A relevant Zen Koan: One day, while talking with his monks, Sansho remarked, “When a student comes, I go out and meet him with no purpose of helping him”. When Koge heard of this remark, he commented, “When a student comes, I do not often go out to meet him, but if I do, I will surely help him”.
- 9.
Hebron S., John Keats and ‘negative capability’, British Library Online, Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians, 2014. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/john-keats-and-negative-capability. Accessed June 21, 2019.
- 10.
Kumar M., John Keats: The Notion of Negative Capability and Poetic Vision, International Journal of Research (IJR), Vol-1 (4), 2014.
- 11.
A related Zen Koan: One day, Jizo received one of Hofuku’s disciples and asked him, “How does your teacher instruct you?” “My teacher instructs me to shut my eyes and see no evil thing; to cover my ears and hear no evil sound; to stop my mind activities and form no wrong ideas”, the monk replied. “I do not ask you to shut your eyes”, Jizo said, “but you do not see a thing. I do not ask you to cover your ears, but you do not hear a sound. I do not ask you to cease your mind-activities, but you do not form any idea at all.”
- 12.
J. E. D. Santa Maria referencing Oshio in Acting without regarding: Daoist self-cultivation as education for non-dichotomous thinking, Education Theory and Philosophy, 2017.
- 13.
Eno R., Introduction to the Doctrine of the Mean, An online teaching translation, 2016. http://www.indiana.edu/~p374/Daxue-Zhongyong.pdf. Accessed June 20, 2019.
- 14.
Eno, p. 23.
- 15.
Suzuki S., Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, edited by Trudy Dixon, with a preface by Huston Smith and an introduction by Richard Baker, Weatherhill, 1970.
- 16.
Soudien C., Inside but Below: The Puzzle of Education in the Global Order, in Zajda (ed.), International Handbook on Globalisation, Education and Policy Research, 501–516, Springer 2005.
- 17.
Palmer A., On Progress and Historical Change, KNOW, Vol 1(2), University of Chicago, 2017.
- 18.
Tagore R., An Eastern University, The Complete Works of Rabindranath Tagore. http://tagoreweb.in/Render/ShowContent.aspx?ct=Essays&bi=72EE92F5-BE50-40D7-AE6E-0F7410664DA3&ti=72EE92F5-BE50-4A47-DE6E-0F7410664DA3.
- 19.
Zhuangzi was a Master of Classical Daoism, who lived in the fourth century BC.
- 20.
Dufresne M., The illusion of teaching and learning: Zhuangzi, Wittgenstein, and the groundlessness of language, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2017.
- 21.
Shen V., Daxue: The Great Learning for Universities Today, Dao 17, 2018, pp. 13–27.
- 22.
Tagore R., An Eastern University, The Complete Works of Rabindranath Tagore. http://tagoreweb.in/Render/ShowContent.aspx?ct=Essays&bi=72EE92F5-BE50-40D7-AE6E-0F7410664DA3&ti=72EE92F5-BE50-4A47-DE6E-0F7410664DA3. Accessed June 11, 2019.
- 23.
Quote from Macaulay’s minute, 1835: “It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by literature the Parliament can have meant only Arabic and Sanscrit literature; that they never would have given the honourable appellation of “a learned native” to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and the physics of Newton; but that they meant to designate by that name only such persons as might have studied in the sacred books of the Hindoos all the uses of cusa-grass, and all the mysteries of absorption into the Deity. This does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation.”
- 24.
This is a reference to a speech made by Thomas Babington Macaulay on February 2, 1835, which came to be known as Macaulay’s minute. Some relevant excerpts from this speech: “[T]he admirers of the oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanscrit would be downright spoliation. It is not easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusion. The grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of literature differ in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. […] But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. […] I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education.” Macaulay’s minute went on to have a very significant influence on the education system in India, starting with the passage of the English Education Act of 1835.
- 25.
Tagore himself wrote these words in his essay “An Eastern University”, in what now seems an accurate representation of the inevitable backlash against globalisation. He wrote: “The political and commercial adventures carried on by Western races—very often by force and against the interest and wishes of the countries they have dealt with—have created a moral alienation, which is deeply injurious to both parties. The perils threatened by this unnatural relationship have long been contemptuously ignored by the West. But the blind confidence of the strong in their apparent invincibility has often led them, from their dream of security, into terrible surprises of history.” In the same vein, in his lecture “A message from India to Japan”, he accurately outlines the very mechanism through which the world of Trump and Brexit seems to have arrived upon us. Here he said: “This political civilisation (European/western) is scientific, not human. It is powerful because it concentrates all its forces upon one purpose, like a millionaire acquiring money at the cost of his soul. It betrays its trust, it weaves its meshes of lies without shame, it enshrines gigantic idols of greed in its temples, taking great pride in the costly ceremonials of its worship, calling it patriotism. And it can be safely prophesized that this cannot go on, for there is a moral law in this world which has its application both to individuals and to organised bodies of men. You cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals. This public sapping of the ethical ideals slowly reacts upon each member of society, gradually breeding weakness, where it is not seen, and causing that cynical distrust of all things sacred in human nature, which is the true symptom of senility.”
- 26.
Zhao W. and Sun C., ‘Keep off the lawn; grass has a life too!: Reinvoking a Daoist ecological sensibility for moral education in China’s primary schools’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2017.
- 27.
Suzuki, p. 45.
- 28.
McRorie C., Adam Smith, Ethicist: A case for reading political economy as moral anthropology, Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 43(4), 2015, pp. 674–696.
- 29.
Tagore R., An Eastern University, The Complete Works of Rabindranath Tagore. http://tagoreweb.in/Render/ShowContent.aspx?ct=Essays&bi=72EE92F5-BE50-40D7-AE6E-0F7410664DA3&ti=72EE92F5-BE50-4A47-DE6E-0F7410664DA3. Accessed June 11, 2019.
- 30.
Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project: Final Project report. The Government Office for Science, London, 2018.
- 31.
Report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics, Wellbeing in four policy areas, UK, 2014. https://wellbeingeconomics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/appg-report-2014.pdf. Accessed June 19, 2019.
- 32.
A Spending Review to increase well-being: An open letter to the Chancellor, Report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Wellbeing Economics, UK, 2019. https://wellbeingeconomics.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Spending-review-to-ncrease-wellbeing-APPG-2019.pdf. Accesses June 19, 2019.
- 33.
APPG Report, Mindful Nation UK.
- 34.
Loughton T. and Morden J., All-Party Parliamentary Group Report, Mindful Nation UK, October 2015. https://www.themindfulnessinitiative.org/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=1af56392-4cf1-4550-bdd1-72e809fa627a. Accessed June 19, 2019.
- 35.
Pandey A. and Navare A.V., Paths of Yoga: Perspective for Workplace Spirituality, The Palgrave Handbook of Workplace Spirituality and Fulfilment, Springer International Publishing, 2018, pp. 101–126.
- 36.
Zoogman S., Goldberg S.B., Hoyt W.T., Miller L., Mindfulness Interventions with Youth: A Meta-Analysis, Mindfulness, 6(2), 2014.
- 37.
Brown K.W. and Ryan R.M., The Benefits of Being Present: Mindfulness and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2003, Vol. 84, No. 4, 822–848.
- 38.
Bristow J., Mindfulness in politics and public policy, Current Opinion in Psychology, 2019, 28:87–91.
- 39.
De Neve J., Diener E., Tay L., and Xuereb C., The objective benefits of subjective well-being. In Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (eds.) World Happiness Report 2013. New York: UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
- 40.
Weick K.E. and Sutclife K.M., Mindfulness and the quality of attention, Organization Science, 2006;17(4):514–525; Knox G.E., Garite T.J., Simpson K.R. High reliability perinatal units: An approach to the prevention of patient injury and medical malpractice claims, Journal of Healthcare Risk Management, 1999;19(2):24–32; Vogus T.J., Welbourne T. Structuring for high reliability: HR practices and mindful processes in reliability-seeking organizations, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 2003;24(7):877–903; Vogus, T.J., Sutclife, KM. The impact of safety organizing, trusted leadership, and care pathways on reported medication errors in hospital nursing units, Medical Care, 2007;45(10):997–1002: Vogus T.J., Cooil B., Sitterding M., Everett L.Q. Safety organizing, emotional exhaustion, and turnover in hospital nursing units, Medical Care, 2014;52(10):870–876.
- 41.
Lieberman C., Is something lost when we use mindfulness as a productivity tool? In Goleman D., Langer E., David S., Congleton C. (eds.), Mindfulness (Harvard Business Review Emotional Intelligence Series), 2017, p 103.
- 42.
Trammel R.C., Tracing the roots of mindfulness: Transcendence in Buddhism and Christianity, Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, Volume 36 (3), 2017.
- 43.
Osho, Mindfulness: Doorway to relaxed awareness, https://www.osho.com/highlights-of-oshos-world/mindfulness. Accessed June 19, 2019.
- 44.
C. Johns’ book (2010) Guided Reflection: A Narrative Approach to Advancing Professional Practice defines the concept as: A Narrative Approach to Advancing Professional Practice introduces the practitioner to the concept of guided reflection, in which the practitioner is assisted by a mentor (or ‘guide’) in a process of self-enquiry, development, and learning through reflection in order to effectively realise one’s vision of practice and self as a lived reality. Guided reflection is grounded in individual practice, and can provide deeply meaningful insights into self-development and professional care.
- 45.
Craig & Zou Y. & Poimbeauf R., Journal writing as a way to know culture: Insights from a travel study abroad program, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 2014.
- 46.
Wong D., Intercultural Learning may be Impossible in Education Abroad: A Lesson from King Lear, Frontiers Journal, Volume XXX, Issue 3, p. 49.
- 47.
Osho online library, https://www.osho.com/osho-online-library/osho-talks/knowledge-ignorance-clarity-f6149cec-051?p=2d0a775eefa0f47c876ffc56ca400c25. Accessed June 22, 2019.
- 48.
Muller-Pelzer W., Intercultural Competence: A phenomenological approach, in Witte and Harden (eds.), Intercultural Competence: Concepts, Challenges, Evaluations, Peter Lang GmbH, 2011, pp. 55–74.
- 49.
Muller-Pelzer, p. 69.
- 50.
Charles Baudelaire was a nineteenth-century French poet who described the flâneur in his works.
- 51.
http://psychogeographicreview.com/baudelaire-benjamin-and-the-birth-of-the-flaneur/. Accessed June 23, 2019.
- 52.
LSE podcast, June 6, 2019, Amit Chaudhuri speaking on The Problem of Modernity: reinterpreting decolonisation and the modern?
- 53.
Lauster M., Walter Benjamin’s Myth of the “Flâneur”, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 102 (1), 2007, pp. 139–156.
- 54.
McLuhan terms the human tendency to name things—and the insistence on getting terminology right in academia in particular—as the label-libel gambit. Postman describes it thus: “’What is its name?’ becomes a substitute for ‘How does it work?’ While giving names to things, obviously, is an indispensable human activity, it can be a dangerous one, especially when you are trying to understand a complex and delicate process. McLuhan’s point here is that a medium is a process, not a thing, which is an important reason why he has turned to the metaphor ‘massage’. […] The inquiry method is a massage, a process, and nothing is especially revealed about its workings by trying to name it properly.” (Teaching as a Subversive Activity p 25) Not giving students the option of using labels, enables them to truly engage with the complexity of their experience and delve into “how” and “why” questions, rather than being descriptive in their expression.
- 55.
McLuhan terms our proclivity to view current developments with reference to familiar categories or objects from the past as “rear-view mirror syndrome”. Postman explains why the rear-view mirror syndrome hampers implementation of the inquiry method thus: “The inquiry method is not designed to do better what older environments try to do. It works you over in entirely different ways. It activates different senses, attitudes and perceptions; it generates a different, bolder and more potent kind of intelligence. Thus it will cause teachers, and their tests, and their grading systems, and their curriculums to change. It will cause college admission requirements to change. It will cause everything about education to change.” Refracting the past through the present is a way of turning the rear-view mirror syndrome on its head and helping students arrive at the conclusion that instead of looking for linear progress, it is more helpful to focus on multidirectional change.
References
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Bristow, J. (2019). Mindfulness in Politics and Public Policy. Current Opinion in Psychology, 28, 87–91.
Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The Benefits of Being Present: Mindfulness and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822–848.
Craig, C. J., Zou, Y., & Poimbeauf, R. (2015). Journal Writing as a Way to Know Culture: Insights from a Travel Study Abroad Program. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(4), 472–489.
De Neve, J., Diener, E., Tay, L., & Xuereb, C. (2013). The Objective Benefits of Subjective Well-Being. In J. Helliwell, R. Layard, & J. Sachs (Eds.), World Happiness Report 2013. New York: UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
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Unkule, K. (2019). Shoshin. In: Internationalising the University. Spirituality, Religion, and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28112-0_5
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