this may not honor him want to welcome
everybody here and particularly john
taylor gatto coming all this way to
speak on a topic that Ralph Waldo
Emerson said almost first a yawn on us
which is education Dorothy Sayers says
the reason that all of us in a sense
have a right to speak about education is
because we have all gone through some
process of education and in a sense Mis
education and she says that the people
that didn't learn anything in that
process should be the ones we should
perhaps listen to most because they have
something to tell us about it and on the
way here as I was driving I was thinking
about my own educational experience and
in some ways it's probably not
dissimilar to a lot of people in this
room who have been through American
educational institutions I went to
school here in California I also went to
school in the East Coast and I was
thinking on the way I was thinking about
my teachers because teachers are such
interesting figures in our lives and I
was thinking about my first grade
teacher mrs. Gilmore I remember her name
I can see her black hair he's very tall
thin lady and she was almost a classic
school marm the beginning of my problems
was in that classroom and then I
remember my second grade teacher but
particular I remember my third grade
teacher Miss Williams because there was
an event that happened in third grade
that had a very deep impact on me and
that was I was falsely accused of
something and I remember the mortified
state that I was in when somebody came
into the classroom and whispered into
her ear and they both looked at me in
front of all these small children and
then the teacher said oh we don't like
boys that do that and I was completely
nonplussed I didn't know what they were
talking about and I was taken to the
principal's office and whacked with a
paddle and this was a complete case of
false testimony by
one of my arch enemies in the playground
that was my first real taste of
injustice that I was the arbitrary
victim of false testimony and I suffered
the consequences and that taught me
something about the nature of justice
and injustice and the sense that people
feel when they're wrong when there's an
injury which is a beautiful word coming
from the Latin injuria unjust then I
remember going into fourth grade mr.
foot and then in fifth grade things
began to change radically I had a
teacher called Dennis HOF slinger and
this was the beginning of summer he'll
he'd read this and this was the 1960s
and a lot of experimentation and we
moved into a whole other realm of
teaching so I went from these very old
school school mARMS to a very radical
young man who was dedicated on undoing
that damage that had been done and he
did his own damage unintentionally
obviously and then sixth grade mrs.
Johnson I remember these people so well
because I lived with them for a year of
my life and listened to them
eighth grade I went to an experimental
school in Marin County that had four
quads earth wind fire and air and each
one of these quads based on testing you
were put into a quad in order to enhance
your natural aptitudes so I was put into
sea school which was for people that
were gifted with language reading and
writing son school was for mathematics
and then they actually had wood school
which was for arts and crafts hand type
things and then they had a music school
and then something very radical happened
major disruption in my own education I
went to a prep school on the East Coast
and went into deep shock I had gone
through
eight years of California and suddenly I
was thrust into an institution on the
East Coast that was founded in 1789 and
was run by Jesuits it was a very very
difficult experience for me personally
and I remember just having a lot of
really difficulty there dealing with the
East Coast children that were very
different from the West Coast there was
a lot of bullying and I remember a novel
that really impacted me was a novel
called separate peace because I lived
that experience and that novel had a
major impact on me when I was in ninth
grade and the pain that was inflicted
you know this recent event of hazing I
think what was so troubling about that
not the hazing hazings been around in
this country for a long long time but
young girls were doing it I was like
Chris Rock said that you know that this
world upside down when the best rapper
is a white guy and the best golfers a
black guy the same case here we've got
young girls that are hazing brutally if
that's equality I'm you know deeply
worried about what we're doing to these
girls because I think that making girls
more like men is actually the wrong way
to go it's the other way around it's
actually the men need to learn how to be
more like those natural qualities that
women have mercy and compassion I mean
this is the humanization process we
don't call our schools alma mater z' for
nothing the nurturing mother I mean
that's what a school is supposed to be
it's supposed to give you your humanity
so in looking at my own education I
couldn't take two years of that on the
East Coast and then I went to a
Augustinian school on the west coast
which was much easier and that's the
difference probably between the Jesuits
and the Augustinians ones a militant
order and the other is less so after
that I was down in a junior college in
Southern California and I had a
conversion experience it was a very
powerful conversion experience and I was
I was uninterested in pursuing my
college anymore
and I dropped out and I went overseas
and I spent three and a half years with
a person who I really feel I got my real
education with this person like one of
the things that probably the greatest
American novelist Herman Melville said
that my college was not Yale or Harvard
my college was a whaling ship and that
really was the college that I went to
was with an individual who was an
extraordinary human being and it was
very difficult could be with this person
but at the same time it was incredibly
beneficial and he exposed me to a whole
range of thought I realized in thinking
back about my own educational experience
what I learned was rarely in school I
was fortunate to grow up in a house that
had a very large library and I remember
very clearly discovering when I was
probably about 13 G de Maupassant and my
mother had a very early edition of his
short stories and I read that from cover
to cover and I can really recall those
stories to this day the necklace I will
never forget that story and Oscar Wilde
my older brother was interested I read
voraciously the plays The Importance of
Being Earnest and his short stories the
Happy Prince and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
and I had a deep interest also in the
Civil War and I read Shelby Foote and an
interest in world war two which a lot of
young male Americans at least when I was
growing up had an interest in that
subject what I remember in school is
that I remember so little of it in terms
of just what I was taught I can
literally only remember one thing in my
entire seventh grade year I remember the
teacher mr. Smith who in the biology
class told us it was impossible for
Jesus to have been born a virgin birth
because men determined sex and Mary only
had a xx chromosome and that's literally
all I remember from seventh grade
somebody said gentlemen should have
least have forgotten Latin right so I
mean that's a problem in education that
you forget and some say education is
what remains after you've forgotten
everything else but when I spent this
three years with this person what
happened to me next was I got a
scholarship to the United Arab Emirates
and I went into an Arab school and I was
literally put in third grade and I was
now 20 I was 20 years old I was put in
third grade because I did not know
Arabic it was really interesting being
in this third grade because one I came
to really understand the whole problem
with the Arab world from that the
Arabians are not unlike the Americans
most of our problems are in the
educational system and I really do
believe that but the punitive measures
that were used in that school the
humiliation the just horrendous pedagogy
that was practiced by these teachers who
inherited the same styles from their
prior teachers and this is what happens
we meet a said we recreate ourselves we
just keep giving the next generation the
same problems that we too had but from
there what happened to me was a very
profound experience and that was I
discovered West Africans when I was in
the United Arab Emirates and from that
discovery it led to studying with them
and these were some of the most
extraordinary people that I've ever met
and I would contest that they are some
of the most extraordinary people left on
the planet they were all raised nomads
that they had extraordinary education
prodigious memories they absorbed
massive amounts of information when they
were young children and they mastered
what we used to call in this culture the
liberal arts
they focused very heavily on grammar on
rhetoric on logic and and it was very
odd to meet West Africans Bedouin nomads
who literally were learning traditional
logic these were people that lived in
tents and most of their books were
handwritten that had been written down
and passed on through centuries I mean
really an amazing experience for me but
what struck me most about these people
was their presence it was not simply
what they knew but how that knowledge
permeated their experience of life and
how it translated into their behavior
and I ended up studying with them and
spent several years with this group of
people and even I went from the Emirates
after four years with them I went to
Mauritania and lived in the Sahara when
I got to the Sahara I was just so
overwhelmed by a people that basically
had no Ministry of Education so to speak
they had no school system they had no
salaried teachers and they had no
budgets for books nothing and yet these
extraordinary schools exist out there
and I think if you actually saw these
schools you would just marvel at their
existence and they have been there for
literally centuries and in studying with
them what I realized was that there are
certain techniques in education that
have been understood for millennia and
they have very profound impact on the
acquisition and the use of knowledge and
one of the things that these people
understood very clearly was the
difference between information and
between knowledge and they distinguish
between those two terms the idea of
people that have a lot of information
but don't know how to process that
information don't know how to make it
useful for them and they distinguish
between knowledge and between wisdom and
just as our language has different words
for these different ideas their language
also reflects that and I probably would
assume that most human languages do in
looking at their educational system and
how they taught and how they imparted
knowledge there were certain things that
I would like to share with you about
that in terms of looking at a classical
versus
modern education and I'm using a West
African Arabian model but I believe that
this model could also be found in
traditional European and even in
traditional American society where I
think there's a big difference is that
in the traditional Arabian a sense of it
they really saw the Democratic nature of
Education there was an idea that
everybody was entitled to attempt to
learn and I once read a beautiful legal
opinion what's known as a fatwa which is
a non-binding legal opinion a beautiful
fatah from a Moroccan scholar one should
easy educational endowments came from
the Muslim world and they were
introduced into the west through the
Muslim world which has been very well
documented by George Makdissi
in his book the rise of colleges there
were beautiful endowments that were
established for students and at one
shitty she was asked by the head of a
school in Fez in Morocco what do we do
with a student who's been with us and is
not benefitting at all from the
educational process and yet he's on a
scholarship how long should we allow him
to stay before we kick him out and at
once Judy she's answer was give him ten
years and if he hasn't had an opening
from God yet teach him how to raise
sheep or to do something useful
and I just thought that that was
something struck me about that was very
profound the idea that don't just assume
people are uneducated don't just assume
that they're stupid give them actual
time because just as we have different
awakenings in our life our first
awakenings are often sensual awakenings
to touch to feel we have aesthetic
awakenings
we obviously have sexual awakenings and
these are very profound experiences as
we grow some of us have spiritual
awakenings and some of us have
intellectual awakenings just to give you
an example of this I was fortunate
participating in a small group
discussion we studied a book called
reforming education which was written by
Mortimer Adler and Adler was
participating he was more of an honorary
head of this comp
but there was a young man there named
John all good and he told his story of
how he came to become interested in
learning and what happened to him he was
a bricklayer and one day a brick
literally fell on his head from somebody
who was working above him and he was
hospitalized he was comatose when he
came to somebody gave him a book called
how to read a book by Adler and Van
Doren and he'd always had a hard time in
school which is one of the reasons why
he became a bricklayer there was a
chapter that began you have a mind and
he said it was the first time anybody
had ever told him that and he had an
intellectual awakening and Malcolm X
mentions this when he was in the seventh
grade and he told his teacher when he
asked him what do you want to be Malcolm
he was the only black kid in this school
and Malcolm said I want to be a lawyer
and the man said that's not a good job
for a nigger you should be something
like a carpenter you'll never succeed at
that and in some ways it was a benefit
because he probably would have become a
brilliant lawyer so the fact that that
man deterred him from that I think is
probably one of the reasons why we got
Malcolm X who in Indian K's recent book
the 200 most important people in human
history they actually had him in there
because of his contribution to civil
rights which is one of the great events
of certainly Western civilization so we
have these extraordinary awakenings and
one of the things that I realized in
these schools is one they don't like to
start the intellectual awakening too
early in the traditional school systems
they did not begin the educational
process until the age of seven and this
is something that Rudolf Steiner
predicted that if you drop the age of
education from seven to five you will
see that the cycle of a woman will begin
earlier so he related
the biology taking place in a woman with
the time that you start her intellectual
development because if you begin it too
early you're setting in motion something
that has already been mapped out to
occur in a very organized and developed
pattern because there's an unfolding
that's taking place
you cannot hasten the unfolding of a
flower a flower knows when to bloom how
to bloom and what you need to do if
anything is just to provide the water if
it's a indoor flower and if its outdoor
it will take care of itself so this is
part of a deep wisdom that the ancients
had of knowing when to actually begin
the process of Education and there is an
extraordinary tradition from deeply wise
human being alia Bonavia thought it said
play with your children for seven years
and then teach them for seven years and
then befriend them for seven years and
then let them go and that idea of
playing with children for seven years is
what Piaget calls the play what work is
to the adult play is to the child that
that play is actually not insignificant
and that's why flashing children into
these Advanced Placement types of
schools where we start teaching them at
three and four and five years things
that they should be allowed to be
relieved of because they're in that
Garden of Eden period and you don't want
to send them out before they bite the
Apple give them that time in that place
of innocence another aspect of not
educating children early is the
importance of orality as human beings we
are aural beings one of the things that
Mark Twain said is he obtained his
education from uneducated people and
Thomas Jefferson says a similar thing he
says the man that reads nothing is
better educated than a man that reads
only newspapers because the man that
does
read anything will actually think for
himself and people would only read
newspapers often pair it what they've
read in the newspapers thinking that
they're their own ideas
this idea of during that period of time
to allow this child to develop at its
own pace and not hastening this process
is absolutely essential and there's a
deep wisdom in understanding the
importance of orality
and this is where the idea of reading
stories to children is so important and
we know that storytelling is an ancient
human tradition and everywhere you go
you will find that children are told
stories even in in oral cultures this is
part of a deep educational process
what's very fascinating about children
and I learned this with my own children
and I didn't understand it until I read
a book which I would really recommend a
is for ox/y our children are dying to
read Barry Sanders a really beautiful
book but what I would do when I would
read my children stories at night I
would improvise because you get a little
tired of reading the same story over and
over again and they always want these
same stories they would get upset and
they would say no it's not like that and
I was really struck by this initially
why are they doing this and what Barry
Sanders explains this is important for
them to hear the same thing over and
over again because this is the process
of their development in order to acquire
language in order to acquire linear
thought in order to communicate
intelligently they need to be introduced
into this and they know how to do it
just let them do it and that's what
we're so devastating at is that we
interrupt this process and television is
particularly pernicious not only does it
give them different stories it's giving
them the visual images part of the
development of the child is in
imagination and this is done through
listening to stories and imagining in
their minds what's taking place there
was a
period of time when I would actually
allow the boys to see these old films of
books that they had to read first and I
remember they read for instance Seawolf
and then they saw the Edgar G Robinson
version of that and I would ask them
what did you think they said the book
was better I didn't imagine he was like
that I imagined it like this and this is
because in reading the book there was
something else happening and this is the
activity that occurs with reading which
is why it is not a passive experience
it's a very active experience whereas
television is a deeply passive
experience because not only are you
hearing the story but you're being given
the emotion to experience and the master
of that is Steven Spielberg I mean I
know just from the music what he wants
you to feel at that point he's even
manipulating your emotions he is not
allowing you to experience something by
yourself he can pull those heartstrings
which is why he has such a mass impact
on a society because we have become a
society that enjoys being manipulated by
others that we're losing our
independence and our sovereign
experience of the world and this is
another thing that the loss of
imagination has I want you just to think
for those of us who are older in this
audience the experience of falling in
love there are some people here that had
a unique experience there are other
people their experience was mediated by
films that they've seen that taught them
how to fall in love that taught them how
to say certain things at certain times
and so everybody experiences now lines
so that when somebody actually expresses
their emotion or love it's out of a
movie and so there's a jaded experience
of the world of that freshness of life
children can be deprived of these
experiences so that was the first thing
that really struck me the second thing
that really struck me is that
in those first years they did almost
entirely memorization because the
children have extraordinary ability to
amass knowledge and there's a certain
amount of knowledge that needs to be
memorized you have to memorize certain
things and many of the most successful
people in careers in this society are
people that were able to retain a lot
more information and we don't like to
admit that but that is actually the
truth
physicians are people that are often not
more intelligent than other people but
they're in fact capable of memorizing a
good deal of facts and figures and
information much of chemistry of biology
terminology and then signs and symptoms
you have to learn certain things when
you see this you see this when you have
these lab results it indicates this and
it's true for all the medical
professions law also you have to
memorize cases and know what happened in
the past and be able to use analogically
those things that happen in the past to
make them relevant for situations going
on in the present what they did was they
developed their capacity to memorize
using very sophisticated techniques and
these were Bedouins that taught me how
to use mnemonic devices I'll never
forget there's three verses in the Quran
that are almost identical and I remember
when I was learning these he gave me
this mnemonic device called alpha which
began each one how to do it and then I
asked him do you do that with a lot of
things you said almost everything that
has any type of pattern or number system
or and he began to show me how to do
this and these are very ancient
techniques and you can literally
facilitate a child's process for
adopting information by just teaching
them very basic techniques that human
beings have always known and I'm amazed
that these things are not taught early
on in our schools to make so many things
very simple for children the next thing
that I thought was very interesting is
that they were very concerned
about language skills particularly the
ability to diagram sentences and the
reason for that is because the ambiguous
nature particularly in Arabic which is
more so than English the proof that
we've got millions of people out there
reading newspapers who know nothing
about grammar is an indication that you
can be functionally literate in English
with having very little grammar in
Arabic that is not the case because it's
an inflected language and if you don't
know grammar you don't know Arabic it's
impossible to learn classical Arabic
without a knowledge of grammar but
grammar has another role and what's very
interesting about grammar is that
grammar preserves a type of integrity in
a language and it also teaches us that
there are rules that we need to abide by
in order for there to be rational
structures and meanings in our sentences
and one of the things about this
postmodern idea that language is what
people speak is really the quick route
to reduce a people to people that are
incapable of having discursive thought
and anybody that reads people of the
past because the whole modern minimalist
theory of language is to reduce
everything down to simple sentences
technical writing has become a
standardized form of writing that is
becoming the way that people now
experience language which reduces the
capability of thought because serious
thought often takes duper sink tactical
structures and expressing it and
learning how to do that is actually
stimulating the intellect there was a
really interesting article recently I
think it's in this week's Newsweek about
the relevancy of poetry and it was
written by somebody who said you know
poetry is meaningless now and he talked
about fast food culture and how he went
through his poetry phase but now he just
didn't have time for poetry anymore it
was very sad article for me to read
because I think what he was saying was
you know why can't the pose just spell
it out
why do they have to make us think why
won't they just say what they mean as
opposed to meaning what you say well the
poet is doing you a great service
because he's forcing you to go from the
surface to something deeper to go beyond
the outward experience and if education
doesn't help that process then it's not
doing you any favors because what you
will be reduced to is a materialistic
consumer and yet everywhere there is
expressions one of the things that Rumi
said is that the unseen is coming into
the scene everywhere like cream and milk
it's everywhere you have to be able to
be open to that and and in our culture
we don't want to allow the cream to rise
to the top we want to homogenize and
that's part of this process so the idea
of teaching them how to analyze language
and this is why Mauritania where I
studied is called belad million Shia
it's called the land of a million poets
and they love poetry and one of the
things that I was really struck is that
they have this response to poetry that I
really enjoyed if you would say a line
of poetry you would get this gut
reaction and shove all the people in the
gallery would say they would make that
sound because what you did is you
embellished the the experience because
poetry is beautiful when it's relevant
that's the power of poetry is that it
offers you insight into human experience
when a line of poetry is said in the
right time in the right place with the
right receptivity it can literally
ignite the atmosphere and that's what I
saw in these people and they gave me a
deep appreciation for that centrality of
poetry in the human experience and this
is why it's always been
around and the fact that we're lamenting
its loss is a deep sign it's a deep sign
of something that is really wrong with
our culture and our society when we're
losing that capacity to hear the poet's
voice the poet is called an Arabic Shia
and it's related to the Greek word is
related to the same thing the Shia is
the one that feels things that other
people don't perceive it's a subtle
shout out means hair a labor loses the
ability for fine tactile stimulation and
the idea the poet is that they can sense
things that other people might not be
sensing but the beauty of the poet is he
shares that with other people and so he
allows you to feel something that you
might not have been able to feel except
that he was there to do it for you and
so he's a great gift in that way or she
is a great gift let's not forget Emily
Dickinson and then the embellishment of
language the importance of rhetoric in
their system which was the study of
Western civilization for centuries
rhetoric is the means by which you
coerce people without force and that is
why is the hallmark of civilization what
our society teaches us now is that might
makes right what the ancients understood
that if words can be used in the absence
of swords then that was the way always
to go but words must be meaningful
powerful and coercive but because
there's such dangerous tool word they
are there they're subversive and they're
dangerous and that's why they're so
feared by certain elements in our
society Winston Churchill said that
rhetorician
and auditors have a power that Kings
don't possess because kings can only
move armies with sovereign force with
the power but auditors can actually move
people with speech
and obviously we've seen the worst of it
in people like Hitler who mobilized an
entire society with the rhetoric of evil
and that's why there is something very
dangerous about it and something
frightening but if you have an educated
population and this one of the hallmarks
of early American society is that they
were argumentative culture people would
go out to see Lincoln and does is debate
for three hours on a sunny day and they
were engaged in that debate
they knew the issues and most of them
who were educated had studied what are
called the Mohana Pot I studied it in
Arabic but in English we caught the
sophistical tradition using sophistical
reasoning so that there are certain
techniques that Sophists learn and
lawyers master these techniques
arguments the use of sophistical
reasoning logical fallacies that can be
very powerful when manipulated but if
you're taught how to recognize them then
you gain an immunity you have antibodies
against them and so you're able to think
and see that the reasoning is flawed and
that was the third element in this
trivia more triad of Arts in English
arts comes from the same Latin root as
army always was power and that's what
art is its power and the artist whether
it's a visual artist or a writer they
have a power that is the power of
civilized strength not of barbaric
strength not the strength of numbers not
the strength of military might but the
strength of reason of thought of insight
people have them to a certain extent
naturally and what the arts do is that
they enhance them they refine them they
hone them down and that's what schooling
should be a refining our word in English
for education education is from a Duke
RA in Latin meant to lead out
there's two ideas embedded in that and
probably more but I can see - one of
them is the idea that a child already
has the kernel of everything in it and
what you do is you help facilitate that
by leading that knowledge out of the
child that's already there and the way I
was taught in the East was we studied in
a circle which is very different from
the lecture where I have the knowledge
and you're all ignorant and I impart it
out of my largesse and magnanimity to
all of you and that is this idea of the
lecture the doctor you know the one that
can teach Doce and it becomes ill duche
that's what they called mussolini same
root word the doctor becomes the tyrant
whose authority is unchallengeable so
this idea of adding a circle as opposed
to having a linear recognizing that
secret of the circle and that the
teacher of the arts is in that circle
and the circle returns back to him that
idea of giving them these arcs these
powers now in the classical education
there were certain other arts that were
the mathematical arts or the arts of
number in both the west and in the
classical Arabic tradition and Persian
and Turkish those were arithmetic
geometry the Muslims developed algebra
and trigonometry for very specific
religious reasons interestingly enough
algebra was designed to work out
inheritance and spherical trigonometry
was actually designed to get the fastest
way to Mecca because of the spherical
curve of the earth and if you're
interested in that David King wrote an
entire book on the subject who's a
brilliant historian of science in
Germany and then music which in the
Muslim world was an extraordinary
science based on a cosmology
unfortunately there's not much on this
in English there's extraordinary work in
Arabic
the classical text of alpha Ravi one of
the great philosophers of the arabian
tradition who wrote a book called an
kitab-o-moosa al kabir the big music
book hamza Aladeen I don't know if
people are familiar with him he's a
brilliant food player he actually gave
me his copy and it's it is the big music
book it's about two thousand pages and
hamza has a knowledge of that and if you
go on his website he's got some insights
into the secrets that they discovered
about music one of the reasons that
music is so dangerous
Plato wanted it banished from the
Republic the musicians and the reason
for that is not that he didn't enjoy
music because the gymnasium was actually
música it was what they taught their
children but he felt that most musicians
didn't know what they were doing and
what they could do to the soul was so
dangerous because of the nature of the
power of music the impact that it can
have on the soul and that in the hands
of somebody that didn't know what they
were doing or manipulated it for other
means that he thought it was better just
to keep it away now in in the Muslim
tradition they separated the profane and
the sacred music and many of the
scholars prohibited the profane music
because they felt that it did have a bad
impact on people and the shape of music
they developed a cosmology to this day
in Turkey there is a man there who has a
hospital where they still use
traditional music therapy which was
developed in Persia because the Arab
music has a 24 note system as opposed to
a 12 because they bring in quarter notes
and it's related to the 12 hours of the
day out of 12 organs in the body they
have 12 in their system there are two
hours and this is the same as the
Chinese system and the Ayurvedic system
they have two hours that are related so
heart is nine between nine and eleven
o'clock in the morning so if you want to
work on the heart then that was the time
that for people that have problems with
their heart
you would play certain chromatic scales
that were designed to actually
strengthen the heart during that period
and in andalucía they had insane asylums
in which orchestras were actually
retained to treat the mad people by
playing music to them and these
musicians were master musicians that
they would base it on the pulse and
based it on this humoral theory because
melancholia is from one of the four
humors the out-of-balance of that so
they would try to reestablish
this and they did to have success if you
read their books and believed for what
they're saying they had extraordinary
success with this the culmination of
this second part of these arts was
astronomy and I was very fortunate in
living in West Africa because that is
one of the few places where they still
teach sacred astronomy and again these
are Bedouins that I was introduced into
the rudiments of sacred astronomy which
is the observation of the order of the
heavens and watching that order and
understanding for instance like right
now the moon is in Leo if you go out
tonight and you see the constellation
Leo which is a stunning constellation
that can actually be seen in this area
the moon is in Leo right now and it will
be in Leo for two and a third days and
then it moves and this is not related to
astrology although it was used for
astrology as well and there were many
astrologers but this is not astrology
it's observing these lunar mansions
there are 28 lunar mansions that the
moon goes through every month because
the moon does around the earth what the
Sun does the experience of the Sun in a
year the moon does in a month and there
is a correlation between these movements
all based on 360 degrees and related to
this secret of the circle I mean this is
very deep order that people were
introduced to in these traditional
cosmologies that are found all over the
planet I mean this is not something that
is simply found in West Africa this was
also found in India it was found
Central Asia was found in Asia it was
found in Europe and it was certainly
found here I mean we have extraordinary
evidence here of the Native American
Indians that were heavily involved in
sacred astronomy and aligning the
heavens and the earth and this is part
of the sacred tradition of the ancient
Greek idea the Pythagorean idea as above
so below that in serving the order of
the heavens and is what Plato says is
the greatest gift of the stars is that
they enable us to see order and in turn
desire that order in our own souls and
so this is at the root of a classical
understanding of Education was how do we
order ourselves that we are in harmony
with the world because everything out
there seems to be an extraordinary
harmony and it is the human being that
seems so adept at being disorderly at
being chaotic at being out of sync with
the world and Wordsworth's home is a
complaint about that that we're out of
sync with nature that we've lost that
ability and he preferred being a pagan
that what we could see that order
and experience it then to have a creed
that divorced him from that I want to
finish here with two things and then
I'll close up a couple of quotes about
education education is a perennial
problem it always has been Will Rogers
said schools ain't what they used to be
and they never was so it is an ancient
problem people have been complaining
about it for a long time Mark Twain said
that first God invented idiots for
practice and then he invented school
boards there's some really extraordinary
things that have been said about
Education Alexander Dumas remarked how
is it that little children are so
intelligent and men are so stupid it
must be education Robert Frost to find
education I think this is the
things I've seen and that's why I wanted
to comment on it a little bit education
is the ability to listen to almost
anything without losing your temper or
self-confidence and I would say that is
a civilized human being and so
ultimately if I have an illiterate
person that's able to do that I would
consider them educated and that's why I
personally do not equate education with
literacy I really don't some of the most
intelligent people I've ever met were
illiterate if you want to know the whole
American foreign policy it was summed up
to me by a Bedouin from Yemen who
absolutely had no education and he said
you know what the problem with your
country is and I said what he said it's
like a story we have in Yemen about a
wolf that came down to a pond and he saw
a sheep about to drink from the pond and
he said I'm going to eat you
and the Sheep said what did I ever do to
you he said you mucked up my pond he
said I haven't even touched it yet he
said well you did it last year I wasn't
born last year well your father mucked
it up that's basically what he said
that's America I want to give you
another good example we can get rid of
all the environmentalists and all the
UNESCO and all these United Nations
councils on saving the environment and
employ a deaf illiterate man that I met
in West Africa who one of the Western
students was there and he wanted to
build a tent because I lived in a what's
called a host you go out and you get
branches and you set them up and then
you show up burlap sacks and then make
your little house and that was student
housing that I lived in and this young
Western student went he was started to
chop down a tree and this illiterate
slave really from
group of people that were traditionally
slaves in Mauritania illiterate he came
up me said don't do that what are you
doing he said I was going to chop it off
to make a hose he said no you don't do
that just take a branch and go from
another tree and take another branch
don't chop down the tree he said you
have a right in the tree but the tree
has rights with you don't take the tree
away because there's animals that
benefit from that tree there's people
that sit under the shade and that's how
he explained it to this young Western
person who just thought I'll just chop
the tree down well that's somebody who's
lived in an environment that understands
that natural resources are limited
trees are limited in West Africa and
that's when he taught that young man it
and that's an immense lesson to learn
take what you need but don't destroy
there's plenty to go around very simple
lesson so in learning without losing our
temper or ourselves in our temper or our
self-confidence is to really I think the
conjugated and the Arabs have a
beautiful word for intellect which is
him and this word in its root meaning is
to suck milk the breasts in Arabic is
Halima and it comes from the same root
it's to take milk from the mother and
the reason that they use that is because
him is an unperturbed state it is the
state a child is in when it is suckling
and the word for intellect is the same
word intellect is to be unperturbed to
be in a state in which you can make
sense of your world even in the midst of
immense chaos immense calamity that you
maintain that unperturbed state because
you've been given
this incredible gift of intellect of
reason that losing your state like
Chicken Little that state of the sky is
falling the sky is falling of losing
that is to lose your sanity and sanity
is another beautiful word which means
hell I mean that is a sane human being
as a healthy human being and so at the
root is learning how to listen to others
to absorb the ideas of others to
recognize that you don't know everything
that I don't know everything that with
this is give and take the children have
as much to teach us as we have to teach
them because they remember things that
we've forgotten and that's why their
world is so extraordinary it has immense
things to offer us and one of the things
that I do with my children as a practice
sometimes my children will come in say
you have to see this you have to see
this and I try to force myself to get
into the same state they're in and say
what what and they said this this bug
and then we both run outside and they
show me look and I oh my god
that's the most extraordinary thing I
want to be in that state I want to
experience the world with those those
new eyes because it's all new you know I
hate when you ask people how things
going same old same old what are you
talking about where cells have been
replicated in the last three months you
don't even exist the same person I saw
three months ago doesn't even exist
they're gone the physical being is
completely renewed it's all new and that
newness of life that is what children
have and that's what our educational
system Rob's from them
destroys losing that excitement about
learning the word in Arabic to find
something means to become ecstatic
Vegeta ecstatic in Latin ex faces to to
come out of the cell and that is what
education is about is rosing the cell
you reach
I mean we have that in our tradition
Eureka and the story is that he was so
excited he ran down the street naked
shouting Eureka Eureka because he
discovered something extraordinary about
the physical universe and those
discoveries about the physical universe
are hors d'oeuvres for what we discover
about the metaphysical world really and
they're both there for the taking and
and I would really like just to see our
children be allowed to retain that
innocence and that power and that desire
to know that so deeply embedded in every
cell in their body thank you very much
[Applause]