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Astin urges attention to spirituality
By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor
At first glance, it might seem strange for an institution of higher education—one focused on the objective mind and science and cold, hard facts—to be concerned with the spiritual—the subjective life.
ASTIN
But education scholar and theorist Alexander Astin maintains that because all human beings—including students, faculty and staff—are spiritual beings who have thoughts, ideas and feelings, higher education must address this aspect of the human psyche.
Astin, Allan Murray Carter Professor of Higher Education and Work in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, shared his views on the connection between higher education and the spiritual life during a speech Tuesday in the University Inn and Conference Center. The speech was the keynote address of a day-long conference, "Fostering Ultimate Meaning: Spirituality as a Legitimate Concern for Higher Education," sponsored by the Newman Center, Student Affairs, the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy in the Graduate School of Education and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.
Astin told conference participants—many who work in Student Affairs and Campus Ministry units from institutions across Western New York and from as far away as Creighton University in Omaha—that the "spiritual domain" involves human consciousness—"what we experience privately in our subjective awareness."
Spirituality has more do to with affective experience than with reason or logic, he said. "Spirituality has to do with the values we hold most dear, our sense of who we are and where we come from, our beliefs about why we are here and the meaning and purpose of our lives and work and our sense of connectiveness," he said. Moreover, spirituality involves aspects of experience that "are not easy to define or talk about," like intuition, inspiration, the mysterious and the mystical, he said.
So why shouldn't this process of becoming more self-aware be one of the central purposes of higher education? Astin asked.
"It's difficult to see how most of our contemporary domestic and world problems can ever be resolved without a substantial increase in individual and collective self-awareness," he said. "Self-awareness and self-understanding are a necessary prerequisite to our ability to understand others and to resolve conflicts. If you don't understand what's going on inside the head of the other person or inside your own head, you're not going to get very far."
Even a cursory look at the educational system indicates that the amount of time devoted to the "interior" and the "exterior" aspects of our lives "has gotten way out of balance," he noted. While we've made crucial advances in the fields of science, medicine, technology and commerce, we've come to neglect the "inner" world of values, beliefs, emotions, maturity, spirituality and self-understanding, he said.
"It's ironic that while the great literal and philosophical traditions that continue to constitute the core of a liberal education are grounded in the maxim of 'know thyself,' development of self-awareness receives very little attention in schools and colleges, and almost no attention in public discourse in general and in the media in particular," he said, adding that this imbalance between the "inner" and "outer" has enormous implications for the future of society.
In focusing on the interior lives of students, Astin said it is important to note that students' values have changed since the 1970s. Surveys show that developing a meaningful philosophy of life—"the 'what's it all about, Alfie' question"—was the top value for students in the 1970s. Students today, however, are more focused on making a lot of money, Astin said, attributing that value shift to the ascendance of television.
In the academy as well, there's been a prioritizing of the fields of business and natural science, with what he called their "exclusive focus on the material exterior," and the parallel demise of the humanities—"the very fields whose priorities are, or ought to be, "interiors," he said.
Putting more emphasis on students' "interior" development has enormous implications for how we approach student learning and development, he said. Most institutions today are focused on the "exterior"—such things as how students perform on exams and the number of credits they receive. When institutions do concern themselves with the "interior life," they tend to focus almost exclusively on developing "cognitive function," like memorization, quantitative reasoning and critical thinking, Astin said. Little attention, he said, is paid to development of such affective skills as empathy, cooperation, leadership and self-understanding.
"Whatever happened to 'know thyself?'" he asked.
This imbalance between the interior and exterior also extends to the issue of educational reform, he said. Reform usually focuses on exterior structures such as programs, policies and curriculum, and little attention is given to the "interior of the institution"—the collective beliefs and values of the faculty that constitute the culture of the institution, he said.
"Our research on institutional change suggests that any effort to change structures has little chance for success if it ignores the collective interiors or culture," he said.
A similar imbalance can be found in the way institutions approach the topic of faculty development, he said. Institutions typically think in terms of exterior matters like scholarly activity, teaching techniques or service to the institution and the community. Interior aspects of faculty development, such as values, beliefs, hopes, fears, frustrations, get relatively little attention, he noted.
"The way we conduct higher education is simply a reflection of the larger society and it's probably no exaggeration to say that the modern world, and the U.S. in particular, has become increasingly focused on the exterior aspects of society—economics, acquisitiveness, competitiveness—to the point where the human condition and the quality of life are judged primarily in terms of 'things,'" he said.
Similarly, higher education tends to judge itself in materialistic terms—enrollments, test scores, rankings—in response to this materialistic society, he added.
There is hope, though, Astin suggested, noting that he has observed academics actively searching for meaning and trying to find ways to make their work, their lives and their institutions "whole."
"What's really happening, I think, is that the growing unease about our institutions and our society has led some of us to start talking about the "S" word—spirituality," he said.
How one defines his or her spirituality is not the issue, Astin pointed out.
"The important point is that the academy has for too long encouraged us to lead fragmented or inauthentic lives, where we act either as if we are not spiritual beings or if the spiritual side is irrelevant to our vocation and work," he said. "Under these conditions, work has become divorced from our most deeply felt values and we hesitate to discuss issues of meaning and purpose with our colleagues. Likewise, we discourage our students from engaging these issues among themselves and with us."
Astin detailed several developments that, he said, "suggest that we may be ready to pay more attention to our inner lives and to those of our students:"
The movement to redirect attention of faculty and staff away from teaching and more in the direction of learning. "That puts us more in the head of the student," he said.
The shift away from the individual teacher and learner toward learning communities.
The growing popularity in the freshman "101 courses" that encourage students to look at their education in a more holistic way and make deeper connections between their academic work and their sense of meaning and purpose in life.
The growing number of academics involved in service learning. "Almost all aspects of students' academic, personal and moral development are favorably influenced by participation in service learning," he said. The teachers often are transformed as well, he added.
The most important thing to keep in mind about spirituality, Astin said, is that it touches directly on our sense of community.
"More than anything else, giving spirituality a more central place in our institutions will serve to strengthen our sense of connectedness with each other, our students and our institutions," he said. "This enrichment of our sense of community will not only go a long way toward overcoming this sense of fragmentation and alienation that so many of us now feel, but it will also help our students lead more meaningful lives."