Reviews for Planning and Conducting Family Cluster: Education for Family Wellness

The average rating for Planning and Conducting Family Cluster: Education for Family Wellness based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-18 00:00:00 Danielle Daddario Originally published in 1940 and revised/reprinted in 1958, this extended length pamphlet by Pendle Hill director Brinton sold quite well and seems to this outside admirer of the Quaker faith to be a valuable primer, historical reference and practical guide for future developments all in one. His willingness to challenge the role of private Quaker K-12 educational institutions in secular economies is refreshing -- and should help recommit educators toward their missions. He lays out the purpose and distinction of Quaker education, explores the nature of Quakerism, outlines the history of Quaker education, takes a census of schools and student counts, and suggests future developments. Excerpts and my notes are below: "We must seek today in a changed world for suitable applications of the old principles, though in some instances the original applications are still valid. Quaker schools should either exhibit something of the unique character of their predecessors or admit that they no longer represent The Society of Friends." (p. vii - preface to the 1958 edition) "If we are educating our young people in order that they may be able to live the best possible kind of life here and now on this earth, then we must arrive at some way of defining that kind of life. Nothing less than a complete philosophy of life is required in order to define education's purpose. If we who are educators are too definite in our answer to ultimate questions (what is the meaning and goal of life? what kind of life is the most worthwhile to live and what constitutes the best preparation for it?) we can properly be accused of dogmatism and narrowness. If we are too vague then we are open to the criticism that we do not know for what we are educating. (p. 1) "The Society of Friends has maintained that youth should be brought up in obedience to inward divine monitions. Education, according to the Quaker theory, ought not be man-centered nor state-centered. It must minister to the needs of the body, mind and spirit, it must be both for time and for eternity, it must partake of both the human and the divine. The goal of life is the centering of the human will in the Divine will, whereas the new education often seeks to center the will in the collective will of human society. Standards of behavior, according to the Quaker view, ought not to be derived from society as it is at the moment, but from society as it ought to be." (pp. 5-6) [If the definition of the Divine more closely approximates the sense of God within Spinozism, and many eastern, religions and indigenous belief systems, then we may begin to more closely align with the God=Nature philosophy needed to begin to heal our damage to the rest of life on the planet.] Brinton expects further developments to come from new applications of the old principles rather than a new philosophy. Many of the Quaker schools were the first or strongest schools in communities when public education was adopted in the states. As a result, many were subsumed into the public system. Brinton holds that the rise of the public school system adopted many of the Quaker principles of democracy, consensus, morality, and equality. But this also led to the need for Quaker schools to charge tuition to sustain their own enrollment. As a result, they became havens for the wealthiest (and often still are today), which Brinton recognizes makes them less egalitarian and more elitist. The removal of the school aspect of the Quaker community he holds, led to Quakers being "more socially active than ever, but their activity tends to be more on the intellectual and deliberative level than on the deeper level in which unity with God and man is felt as a creative fact of experience." (p. 89) In other words, he seems to be saying Quakers are becoming more secular with the absence of their schools. Being driven by tuition rather than mission, "Quaker schools have gradually come to cease exercising their main function of preparing [students] for a special [Quaker] community and have tended, like other schools, to prepare for the greater community of this world." (p. 90) He offers, "if the Society can no longer lead the schools, perhaps the schools can lead the Society." (p. 90) "The school must again become the training ground for a specialized community which lives according to a way different from that of the world around it, but itself serving as a goal or model to indicate the direction of advance. Such a school will probably not be of the type that is conventional today." (p. 91) He blames the success of free market capitalism for some of the decline of democracy. "The absorption of more and more persons into an authoritarian and pitiless industrialism with a resulting mass-mindedness and loss of respect for individuality has had a greater effect than mass education. Big businesses are swallowing little businesses. There are fewer and fewer small independent merchants and producers who are free and self-motivating." (p. 94) In redesigning Quaker schools, Brinton agrees with Gerald Heard in Pamphlet 7 that the original, core approach of the Quaker practice (light within, meeting for worship in silent community) presents what is needed as novel today. Brinton writes, "A school must be developed which enlarges the apprehension and awareness not only of the surface of the mind, but of the deeper levels which move the will." (p. 101) Schools must motivate students to be, through action and belief, the person they want others to be in the society they want to see. They have to feel like that is possible, too. "Only religion can overcome selfishness sufficiently to enable men and nations to work together without compulsion. And yet in America we expect to secure this religious result by secular means and particularly by secular education. This is impossible. To educate with individual success as a goal is to produce an anarchic chaos of conflicting self-interests which can be subdued only by a strong central authority which makes democracy impossible." (pp. 102-103) Patriotism is a quasi-religion that can achieve the same effect as religion as a motivator for abandoning self-interest for the sake of a greater good. "But patriotism is more likely in the long run to lead toward authoritarianism than toward democracy. Education then must nurture a "spirit which admits no narrow self-interest, no narrow national interest." (p. 104) The Quaker system of education must be simultaneously authoritative, rational and mystical, emphasizing any one of the three more or less at different stages of maturity, development and depending on the situation. If always guided by the fundamental Quaker principles, Brinton holds the results will be beneficial for society and the individual.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-08-23 00:00:00 James Saksa Full disclosure - I know Debra Dean Murphy and we are part of a group that is involved in discussions that are similar to the topics in this book, so I am somewhat predisposed to agree with her thoughts. As I began this book, I started to think it was not written for me. I am not a professional educator and I have no detailed knowledge of how Christian Education is managed in the academic world. However, Murphy makes a good case against three prominent pedagogical themes that she identifies in current religious education: Religious Education as Quest for Transcendence, Religious Education as Modern Project, and Religious Education as Responsible Citizenship. Though these chapters are not as engaging for non-academics as the remainder of the book, they are necessary to explain some of what has guided religious education for decades. Once these first three fallacies are exposed, Murphy explores how worship should be the guiding form for religious education. As someone who has spent time in good Sunday school classes, as well as teaching Sunday school and other religious education for adults, this is where I felt most engaged. She sums up her guiding argument on p. 113: "To say that Christian education begins with the worship of the Triune God -- and not with understanding religion...or with freedom and justice...or with cultivatiog responsible citizenship...is to recognize that our coming to "know" this God requires nothing less than our moral transformation." She then goes on to expand that argument and show us how a focus on worship can lead to discipleship. Murphy discusses the Book of Common Prayer, catechisms of various traditions and the ways in which we are shaped by these in worship. This isn't a book for a casual Sunday school teacher to pick up for tips on leading a class. It's a book for people who consider it their responsibility to walk with other followers in the way of Christ Jesus.