European-American University™

Key quotations and resources - and some history
 
Some history
The Society for Humanistic Potential has its roots in a small community called the British Liberal Free Church which formed in 1999 and represented a fusion of Unitarian and Catholic spiritual influences within a non-credal setting. The development of the BLFC over the ensuing few years was complex, with several changes of name and ministerial personnel, but by 2005 it had reached a stable position with three principal ministers and regular public services of worship. 

2006 saw significant change, with one minister leaving to pursue an explicitly Unitarian ministry and the others seeking Apostolic ordination and consecration in the Liberal Catholic tradition. This meant that what was by now the English Liberal Free Church then acquired its present form as The Liberal Rite and the associated Independent Liberal Catholic Fellowship, which now has clergy and communities worldwide.

Alongside this, the ministers of The Liberal Rite became aware of a need to maintain the other main path within ELFC, at that time known as the Society of Free Christians - an Unitarian-influenced, non-denominational outreach that concerned itself in particular with the concepts of non-traditional education that had been actualized in the associated distance learning seminaries and colleges associated with ELFC. The answer to this was to come with the formation of the Society for Humanistic Potential as a religious society in the widest sense, furthering the concepts of person-centered learning and universal ministry within all aspects of life. The next step was to put those concepts into action in a way that would bring EAU into being as a means of ministry-in-action and a conscious work of political activism in the service of the philosophy and precedents we honor.

In 2008, The Liberal Rite received a special commission to continue the work of Archbishop Harold Nicholson, Primate of the Ancient Catholic Church. As a result these two heritages were brought together into a new church, The Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church, and SHP was formally incorporated as a dependent religious society of the LCAC. Further information about the LCAC, including details of its liturgies, history and creeds, is available at its own website. The LCAC is a member of the International Council of Community Churches.

In some respects, SHP and EAU are unique; in others they represent a furtherance of existing principles and a bringing-together of the wisdom of other educators and institutions. The result is a determined challenge to the educational status quo and a defiant statement of faith in the individual as the center of his or her learning process. Recalling a motto of one of our non-traditional predecessors, the erstwhile Columbia Pacific University, we express our resolve in the fulfilment of these ideals with the words Onward Yes!!

Key quotations and resources
Many quotations and resources that underly the principles of SHP may be found distributed around this website. We have collected a number of them together on this page to provide a convenient overview of SHP's philosophical basis at a glance. Reading further in the works of the authors cited will reveal to a fuller extent the very considerable depth of the spiritual tradition upon which SHP draws.

Quotations
Here are some quotations of particular value

"[Malcolm Knowles] saw that the [adult education] movement was, in a sense, peripheral to the dominant institutions in society and yet important to it. He recognized that the very disparate nature of the movement prevented its being adequately coordinated from a central position. [This] ... free-market needs model of adult education provision ... is a position he ... maintained even after adult education became much more established and scholars were calling for a more centrally coordinated approach... [I]mplicit within this position ... is perhaps one of the central planks of his philosophy; that adult education must be free to respond to need, wherever it is discovered."
P. Jarvis, "Malcolm S. Knowles" in "Twentieth-Century Thinkers in Adult Education

"Brookfield (1993) maintains that adult educators need to consider that self-directed learning is often political, for power and control are frequently catalysts for self-directed learning influenced by “political” structures and conditions...[Brookfield] notes that Brockett and Hiemstra (1991) recommend: “The political dimension of self-direction continues to be largely overlooked by adult educators, and this needs to be remedied” (p. 220). Brookfield (1993) argues that self-directed learning is inherently political in nature, and maintains that, “Instead of being equated with atomistic self-gratification, self-direction can be interpreted as part of a cultural tradition that emphasizes the individual’s standing against repressive interests” (p. 225). Moreover, when individuals take control of their learning, it will likely bring them “into direct conflict with powerful entrenched interests” (p. 237) and structures."
Cynthia Lee Andruske, "Self-Directed Learning as a Political Act: Learning Projects of Women on Welfare" (University of British Columbia)

"Lifelong learning is both a right and a responsibility that cannot be ignored without denying life at its root." 
Melvin M. Suhd

"Education must pass beyond the passive reception of the ideas of others. Powers of initiative must be strengthened.

Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilization of knowledge...The valuable intellectual development is self development.

You may not divide the seamless coat of learning. What education has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life of the being possessing it.

The best procedure (comes from) the genius of the teacher, the intellectual type of the students, their prospects in life, the opportunities offered by the immediate surroundings." 
Alfred North Whitehead, "The Aims of Education"

"Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer, into a selflessness which links us with all humanity." 
Nancy Astor

"Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace...European totalitarianism is an upshot of bureaucracy's preeminence in the field of education. The universities paved the way for the dictators."
Ludwig von Mises

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." 
Mark Twain "We now know that in the world of the future we must define the mission of education as to provide competent people - people who are able to apply their knowledge under changing conditions; and we know that the foundational competence all people must have is the competence to engage in life-long self-directed learning.  We now know, also, that the way to produce competent people is to have them acquire their knowledge (and skills, understandings, attitudes, values, and interests) in the context of its application...Education is no longer seen as the monopoly of educational institutions and their teachers. We now perceive that resources for learning are everywhere in our environment and that people can get help in their learning from a variety of other people.  The modern task of education, therefore, becomes one of finding new ways to link learners with learning resources."
Malcolm Knowles

"The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us; to develop, to their fullest extent, the capacities of every kind with which God who made us has endowed us."
Anna Jameson

"True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality, the individuality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius; for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world."
Felix E. Schelling
"The myth of government education, in our country today, is an article of general faith. To question the myth is to tamper with the faith, a business that few will read about or listen to or calmly tolerate. In short, for those who would make the case for educational freedom as they would for freedom in religion, let them be warned that this is a first-rate obstacle course. But heart can be taken in the fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming. And becoming is life's prime purpose; becoming is, in fact, enlightenment -- self-education, its own reward."
Leonard J. Read, "Education for One's Own Sake"

"I find that one of the best, but most difficult, ways for me to learn is to drop my own defensiveness, at least temporarily, and to try to understand the way in which his experience seems and feels to the other person.

I find that another way of learning for me is to state my own uncertainties, to try to clarify my puzzlements, and thus get closer to the meaning that my experience actually seems to have.

This whole train of experiencing, and the meanings that I have thus far discovered in it, seem to have launched me on a process which is both fascinating and at times a little frightening. It seems to mean letting my experiences carry me on, in a direction which appears to be forward, toward goals that I can but dimly define, as I try to understand at least the current meaning of that experience. The sensation is that of floating with a complex stream of experience, with the fascinating possibility of trying to comprehend its ever-changing complexity." 
Carl R. Rogers, "Freedom to Learn"
"The world and its experiences are in the nature of a symbol, and . . . it really reflects something that lies hidden in the subject himself...Such scholars have approached with an air of their own superiority, thus defeating the very purpose of their endeavours...Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside wakes."
Carl G. Jung, various works

"How does a person learn? How can important learnings be facilitated? What basic theoretical assumptions are involved?
Here are a number of the principles which can, I believe, be abstracted from current experience and research related to this newer approach:

1) Human beings have a natural potentiality for learning.
2) Significant learning takes place when the subject matter is perceived by the student as having relevance for his own purposes.
3) Learning which involves a change in self organization - in the perception of oneself - is threatening and tends to be resisted.
4) Those learnings which are threatening to the self are more easily perceived and assimilated when external threats are at a minimum.
5) When threat to the self is low, experience can be perceived in differentiated fashion and learning can proceed.
6) Much significant learning is acquired through doing.
7) Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the learning process.
8) Self-initiated learning which involves the whole person of the learner - feelings as well as intellect - is the most lasting and pervasive.
9) Independence, creativity, and self-reliance are all facilitated when self-criticism and self-evaluation are basic and evaluation by others is of secondary importance.
10) The most socially useful learning in the modern world is the learning of the process of learning, a continuing openness to experience and incorporation into oneself of the process of change."

Carl R. Rogers, "Regarding Learning and Its Facilitation"
"There is another attitude that stands out in those who are successful in facilitating learning… I think of it as prizing the learner, prizing her feelings, her opinions, her person. It is a caring for the learner, but a non-possessive caring. It is an acceptance of this other individual as a separate person, having worth in her own right. It is a basic trust - a belief that this other person is somehow fundamentally trustworthy… What we are describing is a prizing of the learner as an imperfect human being with many feelings, many potentialities. The facilitator’s prizing or acceptance of the learner is an operational expression of her essential confidence and trust in the capacity of the human organism."
Carl R. Rogers, "The interpersonal relationship in the facilitation of learning"

"I believe that there is, therefore, no succession of studies in the ideal school curriculum. If education is life, all life has, from the outset, a scientific aspect, an aspect of art and culture, and an aspect of communication. It cannot, therefore, be true that the proper studies for one grade are mere reading and writing, and that at a later grade, reading, or literature, or science, may be introduced. The progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in, experience.

"I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing."
John Dewey, "My pedagogic creed"

"There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.

The teacher, particularly the teacher dedicated to liberal education, must constantly try to look toward the goal of human completeness. . . .

No real teacher can doubt that his or her task is to assist the pupil to fulfill human nature against all the deforming forces of convention and prejudice.

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because the person is obstinate but because he or she knows others worthy of consideration."
Allan Bloom, "The Closing of the American Mind"

"In education we are moving from the short-term considerations of completing our training at the end of high school or college to lifelong education and retraining.

The whole idea of what education is will be reconceptualized during the next decade.

The notion of lifelong learning is already replacing the short-term approach to education, whereby you went to school, graduated, and that was that."
John Naisbitt, "Megatrends"

"Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself. What better book can there be than the book of humanity?"
Mahatma Gandhi, "Harijan"

"Experts and an expert culture always call for more experts. Experts also have a tendency to cartelize themselves by creating 'institutional barricades' - for example proclaiming themselves gatekeepers, as well as self-selecting themselves. Finally, experts control knowledge production, as they decide what valid and legitimate knowledge is, and how its acquisition is sanctioned."
M. Finger and J.M. Asún, "Adult education at the crossroads: learning our way out."

"The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. So freedom lies...in understanding what you are from moment to moment. You see, you are not [normally] educated for this; your education encourages you to become something or other...

"To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education."
Jiddu Krishnamurti, various works

"What I ask for is absurd: that life shall have a meaning. What I strive for is impossible: that my life shall acquire a meaning. I dare not believe, I do not see how I shall ever be able to believe: that I am not alone."
Dag Hammarskjold, "Markings"

"A spirituality of ends wants to dictate the desirable outcomes of education in the life of the student. It uses the spiritual tradition as a template against which the ideas, beliefs, and behaviours of the student are to be measured. The goal is to shape the student to the template by the time his of her formal education concludes.

But that sort of education never gets started; it is no education at all. Authentic spirituality wants to open us to truth - whatever truth may be, wherever truth may take us. Such a spirituality does not dictate where we must go, but trusts that any path walked with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge. Such a spirituality encourages us to welcome diversity and conflict, to tolerate ambiguity, and to embrace paradox. By this understanding, the spirituality of education is not about dictating ends. It is about examining and clarifying the inner sources of teaching and learning, ridding us of the toxins that poison our hearts and minds."
Parker J. Palmer, "To know as we are known: Education, a spiritual journey"

"Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."
Juergen Habermas

Resources

Author-specific resources
Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi on Education (National Council for Teacher Education, India)

Carl G. Jung
The Jung Page

Ivan Illich
Web index of online writings (davidtinapple.com)
Ivan Illich: Writing on the web (Preservation Institute)

Parker J. Palmer
Four articles from Change magazine (Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction)
Interviewed by Joy Jones (Teacherview.com)

Carl R. Rogers and Natalie Rogers
Carl Rogers (Oak Park Tourist)
Natalie Rogers (daughter of Carl Rogers)

Melvin M. Suhd
The Association for the Integration of the Whole Person
The University for Integrative Learning

Alfred North Whitehead
The Aims of Education and other essays (Emory University)

General resources
The Encyclopedia of Informal Education
Traditional vs. Non-Traditional (Cook's Institute of Electronics Engineering)
Student-Centered Learning (University of Bath, UK)

See also the University's Center for Educational Research (CER) for many more resources.