Casey Tecklenburg

Paidea II: Making Decisions for U.S. Schools

14 April 2015
To Know As We Are Known: Parker Palmers Contemplative Community

Parker Palmer argues for an educational approach that involves

spiritual practice in his work, To Know As We Are Known. He challenges
conventional classroom practices on the grounds that they allow little
room for communal discourse of subject matter and impose too much
authority over student learning. His alternative is a space in which
obedience to truth can be practiced as a journey of discovery of the
nature of reality. Parker Palmer suggests a spiritual approach to
education through communal learning, practicing obedience to truth,
and contemplative practices of meditation.
The conventional classroom focuses too much on imitation of
authority and competition, according to Palmer. He wishes to create a
collaborative space where inquiry is welcome. The focus on
competition in the classroom creates an environment where communal
learning cannot be experienced. Students are taught that learning is
only good for tests, and as such do not experience interaction with
communal truth. Parker gives the example of a simulation game called
Lost on the Moon, in which participants are given the task of ranking
fifteen items based on their usefulness in the given setting of being

stranded on the moon. The individual rankings are then compared and
debated in order to create a team list that is fully agreed upon. The
author of the simulation, Jay Hall, gave guidelines for coming to
consensus on these rankings:
Avoid arguing for rankings. Present your position as lucidly and
logically as possibleDo not assume that someone must win and
someone must lose when discussion reaches a stalemateDo
not change your mind simply to avoid conflict and to reach
agreement and harmonyavoid conflict reducing techniques
(Palmer 95).
These guidelines demonstrate a process of coming to a consensus
within a community of others. Palmer also quotes Hall in demonstrating
how different types of groups operate within the simulation. Groups
that are familiar with each other are much better at debating the
possibilities and approaching conflict pragmatically without aggression.
Groups that are semi-familiar or not familiar at all will encounter
disagreements with tension and uneasiness. Often these groups will
resort to neutral solutions or try to smooth over conflict in order to
reach a consensus peacefully. Once the consensus is reached, the
group score is compared to rankings provided by NASA experts, and
points are awarded on a basis of correspondence with the experts. The
group score is very often higher that the average scores of the
individuals. Palmer states, but what is even more significant, the

group score is often better than the best individual score in the group
(Palmer 94). This indicates, according to Palmer, how the knowledge of
a community has the great potential to be greater than any individuals
knowledge. Palmer argues that the practice of group process to
achieve learning by consensus has the potential to far surpass any
individual work teachers give their students.
Palmers points about the process of learning by consensus,
while obviously very effort-laden, has the potential to increase the
learning of students tenfold when implemented in a classroom setting.
Parker quotes the teachings of desert father Abba Felix saying, to
teach is to create a space in which obedience to the truth is practiced.
Parker creates this space as a place where community learning is a
comfortable and engaging process. Parker is more vague about his
approach to the practice of obedience to truth. He claims that this
practice occurs when the classroom is not approached as a location
separate from the reality of the world. The classroom should be treated
as part of the same plane of existence as the real-life application of the
subject matter. Parker proposes that students should engage the
material as if it were a third entity of the classroom, the first two being
the student and teacher. He gives examples of how he facilitated this
in his own classroom when teaching about Thomas Merton. Parker
would take time to introduce the class to Merton himself, with the
same care taken in introducing one good friend to some others

(Palmer 99). Students learn about Merton the man before ever
beginning to learn about the conceptual and practical issues involved
in most conventional study of him. Parkers strategy to practicing
obedience to truth was to allow students to interact with the subject at
hand, rather than just memorizing facts. Parker describes the practice
of obedience to truth as an act of fidelity to the personal truths of
others. As students interact faithfully and respond to the material
presented and the responses of their peers and their own, they
encounter and practice obedience to truth.
Another point of even greater ambiguity than the practice of
obedience to truth is Parkers approach to spiritual formation of
teachers. One major critique found in Parkers proposed ideology is the
great responsibility it places on the teacher to be fully dedicated to
purely unbiased presentation and facilitation of classroom material. If
students are to enter into a community of learning that requires
vulnerability and fidelity, than the teacher should also be expected to
listen and respond faithfully with deep love for the student and the
subject. If the friendship of the teacher and subject is a jealous or
protective one, then the student will be unable to truly engage in the
material in such a way that allows for Parkers practice of obedience to
truth.
Parker encourages the spiritual formation of teachers through
methods of both pragmatic and contemplative natures. He suggests

that teaching and learning in a filed of study outside ones own can be
of great benefit to teachers. This practice allows teachers to become
students, even such that they encounter new subject material in the
same way as their students do. Parker also calls for the cultivation a
virtues that allow teachers to be unbiased and fully engaged in the
practice of obedience to truth. He names humility with faith as virtues
that allow listening and responding faithfully to occur. The virtue of
reverence without idolatry allows teachers to pay the less familiar
truths encountered in a communal consensus to be paid the same
respect as familiar solutions to problems. Parker calls for the cultivation
of these virtues to come through practices in silent meditation, prayer,
and solitude. These practices can lead to the shedding of the
objectifying mind-force we use to construct reality (Palmer 120). In a
practice similar to Zen Buddhist meditation, Palmer challenges
teachers to seek reality beyond the objective barriers we construct and
listen to the true nature of reality.
Palmers argument is vague and difficult to grasp without a lot of
imagination. To envision the practices he suggests in To Know As We
Are Known put to use in a middle school or even high school classroom
in a public school would be quite a stretch. This way of thinking
challenges the notion that students are receiving education. Palmer
suggests rather that they question and interact with personal truths,

peers, and subject matter to come into a greater knowing of truth and
practice obedience to it through communal learning.

Reflection of Group Work

Our group worked very well together. Upon our first meeting, it
was clear that we all shared similar reservations about the text and the
difficulty we faced in forming a thesis and presenting Palmers. We
each took major chunks of the book to read in great detail, and found
that much of what Palmer was arguing for came back through the text
often. In deciding how and what to present, we chose to introduce the
class to Palmer in such a way that they saw what we interpreted as
both the good and the bad. We split the work of the presentation up so
that each member of the group had a main idea that contributed to our
thesis of the benefit of education when approached as a human
endeavor that actively exists in community.

Bibliography
Palmer, Parker J. To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual
Journey. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993. Print.