Congress of Education and Spirituality: Antonia Mills

domingo, 16 de maio de 2010

Antonia Mills

Bachelor in Arts, PhD in Social Sciences from Harvard, Lecturer at Northern British Columbia University (Canada), active member of the group of Studies on First Nations, Activist in favor of Indian rights and researcher of reincarnation among them. Co-author of Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Beliefs among North American Indians and Inuit.

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Traditionally, from the Tribal Shaman till the Medieval Monk, education has always been in the hands of religions organizations. However, western democratic societies have expelled religion from the school in order to promote freedom of thought and pluralism. This is the reason why a large part of formal education, which children and adolescents receive today, is divorced from spiritual values and the development of faith.

On the other hand, even in a strongly laic society, fundamentalist religious streams which promote intolerance and fanaticism still remain.
In the field of human health, after two centuries of biological reductionism, today, scientists analyze the benefits of spirituality for human beings. Faith, experienced in a healthy way, without fears and repressions, helps us overcome problems of life and death, and grants the human existence with a meaning.

Thus, one question comes forward: how can we restore spirituality in education – necessary, culturally valid and beneficial to the existence – without falling into a confessional and authoritative teaching process which does not respect diversity?

Researchers and educators working in universities and NGOs in different countries have been proposing ideas in this direction, including the inter-religious dialog and the rescue of spirituality in a plural manner.

In Brazil, this movement is still timid. Universities and research centers usually reject the incorporation of spirituality either as a research field or as a dimension to be considered and respected in the education of human beings. This scholar attitude does not take into account the reality of Brazilian population, which in its majority (ca. 90% according to all researches) is connected to some sort of spirituality or religion.
Since 2004, Brazilian Association of Spiritist Pedagogy, in a partnership with Santa Cecília University (Santos-Brazil), with three congresses of Spiritist Pedagogy has been working on including spirituality in education in an inter-religious, interdisciplinary and pluralistic manner.

On September 4th, 5th and 6th, the First International Conference of Education and Spirituality and the 4th Brazilian Conference of Spiritist Pedagogy will take place in São Paulo, Brazil.
The event will focus on three axes: health and spirituality, education and spirituality and reincarnation and education.

Health and spirituality – The findings of longer-than-two-decade research, concerning to the benefits of spirituality in physical and mental health, show the necessity of rescuing this human dimension in the educational praxis.

Education and Spirituality – Proposals from academic researchers and from representatives of various religious segments offer guidelines for the insertion of spirituality in education, without obligatory indoctrination.

Reincarnation and Spirituality – In Brazil, almost 50% of the population accept the idea of reincarnation, and international scientific research shows possible evidences of this hypothesis; how might it impact on the education?

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domingo, 16 de maio de 2010

Antonia Mills

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The Congress