Do we not already know of the arid zone of academics alone—dry of emotion and passion in the lonely desert of consciousness. As a planetary people, we have arrived at a point in which we are compelled to ask the deeper question.

It is time to recognize that our angle of teaching has produced an amazing level of technological achievement (in which we now are forced to deal with the presence of Artificial Intelligence), but is not one which has uplifted our quality of life in a Soulful way. This is so because we come from our relationship to science through an approach that can be termed as Scientific Materialism in which nature is seen only in perspective of how it can serve humanity and that it is ours for the taking. The principles from scientific materialism can be summarized as the following:

On August 4-6, 2010 in Boston, Massachusetts, our three organizations hosted an invitation-only convening of education leaders to focus on the need for the systemic redesign of our K-12 education system to one that is centered on the personalized learning needs of each student. This report summarizes that two-day discussion and outlines the shared vision, views, and recommended action steps of the participants.

As the environmental bell rings ever louder, many realize it is a time for bridge-building as never before. The multiplicity of environmental and social crises call upon us to understand that we cannot continue to turn a blind eye without consequence. At the tipping point, it becomes a question of the continuation of life itself. We are forced to grapple with the question of just what will it take to preserve sustainable life upon our planet. How to bridge to our inner Selves, one another, and to Nature in the process of making meaningful change becomes a paramount question.

Within the consensus of many, we see that we are alive at a time in which there is great tumult in the world. People feel disconnected, disillusioned, and caught upon a wheel of simple survival from day to day. Through traditional education, as we raise our young into this environment, we saddle them with a tremendous amount of “knowledge” to hold on long enough to feed back to the test, then can release and forget (unless they find they need to ask Siri and be reminded).