Although spirituality in education and curriculum is a sensitive topic, it is nonetheless vital to move beyond restrictive religious views of spirituality and to see how it plays a role in all of our lives. Western modernity has created a dangerous cult of totalitarian positivist notions, deploying a praxis of rationality that arrogantly legitimizes only specific epistemological frameworks (Paraskeva, 2011, 2016). In the process, this hegemonic worldview has sidelined any other forms of understanding the self, the other, the word, and the world, while superciliously claiming that Western modern rationality is the only way to comprehend our complex reality. Spirituality is an integral part of human subjectivity and thus Western modernity rationality alone has been insufficient to address or even mitigate the major social issues we are facing in this third phase of capitalism (Arrighi, 2005).
Public institutions, such as schools, have been used to foster this totalitarian positivist cult. These alleged instruments of the public good have imposed a set of concepts and practices that defend and legitimize Western modernity rationality as not just the superior epistemological framework but the only valid one. In a world that is epistemologically diverse, any mode of thought that purports itself to be “the only epistemology” is a eugenic claim (Santos, 2014). I challenge such eugenic claims and call for a public education that is inclusive and genuinely dedicated to the common good. A lethal reign of individualism, competition, ethnic cleansing, poverty, and starvation, along with anti-human immigration and slavery practices, has paved the path to the current neoliberal era.
I argue that in silencing other epistemological forms outside of Western modern rationality, U.S. public education has created an abyssal line (Santos, 2014). I further contend that the need for spirituality in public education is a human rights issue—a matter of social and cognitive justice (Santos, 2014)—a subject that, throughout this book, I intend to dissect down to its bones. Along the way, I will examine identity and spirituality from a personal perspective, through my experiences of (1) being a chaplain dealing with dying patients, (2) losing my brother, (3) observing the death of Geronimo, an itinerant worker, (4) being a private school administrator, and (5) attempting to crossing an abyssal line in moving from Brazil to the United States.
In addition, these five events will help me unravel how (a) the sense of the wonder of life and, the sense of spirituality as an aspect of life should be a capstone within and throughout the schooling process in order to educate students for life, instead of preparing them for future “success”; (b) during critical moments in life, regardless of age, our consciousness puts us up against the
The very nature of my claim—one effectively silenced in so many sectors of our field—implies different approaches in which the “power of the person” is not sidelined. As a male minority for whom spirituality plays a major role in my own ways of being and thinking and acting, as Smith (2004) would put it, I experience oppression by both dominant and counter-dominant Eurocentric theories and methodologies that systematically dismiss an important component of my identity. Darder (2019) states,
[I]n many academic settings, doctoral students are infantilized and, more so, if these students are members of indigenous or subaltern communities. This is further intensified if they hail from working class communities of color, where they obviously lack the social and academic pedigree of the elite and privileged student. The deficit lens that has generally accompanied their educational journeys is recognized only too well by those who have traversed the path to a doctoral degree, often as the first in their families to receive an advanced degree of any kind. In this case, perceptions and judgements are tied to stereotypical notions that these students are insufficiently prepared to participate in the ambitious project of critiquing and transforming educational theory. In the process, they were often met with “well-meaning” disrespect and a professional tendency to expertly silence their dissident voices. (pp. 4–5)
I rely on post-abyssal thinking, rather than the modes of thought academia has attempted to impose on me, to understand—and teach how to understand—the importance of spirituality within our schools’ curricula. So, I’ve consciously designed this book to provide an overview of how spirituality, curriculum, and human rights have been dealt with within the educational realm, across all grades and levels, including colleges and universities. As they have for decades, most academics and educators categorically deny the beneficial aspects of spirituality. That denial drove me to establish my own framework—“aja”/conociminento” (Anzaldúa, 2002a, 2002b)—for breaking the silence about the interrelations between cultural relevance, spirituality, and curriculum.