Why Spiritual Development?

Schools that claim to be serious about educating whole and healthy as well as smart children need to address spiritual development directly and robustly in light of that research. In addition, true "21st century education" is not a matter of fancy educational technology, but of focus on spiritual development in order to address the enormous challenges this century holds for our graduates.

This past May saw a "paradigm-shifting" (Kirkus) event for educators with the publication of The Spiritual Child, an exhaustive survey of research in the "now booming field" of spirituality and psychology by Columbia psychology and education professor Lisa Miller.¹ Miller's book is already the eighth best-selling book on amazon.com in the area of religion, spirituality, and education, but hasn't yet entered the general discussion in educational reform circles. That silence is not surprising given the recent publication date but also the tendency to marginalize religious and spiritual issues in educational debates. Miller is surveying hard science, not the opinions of religious believers or spiritual enthusiasts, and that hard science points to a broad consensus on the importance of spiritual development in educational and family life.

The kind of research Miller is surveying became possible starting in 1997 when the American Journal of Psychiatry published a study that "provided evidence of a hugely beneficial dimension of spirituality that was empirically rather than theoretically derived: a personal relationship with the transcendent."² That empirically derived definition of spirituality turns out to correlate only moderately with religious affiliation, meaning that there are highly spiritual people across all denominations, highly spiritual people with no religious adherence whatsoever, and religious believers who are not particularly spiritual. Since that ground-breaking study, hundreds of others in the last two decades have gone on to demonstrate high statistical correlations between personal spirituality and good health, mental well-being, fulfillment, and success. More startlingly, "No other preventative factor known to science and medicine has such a broad-reaching and powerful influence on the daily decisions that make or break health and wellness."³

What exactly is meant by spiritual development, and how can schools coach that development given its highly personal nature? The best short definition I have found is this paragraph from a 2003 article in the Journal of Applied Developmental Science: Spiritual development is the process of growing the intrinsic human capacity for self-transcendence, in which the self is embedded in something greater than itself, including the sacred. It is the developmental “engine” that propels the search for connectedness, meaning, purpose, and contribution. It is shaped both within and outside of religious traditions, beliefs, and practices.⁴

If spirituality is the primary "developmental engine" driving the rest of the student’s growth and formation, how can schools not address it? And so what if it's personal - isn't all learning ultimately personal? Isn't that one of the main lessons from constructivism and modern brain science, that all of us construct meaning in highly personal ways?⁵

"Self-transcendence" may sound philosophical and abstract, but can be and has been defined and measured by research psychologists (who have even created a "self transcendence scale"⁶!). Likewise, programs that promote spiritual development are already common even in supposedly secular schools.

For example, teachers who:

• provide experiences of awe for their students through art, music, nature, or studying great people are helping their students connect to something larger than themselves;
• teach prosocial skills such as gratitude, compassion, empathy, mindfulness, and altruism are helping their students develop positive relationships that both transcend and meet self-interest;
• relate the content of their classes to students’ lives and who take the time to get to know and cultivate their students’ interests and passions are helping their students develop broader meaning and purpose;
• incorporate service learning into their curriculum are providing opportunities for students to make a worthwhile contribution to society, grow their empathy and compassion for others, and thus become "men and women for others.” ⁷

At Campbell Hall, we go further to make sure we give spiritual development its due and thus nurture happy, loving, and responsible as well as smart students. While affiliated with the Episcopal Church, like many Episcopal and Anglican schools in large urban areas around the world, Campbell Hall has evolved over the decades to include many non-Christian families. Roughly one-third of our students have one or more Jewish parents, we include Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim families, and about one fifth of our students come from families with no formal faith background at all. During that evolution there were the inevitable laments that the school was watering down its religious identity, but we have also delighted in finding and applying notions of spiritual development and formation common to all of our students, and creating and supporting programming using those common notions.

Those programs now include twice weekly chapels (four times per week in elementary), purpose-centered human development and advisory programs, pal and mentoring programs, robust service earning and public purpose programs, spiritually-based diversity and inclusion initiatives, mindfulness training at all levels, extensive professional development for faculty, and parent education programs.

We have therefore been living out for decades the truth that spiritual development (distinct from religious education) is the centerpiece of an effective college preparatory program, and center our mission on the belief that pursuing academic excellence must be matched with an equal commitment to nurturing loving, responsible, and healthy children. So Lisa Miller's research simply confirmed what we already deeply believed based on our own experience.

There are, of course, many excellent private schools that ground their programs explicitly in religious education in a particular denomination. Miller’s work offers those schools two cautions: first of all, religious education does not necessarily guarantee spiritual development; at a symposium on Miller’s work,⁸ I heard one passionate religious educator lament the fact that her religious day school seemed more concerned with the survival of the denomination than with whether or not students were actually engaged in spiritual development.

Secondly, spiritual development in a religious monoculture does not necessarily prepare students well for life and constructive collaboration in a pluralistic democracy. That’s why we like to say that at Campbell Hall, Christians become better Christians, Jews become better Jews, Buddhists become better Buddhists, and atheists become better atheists: all are encouraged to deepen their own faiths and beliefs while learning to bring greater spiritual maturity to their work with others of very different faiths and beliefs. Isn’t that kind of maturity exactly what the world needs?

At Campbell Hall we believe that a program that prioritizes spiritual development is 21st century education that recognizes that our students will grow up and work and raise their own children in a world very different from that of their teachers and parents. The salient feature of the 21st century is the fantastically complex problem of climate change and the accompanying imperative to address that problem simultaneously at the highest intellectual, creative, moral, and economic levels. Nothing short of a profound existential commitment will suffice if humanity is to continue to improve its lot, or perhaps even survive. What the 21st century most needs is human spiritual development which then inspires and makes possible intellectual and creative and economic solutions. The huge problems looming because of climate change will not be solved by religious zealots forcing their beliefs on others, though they will certainly try; nor will they be solved by cynics who have rejected the possibility of a larger intelligence and have given up the search for its solutions. We won't be helped by political systems gridlocked in mutual distrust. We need thinkers willing to make themselves vulnerable to others' best insights; we need investors ready to risk all for the sake of the next world-changing technology; we need youth hopeful that a summer of love, this time without mind-altering and -damaging drugs, can once again give hope to frozen hearts and an overheating planet. We need humanity to dedicate itself wholeheartedly to self-transcendence. We at Campbell Hall are committed to that cause, the cause of developing not just good students, but good people.

¹ Lisa Miller, The Spiritual Child (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), p. 12 “The Spiritual Child: Practices for Education and Youth Development Conference,” Teachers College
² Miller, p. 7
³ Miller, p. 38 Columbia University, November 9
⁴ “Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence: Toward a Field of Inquiry,” Peter L. Benson, Eugene c. Roehikepartain & Stacey P. Rude (Journal of Applied Developmental Science: Volume 7, Issue 3, 2003)
⁵ See, for example, Sarah M. Burnett, “Substantiating Constructivism from a Brain-based Perspective” (International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Volume 5, Issue 4, pp.145-154).
⁶ Miller, p. 58 
⁷ Vicki Zakrzewski, “The Case for Discussing Spirituality in Schools” (Greater Good, January 8, 2013)