Transcript
WESTERHOFF: I decided not to get (inaudible). Because it wasn't the -- it didn't seem right; it kind of lacked light. It was written on a quiet evening looking out on the cloistered courtyard of an ivy-covered faculty apartment in Union Theological Seminary in New York, having just conducted a seminar on Israel Scheffler's philosophy of education. But Sunday evening I had an
experience which made that address seem quite hollow. I was listening to Bach's B minor mass with the hope that [Lent?] would again take on some significance, since I've always found that particular piece of music exciting. The credo had ended, and even the silence [that?] reverberated with my response, yes, I do believe.
And at that point I picked up the new [Haggadah for Passover?] with the Freedom Seder written by Arthur Waskow so that he, his wife, and children might meaningfully celebrate the Passover in 1968, just one week after the murder of Martin Luther King, when, as they looked out of their Washington, DC, apartment they could see their city under military occupation. The Freedom Seder,
Seder, is a family celebration which recalls our slavery and our liberation, our slavery, which is not over, and our liberation, which is not complete. I read this prayer, or rather that's not quite accurate. I found myself praying this prayer, which went like this: "So the struggles for freedom that remain will be more strange and difficult
than any we have met so far. For we must struggle for a freedom that enfolds stern justice, stern bravery, stern love, and simple joy. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God who has confronted us with the necessity of choice and of creating our own book of Thy Law. How many and how hard are the choices and the tasks that Thou has set before us. For if we were to end a single genocide but not stop the other wars that are killing men
and women as we sit here, it would not be sufficient. If we were to end those bloody wars but not disarm the nations of the weapons that could destroy all mankind, it would not be sufficient. If we were to disarm the nations but not end the pollution and the poisoning of our planet it would not be sufficient. If we were to end the poisoning of our planet but not prevent some people from wallowing in luxury while others starve, it would not be sufficient. If we were to make sure that no one starved but not end the police
brutality in many countries, it would not be sufficient. If we were to end outright police brutality but not free the daring poets from their jails, it would not be sufficient. If we were to free the poets from their jails but to cramp the minds of people so that they could not understand the poets, it would not be sufficient. If we liberated all men and women to understand the free creative poets but forbade them to explore their own inner ecstasies, it would not be sufficient. If
we allowed men and women to explore their inner ecstasies but would not allow them to love one another and share in the human frailty -- fraternity, it would not be sufficient. How much then are we in duty bound to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, feel, organize, sit-in, speak out, dream, hope, and be on behalf of mankind?" I put that book aside
and thought of bidding farewell to a man I've come to love who's influenced my life a great deal recently, Paulo Freire, a theoretician of education, the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. We were at recently a meeting of the World Council together, and before he left we embraced, and he shared with me his own concern, which was that his passport of his family had been taken away from him by the Brazilian government,
and that they must leave Geneva and he had no home, they had no home, and there was no place for them to go. Injustice filled my mind, but what could I do for Paulo? What could I do for his family? Then I've also recalled that on my desk in Colloquy's Philadelphia office is a letter from Angela Davis's mother, a letter which recounts how she grew up in our church school, our youth group, our church. Now Angela was in
trouble, and it asked if I did not know, and it asked why the church was so silent, and it asked what I was going to do for Angela. Now perhaps you may see why that speech written in a quiet seminary faculty apartment somehow didn't make sense in terms of making the night meaningful when you think about the future of education in the
church. And how what happened on a quiet Sunday evening at home, with all my work completed, ended up with my having to rethink and rewrite what I might say tonight. We live in a time when history appears to be rushing towards some sort of a climax. But what have we neglected to do? What might we [yet?]? Every aspect of our life is in crisis; that is a crucial
turning point where we're called upon to make new decisions that will shape the future, but what ought we to decide? And what ought we to do? Underneath all of those questions is one even more profound and more troubling. Is there any point to the whole affair? Caught in the demands of daily life, we usually avoid that question and even try to avoid the others. But for how long? Today we witness one of the great ironies of history;
the century that technologically has surmounted most every imaginable problem it set out to solve presents us with the gloomiest depiction of the human condition perhaps ever rendered. Even the hope-filled activism among some of our most idealistic, bright, and committed youths has been supplanted by a deadening depression and pessimism on most university campuses. It doesn't help to look for comfort to the poets and artisans of our age,
for they project back on us a world that is either meaningless or absurd. Never have men known so much while doubting that it adds up to anything. Never is life been covertly so empty while overtly so full. In the face of this void of meaning in our time I take my text from the French philosopher Merleau-Ponty, "because we are present in the world, we are condemned to meaning." That's
true, but what is that meaning? What is that purpose? What values are we to cherish and live by? And how are we to see that tomorrow's children can frame a meaningful world view and a set of values? How do we as Christians view the world, and how do we make sense out of our lives and history? How do we determine how we shall live and how we shall die? And how do we make it possible for tomorrow's children to decide for or against that vision and
that lifestyle? These questions I suggest are the primary questions which confront the Christian educator at Seton. And the other questions I'd like to briefly explore tonight. That exploration will obviously be inadequate. Perhaps it will be too simplistic. Certainly it will be unfinished. But I offer our really first thoughts for all of us I hope tonight and later to grapple with together, rather than a final
thought offered only to convince you or for debate. In Values For Tomorrow's Children I suggested that a person's faith is his frame of reference, the eyes through which he looks at life and views his own life, his framework of meaning. Another way for me to describe faith is to use the words "world view." A world view is an internalized configuration of meaning, and it's a person's understanding of the world
and his place in it. And so I've kind of made a parallel between what the church calls faith and what the culture calls world view. In Values For Tomorrow's Children I also suggested at least one way to understand the word [works?] as it's used in the New Testament is to think of a person's set of values. For values when actualized are seen in our behavior. A value then for me is something we freely choose from alternatives after we've considered
the consequences. A value is something we cherish and advocate. A value is demonstrated in our actions consistently and regularly. Our faith then is an answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" Our works are an answer to the question "What am I to do with my life?" They're obviously bound together; a person's lifestyle results from the union of his faith and works, his world view and his set of values. Now our
American culture, I'd suggest, offers a person a world view and a set of values. Christianity attempts to do the exact same thing. The possibility exists for them to offer the same world view and set of values or differing ones. I'd further like to suggest that American culture with its world view and set of values and mainline Protestantism with its understanding of faith and works have become identical.
A complicated problem, not only have they become identical, but both of them together are breaking down in the world in which we live. The total matrix of meaning which has undergirded and unified the various dimensions of our lives has begun to collapse, and with it all our inherited institutions -- government, schools, churches, and the like -- and our habitual modes of thought and action. It appears that we find ourselves living in a period of transition, the end of a cultural epoch, and to the
extent that American Protestant religion has identified itself with that culture the death of American Protestantism, with it the beginning of another -- a new cultural epoch, to be organized under a new understanding of life and a new set of values. This isn't the first time in history when men have had to face such a turning point or crisis. The culture and religion have traditionally broken apart when new problems cannot be met by the old world view, or
old set of values, or when old problems are no longer live issues. The passing of the modern age creates a particular crisis for American mainline Protestantism for so much of our understanding of faith and works has been synonymous with the American culture's world view and set of values, which are in a period of collapse. Our culture is dying, and with it mainline Protestantism, for it has let itself become an integral part of what is now a dying culture.
Significantly our public atheism, which I believe is not really a denial of God at all but only the inability to believe in the existence of a divine individual person who benevolently interacts with this world as one more member of the community, that's breaking down, and with it the denial of a God who undergirds our cultural understanding of democracy, capitalism, romantic marriage, empirical science, and Christian individualism. Now the church in
such a time had at least three options. One was taken by sixteenth century Catholicism when it entered a defensive style and tried to maintain a faith and a set of values in the past against what was happening. The second is what happened in the mainline Protestantism in America, namely letting the culture determine the values of joining it in blessings. The third is an example from the early church, when the expectations of Jesus' imminent return failed,
they had to radically revise the theology, liturgy, and institutional life, and thereby affected the change in history. As you might guess, I have opted for the last. One thing is clear. We are at a critical turning point in our history. I don't know how to make that more serious or more profound than simply to state it in those somewhat calm, analytical terms. How we respond will decide whether we enter a period of recovery, paralysis,
or death. For some, such an analysis causes anxiety and panic. I'd prefer that it elicit a response of possibility and hope. But in order to elicit that kind of response, we have to be clear about what's happening around us. Our crisis, I'd again suggest, is complicated by two phenomena. The first is pluralism, which I define as a time when no organized world view or faith has a monopoly. In fact, we recognize the competition
between faiths and world views. The second phenomenon is secularization, which I define as the situation when values [in this tradition's?] symbols and institutions, which used to hold sway, recede from places in the society where they once dominated and gave support to that world view. The results are an erosion in faith and works, in world view, and values, causing alienation and crisis in self-identity in a search for new world views and a new set of values.
These two realities, along with the transition in our culture in general, make -- I suggest -- all our old ways of religious education become truly irrelevant. The child coming into self-consciousness must have an explanation of the world around him. He is only able to make sense out of the world because a meaningful story of the world, its origin, its purpose, its meaning and future is communicated to him. We need this world
view to provide -- he needs this world view to provide him with a way of looking at the world and deciding how he is to live in relationship to it. So it is that his selfhood is tied up with that (inaudible). Now it is the family or better the primary group, and in the supportive secondary groups, the neighborhoods, schools, churches, and the like, that he acquires the answers to his questions and the meaning in part. The cultural
world view, and a set of values, and the church's faith in works are mediated directly to a child by his primary and secondary socializing. Today, however, he no longer receives a single message; rather he receives a number of divergent messages. To make it worse, none of these messages make a great deal of sense as he grows older, because the culture is changing. Modern life is rich in choices and opportunity. It's also very confusing for a child to comprehend.
It is more difficult today than it was at the turn of the century for a child to develop a world view and a clear set of values both because the whole culture is disintegrating and because of pluralism and secularization. For example, there are few extended families exist; one out of three mothers work, one out of five are not home when the children [get?] home. One out of five families have only one parent, one out of five fathers are only home on weekends, more commute to the extent that they're really not
home except to sleep. One out of five families move every year. High mobility, low stability. A child's secondary groups constantly changing, he's always in contact with a new peer group, a new school, a new community, with new organizations, a new church. His teachers do not live in his community. Many of the traditional organizations no longer hold sway in his life. He doesn't know the policeman, the storekeeper, or the community leaders. After this the mass
media, especially television, the numerous ways of life and understanding of life which are represented to children without a primary group response to them. Children without special aid cannot profit from so many choices, especially when the institutions and symbols which represent a grounding in a way of looking at the world are also eroding. That brings us then to the question, what is a Christian frame of reference
or world view or a faith, and what are a Christian set of values? And the second question is, how do we communicate them in the light of my analysis of the culture? Let me suggest first a very simplistic answer to the question of a Christian world view. I suggest a Christian world view says that man is a historical being, he knows himself in the mirror of history, he realizes himself in his participation in history.
He is made by history, but also he can make history. His uniqueness lies in his power to make history and determine the future. History is going somewhere; it is moving toward its fulfillment, a new heaven and a new earth. A vision of a new society of love and justice is integral to the aim for which he lives in history. Man can be part of building that vision.
He is free from the principalities and powers which seem to prevent its coming, and our fulfillment personally as man is realized in our working in community toward the goal of history -- a new social order. That's simplistic I know, but it's one way of stating at least in cognitive terms a Christian world view. I suggest that it is just such a world view which can help us to build a new culture
and which can also serve what is coming into being in a very creative way. Let me look at the same set of values, which I think are integral to the Christian faith, which I also believe can help us in that new culture. The first thing is the value that personal rights take precedence over all property rights; people are more important than property. Human need is prior to all other needs.
Cooperation takes precedence over all sorts of competition. Nonviolence takes precedence over all forms of violence, and we're not just talking about fighting and physical violence, but the way we treat people. Ends take precedence over means. A world vision takes precedence over any national identity. Openness, flexibility, and incompleteness takes precedence over any settled view of life. Change takes
precedence over [fixedness?]. Intimate trusting relationships take precedence over any exploitive relationships, whether they be sex, bureaucracies, or professionalism. Personalization of life takes precedence over the depersonalization of life. The importance of feelings takes precedence over a [mind trip?]. Justice takes precedence over personal gain. Social consciousness takes precedence over individual
concerns. Participation takes precedence over any other lifestyle. Liberation takes precedence over domination and domestication. Community takes precedence over individualism. I'd suggest that those values are Christian values and also are the very values that the new culture emerging will need to exist. Based upon that very simple and quick look at those two complex
phenomenon, let me suggest how we might communicate such a world view and such values or such faith in values to our children. First I'd suggest we adults cannot understand or communicate what we do not possess. If the church is to pass on to its children those kinds of values and world views, then we adults must develop such an understanding ourselves.
I suggest that we adults do not possess such an understanding, and that we are not and will not be able to do it by ourselves since our lives have been based upon another world view and another set of values which is disintegrating in front of our eyes. This is why I suggest that the first act that Christian education must take is that we must become the advocates and the supporters and on some days perhaps the critics of the
new generation. Their lifestyle will perhaps lead us into experiences out of which through reflection we can evolve a new consciousness that will make it possible for us to accept a new world view [instead of dying?]. The church needs then those most alienated from itself if it is to save itself. So the first act of Christian education would be to find a way for the adults to become the advocates and supporters
of the new generation lifestyle. The second is we cannot understand or communicate what we do not act upon. I suggest therefore that we adults will not be able to pull that one off either in mainline Protestantism, but once again we're offered in our history a salvation. We can be saved by the blacks, the Chicanos, the Indian Americans, the youth, and the other minority peoples who in their struggle for human
liberation and justice we can join. Churches that will risk joining them in their freedom fight, by acting that out, will be able to acquire the values and the world view that is necessary for us to live in the future. Third, I suggest we cannot understand or communicate what we do not celebrate, and we do not possess the means
by which again we can pull that off. So I suggest again that the adults look to the artists, the poets, the musicians, the dramatists, the street people of our day who are searching for ways of expression and celebration of a new vision of a new world, and that we join them in their songs, and in their dancing, in their embracing, and in their loving, and in their singing, and as we do it will make possible for us to acquire a new world view
and a new set of values equal to the future. If we adults in the church can join those who are bringing into being such a lifestyle, such a new way of looking at the world, a new way of living, and do that in a community of reflection upon our historical past, and ask along with them and our children how did the people of God see
His actions in history in the past? How did the community of faith respond to God's history making? How do I think theologically or use my head as a Christian in my historical decision making, and how do I act morally in determining the course of the future of history? Then we will be on the road for passing on a Christian world view and a set of values to our children which can influence and frame the
new culture that's emerging. We need to work with building a system of beliefs that refer to the unity factor in all the parts, beliefs that undergird a cybernetics world, beliefs in which God holds the pieces together, a God who acts in groups rather than individuals, a vision of God's Kingdom that is not concerned with individual goodness but corporate goodness. We need to work at new myths
and symbols and celebrations whereby a social vision is realizable, symbols that are future-oriented rather than past-oriented. We need to work at social relationships whereby the unity of life is experienced, whereby many feel themselves a part of the whole. Remembering that the word religion comes from two words, religare, meaning to bind together a group identity and experience, and [relegere?], to rehearse,
celebration, liturgy, and a vision. But somehow religion is made up primarily of those two systems, our celebration and social relationships, and the key to religious life is the [key participation?]. We recall the word Christian can be used as either an adjective or a noun. The question people used to ask is are you a Christian? It's easy to answer that question. You could refer to beliefs or organizations to which you belong. When you ask that question, education
becomes teaching people about something. But the real question is, are you Christian? That question is hard to answer. It has to be answered in every moment of time, and it refers to our total behavior, which in part is determined by the way we look at life and our set of values. Out of that behavior we transmit and communicate also our world view and set of values to a new generation. But
beware, for to communicate faith is only to put it honestly before them, to offer them an experience or to ask them to participate in it so that they can make a decision about it. All we can do is make a genuine decision [possible?]. I suffer a great deal of pain when I find a lot of people who are rejecting the faith because they have never had it genuinely communicated. I also suffer because there's a lot of people who have accepted less than the faith itself
and therefore cannot possibly communicate it to a new generation. Somehow the burden of the Christian educator is to look seriously at the culture in which we live and to establish those new ways of thinking and feeling and acting from a new understanding of life and a new set of values that will make the future closer to the vision which is part of our Christian faith. Obviously that's a tremendous burden to put on Christian
educators, but I suggest, as I did at the end of my book, it may appear as if I placed a tremendously heavy responsibility on the church educator. I have. You may wonder whether everything we discuss can possibly be accomplished. I think it can. We may have to stop most of the things we've been doing in our churches and establish some new priorities. That is now in the realm of the possible if we think it important. Like Max Lerner, I characterize myself neither as an optimist nor a pessimist,
but rather a possibilist. Life is a great possibility, realizable through hope and organized, planned human activity. [I've heard?] the new vitality and relevance religious education can break forth; it can also [abort?]. The decision really is ours. So is the responsibility. At stake are tomorrow's children, nothing more, nothing less.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: The [question?] of that is how will you [find this?] (inaudible) progress is not received (inaudible)?
WESTERHOFF: Yeah, I guess what I was -- I'm really using it almost in the contextual ethics sense, you know, that Paul Lehmann uses. You know, if the ends don't justify the means, what does? It doesn't say all means justify all ends. But somehow it confirms that you've got -- the end is a vision, and that that vision has to instruct what you're [about?]. It does not mean that any means gives in to reach that vision.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: So it's an informing process rather than a justified process?
WESTERHOFF: That's right.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: John.
WESTERHOFF: Excuse me. Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: Let me make sure, first of all, that I -- I agree with about 99% of what you say -- (inaudible).
WESTERHOFF: That's too bad.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: I'm curious in my own mind in terms of talking about powerlessness and blessing American values. The new values that you mentioned and the list that you had sounds very much like the values of the counterculture. Have you grappled in your own mind about whether or not you are not so much raising Christian values but blessing the new emerging values of the counterculture?
WESTERHOFF: Could be. All I can say --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: Yeah, you are.
WESTERHOFF: My, my only answer to that is in part I'd like to believe that's not the case, however, knowing how human beings' minds function, I have to leave that open to the possibility that I've let that happen. I'd like to believe that I guarded myself against that.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: You have thought about this?
WESTERHOFF: Yeah. Now as I'd like to believe that I thought about it and came to it by another route, however, it does happen, you have quite a significant fact, and it does parallel with the counterculture, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: We have a few questions that are coming together here.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: Please speak up.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: When you speak of culture, can you define more by what you mean by culture? And can you document the collapse of our culture in the situation where the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer as far as economic roots in the culture, and how we come to some
consensus of what is happening?
WESTERHOFF: I guess I define culture in a very anthropological sense. You know, it's just the straight definition of [those?] forces and decided it influenced -- you can get the frame and operational style in which people think and feel and act.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Our question is more deeper. Western culture, American culture, or the whole world culture is what we're (inaudible; overlapping dialogue).
WESTERHOFF: Yeah. Well, I try to -- I really dealt with American culture only because I had to isolate the problem in some way that I could cope with it, because you do have different phenomena working when you enter the international scene, and I just really wanted to avoid that for the sake of argument. The evidence that it's collapsing? Just pick up almost any book by any anthropologist, sociologist, or almost anyone else that's trying to look at the society in which we live, and what's
going on with the collapse of that culture is imminent. I don't know how you -- I guess you could believe it isn't, but you know you look around, and the understanding of life that basically we've been [harbored?] with just doesn't make sense in terms of the new problems we're confronted by. It just doesn't make sense in terms of our situation, and so it doesn't make --
it isn't very instructive, it isn't helping us very much to cope with the problems that we face, or the questions that are being raised by people. You know, it just doesn't help much. But let me take a kind of -- that isn't a perfect example, but it will help perhaps to see it through. I was out talking to a rancher out in Wyoming, way off in the middle of nowhere, and he raised a fascinating question one night.
He said, "You know," he says, "out here on the range," he says, "there are certain values that are important. Picking yourself up with the bootstraps not only works, but it's a pretty good idea," and he went through a whole series of things. He says, "You know, the problem is that all our kids live here," and he ended up saying they lived in five metropolitan areas, and I'm not going to say that I'll take his word for it. They lived in five metropolitan areas. He says, "Now I would guess," says he, "that we having brought our kids up on these values that out here we
think are pretty important" -- he says -- "probably make them ill-equipped to live where they're living. In fact, I would guess they're voting against every important piece of social legislation that's presented there because it's based upon the opposite value." He says, "Now I have a problem, Mr. Westerhoff. How do we out here educate our children so they can live there meaningfully?" That's the collapsed culture. That's a very simplistic way of looking at it, but I use it purely as an example. Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: I don't think it's a collapsed culture. I think that's (inaudible). It's a question of improper socialization or dysfunctional socialization. It's a question of socializing people to listen in a rural, agricultural environment which is what's the source of our Negro problem.
WESTERHOFF: But that is, that rural social -- that is culture, that's a cultural problem. The anthropologists isolates out cultures. We talked about the culture of Wyoming, we talked about the culture of urban -- a specific cultural [growing?] specific. It isn't a question of having a single mass culture. You've got cultures that also are informed by overall extending cultures.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: But, you know, and so we -- it seems to me though that culture is more of adapting than we give them credit for basically.
WESTERHOFF: Well, it definitely is. In fact, it dies and new things emerge. It's adaptable to that dramatic point.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: But, you know, what do you mean by cultural death? I mean, you know, certain images lose their power and other images take over.
WESTERHOFF: Right. Well, to the extent that you can identify just descriptively, a culture based upon certain world views and certain values, when those values and world view cease being operative or meaningful, then we say that that culture die, and that's in the sense I'm using it.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: But you don't say (inaudible) when you're talking about when did the Renaissance begin, when did the (inaudible), one of these kind of vast transition things. My own feeling is that I think the resiliency of the old -- I won't say the old values, but I think that there's a lot of status quo kind of forces which are still around which have a lot of resiliency,
which are going to change (inaudible) at least in terms of our belief (inaudible).
WESTERHOFF: Yeah, I think that, you know, I wouldn't totally -- I pointed out that the analysis was simplistic and dramatic. It was done on purpose to try to -- you know, I'm trying to paint a scenario that has some force to it so we can relook at the problem. I'd really prefer to have us relook at the problem rather than make a scenario totally sound, because I think that scenario you can write alternative scenarios and you realize also that the flow of that can
change and that some things can happen, and they probably won't happen as dramatically as I indicated that they might. The point is that I see this occurring to a greater or a lesser degree. The point is, then when you talk about educational planning, is if the only way I know to talk about educational planning is you start out with what is, you take the exact thing that is -- this is how we write, -- and then we project out as if nothing changes
except that that increases. Now that's the first scenario you write in educational planning. The next thing you do is you say all right, what if I interject into that system something? What will then be the new alternative scenarios that can be written based upon that interjection? So what I've tried to do is take the existing situation as I see it, project it without anything happening except an increase
of what's already happening. That's my scenario which [has?] my description of the culture. I then suggested that there's a way out of it. The way out of it is to interject into that system a new world view, a new set of values which I've identified as having been instructed by the Gospel, and perhaps they're also part of the counterculture. If we inject that into the system, I'd say there's an alternative scenario, and that's all that I've done.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 6: I've been wondering along with this cultural collapse the sense of how severe is it with our economic collapse along with it? Can you have cultural decay without economic collapse?
WESTERHOFF: Yeah, I'd say you can. I'm not -- I don't have an economic [alternative?], so I don't use those terms in my system.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 6: (inaudible)
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 7: How do you --
WESTERHOFF: Yes, excuse me.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 7: How do you --
WESTERHOFF: OK. Who goes? You two decide that.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 7: How (inaudible) exist in terms of professional [staff?]? Does that exemplify your hierarchy (inaudible) deal with the changes that you're talking about? In other words, is it possible that (inaudible)? Is there a reason for (inaudible)?
WESTERHOFF: Let me try to answer this. I'm still believing that you have to deal with institutions of professional (inaudible) tomorrow, and maybe it brings about a mistake, and that's almost my job (inaudible). In the meantime, let me take a (inaudible). Whether or not the problem (inaudible). I would suggest the
strategy is, one, we're not going to change from the top down. We're not going to change the entirety of the (inaudible). What we can do, and I'm thinking of every (inaudible) of everyone that I know (inaudible) who are prepared to take seriously the analysis and what it might mean to change. And I'd suggest the real leadership in the church [would?] take those people and make them (inaudible). That
does not mean ruling [off?] all the other people (inaudible) and spending a lot of time and energy on them. We spent our time and energy -- we expend our time and energy and we did a [tops?] publication. We spend our time and energy -- we spend our time and energy on creativity on that small remnant group, and we take that group
and we move them out to have experiences with the new generation and (inaudible). We move them out doing minority (inaudible) and focus deliberations. We move them out to join in the celebrations. We [provide?] that we reflect upon them. We begin to build not a copy of theirs, (inaudible), but we begin to build what for us makes sense in the light of that new experience
and that new action and that new celebration. And we begin to frame that in such a way into our celebration and our actions and our [experience?]. And so we begin to construct a new configuration, a new way (inaudible) within the church. We've gone through the relationship together, and for us and our children we begin to frame a future, and if we
really have -- that image will begin slowly to be caught by some other people. We hope that (inaudible) because our authority is not in (inaudible) the structure (inaudible) what happens in society is structural authority is very condemning. [No other kind of structure?]. But
no one has a right to be heard, which is the way I'd define authority, by his structure whether he's parent, minister, or anything else. But we do have a right to be heard because of our moral witness, because of our personal life, because of our wisdom, and because of perhaps our charisma, if we're so [granted?]. And that if this new group has that wisdom and has that charisma perhaps, that has that moral and personal authority, it will be
[heard?] by both the church and the society, and it will begin to make an impact. Now that's a little bit idealistic and dreaming, and I'm open to the fact that that's idiocy, but for the moment I'm working on that hypothesis.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 8: You know, when you talk about rejections, you know, I look at the fact that we have, what, about 20% [more?] people going to church now than we had six or seven years ago.
WESTERHOFF: That's a blessing.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 8: We have dollar-wise about the same in an inflated economy. You want to talk about projections, I think those are projections. I think, you know, what I see you talking about in a very real sense is a rich, kooky Christian [remnant?], and that may be kind of hard, but I think there's a lot of truth in that, myself I do. I'm not sure I have any better answers, but I
think -- at one point I was thinking of the article Charles Baker wrote in the Christian Century, the Harvey Cox, and the letters that came back on it, which I think it draws real, in my mind, a real criticism of what it is that, what my part of it's supposed to [be?]. And I just think to me it's just kind of, it's almost the same kind of mentality towards the youth and "ecology crisis,"
quote, unquote, as was in the early days of the freedom movement.
WESTERHOFF: I guess my argument with that is that perhaps is true, somewhat. But, you know, the academics who come up with such kind of conclusions -- in which some days I'm a part of -- have not made a great deal of impact on the history of the world. They some days are [correct?] when the [idiocy?] of people who have changed [as such?], but there's not -- except we ought to guarantee them their safe harbors
off in their hallowed institutions to perform that important function on all of our behalf. But I have a suspicion that it's going to be the [nuts?] like Harvey who I don't think are all right. In fact, the nice thing about Harvey is (break in audio) Harvey spends most of his time demythologizing our view (inaudible) not because I put myself in his class, but I'd like to believe I [try?] demythologizing myself. But what we're really trying to do is
break free from where we are and think freshly, and I have no trouble, after I've gone through all this and tried to sell it to everybody, if somebody can convince me up there, saying, you know, forget what I said, let's start working on the problem again. Because something was gained through that process. It goes back to that conflict model that I pointed to this afternoon which was you begin in conflict -- that's exactly where I am in trying to understand the culture. You try to make a resolve of it,
how you can't live with the conflict, so you've got to resolve -- that's what the paper is. I'm reality testing. I'll try reality testing two dozen more times, and then I will end up making a statement. I will write it down, OK, and at that point I'll be back in conflict again. When somebody quotes it to me a year from now I'll say, oh, did I write that? Because, you see, it's that process that I think is important, when being said this afternoon. And what I'm encouraging you
to do is not buy the conclusion, buy the analysis, but buy the process. Get involved and solve it your way, and then the beginning creates a model, so you find your analysis, and you go test out yours and I'll go test out mine, and the future will be with both of [them?]. (break in audio) -- director of education for UNESCO, and he gave a brilliant two-hour paper at the end of which some young Roman Catholic clergyman from
Latin America stood up and he said, "Monsieur (inaudible), we are indebted to you, to your big wisdom in your address. But regretfully, sir, you have made all the wrong assumptions, and you have asked all the wrong questions, and hence your address is not going to help us much in this consultation. Mr. Chairman, I move we table the address and get on with the business of the consultation." That's where it's at. What we're doing is we're asking the wrong questions, and so
it has nothing to do with having brilliant answers. I'm convinced of this. My answers may not be very good, but perhaps I'm asking the right questions. And that's what I'm really encouraging people to do, not buy into my solutions, which are filled with hope, but buy into the question-asking process, because I think that that's what's significant, the little bit like I pointed out today, you know, the question, dare the schools to change the society, or will the society change the schools? You don't know what the answer to that may be, but at least
that's the right question. And I'm convinced that that's really the business that we're in in 1971 is trying to learn to ask the right questions. I have hope if we do, we'll find some significant answers. What bothers me is most people are asking what I consider the wrong questions.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: Then is apathy the enemy?
WESTERHOFF: Yes. Sloth, that sin.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 5: John, go back to the business of asking the right questions and so forth as perhaps the hardest thing. Now, I can see I think rather clearly what this would mean in terms of adult education. But now, as a parent, I live with the same children through say 15 or 20 years.
This is a long time to ask the right questions, and it becomes even more complicated when I have responsibility on a more limited scale for other people's children. Now give me some light.
WESTERHOFF: Yeah, I guess that what that demands of you and me and people who are concerned for other people's children or of their own is a kind of willingness and ability to live in ambiguity, an ability to live not with resolutions but with processes. In other words, so that we don't sit around and worry about what conclusion we came to today, we realize that tomorrow we will have a chance to deal
tomorrow freshly in a way, but also enlightened by yesterday, with the fact that we have a new problem on our hands and we want to come out in a way. I would guess if we could -- that's part of the, if you noticed, that was one of the values I pointed out that's important, is that kind of openness, and that kind of ambiguity living with, and that kind of flexibility that doesn't look to established entities or ends, but rather to a kind of free
flowing, creative process. It's always in flux and always in change, but which we affirm is good, and we learn to live with [meaning through it?]. I think that's what Dan was trying to point to today at least in that paper, and I'll affirm that, that that's a -- now how we pull that off, I don't know. I'm not sure yet, because I'd have to read it again, whether Dan has a model available to do it. But my point is that I think that was asking some of the right questions.
Then how we go with it from there is up for grabs yet, for me.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: I think that the demythologizing of the expert society which is taking place in the past years falls short in this (inaudible) in terms of getting this sort of back on the track. I think a lot of what you say, the whole set we were talking this afternoon about the limited experience and the [older?] presence of education, formal education, the abrogation of the parental role, which is something I think we should
feel really strongly against, I think on all levels, even people who don't feel about the future the way we might, that this is taking place. I think that we are beginning with some sense of a responsibility for family life even in our nuclear family, whatever you call nuclear families. Maybe I really don't see the (inaudible). I see that as a sign of hope. I think, you know, I see the
problem today as one of over idealizing by young people, this having -- nobody ever seems to see that. Everybody says, well, you've got to shake up the old folks. The other possibility is the dissolution in the young.
WESTERHOFF: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: I feel there's a lot of things that work in our society right now which we've been trying to make this happen, including, you know, including middle class (inaudible) people defending the status quo to a 12-year-old and succeeding at it.
WESTERHOFF: I guess I'll buy in, at least as a generalization on the part of (inaudible), that we've entered a period where historically something is dramatically changed, that for the first period in history the adults can -- in fact must -- learn from the youth, as well as the other way around. I think that what I'm suggesting when I suggest the advocate of a new generation (inaudible)
it's not by, as I pointed out, not buying into it in a way. It means joining up to the point that we're sharing their experiences and what in effect clearly [impedes them?] in the light of our past experiences that makes a new sense of it. But I'm not suggesting we just buy into what's going on and we'll say that they're all right and we're all wrong. But I am suggesting that the only way we're going to be able to think and feel and behave freely
is by joining them so that we can freely reflect upon the new thing that they can teach us. So I'm not uncritical buying into [anything?], but I am saying that unless we join them, we will not be able to reflect upon what's going on (inaudible) tomorrow. And so at this point we can learn from them, as we reflect upon
that created. I have a suspicion we will once again be able to teach them something. But until we do, I think we've given up our possibility of teaching the new generation anything. In fact, we've done that whether it's true or not that we ought to have. So I'm suggesting that where we have to go is with them, we then reflect on it, then build anew, and then we can teach them as well as being taught by them. So I think that that's my strategy for taking seriously
[Martineau's?] thesis and responding to it educationally, without falling in the trap of buying into either them or us. Yes, one more question.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 10: Do you see the credo in the box being led amiss, being instructed at all to the counterculture?
WESTERHOFF: I don't know. I really don't. You'd have to ask somebody who's counterculture that question. It's instructive for me because it comes out of something that's meaningful to me. You know, one -- again, I go back to my own experience. One night, Paul Tillich is trying to straighten out some of my confused thinking on theology, and he says, "There's only one way to explain it, and it's not something you explain in words." If you said you were by yourself in this room, (inaudible) and you listen to (inaudible). Now would that happen for somebody else? I don't know. But that's why it means something to me, it comes out of my experience.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 10: Well, if you're such a description of the world view, i.e., faith, which I think you have linked up as a model for a vision, with being essentially a humanism that could be a global humanism, I'm instructed necessarily by the Christian faith, the credo, right?
WESTERHOFF: I don't think so. Actually, if you look carefully at what I said there, it comes through (inaudible). In fact, if you look very carefully you'll find somebody said it works. It comes from [calculated?] (inaudible) comes from Paul Tillich, too. I'd suggest if you read (inaudible) theology that you will find a very strong faith in (inaudible).
The parallel is almost directly with faith. It is a new symbol for talking about it, but that's because I don't have -- the old symbols are dead for me, and so for me to use them is meaningless. The best I can do by using the old words is they're signs. You know, if you asked me I will define to you what they mean, and if you can accept my definition we've got an understanding. But that's not going to move either you or me to a new behavior.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 10: It might.
WESTERHOFF: No, I doubt it.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 10: It does.
WESTERHOFF: Signs don't. Symbols do. In other words, for example, my definition of a sign is bad -- a poor example, but let's play with it -- a traffic light, red, see, means stop. You tell me that, I define that, I've got it in my head, and so that's what I do. But it doesn't make great sense to me. So one day I see it, and I go spinning through it, because I'm in a hurry, and I hit somebody, and I end up with a bum leg, you see. From now on, whenever I
drive up, that is no longer a sign that says stop. That's a symbol. Buddy, I put my foot on the brake. My behavior is affected because that's alive, it determines my whole being, and perhaps someday it will die, because I'll forget my bad leg. And so I will need a new symbol. That's -- because symbols are born naturally, they live and they die, and new symbols are
born that can die. But it's only symbols that determine behavior. Signs are best a definition offering communication sense, but I don't find that they really change history. I see no evidence. You may prove to me I'm wrong, but I just don't see any evidence where signs did anything to accomplish.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 11: You're concerned about values for tomorrow's children and you're talking very highly theological terms, and that's fine and dandy. But you also suggest that all kinds of things are coming at the child, and having children of my own as well as, like the White House says, having others around me all the time, too, coming at them, what kind of questions do we ask in that context that will influence them in the values of tomorrow?
WESTERHOFF: I think that what you have to do is, you see, first you have to make some grounding in something, whether you're not only talking about the good [values?]. Then, as children are bombarded with that pluralism that they're going to be bombarded with, whether we like it or not, unless you believe in somehow escaping society, what you have to do is work very hard at helping them understand those others in terms of your own. What that means
in the early years is primarily I think not in terms of explaining so much as providing the kinds of experiences out of which it will be possible for a child to think freely and openly and critically about those. Again, I suggest some of the years I condensed pretty quickly this afternoon. As a child gets older, you can begin to conceptualize about these, and then you begin to help him to see what --
help him to work out what those other values and world views are that he's being projected upon and help him to make sense out of those in the light of the ones that he lives with in his own family and his other primary and secondary supportive community. So then he can learn to think critically and freely about them and is not [happened to?]. They become something that he can deal with. I think we have to work very hard at that, and that means again whole new educational styles in terms of
how we educate parents instead of the children, and how we educate the supporting communities like the church in terms of dealing with things like the mass media and the high mobility rates and conflicting views in schools and things. We have to really work at that consciously. But before we can work at that problem consciously we have to be grounded in something ourselves which is the base from which we help them to do that, just as we have to give them those early childhood experiences that make it possible for them to think
freely and openly and critically about them.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 11: It seems that hearing a couple of your presentations that the whole position [on being?] really supported by some sort of a theological or religious experience, and I'm wondering, you know, for you is what makes an experience of the nature that we're talking about one that is liturgically grounded and acted upon, is that what makes the kind of thing a religious experience that you're talking about?
WESTERHOFF: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 11: Those are the things that prescribe the criteria therefore, whether it's educational, whether it's experience?
WESTERHOFF: No. Getting to -- defining religion as I do, there's simply [only?] two vital [words?], namely it's supporting on the one hand with the ritualized and celebrated [anew?]. Those two phenomena are the two basic phenomena to all religions. We add in the Western world beliefs, systems of belief, and the cognitive third, I think it's perhaps important in the Western world and secondary I think to the other two. We've made it more important than it really is in terms of religion, and I think this is a
part of all system and view it the same when they talk about rejecting the [mind trip?]. Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 12: Well, it seems that perhaps you're contradicting something you said earlier when you said you --
WESTERHOFF: That's possible, but go ahead, catch me.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 12: When you said we had nothing to teach them, you just beautifully expressed how we can teach them if we witness to our values and to our beliefs.
WESTERHOFF: Yeah, no, right.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 12: And if we can be woken and take and share in a way that is meaningful to them.
WESTERHOFF: Yeah, right. But my point is that if we only -- and we can communicate with the values and say world view that -- I'm not going to say you and me, but that I see as a generalization of mainline Protestant, we can do that. The problem is we'll be doing that at our peril, because it will be meaningless and inoperative and unimportant and irrelevant to the new world I see blooming. So the point is what we have to do is adopt a new world view and set of values so that we can
pass onto them through the exact same structures as we could pass on the old one, but a new one that will make sense and have power in the future. So my real point is that the problem resides in not that we can't find a way to communicate what we now have, but we would be doing that at our children's peril, because that will not help them to live in the next century.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 12: But you do this in a dynamic sharing with them?
WESTERHOFF: Sure. We are doing it [that way?].
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 12: Evolving a church rather than a static.
WESTERHOFF: That's right. Yeah, right. It's a dynamic situation. In other words, it's always a dynamic. It's never become static. It isn't a question of working up to the answer and then you become static again. It's keeping it as a dynamic. And that's a very unsettling thing for a lot of people. They somehow want to resolve it and end it for good, and I'd say that just can't be done. Don't seek your security there, because there isn't any. Because in fact it's even worse. You'll have to continually be going
to another [depth?]. At least we keep the dynamic, keep it kind of exciting in flux. (break in audio) Exciting in flux.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 12: Well, I agree with you, but I think that they can like the lesson we can learn from them, provided we can be open to one another.
WESTERHOFF: Right. But we can't learn from them unless we join them.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 12: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: I think one thing you say over and over again --
WESTERHOFF: Yeah, I do repeat --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: No, no, and I think this is good, because it's [rehearsal?].
WESTERHOFF: Rehearsal is a good way for that.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: It seems to me that one of the things that really troubles you is the problem of living as a secular man as opposed to (inaudible) and that somehow it's only out of the courage to live in that way that one can freely choose (inaudible). There's something about this kind of -- I think it's (inaudible)
so that they can live freely as established [children?], and a secular man as (inaudible) at the same time education is preparing them to go to stages, and then the family as a sort of haven (inaudible) at another level is much like a modern missionary striving
very hard to take responsibly the Hindu faith of that man with whom he lives, and that there's something they share that is deeper than what they believe about God. There's something the same way between you and the child.
WESTERHOFF: Yeah. Yeah, I guess, yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 9: You don't --
WESTERHOFF: If you push me far enough, I come out a Thomist in a way. I do believe in [natural?] religions. I think if you pushed me long enough, that's where I'd come out. I mean, that that --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 13: You fall down.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 14: [Feebly walking powerfully?] from [Long Island?].
WESTERHOFF: I apologize. Will he really get upset if I like Emerson, too?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 14: No, he was very poetic.
WESTERHOFF: I know, they --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 10: All ideas are simple.
WESTERHOFF: That's right. If you fold them, he will be a seven-year-old. You may see a convergent right here.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: Thank you very much.
WESTERHOFF: Thank you.
(inaudible; overlapping dialogue)
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 15: -- or elsewhere. I'll see those of you who choose to accept this mission next Monday morning at 8:40. Thank you for listening, if in fact that's what you've been doing.