Palmer cited the experience of a new principal at a school in Dayton, Ohio with a high dropout rate. The principal told his teachers that while the students were poor in the external world with which U.S. education is obsessed, one thing no one could take from them was their souls. History is replete with stories of people who survived hardship against all odds because of the inner strength they could draw from their untouched souls. Today, in a secular society, the strength of the soul has been denied to those who learn within a mechanistic, industrialized and economically rationalised education system.

Palmer described his own struggles with depression, which he attributed in part to an education system that emphasizes thinking and disregards intuition, feeling and relationship. He said learning is not just about gaining information, but also about healing, wholeness, transformation and reclaiming the vitality of life. He chastised the "industrial model of education" and added "education is dull because we have driven the sacred out of it ...•

Palmer described the sacred as "that which is worthy of respect. As soon as we see that, the sacred is everywhere. How it would transform academic life if we could just practice simple respect." But in institutionalized education, we only grant respect to "the text, the expert, and only those who win at competition. We do not grant respect to students, to stumbling and failing ... We don't grant respect to silence and wonder ... We are afraid of hearing something that will challenge us and change us."

Palmer asked what was the meaning of spirituality in education and then proposed: "I think we are here to seek lifegiving forces and sources in the midst of an enterprise which is too often death dealing." He said the current educational system is "rooted in fear" and distances us from the world. He said the conference was about inviting people to have the courage to jump into the "mess" caused by institutionalized education. Palmer went on to encourage conference participants to "be not afraid; be not afraid."

Palmer believes there are five ways education would be transformed by a sense of the sacred.

We would recover our sense of the otherness of things of the world.

One of the greatest sins in education is reductionism; we ignore data, voices, simple facts and writers who don't fit into our own shoebox. We have a fear of otherness and we confine other cultures and make them conform." He said as a result, students have learned to disrespect otherness. "We have to learn to know precious otherness."

We would know the precious inwardness of the things of the world.

"We haven't respected the inwardness of what we study and therefore the inwardness of ourselves." As an example, he referred to his education about the Holocaust as "murderousness that happened to another species on another planet." What he didn't learn was that the anti-semitic attitudes in his hometown of Wilmette, Illinois kept Jewish residents out. He also said he didn't learn "that within me, within my shadow is a little Hitler" that metaphorically "kills" off people or things that are too different with a "category, a dismissal, a word ... that will render" that person or thing irrelevant "in my universe."

We would recover a sense of community.

He said a good teacher was someone who could serve as "connective tissue" between students and the subject they were covering. "In the secular world, we don't have the connective tissue of the sacred to wed the disconnect and chaos together."

We would recover humility.

"We would recover the humility the that makes teaching and learning possible," Palmer said. He quoted one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA as saying "We were upstaged by a molecule."

We would recover the capacity for wonder and surprise.

He said while in institutionalized education, we think competition generates new ideas, that actually competition makes new ideas too risky and "you reach for an old idea you know how to use as a weapon. The landscape of higher education is so flat, so banal ... that anything that pops up is perceived as a threat." But he added we should not ask institutions to carry the sacred; instead he said "these are things we carry in our hearts into the world in solitude and in community."

Palmer summarized his talk by saying that powerful social movements begin with individuals who "feel very isolated and alone in an alien culture" and in touch with something life-giving, who "make one of the most basic decisions ... the decision to live divided no more." That decision, he said, was to refuse to live differently on the outside than how one lives on the inside.

"What transforms education," he said, "is a transformed being in the world."

Implications for Teaching and Learning

Can a secular education system embrace Palmer's "sense of the sacred" without compromising its non-sectarian approach?

At what cost to the individual, to teaching and learning, and to society does education ignore a student's inner spirit?

Will a discussion about spitituality in education become a discussion about religion in education? Do we need to talk about sacredness or just basic human values like respect, sense of community, humility and sense of wonder?

How can a secular curriculum include a sense of the sacred?

What would schools look like if we recognised the sacredness all around us?