Opinion | The School Ritual: Spirituality in the Classroom?

I have several reasons not to discuss “spirituality” with the freedom I desire. The first and most important is that spirituality is presented to me as a mystery about which perhaps it is better to remain silent. But I emphasize perhaps because the mystery itself demands it of me: When I consider it, I do not know if I should really be silent or elaborate. “Perhaps” human language contains that particular magic required to explain and understand the spiritual. However, it is also possible that the word spirituality is only the door to that inexpressible and invisible space. In speaking about it, one is actually talking only about the door.

The second reason for not discussing spirituality with ease is a certain modesty before the elevated term and the elementality of my approaches. That modesty, which makes me blush, also asks me to be discreet and not boast of having achieved something from which I am still far away. I experience it like those who are shy to call themselves poets just for writing a few good verses. This modesty, I insist, accompanied by its inevitable blushing, also feels good.

The third reason involves the inevitable questions about the subject: doubts about whether there really exists that invisible territory that we call spirituality or if all reality is ultimately reduced to the visible (as scientists claim). These are legitimate questions that, as Karl Jaspers explains, prevent us from falling into fanaticism. “Not even the purest clarity should lead us to such certainty of ourselves that we believe our path is the only true one for all. In full transparency, one can enter a wrong path,” says the German philosopher, and therefore ends up attaching the most profound importance to humility.

Despite these three good reasons for not talking much about the subject, repeatedly, I latch onto the idea of proposing to the educational community a kind of return to spirituality in the classroom, or at least an open space in school to dialog freely about it. However, even having just written this, I am blushing again, not with that humble blush of my first three motives, but with real shame. Something inside me asks me how I can expose myself in this way. Really? Spirituality in the classroom? Have I considered all the horrifying things my readers can associate with me?

Yes, of course, I know them, and I can’t help but shudder: They are the fourth reason I am afraid to make my proposal. In fact, I am sure that many of those who have suffered bad experiences with supposedly spiritual leaders have already shelved this text of mine, convalescing as they are from everything that sounds like spirituality. So, I sincerely thank those who still follow me. After all, who has not been a victim of the spiritual corruption of our age at some point? “There is a no worse evil than false good,” has been said, so those of us who believe that spirituality is the best of the human feel for the same reason that its misrepresentation has damaged us all in something crucial.

Thus, it is clear to me that whoever intends to propose resuming spiritual education to the educational community will first have to alienate himself precisely from those ideas and practices that today, with good reason, make us run away from what has been represented as “religious education.” Some proponents of it – those still assisted by reason – will say that religion does not have to pay for the broken dishes of its false representatives. And that’s true; however, those who think this will also have to agree that, in practice, it is difficult to separate. Many generations have already taken precautions regarding the “spiritual” paths offered to them. In doing this, they may lose many valuable things, but the risks are also enormous, so looking for other ways to be at peace with themselves is better. Thus, a Spirituality of genuine truth would be prudent to hide a little while clarifying the difference between it and the false good.

In fact, those of us who believe in a true spirituality cannot but be grateful for this distinction marked by so many generations in the last century: Atheism, agnosticism, and the search for new religious options have fulfilled a fundamental mission, that of eliminating obstacles so that authentic spirituality can once again break through, now with a long cauda of rationality, including science, feminism, egalitarian struggles, the right to think and decide about one’s own body and respect personal limits. The cauda is also full of liberating, sensitive, inclusive rituals, full of well-founded knowledge, and profound poetry (rituals that, as G.K. Chesterton said, may require us to take off our hats but not our heads). In short, these resources help free people and not burden them more.

For many years, the West’s most influential spiritual leaders tried to “educate” large populations to stigmatize and persecute people who freely exercise sexuality, contraceptive use, and homosexuality. Yet, one day, many ended up showing that they practiced all these options, and their only restriction was not making them public. In my opinion, the actual “sin” (to use their terms) lay not in these practices but in their persecution and concealment and something much more severe, beyond repression and guilt: characterizing those choices as solely in the domain of the vulnerable (and captive!) populations that they abused (and continue to abuse!) with impunity. The false good in all its sinister splendor!

Today it is common to speak of “herd immunity.” This pastoral term applies perfectly: those who were supposed to lead and protect the flock ended up spreading their own infection among it (more mental and spiritual than physical), leaving them immune to all true spirituality. Only a few lambs warned of the danger and fled in terror from the contagion. In schools, abuse opened the eyes of society not only to religious and educational spaces but to all kinds of schools and places where children and young people were placed under adult protection. It is simultaneously a disgrace and a blessing that these practices have begun to be evidenced.

The above is one example, perhaps the most scandalous for us, but not the only one. Equally serious things can be said about many other deviations from today’s “spirituality”: usury in rituals, alignment with the interests of unnecessary (a kind of shameless tendency to increase the size of the head of the needle so the camel can pass through), absence of forceful leadership to confront planetary ecological problems, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Regaining people’s trust would require thoroughly addressing each of these etceteras, especially those that touch education directly.

However, this article is not the space to do it. On another occasion, I will take the opportunity to speak on some fundamental points, such as the so-called “non-binarity,” which is beginning to be crucial in most schools. Those who thought that the hippy and political and artistic movements of the sixties in the last century were the most extreme youthful transgressions that could occur are now shocked to realize that those were only the embryo of what happens today. To give the most visible example: The disruptive unisexuality in clothing and hairstyle has evolved to become freedom to modify one’s body in permanent ways in almost any aspect, from skin color to genital and bone structures.

It should be noted that this type of freedom did not begin in the last decade. It goes back to the first anatomical dissections of the human body in the beginnings of modernity (previously prohibited) and fully developed with the medicine of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, transforming the body has a lot to do with the advances in genomics, artificial intelligence, and robotics (Anyone who wants to read an enjoyable, deep, and well-informed review of all this can refer to the book Military History of the Calorie by Fabrizzio Guerrero McManus).

Like everything human, such changes are not alien to spirituality. On the contrary, some of us think that this is its spearhead. A biased 19th-century vision prohibited (with great success) using anesthesia during childbirth by arguing that it opposed the divine plan of “giving birth with pain.” Today, a renewing spirituality could only dignify the search for a relationship of freedom with one’s body and open and promote deep dialogue about reinventing ourselves.

All this does not have to be absent from our classrooms.

Translation by Daniel Wetta.

Disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The viewpoints expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints, and official policies of Tecnológico de Monterrey.