Critical Evaluation of the of Brendan Hyde - Book Report/Review Example

A Critical Evaluation of Brendan Hyde’s “The Identification of Four Characteristics of Children’s Spirituality in Australian Catholic Primary Schools” Student’s Name Course Tutor’s name Date: Introduction Hyde starts her article by stating that unlike other countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada where spirituality is well researched and understood, Australia is yet to carry out similar research especially in relation to children and spirituality. Hyde further notes that Australia has no legislative provisions addressing the importance of spiritual development among school-going children. The writer’s focus on spirituality among children attending Catholic schools seems to be informed by the fact that the Catholic system of education is the only one that fosters spiritual development among children. In other words, this could be interpreted to mean that children attending the state-run public schools and the independent-run private schools have reduced chances of spiritual development compared to their counterparts in Catholic schools. This interpretation aside, Hyde’s article came up with some findings that are relevant to educators as well as policy makers in Australia and elsewhere; specifically, Hyde (2008) found out that children’s spirituality involves “the felt sense, integrating awareness, weaving the threads of meaning, and spiritual questing” (p. 117). Hyde’s findings as articulated in the article, although obtained from a limited sample of students (i.e. “two groups of six children, one at year 3 and one at year 5” from three different Catholic schools) have relevance in literature in that they have expanded on earlier work by Hay and Nye (2006), where the topic of spiritual sensitivity among children was addressed. Specifically, much of what Hyde has written seems to be well covered by the concept of relational consciousness as used by Hay and Nye (2006) in explaining how children were found to be aware of their interdependence with others, nature, animals, and God. Before delving into Hyde’s (2008) specific findings however, it is worth noting that the article might have been more comprehensive if the study had sought to investigate whether children schooling in non-Catholic schools (i.e. in public and private schools) would have portrayed similar or different spiritual characteristics. This argument is based on the observation that despite the study being conducted in Catholic schools, reference to things like astrology, and TV shows such as “Charmed” were made. This then indicates that spiritual questing in children can be invoked even by the popular media and hence is not held in reserve by Catholic schools per se. In other words, there is a probability that children in public and private schools might have shown similar or close-like spiritual aspects as those exhibited by the group involved in the research conducted by Hyde. The writer’s approach seemed to ignore the points that “spirituality is innate”, that it is “at the heart of human experience” and that everyone experiences it regardless of their environments (Fisher, 2011, p. 18). Much as the omission may have been deliberate on the writer’s part especially seeing that she was focused on Catholic schools, it fails to give a reader an objective view of spiritual development in the children attending different school environments. Felt sense Hyde (2008) defines the felt sense as the “intensity and immediacy of awareness of the present moment” (p. 120). The writer justifies the felt sense as a characteristic of spirituality evident among the observed children on the argument that their focus, which involved bodily awareness of their environment and situations, was suggestive of an ontological kind of awareness whereby “the children seemed to bridge the divide between self and object” (Hyde, 2008, p. 121). Notably, Hyde is quick to cite Gendlin (1981) in arguing that bodily awareness is a spiritual experience as opposed to being a mental experience. This thought is reiterated by Fisher (2011) who argues that the dynamic nature of spiritualism requires one to feel something before they can conceptualise the same. Integrating awareness Following Hyde’s (2008) analysis of the phenomenology research, it seems that integrating awareness was born out of the children’s short concentration capacity that only allowed them to engage in the felt sense spiritual characteristic only momentarily. Here, Hyde (2008) observed that children exhibited two levels of consciousness in that they were able to pay attention to the activities they were attending to while conversing with their peers. Notably, and as opposed to what an objective reader would expect, Hyde (2008) does not indicate any instance where any of the children in the survey paused, or even messed with his/her activity (beading) as a result of their engagement with the second form of consciousness (i.e. their conversation with others). While this is suspect however, it is Hyde’s concluding remark that indicates that although integrating awareness may be a characteristic of spirituality, Hyde did not have enough reasons to believe so. Specifically, Hyde (2008) argues that: “The fact that these children could integrate new waves of consciousness with previous levels of awareness suggests that integrating awareness is at least a characteristic of the self’s drive to integrate, and therefore it could possibly be identified as a characteristic of their spirituality (p. 123 emphasis added). Weaving the threads of meaning Hyde (2008) based this aspect of her research on Hay and Nye’s (2006) spiritual sensitivity aspect of mystery sensing. Specifically, Hyde (2008) provoked the children’s sense of wonder by asking them how they think certain things happen. Arguably, this is the most convincing characteristic of spirituality in Hyde’s article in that it allowed the children to express themselves in a manner that enabled Hyde to appreciate their understanding of spirituality. Notably, it is the mystery sensing activities that produced results that are most relevant to the Catholic Church in its approach to curriculum development and spiritual education. As Hyde observes, the children “did not draw solely from the Christian meta-narrative in creating and expressing their spirituality” (p. 123). On one hand, the observation by Hyde as quoted above could mean that the Catholic Church is not effective in convincing children that the religion (in this case Christianity) is the best spiritual discourse to follow; on the other hand however, it could be argued that the Catholic Church is realising that spirituality is multidimensional, and is also changing as changes in the society happen. As noted by Rossiter (2011) spirituality in the past century was permeated by “centrality of God”, “the power of the church/religion”, obedience, fear as a motivating factor, and evil as the source of human trouble (p. 6). In modern societies however, the understanding of God being at the centre of the universe, the powers of the religion and their prominence in societies have changed. As such, the Catholic Church in particular has to be willing to accommodate such changes especially in their curriculum development. Spiritual questing Again, this characteristic of spirituality as expressed by Hyde (2008) is based on the value-sensing aspect of spiritual sensitivity as indicated by Hay and Nye (2006). During the study, Hyde engaged children in exercises that gave them opportunities and freedom to think about ways in which they could enhance their lives. The findings from the exercise revealed that in addition to things such as love, compassion, kindness, and altruism, children considered such things as astrology and telepathy as channels by which they could seek connectedness with self, the environment and/or the supreme someone or something. Such observations can be interpreted to imply that although the children were schooling in a Catholic environment, they did not feel inclined to or limited by the religious approach to spirituality. Implications for the religious education in Catholic schools As implied by Hyde (2008) in the “weaving the threads of meaning” characteristic of spiritualism, children portrayed some aspects of secular spirituality despite being in Catholic schools. As such, and as indicated by Rossiter (2011), educators in Catholic schools need to realise and accept that secular spirituality will most likely be exhibited by children based on their social-cultural experiences outside the school environment. As such, and instead of using a normative curriculum that seeks to persuade children towards a prescribed form of religious spirituality, Catholic schools should seek means to enhance children’s spirituality in a religious-free environment. In other words, Catholic schools need to replace their insistence on religious spirituality with a concept of how well to enhance the basic human spirituality. As Crawford and Rossiter (2006) aptly state, people (including educators) need to understand that spirituality is not necessarily connected to religion. Further (and this is especially important to educators and caregivers who handle children), spirituality is one of the essential aspects of the human being that needs to be healthy. As Donatelle (2006) observes, a child cannot be fully healthy if either their physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social or environmental health is neglected. Specifically, Donatelle (2006) argues that a child’s spirituality health determines how they are able to handle such things like joy, love, pain, sorrow, contentment and/or peace. Similarly, by avoiding inhibiting their sense of spirituality within religious constraints, Catholic schools will have empowered the children to make choices, be creative, and express themselves in a manner that fosters their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual development as indicated by Graham (2007). Conclusion Based on the above observations, it is therefore clear that Catholic schools need to change the religion curricula (even if subtly so) in order to accommodate students from both religious and non-religious social-cultural backgrounds. In other words, Catholic schools need to acknowledge that spirituality is more than the Catholic culture and religion that they expose the children to; as such, they ought to provide spiritual studies to cater for the spiritual development of children without restricting the same within religion boundaries. As indicated by Rossiter (2011), “religion curricula in Catholic schools still give the impression that all students are, or should be, regular church goers – as if Sunday mass attendance was to be the end point of their education in spirituality” (p. 2). Given that this is not the case in Australia or anywhere else where new cultural meanings are changing how spirituality is perceived, Catholic schools need to start offering an education (in spirituality) that is relevant to the lives of children. Overall, Hyde’s (2008) article despite the shortcoming observed herein reiterates the need for spiritual development as one aspect of attaining overall health and wellness among children. If Donatelle’s (2006) assertion that spiritual health is one out of the six dimensions that contribute to healthy development in children is anything to go by, then the suggestion by Hyde that spirituality is an under-researched area in Australia’s education system could be important for future research and policy making purposes. References Crawford, M. & Rossiter, G. (2006). Reasons for living: Education and young people’s search for meaning, identity and spirituality. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research. Donatelle, R. (2006). Promoting healthy behaviour change. In Access to health (9th Ed.) (pp. 3-37). San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings. Fisher, J. (2011). The four domains model: connecting spirituality, health and well-being. Religions, 2: 17-28. Doi: 10.3390/rel2010017. Graham, S. (2007). Adapting Godly play for the inclusive classroom. Belfast: Research Resources for Religious Education. Hay, D., & Nye, R. (2006). The spirit of the child (revised Ed.). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Hyde, B. (2008). The identification of four characteristics of children’s spirituality in Australian catholic primary schools. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 13(2): 117-127. Rossiter, G. (2011). Implications on the changing landscape of contemporary spirituality: implications for Catholic school K-12 religious education. Retrieved August 15, 2012, from http://www.nceconv2011.com.au/uploads/Graham%20Rossiter%20Handout.pdf Read More

Felt sense Hyde (2008) defines the felt sense as the “intensity and immediacy of awareness of the present moment” (p. 120). The writer justifies the felt sense as a characteristic of spirituality evident among the observed children on the argument that their focus, which involved bodily awareness of their environment and situations, was suggestive of an ontological kind of awareness whereby “the children seemed to bridge the divide between self and object” (Hyde, 2008, p. 121). Notably, Hyde is quick to cite Gendlin (1981) in arguing that bodily awareness is a spiritual experience as opposed to being a mental experience.

This thought is reiterated by Fisher (2011) who argues that the dynamic nature of spiritualism requires one to feel something before they can conceptualise the same. Integrating awareness Following Hyde’s (2008) analysis of the phenomenology research, it seems that integrating awareness was born out of the children’s short concentration capacity that only allowed them to engage in the felt sense spiritual characteristic only momentarily. Here, Hyde (2008) observed that children exhibited two levels of consciousness in that they were able to pay attention to the activities they were attending to while conversing with their peers.

Notably, and as opposed to what an objective reader would expect, Hyde (2008) does not indicate any instance where any of the children in the survey paused, or even messed with his/her activity (beading) as a result of their engagement with the second form of consciousness (i.e. their conversation with others). While this is suspect however, it is Hyde’s concluding remark that indicates that although integrating awareness may be a characteristic of spirituality, Hyde did not have enough reasons to believe so.

Specifically, Hyde (2008) argues that: “The fact that these children could integrate new waves of consciousness with previous levels of awareness suggests that integrating awareness is at least a characteristic of the self’s drive to integrate, and therefore it could possibly be identified as a characteristic of their spirituality (p. 123 emphasis added). Weaving the threads of meaning Hyde (2008) based this aspect of her research on Hay and Nye’s (2006) spiritual sensitivity aspect of mystery sensing.

Specifically, Hyde (2008) provoked the children’s sense of wonder by asking them how they think certain things happen. Arguably, this is the most convincing characteristic of spirituality in Hyde’s article in that it allowed the children to express themselves in a manner that enabled Hyde to appreciate their understanding of spirituality. Notably, it is the mystery sensing activities that produced results that are most relevant to the Catholic Church in its approach to curriculum development and spiritual education.

As Hyde observes, the children “did not draw solely from the Christian meta-narrative in creating and expressing their spirituality” (p. 123). On one hand, the observation by Hyde as quoted above could mean that the Catholic Church is not effective in convincing children that the religion (in this case Christianity) is the best spiritual discourse to follow; on the other hand however, it could be argued that the Catholic Church is realising that spirituality is multidimensional, and is also changing as changes in the society happen.

As noted by Rossiter (2011) spirituality in the past century was permeated by “centrality of God”, “the power of the church/religion”, obedience, fear as a motivating factor, and evil as the source of human trouble (p. 6). In modern societies however, the understanding of God being at the centre of the universe, the powers of the religion and their prominence in societies have changed. As such, the Catholic Church in particular has to be willing to accommodate such changes especially in their curriculum development.

Spiritual questing Again, this characteristic of spirituality as expressed by Hyde (2008) is based on the value-sensing aspect of spiritual sensitivity as indicated by Hay and Nye (2006).

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