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Inner Growth and Outer Action:
The Story of Findhorn Foundation College
A little history ...
Malcolm Hollick
(Malcolm was responsible for developing the proposal to set up the new Findhorn Foundation College, and guiding it through the decision-making processes. He is now the College’s first Principal. Before coming to Findhorn, he spent almost 25 years at The University of Western Australia, where his work spanned a wide range of fields related to sustainability.)
For almost 30 years, the impulse to create a College at Findhorn has arisen repeatedly and then faded away again. I’ve heard two explanations of why it has never landed. One is that intellectual learning is incompatible with this mystery school of living education. The impulse to build a College here is a human one, and it simply won’t work. The other interpretation is that Spirit really wants the College to come into being and keeps on trying, but the time has not been right. I tend to the latter view.
My journey to Findhorn and into my role as Principal of the College still amazes me. It all began ... well, I shan’t bore you with infancy and childhood ... It all began with the break-up of my family. Shaken loose from my rut, I formed a new relationship, became involved with transpersonal studies, buddhism and sacred dance, ended my 25 year academic career, and took off with my partner for a 6-month study tour of ecovillages including Findhorn. We spent a month as Living in Community Guests here before returning to Australia with just 7 weeks to pack up our lives and return for the Foundation Year Programme ... And the rest, as they say, is history.
Amidst this whirlwind of synchronicities, I received what remains perhaps the clearest and strongest guidance of my life. While on LCG at Cluny, I got images and messages about accredited education in the Foundation, its future, and my role in it. Before we left a few weeks later, Christine and I had written a long paper on the subject which we circulated within the Foundation, thinking: “If this is guidance from Spirit, these ideas will land and something will come of them; if not, they will die.”
18 months later, they began to land. I agreed to focalise Accredited Education, and before I took up the post I was asked to set up a College. The impulse this time came from the National Minimum Wage legislation, of all places, which made it illegal for the Foundation to run courses of further or higher education. Rather than abandon this growing area of education or pay all its members the minimum wage, the Foundation decided to move such courses sideways into a College. This also made good educational sense as further and higher education require a different approach.
So in October 1999, I left my beloved Cluny Garden and began to develop the College. The detailed proposal was finally approved by the Trustees in November 2000, and Findhorn Foundation College came into legal existence in February 2001 as a subsidiary charitable company with its own Board of Directors. It has slowly been coming into full operation ever since.
So what’s our vision?
The Foundation has transferred to the College several programmes which it could no longer run - such as English in Community, Ecovillage Training, and the Findhorn Community Semester. We have already introduced a number of new short trainings, including tools for holistic living, designing a more sustainable lifestyle, courses for workplace supervisors, community arts and a writers intensive. These will be our bread and butter in the first full year of operation. Beyond this we have big dreams ...
It’s been a long, slow process distilling the many possibilities down to the essence of our role in the world. We have finally encapsulated this in the slogan “Inner Growth and Outer Action - Towards Global Citizenship.” This has two elements which reflect our heritage within the Foundation and the needs of the world. First, is inner growth, without which we cannot act with love and wisdom. But we believe inner growth should not be a goal in itself so much as a preparation for planetary service, and so we also plan to offer training in practical skills.
You may have seen The Earth Charter, produced by an International Commission and due to be ratified by the UN General Assembly in 2002. This reflects strongly the inspiration of the College, and so we are publicly linking our vision to theirs. A brief quote will give you the flavour of this:
We stand at a critical point in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future. ... Let ours be a time remembered for the awakening of a new reverence for life, the firm resolve to achieve sustainability, the quickening of the struggle for justice and peace, and the joyful celebration of life.
Our approach to education seeks to balance development of mind, body, emotions, spirit and relationships (with nature and the planet as well as other people). Mainstream education tends to emphasise intellectual learning at the expense of other aspects, whereas education within the Foundation has always been experiential, with minimal attention to the mind. Our aim is to integrate these streams in a truly holistic way.
We also aim to create a learning community of faculty and students which is open to discriminating exploration of any beliefs, values, perceptions and ideas; a community in which students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning with the support of their peers and faculty - helping to set their learning goals and assessment criteria, and participating in assessing their own progress. We will use a wide diversity of educational techniques, including learning through living and working in the Community.
Another key element in our vision is the desire to collaborate with other communities, colleges and universities. We believe that by working together we can create better programmes, draw more students, and have a far bigger impact on the world than by working alone. Already we’re working with Living Routes in the US on the Community Semester, and we’re in contact with quite a few other people and organisations in the UK. And I’m a member of a group, supported by the Wrekin Trust, that is working towards a University for Spirit in the UK.
So what kinds of courses will we be offering in future? There are many possibilities and few certainties so far. But I can see the month-long Ecovillage Training forming the introduction to a year-long Certificate. The Quest, which has been written up in Network News previously, may form a foundation module in inner development appropriate to many longer programmes. I can see a wide range of professional continuing development courses - perhaps for the helping professions first of all. And courses in healing, community arts and other areas. As just one, very exciting example, I recently circulated an outline for a networked degree in Creating the Future which has received an enthusiastic response from people around the country.
Dave Till
(Dave joined Malcolm to take up the post of Deputy Principal in April 2001. He has worked to set up educational courses in both England and in New York City and used to lecture in Media Production at the Department of Performing Arts and Media Studies, University College Salford, now Salford University).
Here at Findhorn Foundation College we are wrestling with the question of how to introduce holistic education into our courses and yet keep an academic framework. This is a fascinating challenge in a number of ways. Academia is founded upon the mind, and this can be a problem if, like me, you are an academic who has also attended holistic or personal growth workshops that move into other areas of learning. Some of the best learning that I have ever done in my life was in a co-counselling workshop that was dealing largely with emotions. And with my new emotional knowledge it became very hard to go back into the classroom and promote the idea that education should be largely a mental process.
For instance, how I feel will strongly affect my ability to learn. Learning the basics of computers can promote strong feelings in novices - if I feel good about computers, chances are, I will learn quickly. If I hate the things and they fill me full of fear and dread, then I need to deal with my feelings as part of my learning process. If my teacher and learning method doesn’t acknowledge my feelings then it will be a strangely difficult process to learn anything at all.
Here’s another example. If my learning is done in groups (and all classrooms are a group), and the learning method does not leave room for conflict, then it will be missing out on a major learning tool. Again, from personal growth workshops, I have discovered what a good teacher conflict can be - having resolved a conflict with a colleague or student will actually increase intimacy, trust and learning. Looking at conflict as a learning tool is essential because conflict will always occur, but an attitude valuing conflict is virtually non-existant in mainstream education and this seems both a shame and a waste.
And what about the physical body and the learning process? We have long realised the value of exercise in the good use of the brain but how much do we want to incorporate that knowledge into an educational process? Say, for instance, learning sessions are routinely begun with a physical warm up. Say a sedentary, passive “receiving” education - students sitting still in classrooms - is replaced by an emphasis on an active, moving, experiential learning model, will learning increase? I think it’s bound to.
And the spiritual dimension? Can that get included in education without it becoming formal religious teaching? Why, yes it can. Intuition is a spiritual dimension to learning and we can all develop our intuitive processes, perhaps by sitting in silence in meditation or listening to our body response when we have to make decisions. Intuition may be part of our personal process in conventional education but it is not part of the curriculum. In the College, we want to make sure that the curriculum expands to include it.
Personally, I’m fascinated by the challenges and the questions that are posed by these different learning methods - by a truly holistic educational practice. However if the College can not only find answers but also start to use these answers in practice, then my intuition tells me we will be on to something big!
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