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A frequent comment from adult students is that their previous educational experiences have given them more than enough information. A just as frequent lament is that in the process of learning the information, something happened which deadened the joy of learning. Along with this feeling of remorse, adults often express that in the future they wish to develop self directed learning rather than get a new set of vocational tools or more specific information. In our educational institutions of higher learning the teaching strategies often seem at odds with these self directed needs of the adult student.
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The purpose of the Consciousness Studies program is to provide educational experiences which can promote self directed learning in adults. The format for the whole year is seven months of instruction which is composed of seven courses each containing three blocks. Each block in a course addresses similar material but the material must be responded to in a completely different way in each block so that learning strategies on similar material must arise from very different places in the student.
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To accomplish this goal it has been necessary to modify some traditional values for the educative process. The most fundamental modification of traditional goals is that in the Goethen Studies course an informational, lecture driven block, is considered adequate only when it is followed by blocks focusing on the development of soul processes which are parallel to the cognitive content in the lectures. The complete experience of the subject is found when blocks in which artistic solutions to the same cognitive problems given in the lecture content must be explored by the student.
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In the Consciousness Studies course the blocks which accompany academic lectures focus on the role of the consciousness of the learner as a next step and then the role of the arts as epistemological processes independent of their role in self expression or vocation as a further step. Ideally each course component would revisit the content of the lecture sessions but would do so in a separate time frame and with a separate outcome. This would allow for a more wholistic breathing process in the learning environment throughout each of the seven courses and throughout the year.
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The first period of the day is a lecture concerning the concepts found in the esoteric science of inner work. The second period of the day is dialogue and group work on varied problems in natural science. The third period of the day is artistic practice which is given to help the students think through the concepts of the first two periods from other perspectives. In these ways the adult student must fashion the elements which express their optimal learning strategy from a palette of choices and modalities. One student will be stronger in one area and weaker in another area of study. One mode will be preferable to another. In the context of the year we often find that students are able to expand their expectations and balance weaknesses from past educational experiences when the goal is to pursue learning rather than to get training or to gather information. The expanded capacity to learn often brings a feeling of joy to the learning process and often stimulates a search for new learning horizons.
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