Thompson Transforms into Teacher

Book review on

Transforming history: A new curriculum for a planetary culture

by William Irwin Thompson (2009)

Reviewed by Martin Lockley , 2009 published in Network Review No 101

In Transforming History Thompson turns teacher and proposes a curriculum adhering to Haeckel's 'biogenetic law' that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: i.e. aiming to 'match the stages of the child's cognitive evolution to the stages of cultural evolution.'  Thompson proposes that the entire (American) school curriculum,  from Kindergarten through 12th grade, should review the  history of  the human species from pre-Ice Age origins to the present era of globalisation. While this ambitious 12-13 year-long history lesson could be construed as a historian's bias,  Thompson envisions all traditional subjects, woven  into an epic history-of-humanity tapestry, calibrated with sound Waldorf-style child developmental principles. Hopefully a healthy awareness of physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dynamics would mitigate insidious developmental problems ranging from Attention Deficit Disorder to math anxiety. As Swiss psychologist Remo Largo said. 'You can't make the grass grow faster by pulling it upward.'

Anyone familiar with his previous work, will find the introduction to this book  'vintage Thompson.'  He reminds us of the accelerating tempo of evolution through Hominisation (4 million -200,000 B.C.E), Symbolisation (200-10K), Agriculturalisation (10-3.5K), Civilisation (3.5K B.C.E- 1500 C.E.), Industrialisation (1500-1945) and Planetisation (1945 - present).  Here, Teilhard's term Planetisation is given appropriate, historical priority over the now-more-familiar term 'globalisation.'  Like Teilhard, and even Einstein who advocated a world government, Thompson is among a growing number of 'integral' cultural philosophers looking beyond nationalism, patriotism and other factionalisms to a more coherent planetary culture that celebrates our common humanity.  Thompson also defines seven evolutionary cultural ecologies: Sylvian (primate evolution), Savannahan/lacustrine/coastal (Australopithecus to Homo erectus), Glacial (archaic to modern Homo sapiens), Riverine (ancient civilisations), Mediterranean or Transcontinental (classic civilisations), Oceanic  (modern industrial nation states) and Biospheric (planetary noetic polities). He supplements these 6- and 7-fold evolutionary schemes additional  5-fold schemes including Gebser's Archaic, Magical Mythical, Mental and Integral consciousness structures, its several corollaries or equivalents like Marshall McLuan's modes of communication (Oral, Script Alphabetic, Print and Electronic), what he calls 'identities' (Sanguinal, Territorial, Linguistic, Economic and  Noetic) and what he terms 'artistic-mathematic mentalities' (Arithmetic, Geometric, Algebraic, Galilean Dynamic and Complex Dynamic). For good measure the complex dynamical systems exhibit three possible modes or 'attractors:' point, periodic and chaotic. Though some may find these lists repetitive (I don't), they have the advantage of being easily blended and shuffled to give us a rich overview of how humanity is a multi-layered, evolutionary,  organism or system made up of a dynamic and creative flux of  individual, collective linguistic and cognitive faculties,  identities and consciousness structures.

Thompson's entertaining but light scholarly erudition betrays his Celtic love of language. Words like 'fabulation,' 'angelology,' 'thaumaturgical' (=miraculous) and 'amphyctyony' (= a league of Greek states) embellish his pithy turn of phrase and his digs at the monolithic establishment. So the 'History Channel...is really the War Channel' and speeches by Lynne Cheney calling for the 'elimination of multiculturalism in our public schools and a purified curriculum of  "America First"... [make the] ... school systems the battlefield in which the dying ethnicities of the past fight for three dimensional space in a scientific world that has already moved beyond into the multiple dimensions of astrophysics.'   Thompson has already foreseen and described the 'heat' of the phase shift that is causing the 'meltdown' or 'catastrophic restructuring' of the biosphere, the ever-more-helpless territorial nation-state, and the human body, under assault from pharmaceutical,  industrial and genetic pollution. Even poor Edward Wilson, Harvard's ant specialist and biodiversity guru, is depicted as so unable to comprehend Stuart Kauffman's science of complexity mentality, that their dialog  is like a 'Catholic cardinal and Descartes discussing the Renaissance,' with cardinal Wilson dogmatically insisting that the outmoded 'scientism' mentality is 'adequate for all times and circumstances.'  Perhaps William doth protest too much, and Edward's  other contributions deserve better approbation.

Thompson  never explicitly states whether this curriculum is designed only for American schools, where it is undoubtedly needed, as parts of the country are 'stuck in pre-Enlightenment religious mentalities' or, as the book's subtitle would imply, is it for the entire planetary culture.  Thompson's soaring and idealistic intellectual vision is undoubtedly holistic and well-intentioned but, one wonder's how quickly and widely it could be implemented, given the huge variability in cultural mentalities across the planet.  Presumably implementation would require Waldorf-style teacher training programs, and fundamental changes in the administration of educational infrastructure. Although Thompson does not discuss the global growth of Waldorf schools, from less then 100 in the 1970s, to about 1000 today, the trend is very promising and verifies Steiner's prescient predictions about achieving critical mass. 

I would be the last to decry Thompson's visionary idealism.  Indeed, I was tickled to find that his appendix appears under the label of  'An evolution of consciousness curriculum.'  (The same title as the university course I've taught for 10 years in Colorado)! His vision is more high-falutin,  intellectual and global than that embodied in grass roots programs like Learning for Life which aim to 'build and strengthen character in the contexts of the family, education and employment' thus making  'a real difference to the lives and character development of both learners and the professionals.'   (www.learningforlife.org.uk). Nevertheless there are undoubtedly many interesting convergent threads. Perhaps Thompson is right about the complex dynamical system's instability that he has often discussed in reference to the weather, biosphere and financial systems, not to mention 'mentalities' and 'consciousness structures.' Ideally inducing a consciousness paradigm shift in early education could have rapid and revolutionary results. If so, Thompson's desired and much needed transformative revolution may come about sooner that we think.

(order this book from amazon.co.uk)