The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Future of Education

Sep 23, 2005
Rio Salado College
8:30am - 12:00pm
Continental Breakfast will be provided.

What is wisdom? Why is it of great value? And how do we develop it in ourselves and our students? These are the central questions that will be addressed in this workshop.

As I will argue, in order to successfully address the challenges, complexities, and speed of change in contemporary times, we need to develop the virtue of wisdom. Wisdom, and the psychological capacities upon which it is built, needs to become the central goal of education. Wisdom unites heart and mind, past and future, learning and creativity, and abstraction and practice. Wisdom is the key to the future of education.

Before tackling wisdom itself, I will first examine the issue of "deep learning", a topic of great interest in recent educational research and thinking. What is it to truly and deeply understand something? I will describe how many of the features of deep learning align with commonly identified features of wisdom. Next I will explain how the capacity of "critical thinking" and the state of "enlightenment" also are connected to wisdom. Based on these comparisons, together with an examination of writings on wisdom, I will develop a theory of the nature of wisdom and its value.

Next I will look at the personal and interpersonal dimensions of knowledge and wisdom, and connect these themes to teaching and education. Further, I will explain the relationship between the virtue of wisdom and contemporary thinking in science and the philosophy of knowledge. I will also examine recent research in multiple modes of understanding and connect this topic to the general theme of wisdom. Integrating all these themes, I will outline a proposal for a "new enlightenment" built on a contemporary understanding of the virtue of wisdom. Finally, I will provide a set of recommendations for how to instill in students "the love of wisdom" and develop this virtue within them.

The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Future of Education
Tom Lombardo, Ph.D.
Adobe Acrobat File: pursuit_of_wisdom.pdf [210k]

Agenda

About the speaker...
Tom Lombardo, Ph.D. is the Faculty Chair of Psychology, Philosophy, and Integrated Studies at Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona. He is a graduate of the University of Connecticut and the University of Minnesota and a graduate fellow of Cornell University. He has served as the Chief Psychologist and Educational Director at John Madden Mental Health Center, the Dean of Forest Institute of Professional Psychology, and the Chair of the Psychology Instructional Council at Maricopa Community Colleges. His book The Reciprocity of Perceiver and Environment is the best selling volume in Lawrence Erlbaum's Resources in Ecological Psychology and recently was translated into Japanese.

Tom has been teaching college courses and giving various professional presentations on the future for the last dozen years. He is a regular contributor to the World Future Society conventions and his most recent publications "Evolving Future Consciousness through the Pursuit of Virtue" and "The Value of Future Consciousness" have been published in the annual World Future Society Anthologies Thinking Creatively in Turbulent Times and Foresight, Innovation, and Strategy. He is a member of the World Future Society and the World Future Study Federation, an Affiliate of Communities for the Future and the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, an Educational Advisory Board Member of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, and a member of Contact. He has published one book on the future, Doorways to the Future, and he is presently working on a multi-volume study of the future. His website The Odyssey of the Future contains a wealth of informational resources on the study of the future. Most recently, Tom has given presentations on "The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Future of Education" at the School for the Future in Den Bosch, The Netherlands, "Science fiction as the Mythology of the Future" at the NASA Contact Conference, and "Evolving the Mind: The Future of Psychology" at the UCLA and Los Angeles Future Salon.

The Pursuit of Wisdom and the Future of Education Dialogue Day

Agenda

Faculty Professional Growth