The CbE Principles of Teaching and the Fundamentals of Education
All teachers at the Maharishi School follow a set of professional standards which include the CbE Principles of Teaching. Those principles guide teachers to enliven the CbE Fundamentals of Education for pupils whilst teaching their own subjects.
The CbE Fundamentals of Education are: Receptivity, Intelligence, Knowledge, Experience and Expression.
Receptivity:
Receptivity is at the heart of a successful teacher-pupil relationship. The ideal teacher is completely receptive to the educational needs of the pupil and the ideal pupil is completely receptive to the knowledge and expertise of the teacher.
Intelligence:
Intelligence is required for any meaningful human action and it guides the construction of knowledge. Intelligence flows both ways within one’s own consciousness. From inside it flows outwards into action on the basis of some intention. From outside, it flows inwards on the basis of some experience, creating what we perceive and think in response. Flowing freely inwards and outwards, intelligence constructs knowledge and guides purposeful action towards achievement and fulfilment.
Knowledge:
Knowledge is the result of learning, and it encompasses three parts: the knower (i.e. the pupil as owner of the knowledge), the known (i.e. what the pupil knows at any given moment) and the process of knowing (i.e. the operation of the pupil’s own mental faculties, including their own creativity and intelligence).
- The teacher uses their own knowledge and skill to design and manage a range of learning experiences that will inspire each pupil, engage their faculties and lead them to gain their own new knowledge.
- Regular experience of Restful Alertness during TM enlivens all three components of knowledge in the consciousness of each pupil. When this enlivened consciousness of the pupil is applied to learning in class through the principles of CbE, guided by a competent teacher, our pupils begin to develop knowledge which has a sense of completeness, that is, they develop wholeness of awareness.
Hence the school motto: “Knowledge is structured in consciousness”.
Experience:
Experience is the basis of human life. The quality of experience determines the level of fulfilment in life and hence our subsequent actions and reactions. Experience is the ground on which knowledge is applied and human values are unfolded. Human experience encompasses four interdependent worlds or categories: the physical world, the mental world, the social & cultural world and the transcendental world. The transcendental corresponds to the innocent experience of Restful Alertness in Transcendental Meditation. Complete knowledge requires the ability to integrate experience across all four worlds.
Expression:
Expression is essential to life, which grows by expressing itself from within. Expression is closely related to creativity which requires intelligently directed expression for its fulfilment. Our pupils are encouraged to express themselves intelligently in many different ways as they grow up through our school as part of the whole approach to CbE. Complete expression is the fulfilment of all learning.