לחשוב "חינוך" מחדש ולחנך ל"כאן ועכשיו" מן המבט הקונטמפלטיבי

This paper invites the readers to rethink education according to the fundamental concepts of attention, space, and time. Although these concepts may seem abstract, I claim that deliberation at these levels constitutes the most dramatic educational process to occur in any educational institution. The paper poses a question that challenges assumptions that are taken for granted in educational practice: 'Where should we direct a student's attention – inward toward his or her body and mind, outward toward the world, or both?' Public education is based almost entirely on orienting students' attention outward. Such deliberation teaches an absurd lesson, namely, that the 'here and now', which constitutes the only time and place in which you and I can live in reality, is not the time and place for us. This deliberation also etches the form of "education" onto our minds and limits the scope of its practice in a manner that is depicted as anti-educational. Countering this curricular orientation, the paper depicts "contemplative education", which is becoming widely acknowledged in North America and Europe. This orientation does not propose an alternative to contemporary public education, but rather a balancing and complementary one that is based on pedagogies that orient students to attend to the 'here and now' based on mindfulness, journaling, and other contemplative pedagogies. It will be argued that people live their lives from 'here', yet countries and states conceptualize education from 'there'. Although a curriculum that does not include a serious and deliberate orientation that involves paying attention to the 'here and now', to the subject-matter of our personal lives, and to their source within mind and body may be educating countries, it hardly educates us in the sense of being humans in the throes of the struggles of life. The final part of the paper discusses direct implications of this approach for the teacher's work.