How Do You Shift a Worldview?

Short answer: Not easily.

Early in my academic life I became intrigued by the concept of zeitgeist — the spirit of the times. Whether or not geist (i.e. “ghost”) signifies an actual psychic entity, some sort of disembodied consciousness, the idea of a pervading cultural spirit suggested to me that historical events play out on the surface of a deeper reality. We observe and record political uprisings and social movements, wars and technologies, “great men” and other historical actors, yet behind these occurrences there may be something like what biologist Rupert Sheldrake calls a “morphogenetic field” — a meaningful pattern or force that shapes events.

I never got carried away, like some thinkers of the Romantic period and New Age persuasions, with imagining the literal reality of a purposeful “spirit” that exists in some adjacent dimension. But the idea that there are patterns in nature and culture, force fields that organize evolution and history coherently, led me to look seriously at the effects of paradigms or worldviews on cultural development. Much of my research as a historian has sought to unpack the deep underlying assumptions that have given rise to educational practices and institutions in the modern world. It was obvious to me that what our society expects schools to do is firmly rooted in a particular worldview, and is thus inextricably…