ABSTRACT

In every age and in every context teachers and school leaders always try to find subjective and objective meanings for what they do, specifically, in relation to who they are and to their professionalism. This quest for meaning has to do with the nature of their enterprise, with change and with society. Observing this phenomenon several decades ago, an educator observed what was valid then and is valid now:

We are fumbling around in education because we know so little about the future and do not bother to know enough about the past. Education is not only one of the greatest human enterprises in immediate planning, with parents, teachers, ‘educators,’ school administrators, and college presidents

as its leaders. It is also a long-enduring process of cultural self-evolution. This process expresses itself through the minds of men who are interested in, and capable of, looking deeper into the nature, the needs and the aspirations of human beings than are most people. As long as the daily planning, doing, and structuring in education are constantly nourished by the wellsprings of the total cultural evolution, education and civilization are in a state of health; when the contact is cut they are sick and a crisis occurs. We live now in such a crisis. The degree of futile busy-ness constantly increases in proportion to the loss of a feeling for cultural depth and continuity.