Submission Date

4-25-2021

Document Type

Paper

Department

Education

Adviser

Stephanie Mackler

Committee Member

Abby Kluchin

Committee Member

Seamus Mulryan

Committee Member

John Spencer

Department Chair

John Spencer

External Reviewer

Jessica Davis

Distinguished Honors

This paper has met the requirements for Distinguished Honors.

Project Description

America is increasingly, and perhaps overwhelmingly, becoming a society characterized by political divisiveness. At its most extreme form, Hannah Arendt argues such a division can make us vulnerable to a loneliness that destroys our confidence and leaves us dependent on ideologies. A renewed sense of spirituality and intellect are prime candidates for helping us develop a healthy relationship with ourselves that can help counteract this loneliness. Not only that, but fully accessing our intellectual and spiritual sides can give us the confidence to tackle democratic republican citizenship the way Thomas Jefferson envisioned it. Here, Jacques Rancière helps us to construct a model of intellectual access that makes intellect essential, inclusive, and intuition adjacent. William James then contributes, along with Hanan A. Alexander, to a broader understanding of spirituality that opens up new worlds of spiritual access for students. Together, these two forms of access make up an intellectuospiritual approach to education that can help inform how we think about teacher professionalism, the relationship between private and public, and the potential for spirituality within schools.

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