In a world described as increasingly complex, operating in a global economy, and riddled with conflict, could it be possible that our best hope is in looking to the past, rather than the future? Discussions of global warming have turned everyday Americans into environmentalists. Faced with the challenge of a planet literally burning, people have begun to see that their behavior does indeed leave a footprint on our Earth Mother. While we have far to go on the issue of caring for our biosphere, some hope was granted last week with the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Al Gore along with the UN's Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Unfortunately, there is no parallel progress to be said for the military conflicts raging around the world—intractable human destruction the likes of Darfur and Iraq.

After September 11th, 2001, the world shifted. The end of the Cold War heralded the rise of the War on Terror. After all, the world has operated on the so-called balance of power theory for almost 150 years. What happens to power trapped in a vacuum? It most certainly does nothing. For power to be powerful, it must be exerted against something. Americans found this out in the most critical fashion, and now we are more aware than ever about the consequences of our aggressive action against the defenseless peoples of the world. In such a war-driven state, what is the hope for changing consciousness? When the war machine strikes, people are left in its wake-shattered, lost, homeless, without families, struggling to survive. How can we as Americans ever hope to dismantle the illusion of progress through aggression? To me, this is the most important topic of our times. It is my hope through describing this backdrop that you will be able to understand my rationale for posing an approach, a cry for help, if you will, or perhaps a mere dream to answer this madness.

Upsetting the American education system is our last hope for creating peace in our world today. America is a reference point, the vanguard, oppressor and know-it-all on the world’s stage. It is we Americans who speak the loudest, promote, proselytize and sell our democracy and its attendant capitalist cultural products to the rest of the world (even as we sink deeper into debt doing it). If we really care about the proliferation of war and weapons--as an answer to all that troubles us in the world--then is our responsibility to change the way we raise our children.

We can do this by turning not ahead, but rather by rewinding several centuries. Just as the environmental movement has gained steam by exhorting us to “Live simply, so that others may simply live,” we can also learn to live peacefully so that others may live in peace. While we do know now, thanks to spokespersons like Wangari Maathai, that conflicts around the world are inexorably intertwined with environmental oppression that is not my focus here. What I am proposing is a radical shift in the way we educate ourselves and especially our children, because it is probably already too late for us. This program does not rely on testing, surveys, or digital information programs. It is nothing short of a drastic overhaul of our entire education system, based on the incorporation of ancient spiritual practices originating on our own continent.

Now before the fundamentalists turn away and the New Agers run out to by the book, let me just say that this is not a spiritual program. It is an adaptation of the ancient Nahua education system. Nahua is a term describing the ancient Mexicans, a large language-based civilization that included cultural influences from groups that may sound more familiar—Aztecs, Toltecs, Texcocans, etc. Back in the 1960s, Mexican scholar Miguel Leon-Portilla translated many manuscripts from ancient Nahuatl language, and encapsulated them into a very important book called Aztec Thought and Culture. At that time and since then, this research profoundly affected the cultural revitalization of indigenous cultures within Mexico, as well as Mexican-Americans and Native American groups in the United States. By getting in touch with ancient teachings of the continent, people have been able to connect a large puzzle together, the pieces of which were scattered at the time of Western invasion and colonization (north and south of the border). Cultural theorists and artists from these ethnic groups began to understand how their lives--the way they grew up, the teachings taught to them by their elders, and the cultural practices they saw throughout their whole lives that did not look like the lives they saw on television—came from a deep philosophy rooted in the ancient Nahua world.

I believe that promoting this ancient American philosophy is relevant today for two reasons. For one, the borders of our continent have become more fluid and while they are certainly contested and ever more militarized sites, most of us can understand from the statistics of Latino immigration throughout the continent that this movement is not likely to stop—no matter what the governments of the countries attempt to do to stop it. Secondly, the English-speaking countries of the North are--although feigning arrogance and ignorance due to their current pre-occupation with the Islamic world—due for a big surprise, as Latin American leaders have recently become ever more confident and vocal in their revolutionary rhetoric towards the North.

The sources that Leon-Portilla worked with come from an advanced civilization replete with a highly organized thought culture and philosophy. The manuscripts “reflect the various doctrines taught in the centers of higher education (the Calmecac) during the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries.” (1963, xxv) By embracing these concepts, we may be able to breathe some life into an education system that is failing miserably—deteriorating so much that it does not educate citizens who can compassionately engage, or even speak with, the rest of the world. In promoting the ideas as “American,” or of the continent, we may be able to ease some of the tensions arising over immigration and Latin American relations as well.

Nahua thought culture held as precious a key concept—“face and heart”--that encouraged the students in the Calmecac to understand and create themselves as conscious human beings. The sages that guided them were called the tlamatinime, and they themselves lived lives that were reflective of a very detailed ethical code. They were organized into thirty distinct classes, and were the literate orators, rhetoricians, scientists, and astronomers of the day (those who attained the rank of “a Socrates” were named Quetzalcoatl, after the plumed serpent god). (1963, 19-20) It was the tlamatinime’s duty “to place a mirror before the people, that they might become wise and prudent; to endow with wisdom the countenance of others, so that a face might be assumed and developed…to humanize the will of the people.” (1963, 104) The “face” in this sense represented the totality of self-actualization for the students.

While the subjects were many and varied, the philosophers taught them with the idea that personal development was the cornerstone of learning. This was done through routinely approaching problems from a philosophical line of inquiry—specifically based on a key question: “Is there any truth to man?” (1963, 105) Curiously, the Nahuatl word for “truth” (neltilitzi) literally meant support or foundation. The idea here, then, was to motivate students to search for their own truths first and foremost, knowing that “personal and social ideals” would emerge from that process.
In addition to “giving wisdom to the face” (Neixtlamachiliztli), the Nahuas emphasized a second concept in education—“the art of strengthening or bringing up men” (Tlacahuapahualiztli). (1963, 134-5) Strengthening meant the cultivation of both strength and self-control. Not only were they concerned with integrating deep wisdom into learning, but they also prized the role of the individual as a member of the group. They paid very close attention to the concept of community in the raising of their children, emphasizing ethical development and “purity of heart.” Leon-Portilla comments that “this was the highest humanistic ideal to which the Tlacahuapahualiztli (art of strengthening men) aspired. (1963, 143) Casting social difference aside, these teachers focused on cultivating true virtues of the heart.

How would we integrate such ideals into our own education system today? The first step would be to look beyond simply achieving knowledge, and to value the pursuit of wisdom in our schools. Looking at schooling from a wisdom perspective, we may come to understand new ways of viewing problems—between individuals, in communities, and among nation-states. People need to be given ethics--skills that will allow them to grow into whole individuals. New curriculum modules can be created, and teachers and professors can be educated in how to incorporate a “mindfulness approach” into their respective subjects.

In summation, these ideas can be incorporated into any educational setting—a free-thinking un-school, any public or private K-12 institution, retreat center, charter schools, colleges and universities. There are no limits to how these concepts may be incorporated into standard educational institutions to revolutionize the way we think about thinking, learning, and growing. We are all on a journey, and I believe understanding one’s own path is the true key to any form of education. When people are educated in an ethical way that allows them to develop true consciousness and creativity, they become capable of living lives of true peace; in turn, they can then be empowered to create a world of peace.

Works Cited
Leon-Portilla, Miguel. Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.

Amy Champ is currently a doctoral student in Performance Studies (with a designated emphasis in Feminist Theory and Research) at the UC Davis Dept. of Theatre and Dance. She is also an adjunct professor of politics and international relations at Sac State and Sac City College. A yoga practitioner for 15 years and student of Swami Sitaramananda, she is a registered Sivananda yoga teacher, and creates “yoga projects” in outdoor settings to facilitate building communities of peace.

Special thanks to Dr. Ines Hernandez-Avila, who advised me in the development of this paper for a course in Native American Religion and Philosophy at UC Davis. The course of study in Nahuatl culture was developed by her as a part of a Contemplative Practice Fellowship from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (www.contemplativemind.org) and made possible by funding from the Fetzer Institute.