The "Common Roots" Curriculum
Another less dramatic example of how changes in our self-understanding can have concrete implications – an example that focuses more specifically on education – is the "Common Roots" Curriculum employed in some rural Vermont schools. This alternative educational program for grades 1 through 6 takes the idea of "the fundamental connections between food, community, and ecological stewardship" as the "basis of an integrated curriculum that is the focal point of student learning and community involvement" (Bowers 1995, 197). As C. A. Bowers notes in his discussion of this curriculum, the central role of local community and broader cultural traditions in this curriculum "reinforces a radically different way of understanding primary relationships that are too often take for granted to be noticed" (199). This change in understanding affects not only the content of the curriculum and the activities within it but also how students understand that content and the curricular activities – that is, their relationship to the knowledge they generate and encounter and how it should be used in their lives. It also affects how students understand who they are in the world: "Interdependence not only serves as the root metaphor for understanding how energy is exchanged within the web of ecosystems but also provides students a radical alternative to the individually-centered view of moral responsibility" (199).

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Alternatives: Nonduality, Inter-connectedness, and Being-in-the-World | Works Cited