Conveyance of Culture Through Education with Elanne Kresser

Ep. #30
In today's episode, Mallika invites her friend, Elanne Kresser, to share a deep exploration of cultural healing and the hope for education that teaches our children to live within and honor the beautiful space we occupy, birthing a new paradigm of partnership, of tending and  of caring for all beings. 

Mallika and Elanne have been friends since 2013 and have been in conversation with each other about many topics, from conscious parenting and healthy relating styles, to the current paradigm of "compulsory schooling" and examining or shifting cultural constructs.

Elanne Kresser is devoted to the labor of birthing a world in which all voices, both human and otherwise, are honored. She has practiced in the Ordinary Mind School of Zen for two decades and directed The Dharma School for children for eight years, and her adult life has been dedicated to community-based, culturally-generative, earth-honoring education. She is a practitioner of ancestral and cultural healing and loves supporting others to reclaim their self-worth, life purpose, and sense of belonging. Her people hail from Bavaria, Bohemia, Jämtland, Sweden and England.

Elanne Kresser's Website

Peter Grey
John Taylor Gatto
"Weapons of Mass Instruction" By John Taylor Gatto

Things we touch on in this episode: 

• Feeling belonging with place 
• Personal wellness = "how able am I to meet the changing conditions of life" 
• Wellness is relational 
• Animism, at it's foundation, is relationship
• How teaching in today's system that is devoid of meaningful work
• The ancestors are who hands us our culture
• Depth of cultural healing available through getting right with our ancestors
• Tending ancestral connection through education 
• A new paradigm of relating and tending and caring
• The natural friction when shifting from an old to a new paradigm
• Distinguishing between education and compulsory schooling and the values at the base of the current schooling structure
• Ways that we can each play a role in starting this shift
• The possibility that we re-imagine schooling is here
• Homeschooling, free-schooling, unschooling, democratic schooling, and the movement for self-directed education
• What practical ways can this be implemented in a schooling setting
• The clarity that can come from ancestral involvement in these projects

Quotes from Elanne: 
Wellness requires relationally (12 min)
The ancestors are who hands us our culture (24)
Education is ultimately the transmission of culture (25)

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