The Feng Shui Approach To Education

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from the San Diego Union Tribune with a headline: “Class Achieves Harmony with Feng Shui.” The scent of strawberry incense wafts through the air.New age music fills the room and a soft light glows from the lamps on 32 cloth covered tables.A small electric waterfall generates a soothing stream-like trickle.Gauzy green curtains fastened with green ribbon hang from the windows and delicate wind chimes catch an occasional breeze.This is not the interior of a spa, café, or meditation room.Rather, this is the setting of Vince Riveral’s 6^th grade classroom at KeelerMiddle School in San Diego’s Lomita neighborhood.Riveral is among a small but growing number of educators who have turned to the ancient Chinese practice of Feng Shui to bring peace, prosperity and perhaps a bit of cliché California style to the classroom. The practice of living in harmony with one’s surroundings focuses on harnessing positive “Chi,” or energy and dispelling negative “chi.” The arrangement of furniture, the placement of a window or door, the addition of a mirror and a careful selection of colors can help promote better health, wealth and relationships according to the practice that dates back 3000 years in China.Feng Shui has become trendy with architects, interior designers, spiritual seekers and celebrities. And as Americans build stronger economic, cultural, and political ties to Asia, mainstream society has borrowed more and more of the ancient Asian disciplines.“So it was only a matter of time before Feng Shui made it to the often chaotic public school system,” said Shelly Degan a psychic and Feng Shui consultant who’s new course “Feng Shui for Teachers” will be offered at SouthwesternCollege this summer.I have Feng Shui-ed several of San Diego’s schools Degan said.What we have found is that when Feng Shui is introduced to a classroom the energy is better and the kids are learning.They are retaining the information.Our environment truly affects us and although they can’t point to any studies, both Riveral and Principal Mary Louise Martin are convinced that the introduction of Feng Shui to the school setting has improved academic achievement.Sixth grade student Gregory Simon agrees.At 12, he is a Feng Shui convert.“I feel more relaxed here than in any other classrooms,” he said.“I just work better.”

Tom:

Dave, Feng Shui—how does it work?

Dave:

Well, probably it doesn’t work in most cases.Before we get to that, what concerns me a great deal, well I hate to use the term but it makes me just a little bit angry—this is occultism.Yet it is being brought into the classroom.You can’t bring Christianity in, you can bring in North American Indian witchcraft down in Lassen County, Northern California, they are putting up totem poles now and children are celebrating the Indian spirits that are guiding them and protecting them and so forth.Feng Shui is based upon the same idea that the ki or chi—you find some of it in the martial arts, it’s involved with acupuncture, it’s the idea that the dao— this universal force is in all of us.

Tom:

Right, the yin and yang.

Dave:

Right, and you need to realign it and so forth.It’s one of many theories.Now, first of all it is nonsense—

Tom:

Well Dave, let me just interject here.The idea here that God is not personal, that it is a force out there, that he is a mind.This relates back to the mind sciences, what we talked about in our first article.

Dave:

Right, but it isn’t true, it’s nonsense.On the other hand, you could have a placebo effect.The article says they don’t have any studies—no proof, no scientific evidence, but they all “feel” that it works. Well this is like the placebo effect.You give a sugar pill to somebody and even it may stop their headache or whatever—

Tom:

Well certainly the classroom was nicer after doing all these things to it than it was prior to that so—

Dave:

But this is occultism, so you’re either going to have nothing will happen or it’s in their imagination, you have a placebo effect, or you could now begin to believe in this force and that will open the door to the occult.As an example, we’ve mentioned Phil Jackson, former coach of the Chicago Bulls, now coaching the L.A. Lakers and Horace Grant tells how when he was with the Bulls there in Chicago he would walk into a locker room and it would be clouding with clouds of incense. Phil Jackson is driving out the evil spirits, so the team will be focused.Now if you tried to bring the Gospel, you know impose the Gospel on your team—that is not to say there are not some NBA Christian coaches who can share the gospel individually, but now he is imposing this on the whole team.His North American Indian witchcraft beliefs and so forth, his Zen Buddhist beliefs—they call him the Zen Master in a lot of publicity about how Zen is going to help the Lakers and so forth.Now we are bringing this into the public schools.This is an occult idea from the East, from Eastern mysticism.You can’t bring Christianity in—oh that’s a religion.Ah, but this is culture now.So we have misunderstanding and I’m concerned that it is opening the door for a lot of people to enter into the occult.This is a first step, then they will get in deeper.

Tom:

Well Dave from our perspective this does have an interesting ending—something that we would agree with.This program was shut down, but it wasn’t shut down for the right reasons.It was shut down because they had people from the fire district code enforcement officials got wind of what was going on and nothing they did in there was up to code so they cleaned it out.

Dave:

Yes, as you say for the wrong reasons.

Tom:

Right.