By: Ella Pendlington, Staff Writer
Content warning: mentions of institutionalized racism (residential schools and racially segregated schools), eugenics, the Holocaust, and forced sterilization.
As little kids, the world often appears full of possibilities, but as we get older, we can begin to lose our “childlike curiosity.” Lack of accessibility in education is partly to blame. Western ideas of learning are filled with Eurocentric values and beliefs as well as problematic methods of measuring intelligence. I think developing a beginner’s mind is a way to resist this.
Zen Buddhism introduces shoshin (初心) as a Japanese term defined as the “beginner’s mind” in English. Stemming from The Buddha’s principles, Buddhism expanded across Asia before blooming in the West, particularly during the mid-20th century. As for the word “Zen,” its origins can be traced back to “dhyana,” which in Sanskrit means “meditation.” Zen is an East Asian school of Mahayana Buddhism. A beginner’s mind promotes the idea that the lessons life brings should be approached without preconceptions, and was brought to the West by the Zen priest Shunryu Suzuki Rōshi. Approaching the Western education system with a beginner’s mind could mean challenging the values and beliefs promoted by the testing system or its history of colonial learning.
For example, preconceptions centring European values and beliefs have long dictated the treatment of Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian education system. It wasn’t until recently that Indigenous history and knowledge has begun to be appreciated and more accurately represented in our country’s education curriculums. The system that exists today is rooted in colonialism and horrendous acts of institutionalized racism such as the residential school system and racially segregated schools. The colonial education system often misconstrues history and overtly presents preconceived racist depictions of so-called “uncivilized” Indigeneity. While there has been improvement in the North of Turtle Island’s (Canada) education system, unfortunately much of the changes remain performative and continue to centre Western ideologies.
In Western cultures, intelligence is frequently measured by academic performance; however, the Western education system is not accessible for many. Standardized testing, for instance, has a dark history. In his book Hereditary Genius, the eugenicist Francis Galton claimed that genes completely determine intelligence. He proposed testing that would segregate people with “low intelligence” away from any form of community and prevent them from reproducing. His ideas and beliefs founded the eugenics movement and the forced sterilization of many racialized, queer, disabled, mentally ill, and neurodivergent people. Horrors like the Holocaust demonstrate the repeated use of Galton’s pseudoscientific ideas to “justify” human rights violations against people from different groups with identifiable traits. The cruel history of standardized testing shows once again how racist preconceptions shaped the education system for the worse.
Today’s standardized testing still demonstrates various inequalities, as it doesn’t reflect the diversity of students who come from a variety of backgrounds and cultures. Tests are taken in manufactured environments that don’t reflect everyone’s learning and thinking styles. A long-term negative implication is tying students’ worth to academic performance, which reduces the vastness of human experience to a number. Measurements of intelligence frequently fail to comprehensively include human behaviours like artistic skills, athletic abilities, as well as social and emotional wisdom. For our individual and collective well-being, when we embody a beginner’s mind, we must be critical of the preconceptions that social institutions teach us.
Zazen — “a form of seated meditation used in congruence with the mind state of shoshin” — allows people to be observers of their own mind, instead of constantly asking something from it.
Unlike the Eurocentrism and standardized testing centred in Western education, Zazen — “a form of seated meditation used in congruence with the mind state of shoshin” — allows people to be observers of their own mind, instead of constantly asking something from it. It encourages passivity rather than the extreme productivity preached by capitalism. Focusing on the present is discouraged in our economic system but a core tenant of Zazen and important for our well-being.
When we embrace Zazen, we show ourselves compassion more easily, and accept our imperfections as scholars. Intellectual humility, which involves the recognition that one’s knowledge may be incomplete or wrong, can motivate people to learn more and find pleasure in the knowledge acquisition process. Invoking oneself in awe, cultivating a certain reverence for all we still have to learn, can help develop intellectual humility and increase our acceptance of uncertainty.
Coming to recognize that knowledge, far from fixed, develops through the pursuit of curiosity is an important mind shift. With gentler expectations, we can reframe what it means to not understand. What previously may have been understood as failure, becomes a learning opportunity. You may never know what you find when you’re not looking for it.
