Shunryu Suzuki

Approaching learning with a beginner’s mind is crucial for students

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”…

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