About University of Earth

At critical junctures throughout human history, societies have been required to reinvent themselves. Our current times have lead scholars across many disciplines to believe we are at one of those cross roads. Cultural historian Thomas Berry wrote, "The historical mission of our times is to reinvent the human."

University of Earth is a wisdom school, with the central mission of participating in the process of reinventing ourselves, promoting the reinvention of the four central pillars of society; education, politics, economics and religion, while creating sustainable career opportunites.

Founded in 2004, U of Earth now enters its second phase by offering field and online courses for the general public, customized degree programs for the avant-garde, as well as continuing education (CEU) seminars and certifications for professionals, U of Earth emphasizes an integral approach and brings education into a proper relationship with Earth itself and our still expanding Universe.

Additionally, U of Earth offers counseling, coaching and consulting for individuals, groups and organizations.

More about U of Earth

When universities were first created in the 12th century their original meaning was to find one's place in the universe. In the early 1900's Maria Montessori suggested that all education must first orient the students to this place. In To Educate the Human Potential, Montessori wrote, "Only when the child is able to identify its own center with the center of the universe does education really begin."

In contrast, Pulitzer Prize winning cultural anthropologist and psychologist Ernest Becker said, "Today our universities breed competition, separateness, hate, war; we may call them whatever we will – 'hatcheries,' 'uni-nurseries' - but not universities. That institution has not yet dawned in any land on this planet."

Thomas Berry described our educational system and its universities as consumer factories, preparing and training our youth to take their role as the ultimate consumer. "Our educational institutions need to see their purpose not as training personnel for exploiting the Earth but as guiding students toward an intimate relationship with the Earth." Berry continues, "...the university has a special place because it teaches all those professions that control the human endeavor."

To change the educational system to one envisioned by Berry and we of like mind, if not impossible, would be excessively contentious and endlessly time consuming. One of the world's preeminent authorities on education, Harvard’s Howard Gardner, tells a story of a discussion with a colleague regarding a certain educational methodology that he felt was largely a waste of time only to have the discussion cut off with his colleague commenting, "We have been doing it this way for so long that we know it is right." Nonetheless, Gardner believes change is necessary, stating, "I believe that current formal education still prepares students primarily for the world of the past, rather than for possible worlds of the future ..."

Here at U of Earth, while it is our goal to help prepare students for "possible worlds of the future," it is not our intention to challenge the current educational system; we fully understand the constraints inherent in bureaucracies. Rather we hope to supplement traditional education and offer a forum for the free flow of ideas and dialogue directed toward the reinvention thereof.

In the spirit of the original meaning and purpose of the university, we at U of Earth intend to help deepen and enrich our understanding of our human place in the universe and guide the students toward an intimate relationship with the Earth in preparation for sustainable career opportunities.

In addition, we believe it will be through a collective participation in the process of reinventing the human and the four central pillars of human society, the four establishments which impact the fate of all life, that we will create a sustainable future.