Raymond Trinh - Week 10

In Connected: Indigenous Spirituality as Resistance in the Classroom, the author Eric Ritskes states an ever increasing body of work is emerging within the pedagogical arena that explores the realm of spirituality and its implications within a classroom in curriculum, for student development, or within the academy as a whole. He examines the definitions of spirituality that are emerging out of this Western educational discourse and contents that the current definitions undermine the collective power of spirituality by centering the individual as the sole locus of spiritual determination in a sort of spiritual solipsism. Ritskes argue that any definition of spirituality needs to acknowledge the value of connection, as conceived in indigenous spirituality, as vital and inherent to its being: a connection to all aspects of the self, connection to one’s community, connection history, and connection to a higher power or larger framework. Overall, it is through this connectivity that spiritual power is constructed and spiritual resistance is empowered and without it, spirituality falls prey to individualism and relativism.