Importance of Spiritual Education for Present and Future School: M. Lukšienė’s Insights

Spiritual education derives from the conception of a human being as intersection and unity of spiritual, psychical and physical dimension. Spiritual dimension, as a part of supernatural reality, performs a fundamental and unifying function in the becoming of an individual but it is not approachable through positivist research methods. Due to this reason, spiritual dimension of personality is inconceivable to apologists of materialism and pragmatism, unapproachable theoreticians of relativism. Therefore, it is particularly important to understand spiritual parameters of an individual (freedom, truth, love) that manifest themselves through principles of humanism, nationality and democracy. Since its very beginning, the education reform has been grounded on links of an individual and culture because namely, the spiritual dimension enables a human being to become a personality, to create culture and oneself. M. Lukšienė perceives holistic understanding of culture as a highly relevant aspect and education as a component of culture process, which derives from spiritual roots. Therefore, links of personality and culture are fundamentals of education reform. Discussing the relation between change and stability of education, M. Lukšienė directs our attention to spiritual values, approaching them as common denominator of present and future school as well as a guarantee of education reform. She also presents conception of spirituality, links of transcendental dimension, penetrates into the essence and spread of freedom, openness and dignity, and raises concern about moral, national and civic education. Contemporary focuses of education problems emerge at school deriving from the very depths of spiritual education. The main concern regards evaluation of teachers’ work and their training; knowledge commercialization and transfer of related business models to spiritual relations; establishment of education goals eliminating spiritual values or failing to understand mechanism of their (self-)development; prioritization of education methods; nurturance of patriotism, national culture, limits of freedom and other aspects, which were pointed out by M. Lukšienė.