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Lowell Harrison Young

A Most Unusual Biodesign Christmas Card

Posted on December 14, 2014 Leave a Comment

Screen shot 2014-12-14 at 10.03.19 AM“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” – Meister Eckhart

“And even as each one of you stands alone in God’s knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.”- Kahlil Gibran

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2T1csHUgF4

I was not aware of the hymn, “How Great Thou Art,” before a Fb friend recently shared it on my “home page.” I was not prepared for the soul-stirring combination of lyrics, melody and Carrie Underwood’s dazzling talent. However, it wouldn’t have mattered if I had known about it when I was still teaching because the lyrics would not have been appropriate to share in a public school. The Biodesign Facebook page and websites, however, are not constrained by the laws regarding the separation of church and state and we are free to exercise our “illimitable freedom of the human mind.” (Galileo would say, “Good luck with that!”) 😉

The Biodesign Class began as a revolutionary approach to learning advanced biology. Lacking any model to follow, the class was originally called “Bio-X “ (as in Xperimental). Given the current pressures on education, it is not likely another experiment like this will occur.

We experimented with many learning techniques and two interrelated discoveries proved to be immensely important in the evolution of the class. One, thanks to Black Elk, was to conduct all meetings in a circle. Sitting in a circle elevated student responsibility and reduced my role as the “teacher.” It also greatly enhanced communication as everyone could see each other’s face. The other was a technique we called, “minimal philosophy.” Whenever we encountered a new word or phrase that needed clarification, we “minimalized” it. Any student could express his/her one or two-word take on it. Either a student at his/her left or right would follow in turn until the word was back to the beginning. It was a little like the “Telephone Game,” however, the process was overt and the collective definition included feeling-tone, nuance and ethos and was often better than that of Webster or Roget.

“How Great Thou Art” is a poem of gratefulness written by Carl Gustav Boberg (1859–1940) in Sweden in 1885. The melody is a Swedish folk song, which was translated into an English hymn of praise by British missionary Stuart K. Hine. Carrie Underwood has publicly avowed that her mission in life is to share God’s love. For her, performing the song becomes a personal act of praise and adoration.

The hymn, “How Great Thou Art,” provides a perfect segue to using “minimal philosophy” to distill the essence of some of the world’s great people. It was actually a lot of fun to put together.

Socrates: How philosophical Thou art.
Plato: How truthful, beautiful and good Thou art.
St. Francis:  How wonderful Thou animals art.
Meister Eckhart: How mystical Thou art.
Galileo and Isaac Newton: How scientific Thou art.
Da Vinci: How mechanical Thou art.
Michelangelo: How artistic Thou art.
Shakespeare: How dramatic Thou art.
Robert Burns: How poetic Thou art.
RW Emerson: How metaphorical Thou art.
Henry Thoreau: How transcendental Thou art.
Walt Whitman: How miraculous Thou art.
Gregor Mendel: How genetic Thou art.
John Muir: How glorious Thou art.
O. Henry: How ironic Thou art.
Black Elk: Thou art a circle with no beginning or end.
Carl Jung: How synchronistic Thou art.
Helen Keller: Thou art greater than man can see or hear.
Loren Eiseley: How mysterious Thou art.
Mother Teresa: How compassionate Thou art.
Charles Schultz: How funny Thou art.
Dr. Martin Luther King: How non-violent Thou art.

All of these people have several things in common. They shared a deep sense of spirituality and saw beyond the physical, mental and material world. Each was a visionary who made a huge contribution to society by eclipsing his/her self-limiting-self-serving ego. Although, I may not be worthy of untying their shoes, it gives me goosebumps when I contemplate how profoundly each one of them enriched my life by the simple expediency of going for a spiritual walk with me.

How Great Thou Art, was voted the United Kingdom’s favorite hymn by BBC’s Songs of Praise and according to many scholars and musicologists, follows only “Amazing Grace” on the list of the world’s all-time favorite hymns.

Lowell H. Young, Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

Posted in: Reflections | Tagged: Biodesign, How Great Thou Art, Lowell Harrison Young

“The Rarest Courage Is The Courage Of Thought.” – Anatole France

Posted on June 21, 2014 Leave a Comment

HD ClimbersOn only two of the 20 Biodesign Classes that got to sleep on top of Yosemite’s famous Half Dome, rock climbers “topped out” the same afternoon we were there. Our students were fascinated by the climbers and went over to the edge to welcome them. I was about 100 yards away, busy with other tasks, but in the cool mountain air their voices could be easily heard. One of the climber’s voice came across the way crystal clear: “Your whole biology class is up here? Far out! Your teacher must have big balls.” I burst out laughing. The phrase was not new to me; I had heard our guys, and a few girls use it, but never directed at me. Although I found it a little crude, I understood young people’s desire to communicate intensity, passion, even spirit, when they found words like “courageous” trite and obsolete.

After all four climbers reached the top they ate a snack, drank some Gatorade and quickly began reorganizing their “haul sacks.” The amount of food, water and climbing gear needed for the 5-day ascent was stunning. They divided the packs evenly, with each one weighing about 60 pounds. We were shocked to discover that they were going to descend the cables and make the 10-mile trek back to Yosemite Valley; the final few miles in the dark. It was hard to imagine a hiker carrying a 60-pound load for a short distance, let alone 10 miles. As they prepared to leave the leader asked me for a favor. The ascent had taken one day longer than planned and, mysteriously, all of their flashlights had dead batteries. He wondered if we could spare a couple flashlights. Our students reacted quickly and each climber was given a light. We told them where our base-camp was and they assured us that they would leave the flashlights there. After they departed, in an uncommon cynical moment, one of our guys snorted, “Any bets we will ever see the flashlights again?”

Later on in the night, the climber gave me pause to reflect and what I discovered was intriguing. In leading the students up the cables to the top of Half Dome, I did not feel that any particular body parts were larger than normal. Translated; I did not feel particularly “courageous.”  I felt more like Sir Edmond Hilary who stated that he climbed Mt. Everest “because it was there.”

And then I experienced yet another Half Dome epiphany.  The young climber was not referring to the courage of climbing a mountain; he was referring to the courage to face our gravest fears. For me, this was not leading a group of students up the cables of Half Dome, it was leading classes on an educational adventure that may have been the only one of its kind in a public high school. We were truly in the spiritual wilderness with no charts or maps and at the mercy of Mother Nature.

Anatole France’s words came to mind. “The rarest courage is the courage of thought.”

Richard Bach wrote in, Jonathan Livingston Seagull:

“Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip… is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too.”

Breaking the chains of well-established thought patterns can be as difficult as breaking a well entrenched habit. However, the greatest difficulty is often overcoming the fear of believing something new. Mark Twain understood this perfectly when he wrote:

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

The work I was doing could be both threatening and provocative to traditional thought patterns of students, parents, colleagues, administrators and school board members. Although numbers of antagonists were typically small, they could be very vocal. Comments like, “Biodesign is NOT a science class;” “Young is a frustrated preacher;” “What he is doing is not only illegal, but evil,” were whispered, or even expressed verbally. For several years, one school board member did every thing in his power to have the Biodesign Class banned and me fired. When confrontations did occur, I was shaken to the depths of my soul. I had no book or lesson plan to refer to. Aside from my wife, I had no one to confer with to offer guidance, support or encouragement. Of course, I was keenly aware of the perils that Socrates, Jesus and Galileo faced for encouraging people to “break the chains” of their thought patterns. In the end, I had to rely on the wisdom of my support team. Men like Socrates, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Einstein. I regarded what I was attempting was “good” and Plato warned me, “if you ever doubt the power of evil, try to do something good and see what happens.”

One of the primary goals of writing Biodesign Out For A Walk was to offer guidance, support and encouragement to teachers, in general, but specifically biology teachers, to “break the chains” of restrictive traditional teaching methods and set their students free. It may be scary at times, but it may also be a matter of a student’s spiritual life or death.

Note: When we returned to our base-camp, all four flashlights were lined up in a row, on a table with a “thank you” note written on a piece of a grocery bag.

Lowell Harrison Young, Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

Posted in: Reflections | Tagged: Anatole France, breaking the chains, courage, established thought patterns, Half Dome climbers, Lowell Harrison Young, restrictive traditional teaching methods, Yosemite Valley

The Elephant Whisperer II

Posted on June 9, 2014 Leave a Comment

African Elephant

Excerpt: Biodesign Out For A Walk, Chap. 9, “Gratefulness.”

“Students had shown and taught me things that were simply impossible for me to discover on my own.”

 

For many years I had a cartoon on the bulletin board in the front of the biology room. A herd of elephants were milling around in a dusty commotion with their trunks raised. The caption read: High School education is a lot like elephants mating. There is a lot of  pushing, shoving and loud trumpeting and 18 months later there are results. The students got a good chuckle out of it.

“On March 7, 2012 Lawrence Anthony died. He is remembered and missed by his wife, 2 sons, 2 grandsons, and numerous elephants. Two days after his passing, the wild elephants showed up at his home led by two large matriarchs. Separate wild herds arrived in droves to say goodbye to their beloved ‘man-friend’. A total of 31 elephants had patiently walked over 12 miles to get to his South African House.”

http://delightmakers.com/news/wild-elephants-gather-inexplicably-mourn-death-of-elephant-whisperer/

I was deeply moved by the shared post about the death of Lawrence Anthony, author of, “The Elephant Whisperer.”

In every good book there is a compelling thesis statement that unites the soul of the author to his/her reader. I did not have to search far for Lawrence’s. It appeared as the third paragraph in his prologue:

“Make no mistake, the title of this book is not about me for I make no claim to any special abilities. It is about the elephants—it was they who whispered to me and taught me how to listen.”                       Lawrence Anthony

I felt an immediate kinship with Anthony’s spirit and with very little effort paraphrased his disclaimer:

Make no mistake, Biodesign Out For A Walk is not about me for I make no claim to any special abilities. It is about students—it was they who took me on a journey that Joseph Campbell called, “The Soul’s High Adventure.”

I had no preconceived idea about what was in the book, and did not expect to discover a literary soul-mate. As it turned out we were both seekers, however, more importantly we both discovered that our students often knew things that were far beyond our knowledge.

There were times when the elephants could read his mind and emotions; I had students who could complete my thoughts and read the joy, sorrow, anguish and frustration when I was struggling.

There were several times when elephants charged him and veered off at the last second; there were equally scary times when Biodesign students intellectually challenged me, sometimes resulting in anger and recrimination.

The bottom line for both of us was that elephants and students represented a level of “intelligent design” far beyond what man has ever guessed. Students typically are made up a 100 trillion cells. Standing 10 feet tall at the shoulder, an African bull elephant may contain 8 thousand trillion cells and weigh as much as a Mack Semi-truck.  If we can not completely comprehend the workings of a single cell, how can we arrogantly assume that we understand man or elephant? Each group also has mysterious powers that man will only fully understand when he understands the mind of God.

Lowell Harrison Young, Author; Biodesign out For A Walk

Posted in: Reflections | Tagged: Lawrence Anthony, Lowell Harrison Young, The Elephant Whisperer

Author Lowell Harrison Young Appears On The Authors Show To Discuss “Biodesign Out For A Walk”

Posted on June 6, 2014 Leave a Comment

BOFAW Post PicYoung’s book relates how a group of disconnected souls connected and discovered the real meaning of life in a high school class called Biodesign.

[Wilmington, NC June 3, 2014] Author Lowell Harrison Young appeared on The Author Show recently to discuss his latest release, ‘Biodesign Out For A Walk’.

A biology class does not normally serve to provide the meaning of life. But in the case of Lowell Harrison Young’s students, an advanced biology class provided the framework to discover the meaning of life.

Today’s typical high school students are bored. They are disinterested and forced to memorize rote facts that often have no relevance or meaning to their own lives. Technology has forced them to disconnect from Nature and from each other. However, in Young’s Biodesign class, students transcended all of that and went from dissecting fetal pigs to wilderness revelations. They escaped from four drab walls and entered a wilderness classroom under the stars. They went from boredom to mysteries, from profane hallway chatter to discussing the wisdom of Nature’s designs. They went from memorization of minutiae to probing the illimitable freedom of their minds. And finally, they connected with Nature, and with each other, to discover the real meaning of life.

“I wrote Biodesign Out For A Walk in hopes that it will resuscitate readers’s waning sense of wonder, mystery and love of life,” Young stated. “The work is a collection of stories of curious high school biology students who embarked on what Joseph Campbell described as ‘the soul’s high adventure.’  It is a thrilling example of what young minds can do when they are challenged to transcend to higher levels of consciousness, compassion and connectedness.”

‘Biodesign Out For A Walk has received rave reviews and has garnered 16 5-star reviews on Amazon. The book is rated 4.9 out of 5 stars. One reviewer stated, “What Lowell Young has crafted in these pages–and more than that, the experience he created with students for 24 years–is an essential exploration for any reader with an equal passion for tales of authentic education and the natural world. If you find yourself moved to tears, laughter and deeper questions (sometimes in the same chapter) then you’ll have joined the caravan of over 700 of his Biodesign students. No doubt he’s a fitting heir to the work of Muir, Thoreau, Eiseley, and Darwin, and deserves a comfortable place in that good company.”

Lowell Harrison Young is available for media interviews and can be reached using the information below or by email at young.lowell@gmail.com.

‘Biodesign Out For A Walk’ is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. More information is available at Young’s website at https://biodesignoutforawalk.com.

About Lowell Harrison Young:

Lowell Young and his wife, Christie, have lived in California’s Napa Valley for over 40 years.  Mr. Young taught high school biology for nearly 38 years before he retired.  He holds a Masters’ Degree in the art of teaching biology.

The class that evolved into Biodesign was a collaborative, creative project where the roles of teacher and student were often reversed.  It was well known by the students that although Mr. Young represented the physical nature of the class, Christie’s silent spiritual guidance was often felt in their classroom circles as well as along the many miles of trails they walked.  The Biodesign class may be the only one of its kind taught in a public high school in the country.

Contact:

Lowell Harrison Young
https://biodesignoutforawalk.com
young.lowell@gmail.com
– See more at:  http://www.freepublicitygroup.com/release_lowell_young_mar114.html

Posted in: Reflections | Tagged: author, Biodesign, high school biology, intelligent design, Lowell Harrison Young, press release
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