The Threefold Social Order in Education

Why should we introduce the Threefold Social Order in Education? Observing the current political climate in America, I see there being two main sides (with a third being largely ignored). On either side, there’s very little inspiration. I hardly ever hear people express enthusiasm for their chosen candidate. Instead, I usually hear some version of fear or hatred towards the other side. The majority of people still vote against what they fear and hate rather than for what moves them. I think to myself, “If you want to chart your course, focus on what you want more than what you don’t.”

The same is true for cultures. In our lessons, therefore, our goal should not be to enroll students in this or that political party or viewpoint. Rather, it should give them the bones of society as they exist in reality. The reason there’s so much polarization, extremism, and ineffectiveness in leadership is because our society has strayed so far from reality of its underlying true geometry, that is, the Threefold Social Order. In this article, we will present a brief introduction to this model and bring it back to education at the end.

Threefold Social Order, Very Briefly

What, you may ask, is that? It is beyond the scope of this short piece to explain it all in detail. However, the basic gist of it is as follows. A human being is composed of three main parts – head, heart, and limbs. You could also say thinking, feeling, and willing, or nervous, circulatory, and metabolic systems. These parts have different functions and are related but need to be able to do their respective jobs without interference from the others. For example, we don’t want too much sensory activity happening in the metabolism. Can you imagine what it would feel like if you felt every ounce of food moving through your gut? That would be, as an old student of mine used to say, “No bueno.” So, the systems need to be able to do their jobs with some autonomy.

Society is like a big human being, similarly composed of three spheres. These are the cultural (head), rights/legal (heart), and economic (limbs) realms.

Cultural Realm

Schools, research labs, churches, libraries, universities, artist studios, and all those other places involved with ideas, new inventions, new creations compose the cultural realm. This is where society finds its guidance. It’s also where people make new discoveries. Therefore, this realm needs to operate in freedom just like you need to be able to think freely. Can you imagine what happens when government bureaucrats or big money interferes with that freedom? Then, you start to get cultural decay, and new impulses which may want to enter society for its higher good are blocked from doing so by agendas. the cultural realm must be left to function and freedom, albeit, within moral parameters of course. (For example, you can’t just experiment on people without a safety protocol.)

Rights/Legal Realm

Courts, government, legislative and rule-making bodies and agencies, police, military, etc. compose the rights/legal realm. It’s purpose is to maintain balance in society just as the heart and lungs preserve balance and health in the human body. The governing principle of this realm must be equality – all people, from peasant to president, must be equal under the law. Can you imagine what happens when, say, religious leaders try to exert their influence on the passing of laws, or when big corporations capture regulatory bodies with their money? It becomes disastrous, and the country becomes a banana republic. The rights realms must be able to protect the rights of all people, equal under the law, without interference from the cultural or economic realms.

Economic Realm

Businessmen, farmers, merchants, truck drivers, workers, industry, etc. compose the economic realm. These are the people who make the world go ’round. They produce and move the goods that sustain our lives like food, houses, cars, airplanes, computers, etc. What is the guiding value here? It is brotherhood. This is the most misunderstood of all values, especially in the West. We have no sense for it because brotherhood means that I work for your needs and you work for mine. That is foreign to a society that so highly prizes competition over collaboration. The truth is that while we need both, the second is of higher priority than the first. How we actually do this gets complicated, but we explain it in our 6th grade Business Math block, especially in the Live Zoom Enrichment Sessions (Session 3 this year).

How We Apply this to Education

Right now in America the chasm between Right and Left grow bigger by the day. People talk of secession and such things, even. However, this is all nonsense, and profiteering powers manipulate people into this polarized thinking because they’ve had a poor education.

Throughout our middle school curriculum beginning in 6th grade, we start to build a sense for this Threefold geometry of the human being and its macrocosmic expression as society. We introduce it in Business Math (also referenced here), expand it in Physiology, and continue it through this history and geography blocks of 8th grade. We do this to build students’ immunity to the manipulations of polarizing rhetoric.

Think about it, the Left focuses on protecting rights. They do very well in the rights realm. The Right focuses on protecting freedoms. They succeed in the cultural realm. However, both misunderstand the economic realm. The extreme Left applies equality to all three realms creating a communist hell. The extreme Right applies freedom to all realms, creating an plutocratic nightmare. Both miss the mark. However, imagine students who grew up understanding the Threefold Social Order. They would create a vastly different society than we have today. Right and Left would still have their places in the conversation, but it would no longer be a matter or either-or but rather both-and.