The Core Curriculum provides a philosophical framework for all Essential Education resources, programmes and training, ensuring that they are rigorous, authentic and profound, and that they take forward its aim of helping people everywhere to develop compassion and wisdom.

Essential Education proposes that the most effective and lasting form of compassion arises through the development of wisdom. The more deeply we investigate the nature of reality, particularly the changing nature of our body and mind and our interconnectedness with other beings and the natural world, the more we will develop the insight and understanding that intuitively gives rise to kindness and compassion.

This process of exploration is the ‘essential education’ that enables each one of us to lead a meaningful life and build a more peaceful world. It includes practices such as critical thinking and deep introspection which play a crucial part in helping us to absorb ideas and information, and to verify them with our own daily experience.

The subject matter of the Core Curriculum has been distilled into sixteen topics. The first nine of these are concerned with exploring reality, and the last seven with practising compassion. Buddhist reference materials inform the content of the Core Curriculum, but our aim is to present the topics in a way that is accessible and helpful to people of all traditions and cultures.

The 16 essays that constitute the initial Core Curriculum resource have been commissioned from Buddhist academics and teachers Gavin Kilty, Wai Cheong Kok, Ven Constance Miller, Mike Murray, Gareth Sparham, Sonam Thakchoe and Claudia Wellnitz. The aim of these essays is to introduce, in contemporary language and style, the essential content of each topic.

The essays will be completed during 2009, and Essential Education is now seeking the necessary funding to edit them into book form. In the next phase of this initiative, we will seek out trainers and facilitators who are capable of supplementing these initial essays with complementary material from the natural and social sciences, and from other philosophical and spiritual traditions, and will support them in creating training courses and practical initiatives for the general public.

For more information, especially if you would like to get involved, contact Andy Wistreich on andy [dot] wistreich [at] btinternet [dot] com.