Global Explorers : A Pricey New Boarding School Teaches Basics--Plus New Age Spiritualism

Over granola and bran muffins, Ana-Lisa Nel and her friends describe the visualization sessions in which they connect with the Higher Self to rid themselves of fear from conflicts in their past lives.

“I can really feel that something is released from my body,” the 20-year-old German student says.

“Basically, we discover how to use our energy and power, because we all have it inside,” chimes in Christina Chamberlain, a 24-year-old from New Hampshire. “Everyone really believes in it here, just through experience.”

Here is the Nizhoni School for Global Consciousness, where journeys to the metaphysical realm are part and parcel of a novel education that mixes mainstream academics with New Age spiritualism.

The 2 1/2-year-old boarding school for students ages 13 to 25 seems at home in a city where several weekly newspapers and a host of healers, channelers and psychics minister to a sizable population with New Age leanings.

The curriculum, molded by the ideas of the school’s founder, New Age teacher Chris Griscom, represents a valid educational model, says Nizhoni president Alex Petofi. It encourages students to become well-rounded intellectual explorers, drawing on interdisciplinary study to solve global problems, he says.

“It’s not a New Age school,” Petofi says. “(It) does not teach crystals and rainbows or say you should get all your information from channeling.” Moreover, he says, students--who pay $15,000 a year for tuition, room and board--are free to believe as they wish.

“The most heretical thing about this school is that we think it’s more important to be spiritual than religious,” Petofi says.

A soft-spoken, energetic 30-year-old who designed his own undergraduate major in “enterprise engineering” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Petofi cheerfully admits that he and Griscom lack formal training as teachers.

Yet their high school program embraces conventional subjects like chemistry and English while introducing such free-ranging topics as planet management, spirituality and humanity literacy--all with the blessings of state education officials. And the school offers three college-level specialties with an interdisciplinary bent: the School for Global Business, the Academy for Ecology and Energy and the Academy for Arts of Expression.

Students also take two one-month trips abroad each year to examine world issues firsthand, and they engage in group confidence-building activities like bungee jumping and fire walking, Petofi says.

Since opening in 1989 with 12 students, the school has grown to include 40 teens and young adults from the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Finland, Brazil, Denmark and England. Petofi hopes to soon move to larger quarters and has set a fall enrollment target of 60.

The idea for the school came from Griscom, a spiritual teacher and healer who, in the early 1980s, founded the Light Institute in nearby Galisteo. She turned to Petofi, a former computer software firm manager whom she met in 1988 at a Soviet-American citizens’ summit in Washington, to help bring her vision to life.

They started with $300 and a self-published manifesto on education written by Griscom. She chose the name Nizhoni, a Navajo word meaning beauty way, because it conveys harmony and natural order.

“Nizhoni evolved with this concept of ‘let’s find out who’s inside. Acknowledge and explore that each individual is a fully developed being,’ ” Griscom says.

The nonprofit school is now a million-dollar-a-year operation, with 13 licensed part-time teachers, two residence houses downtown and an 8,000-square-foot leased dormitory-and-classroom building in a canyon east of town.

Only half the budget comes from tuition; income is also drawn from six-day adult workshops offered eight times a year at $2,300 per person. A $2,300 three-week summer program for kids called Students’ Venture serves as a recruiting ground for the school.

With fees running near Ivy League levels, a Nizhoni education is not a casual undertaking for most families. About one-quarter of the students receive tuition discounts and take work-study jobs.

Perhaps because they spend most of their time together and share common values, Nizhoni students interact like family members. Boys and girls seem comfortable hugging spontaneously or rubbing each another’s shoulders, and there appears to be less competitiveness and posturing than in the average high school.

Although students generally make their own decisions about what and how to study, they must abide by certain rules: Drugs, alcohol and tobacco are forbidden. Celibacy is strongly encouraged, and listening to music and watching television are restricted. The diet is strictly vegetarian.

Students say they are happy with Nizhoni, especially when they consider traditional schools.

“This is totally different from my school,” says 16-year-old Tina Auffhammer, who found the education in her native Germany “stiff.”

“Here, people really want to know what we feel,” she says. “It’s the first time in my life I’ve really had fun learning.”

Although Nizhoni’s unconventional approach has gained a following, the school has had to clear its share of hurdles.

Winning state approval for the high school program was a trial, Petofi says, because some officials were skeptical of the school’s mission and of his and Griscom’s lack of credentials. Despite those reservations, the state board of education voted for accreditation in October, 1990, and unanimously renewed the rating last fall, says Petofi, who now has his teaching certificate.

Joe Baca, a state education consultant who helped evaluate Nizhoni, says that it must develop and teach a written curriculum that complies with state standards. When that goal is reached, the school will be recommended for permanent accreditation, he says.

“It has potential to become a quality school,” Baca says. “I don’t know how far away from reaching that goal they are.”

Petofi, who hired a professional administrator as principal, says that, despite the emphasis on spiritual development, Nizhoni graduates compete well academically. Two students have been accepted at prestigious U.S. colleges, including Brown University.

Eager to put his educational theories into practice, Petofi teaches two courses a week. In his Thursday morning humanity literacy course, he asks the students to do a trust-building exercise. They form a circle, one shoulder inward, and each leans back into the lap of the person behind. Despite their expectations, the students remain upright.

“The idea of these exercises is to make them self-organizing,” Petofi explains amid the students’ laughter. They settle into a semicircle on cushions and fold-up seat backs as Petofi leads a wide-ranging discussion of the need to have a vision for the future.

They enumerate the social and personal problems that arise when vision is lacking, with some students tearfully telling of friends who succumbed to drugs or suicide.

“I think it’s extremely important for you as global citizens to come up with a vision for America,” Petofi tells them. He explains later that he wants students to draw their own conclusions about the issues.

“I don’t actually tell students what to do,” he says, “because I wouldn’t want to incur the karma of that.”