Season 7 - Educational Leadership with Kent Bicknell - Episode 70

Wisdom of Friends with Kal Aras

Kent Bicknell grew up in central New Hampshire and resides there still. In 1973 Kent became founding head of Sant Bani School and stayed as a teaching head for 44 years, retiring in 2017. He was a Scholar of the House at Yale University, and holds a master’s degree from Goddard College and a doctorate in curriculum from Boston University. Kent has been involved in education for five decades, including over forty years on the Advisory Council of the New Hampshire Commissioner of Education and six years as a commissioner with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. He has served as a consultant to schools across the U.S. as well as in Bhutan, Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, India and Venezuela. In 2018 Kent published Stepping Stones: The First Five Years of Sant Bani School (1973-1978). This history of the founding and formative years of a unique school has received strong endorsement from educators across the country.

An independent scholar whose work has been published in a variety of journals, Kent’s main interests are the New England Transcendentalists – Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Alcott Family: their educational pedagogy and how they were inspired by the spiritual wisdom of Asia. In 1995, he acquired, edited and published the manuscript of A Long Fatal Love Chase, a gothic thriller by Louisa May Alcott that became a New York Times best seller.

Kent’s spiritual quest in the ‘60s culminated in receiving initiation in 1968 from Master Kirpal Singh (1894-1974) of New Delhi, India. In 1976 he came close to Sant Ajaib Singh (1926-1997) of Rajasthan, India. After more than twenty-five visits to India as well as traveling extensively in Central and South America with Sant Ji, he published Rainbow On My Heart: A Memoir of the Early Years of the Mission of Sant Ajaib Singh (2002).

Show Notes:

Little Green Light: www.littlegreenlight.com