Partnership Studies 5: Partnership Education, Human Nature, and Building Caring Societies

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Keywords: Riane Eisler, partnership education, human nature, caring societies, cultural transformation

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09/11

Riane Eisler, an Austrian-born American systems scientist, futurist, and human rights advocate, is renowned for her influential work on cultural transformation and gender equity. Best known for “The Chalice and the Blade,” she introduced the partnership versus dominator models of social organization. She received the Humanist Pioneer Award, and in conversation with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Eisler emphasized the urgent need for humanists to focus on values-based systems and the transformative power of caring economics. Drawing on neuroscience and history, she argues that peace begins at home and calls for a shift in worldview to build more equitable, sustainable, and compassionate societies rooted in connection rather than control. The three books of hers of note that could be highlighted are The Chalice and the Blade—now in its 57th U.S. printing with 30 foreign editions, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future (Oxford University Press, 2019). 

In this conversation, Scott Douglas Jacobsen speaks with Eisler. She critiques the roots of education’s domination—fear, hierarchy, and top-down control—and advocates for a partnership-based education that emphasizes equity, multicultural content, environmental awareness, and relational skills. Drawing on neuroscience and history, Eisler emphasizes that “peace begins at home,” advocating for a shift toward caring economics and integrated learning. Her influential works—including The Chalice and the Blade, The Real Wealth of Nations, and Tomorrow’s Children—offer a blueprint for fostering compassionate, sustainable societies.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here once again with the prolific Riane Eisler. We will be discussing education within the partnership model. The partnership studies framework, which you developed, proposes a dualistic contrast between two systems: the domination system, which is based on hierarchy, control, and fear, and the partnership system, which emphasizes mutual respect, equity, and nurturing.

In education, has the United States historically focused more on the partnership model or on the domination model?

Riane Eisler: You know the answer to that—it has been the domination model. The approach has been mainly to cram information into children’s heads. That information, to a considerable extent, serves two purposes.

First, it prepares them for the dominant workplace. Second, it maintains the stories and the language of domination.

Jacobsen: When you say that it prepares them for the dominant workforce and conditions them for further domination in educational styles, are you suggesting it is all top-down? 

Eisler: The entire system is hierarchical. In Tomorrow’s Children—my book on applying partnership principles to education—I begin by discussing three elements of the educational process: process, structure, and content. Progressive education has paid considerable attention to process, aiming to make learning more participatory for children.

Some attention has also been given to structure, such as involving children in specific decision-making processes within schools. However, content has been almost entirely ignored by so-called progressive education.

In Tomorrow’s Children, the focus is very much on content. Why? Because we have been told many stories that are either false, biased, or incomplete. These omissions prevent us from adequately addressing the challenges we face as a species.

We are not well prepared to deal with issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, and the complexities of the social media landscape. Education must instead emphasize new stories that are, first, gender-balanced—because much of the old curriculum, especially history, has idealized wars and the so-called “great men” who won them. Figures such as Napoleon Bonaparte come to mind. Students were expected to memorize their names and the dates of their battles.

Including more women is important, but it is not enough to add women into a domination system—those who have managed to succeed and become visible. We must also include values and qualities traditionally labelled as “feminine.”

 I will address that later. Of course, partnership education is also environmentally sensitive.

And the content must be multicultural. There are encouraging trends moving in this direction.

So it is a truly integrated and integrative approach to education, one that prepares young people for partnership rather than domination.

Jacobsen: What would you say are the important signifiers, in terms of labels and relations, that appear at the pre-secondary, secondary, and post-secondary levels of education? In terms of hierarchies, the potential for control and fear that arises from those hierarchies which are more prominent in school systems focused on domination.

Eisler: The fear is always there—the fear of failure. The fear of one’s peers, because they are competing with you, the fear of the administration, of the teacher,  of authority figures.

We do not know our history well, but Tomorrow’s Children does address it, including the domination aspects of our past, when physical punishment in schools was routine. Fear, therefore, is one of the clearest indicators of dominator education.

Jacobsen: What about systems that produce a particular persona—say, “Mr.” or “Mrs.”—someone who operates entirely on one gear? For example, part of education should probably involve interpersonal skills. Suppose someone is grieving or emotionally activated because something has upset them, and another person responds only with argumentation and a rigid system of facts. In that case, they are not using the right approach. In such situations, care and consolation are probably more appropriate.

Eisler: Precisely. One of the proposals of partnership education is not only to change the traditional content of education—making it more gender-balanced, multicultural, and environmentally sensitive—but also to teach children relational skills.

Children in partnership education would be taught how to care: caring for themselves, caring for others, and caring for our natural environment—our Mother Earth.

Moreover, it is striking how absent this is in traditional education. Again, there are some trends toward incorporating more multiculturalism, greater gender balance, and increased environmental consciousness. However, these are often treated as add-ons rather than being fully integrated into the system.

Partnership education is not only about making curricula more gender-balanced, multicultural, and environmentally sensitive, but also about teaching children relational skills—essential for building healthy relationships. 

What I propose in Tomorrow’s Children is an education that tells a different story of human nature and evolution than the one conventionally taught. In fact, the book foreshadows much of what we now recognize as essential: emotional literacy, which you mentioned earlier. It also foreshadows telling a different story of Darwin—what I call “meaningful evolution”—rather than the distorted “dog-eat-dog” story. Of course, dogs do not eat dogs, but that is how evolution has often been misinterpreted.

Jacobsen: Was it Kropotkin who argued that cooperation is a factor in evolution?

Eisler: It was Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902). Kropotkin was an anarchist—in the proper sense of the word, meaning self-governance, rather than chaos. He was indeed remarkable. Moreover, yes, thinkers like him, who recognized the importance of cooperation, should be included in education—but they are not.

Jacobsen: This may not influence the outcome of research itself. If research is done correctly, the results will be what they are. However, in terms of the questions asked and the research programs funded and emphasized, education appears to play a significant role. Specific perspectives dominate the intellectual and research landscape. Has this affected how human nature is represented in the evidence?

Eisler: Yes. If you ask the so-called “common person” what human nature is, many will respond with the language of sin—original sin—or with the reductionist story of “selfish genes.” Of course, we naturally care more for those who are closest to us. However, consider societies that have progressed further toward the partnership model: they have more caring policies, such as paid parental leave, universal healthcare, and support systems for families.

In these nations, like Finland, Sweden, and Norway, women hold approximately 40 to 50 percent of parliamentary seats, and female heads of state are not uncommon. These societies also invest a greater proportion of their GDP than most others in supporting people through NGOs worldwide—people to whom they are not regionally or genetically related.

There is clearly something wrong with the conventional view of human nature as inherently flawed. Sociobiologists popularized the idea that selfishness and aggression are dominant traits, but this view distorts reality. Killing one’s own mother, for example, is extraordinarily rare—the Menendez case is the exception, not the rule.The stories of selfishness and domination have been popularized and institutionalized, shaping education, culture, and policy in ways that obscure the whole reality of our human capacity for care, empathy, and cooperation.

These distorted stories about human nature have been accepted even in science because they maintain a domination system that is ultimately based on fear. It is a fear of those in power—whether a parent, a religious authority, or a political leader. Consider some of the so-called Christian parenting guides, which literally teach that you “spoil the child if you spare the rod.” They claim that even an eighteen-month-old baby must be forced to sit absolutely still in a high chair because what the child must learn is that the parent’s will is law.

If that is not preparation for fitting into a top-down system, I do not know what is. It begins with fearing God, then fearing the authoritarian leader of the state, and, of course, fearing the parent. This indoctrination begins very early. Education, as I point out in Tomorrow’s Children, begins long before formal schooling.

We have not paid enough attention to what neuroscience tells us. We are bombarded with data, but we often fail to connect the dots. What neuroscience makes clear is that what children observe or experience—especially in their earliest years—literally shapes the architecture of their brains. It influences how we feel, think, act, and even how we vote as adults.

Now, the good news is that we can change. Humans are an extraordinarily flexible species. However, as we know, meaningful change often takes time. Those who have undergone psychoanalysis, for example, will tell you that it requires significant effort and time to reprogram ourselves, if you will. So why not start early?

Fortunately, there has been a trend among pediatricians, early childhood educators, and Montessori practitioners to emphasize the importance of the first years of life. However, this work must continue. Parenting, dating, and numerous aspects of daily life require strong relational skills. These skills are shaped by whether relationships are oriented toward domination or toward partnership. Of course, it is always a matter of degree—where on the continuum a society or family falls.

Dominator societies tend to be very warlike. They devote enormous resources to military budgets—often euphemistically labelled “defence.”

Jacobsen: Where does partnership education emphasize peace? Not necessarily in the sense of advocating war or not, but in cultivating values that make war less appealing.

Eisler: Everywhere, to put it bluntly. Partnership education is not centered on memorizing the dates of wars or the names of the men who won or lost them. Instead, it fosters a more humane approach to learning. It is education for partnership rather than education for domination.

 The Center for Partnership Systems is hosting a virtual summit called ‘Peace Begins at Home,’ which connects the dots—showing what neuroscience reveals: that it is in our homes where we first learn how to relate, through what we observe and what we experience. Unless we encounter partnership models along the way, we may never realize that partnership is even a possibility.

It is also important to learn about our prehistoric past, thousands of years ago, when societies were oriented more toward partnership than domination—particularly during the early Neolithic, the first agrarian age. However, history has often been taught as if it only consists of the last five to ten thousand years, which marked the violent shift toward domination.

For example, the Yamnaya people—well documented in archaeology and genetics—introduced warfare and practices that were far from peaceful. DNA studies show that when they migrated into Europe, they killed or displaced the local male populations. The Yamnaya genetic markers largely replaced those of the earlier inhabitants, such as in what archaeologist Marija Gimbutas called “Old Europe.”

We have also inherited our languages through this shift in domination. Nearly all European languages are Indo-European. Only a few exceptions remain—such as Basque, spoken in a small region of the Pyrenees between Spain and France, which is not an Indo-European language. It is no coincidence that the Mondragón cooperatives emerged in this region, where matrilineal and matrifocal traditions endured. However, these were not matriarchies. 

The difference between matriarchy and patriarchy is only a matter of who controls. The genuine alternative to patriarchy is partnership.

In Tomorrow’s Children, I emphasize that partnership education also humanizes men. This is just as important as making women visible. It involves transforming rigid gender stereotypes for everyone.

I want to provide you with some examples. For instance, in developing the curriculum— and my book Tomorrow’s Children includes many lesson plans, most aimed at higher grades but adaptable for younger students—we challenge the conventional distinction between “art,” meaning what hangs in museums, and so-called “crafts,” such as tapestries, rugs, and weaving, is shown to be part of male-dominance. Traditionally, it was primarily women who created these,  so it is no coincidence that such forms have been marginalized.

I love some of the art that hangs in museums, but let us face it, much of it idealizes domination. In Tomorrow’s Children, I include a lesson plan that highlights this distinction and showcases women artists, such as African weavers and pottery makers. These are not “mere crafts”—they are art. So it is also multicultural.

We also discuss concepts such as mass. It is often difficult for children to relate to such abstract ideas, especially children who have not been included in the standard curriculum—indigenous children, for example. However, so-called “indigenous societies” understood mass in profound ways. They constructed monuments aligned with the solstices, so that at specific times of year the sun would shine through with precision. However, we have acted as though Western science is the only form of knowledge on the planet.

In Tomorrow’s Children, I cite the historian of science David Noble, who wrote A World Without Women. Consider this: Western science emerged from a clerical, all-male, misogynist culture, shaped in large part by the rediscovery of ancient Greek texts. However, even  Athens was already a mix—an uneasy blend of partnership and domination. It leaned heavily toward male dominance. Remember, the much-praised Athenian democracy excluded all women, all enslaved people (male and female), and all men who did not own property. Aristotle himself argued that women were inferior by nature.

So democracy in Athens was a peculiar adaptation of the concept. Moreover, as historian Robert Flacelière demonstrates in Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles [sometimes cited as The Daily Life of the Greeks], the head of household had the legal right to decide whether a newborn would live. If a father deemed a child unwanted, the infant could be exposed, left outside to die. Some were “rescued” and enslaved; others perished.

This illustrates how deeply ingrained male power and fear were—not only in public life but also in the household. The Old Testament echoes this as well: Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command is another example of male power, fear, and terror as normalized cultural elements.

As I point out in Tomorrow’s Children, and in my best-known book, The Chalice and the Blade, the Athenians even made it compulsory for everyone in society to watch plays that inculcated domination as the only viable model for society. However, within these same traditions, playwrights such as Aristophanes wrote of women’s peace movements in Athens. Is that not remarkable? However, we rarely connect such examples with our deeper prehistory.

Tomorrow’s Children was ahead of its time in drawing out these connections—between what we teach, the stories we tell, and the social systems we perpetuate. Tomorrow’s Children includes many examples drawn from across the humanities. Too often, when we think of the humanities, we imagine old white men from Western culture. However, that is not the humanities. Humanity is much broader and richer than that.

Some of the United Nations declarations on women and children should be part of our conception of the humanities. We need a way of including all of humanity, not just men, not just women. Domination systems rely on rigid gender stereotypes precisely so that one can be ranked above the other, while pretending that no one exists in between. However, throughout history and prehistory, there have always been people who did not fit neatly into these categories.

There are many such examples. So the goal is not to erase the positive aspects of American history, but to teach both the admirable and the terrible. For instance, we must include slavery and conquest. Christopher Columbus, once venerated, is now increasingly recognized in a more critical light. In Tomorrow’s Children, I use many illustrations and cartoons to help children think about these issues. One cartoon I particularly like shows conquistadors arriving on shore and proclaiming, “We discovered you,” while the indigenous people respond, “What do you mean? We discovered you arriving here.” It all depends on your paradigm, your worldview.

This does not mean we ignore the promising developments of the past centuries, especially the last three hundred years. However, we must connect the dots: every progressive social movement has challenged  a tradition of domination. Think about it.

The Enlightenment’s “rights of man” movement challenged the notion that kings had a divinely ordained right to rule over their subjects. The women’s movement challenged the divinely ordained right of men to rule over women and children within their homes. The abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and today’s Black Lives Matter movement have all challenged the notion of a “superior race” ruling over an “inferior” one. The environmental movement challenges humanity’s supposed right to dominate nature.

That is what Tomorrow’s Children presents: that children—and humanity—do not have a viable future if the domination system continues to shape our policies and our attitudes. Between nuclear weapons and climate change, domination threatens to bring us to evolutionary collapse. We must shift toward partnership.

Jacobsen: Dominator models often produce bluster—a kind of defence mechanism of saving face when exposed for lying or being wrong. We see this in many prominent cases, including among tech industry leaders. What role does this have in reducing a society’s ability to make course corrections?

Eisler: 

  You know the answer: distraction. Marketing and overconsumption also serve as powerful distractions. Marketing for overconsumption has become a highly effective art form, and it is highly rewarded.

So, really, we are back to the four cornerstones: childhood and family, gender, economics, and story and language. So that children can have a future, we must recognize the barriers.

Gender, of course, is not only a woman’s issue but an organizing principle for families and for economic systems. The so-called “feminine” is consistently devalued. There is always money for weapons, but somehow there is never enough money for feeding and caring for children, for caregiving in general.

Our economic system rewards domination rather than care. And then there is story and language. Tomorrow’s Children addresses all of these—indeed, even before I formally articulated the framework of the four cornerstones, the book already grappled with them.

If we do not change education, we will continue to use it as an instrument to maintain domination. Education must instead become an instrument for accelerating the shift toward partnership. 

Not an idealized, perfect partnership—but certainly something better than the horrendous inequalities we now see worldwide, as regression toward authoritarianism and domination in all spheres, including the family, childhood, and gender, continues.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Riane. 

Eisler: Then we have more to look forward to. Take care of yourself, my friend.

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