LessonsInLiving
Lessons In Living
THE FOUNDATIONS OF PRACTICAL PEACE: How Dr. Michael Ryce’s Lessons in Living Program Shaped Unity School of Delray Beach’s ethical education and character development program.
In the early to mid 1980’s, an educational experiment in emotional self-regulation, character, personal and community responsibility and development, forgiveness, and understanding the practical application of the Laws that govern Life took root in a one of a kind school, Unity of Delray Beach, along Florida’s Gold Coast.
Developed and introduced by Dr. Michael Ryce at Unity of Delray Beach and Unity School, the program — titled Lessons in Living — was designed to bridge the gap between abstract ideas and concrete daily human behavior development in children.
Working within the community led by Senior Minister Mary Kupferle, Dr. Ryce was uniquely qualified to fulfill Reverend Kupferle’s request for such a program. Dr. Ryce, who had studied both man’s law, and the Laws by which the universe and everything in it operate, as well as the revelations of Y’Shua (aka Jesus) in His native Aramaic language and Naturopathic Medicine as part of his educational journey, structured the Lessons in Living Program.
Designed to be a comprehensive curriculum for building a True Human Life where Love, caring, personal responsibility and Truth were paramount, the Lessons In Living curriculum was, and continues to be a practical success. Rather than offering dogma or conventional moralizing, the coursework centered on actionable mechanics: understanding the laws of cause and effect in human interaction, mastering emotional self-regulation, practicing conflict resolution through Responsibility Communication, and applying Forgiveness as a biological and relational reality.
The Lessons in Living program proved so vital that Unity School of Delray Beach made Dr. Ryce’s program a permanent, dedicated Department. Integrated across all grade levels — from Montessori preschool through the eighth grade — the curriculum became a defining pillar of the school’s academic and character education.
Generations of students, educators, and parents were introduced, through Lessons In Living, to its structured focus on personal accountability, understanding the laws which govern life, in particular, those by which the Human Energy System operates, a lifelong study for Dr. Ryce, and peaceful stewardship of the earth.
For Dr. Ryce, the years of classroom and community lectures at Unity of Delray Beach, Unity of Fort Lauderdale, Unityof Lake Worth and Unity of The Palm Beaches served as the foundational crucible for the development of his broader life’s work. The principles refined during those Florida presentations directly informed his concurrent and subsequent research into ancient Aramaic linguistics and textual psychology, ultimately evolving into a powerful and successful prison reform program, Laws of Living, which he developed in concert with attorney Dan MacDougald, head of Social Research Laboratories in Albany, Georgia. Ryce ultimately, after his partner in the Laws of Living Program, MacDougald passed, continued its development and it became an intensive study curriculum, taught to this day with his Eternal Life partner, Jeanette (Jeanie) Ryce-Shaw through their website, www.whyagain.org, their 5 day a week long running MindShifters Radio Show, and their global online educational outreach centered at HeartLand, their teaching center in Southern Missouri.
Today, Lessons in Living stands as a living testament to the power of grounding universal Breath principles in early childhood development and practical daily living, maintaining its active place at Unity School more than five decades after its inception.
Below are a few pictures and letters from some of the children who participated in the early days of the program.
