Download - Person-centred Education and Holistic Education

27/01/09 C Dr Roger Prentice - [email protected]

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Presentation for the Uni. of Sussex Saturday 31st Jan 2009

Dr Roger Prentice

Theorizing your practice & practising your theory:

values & philosophies underpinning holistic education as a movement.

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The 4 Cs - at its simplest I will be suggesting that the human spirit, and therefore education, is intra-personally about;

1 Caring,2 Creativity and3 Criticality

All of which we experience, learn and express inter-personally in 4 Community. The BBC video Socrates for Six-year-olds shows my exemplary programme for the ‘Criticality’ dimension i.e. PFC, and shows an outstanding example of Person-centred teaching. All my work from, and back to, the classroom.

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Video ‘Socrates for six-year olds’

QUESTION: Is this Holistic Education? – How far and in what ways is it Hol. Ed.?

-----0-----Looks at American philosopher Matthew Lipman and his theories that conventional

education is failing children because it doesn't teach them to think and question. It takes a look at his "philosophy for children" programme in which students are given the powerful tools of logic, reason and ethics with which to stretch their minds, with some startling successes amongst both bright well-of children and teenage "non-hopers" from inner-city areas.

Features American philosopher Matthew Lipman, who in the late 1960s voiced a radical idea: that before children can learn to absorb facts, they must be taught how to think. His theories have been channelled through an educational programme called Philosophy for Children, aimed at pupils of all ages and cultures. Teachers are filmed working in schools in two contrasting environments - a smart suburb of New Jersey, and in Newark, one of the toughest cities in the USA.

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If you are an experienced professional the purpose of an MA, it has been suggested, is:

To more fully articulate the model/s that is within the ‘blood and bones’ of your daily practice.

You do this via your reading of public knowledge, conducting a piece of research that involves your practice and expressing the work in e.g. a long essay.

At best you research your practice and practise your research in a ongoing cycle – and in doing so you live your values more fully in your practice.

We all construe the world in particular ways i.e. we are walking ‘models’ - See non-mainstream PCP psychologist George Kelly

We need to be clear on what a model is. Most theoretical models seem to be vague. The more vague they are the more difficult they are for others to adopt.

NB - If you haven’t articulated your own model you are using someone else’s!


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My brief for today

1) Provide an overview of holistic education (and its diverse models/creating your own model)

2) Introduce the key ideas & readings of Hol. Ed.

3) Discuss my PhD (research findings)

My time allocation – 90 hours (is that correct?)


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1) An overview of Holistic Education(and articulating your own model)

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17 Central Concerns of Holistic, Human-centred

or Person-centred education – 1 to 8

The central importance of giving a satisfactory, balanced, appropriate account of :

1 what it is to be fully & positively human. (Can anything be more imp than this question?)

2 the nature & characteristics of Holistic, Human-centred or Person-centred education.

3 the place of story and storying.

4 the central importance of meaning, its making and subjective & objective

5 appropriate & challenging forms of construing (subjective forms of expression)

6 appropriate & challenging forms of and de-construction (objective forms - 'reading' analysing etc)

7 the physical, psychological & spiritual dimensions of learning & their inter-relationships

8 the re-establishment of the central importance of wisdom.

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17 Central Concerns of Holistic, Human-centred

or Person-centred education – 9 - 27

The central importance of giving a satisfactory, balanced, appropriate account of :

9 engendering and managing volition. 10 active and experiential learning

11 love /affect 12 knowing, knowledge & personal transformation

13 community – including friendship groups, class, family & wider community

14 multi-level-dialogue – intrapersonal and within friendship groups, class, family & wider comm.

15 the (chosen) sources of higher-order values & beliefs,

16 the nature & implications of those higher-order values and beliefs - inc. the Whole, the nature of reality & the inevitable context of mystery (world-view)

17 finding & utilizing best available, appropriate, content for each element

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Too few Wholists in relation to number of specialists

The 17 concerns constitute a) a) a set of design criteria and b) b) a set of evaluative criteria.

You can study bits – but we have an excessive number of specialists and far too few expert generalists or Wholists.

There are people who help e.g. including good journalists

Ideally a school-leaver, I suggest, would have a balance i.e. be a generalist as well as a specialist


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What is Holistic Education?

“Holistic education is a philosophy of education based on the premise that each

person finds identity, meaning, and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to spiritual values such as compassion and peace.

Holistic education aims to call forth from people an intrinsic reverence for life and a passionate love of learning.”

Ron Miller


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“What is it to function holistically - as a holistic practitioner?”

Ultimately my answer =?

To function as a holistic professional is,

“To proceed in all particulars with a deep sense of the whole.” RP


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But in steps along the path of development it is;

“ 1) consciously connecting ever-widening contexts, and

2) realizing encounters with the Whole.”


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Four key quotations:

Firstly Jung’s;

“The utterances of the heart— unlike those of the discriminating intellect— always relate to the whole.”

Secondly Heschel’s;“Concepts are delicious snacks with which we try to alleviate our amazement.”

Just found - "Concepts cannot render a living account of our multifarious experience. Exit the philosopher chastened. Enter the poet cleansed." - Peter Abbs

Thirdly Peter Abbs’;"No existential engagement, no deep learning."


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Fourthly Wilber on the parts and the Whole;

“To understand the whole it is necessary to understand the parts. To understand the parts, it is necessary to understand the whole. Such is the circle of understanding.

We move from part to whole and back again, and in that dance of comprehension, in that amazing circle of understanding we come alive to meaning, to value, and to vision: the very circle of understanding guides our way, weaving together the pieces, healing the fractures, mending the torn and fractured fragments, lighting the way ahead - this extraordinary movement from part to whole and back again, with healing the hallmark of every step, and grace the tender reward.”

The Eye of Spirit; an integral vision for a world gone slightly mad by Ken Wilber (1997) pub. Shambhala p.1.


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Some defining characteristics of Holistic Education

Holistic Education for me is part of a paradigmatic shift. It involves

1 re-locating education within a framework of eternal truths e.g. as in Socratic education – see Peter Abbs (The Educational Imperative: Defence of Socratic and Aesthetic Learning )

2 A paradigmatic shift to what I call (Wilberian) post post-modernism – see Wilber’s The Marriage of Sense and Soul

3 A realization of Universalism e.g. via Perennial Philosophy as a values perspective & world-view


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The most useful contemporary flowering of Socratic education is PFC, Philosophy for Children, by Prof

Matthew Lipman

Professor Matthew Lipman started developing PFC in 1969.

PFC = Text+agenda of questions+facilitating process

It is the exemplary programme for the development of criticality in my SunWALK

model.


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"No existential engagement, no deep learning." - Peter Abbs

I suggest that one of the biggest problems in ed. is that children have so many experiences that are shallow, superficial, - mere bits of unconnected stuff – no existential engagement – no deep learning.

The ‘Wilberian shift’ is from what he calls ‘Flatland’ reality to experiences of depth and of the Whole.

In short Flatland reality is the denial of any kind of truth or value other than ‘bean-counting’.

As Arthur Costa said, "What was educationally significant and hard to measure has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So, now we measure how well we have taught what is not worth learning!"


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Examples of other aspects of the paradigmatic shift – it’s the co-equivalent of the shift from Newtonian physics to Einstein

& post-Einstein physics

1 Mechanistic world-view v. process world-view

2 Materialistic v. idealistic

3 Lower order values v. higher order values

4 Fragmentation/atomistic (focus on parts) v. (W)holism (Whole as well as parts)

5 Wasteful consumption v. sustainability in society/environment

6 Humans as consumers v humans as (transcendent) ‘servants’ of humankind

7 Promotes impersonal knowledge v integration of personal knowing

8 Superficial & trivial culture v deep psycho-spiritual experiences

9 Endless thirst for more v the simple feeling of being

I have about 50 of these – the triadic ones are even more interesting!


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Wilber manages to present the strengths and weaknesses of pre-modernism, modernism and post-modernism.

He is also the major contemporary re-presenter of Perennial Philosophy.


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On Universalism or Perennial Philosophy –

“God has no religion.”

“I believe in the fundamental Truth of all great religions of the world. I believe they are all God given and I believe they were necessary for the people to whom these religions were revealed.

And I believe that if only we could all of us read the scriptures of the different faiths from the standpoint of the followers of these faiths, we should find that they were at the bottom all one and were all helpful to one another.” –

M K Gandhi


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Perennial Philosophy in one sentence

“We can be happy, and serve others well,

if we realize our true Self ,

by detaching ourselves from the egotistic lower self and

by becoming aware of the stillness beneath the noise.”


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HERE IS HOW KEN WILBER SUMMARIZES THE 7 MAJOR POINTS OF THE PERENNIAL

PHILOSOPHY

1. Spirit exists.

2. Spirit is found within.

3. Most of us don't realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, and duality--that is, we are living in a fallen or illusory state.

4. There is a way out of this fallen state of sin and illusion, there is a Path to our liberation.

5. If we follow this path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within, a Supreme Liberation, which--

6 marks the end of sin and suffering, and which

7 issues in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings.

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2) Key readings – see handouts

I have also put them on my site and am continuing to add relevant materials;

www.sunwalked.wordpress.com


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If you think of additional questions after today contact me at….

• [email protected]

• 01 434 345 074

• www.sunwalked.wordpress.com

The End!

Download - Person-centred Education and Holistic Education

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