Whole Child Education

The text ‘Whole Child Education’ features in B.Ed. 1^st Year’s General English book (Tribhuvan University).

This text is about not just imparting academic knowledge to the children and making them pass the exam as traditional school education has been doing, but providing them with whole education through holistic approach as practiced by Waldorf and Montessori school educations. It means facilitating the children to learn by doing all kinds of necessary knowledge, skills, and attitude in a child-friendly and motivated environment, making them in the end free, good and responsible citizens, and also one who cares for the Earth and the nature.

The key takeaways from the text are as follows:

• Children should be provided with holistic education: the intellectual, emotional, physical, social, aesthetic and spiritual education
• The aim of holistic teaching is to facilitate a more fully integrated learning experience rather than the fractured and alienated learning experience produced by much modern Western pedagogy.
• According to Ron Miller, every child is more than a future employee; every person’s intelligence and abilities are far more complex than his or her scores on standardized tests. Holistic education aims to call forth from people an intrinsic reverence for life and a passionate love of learning. This is done, not through an academic curriculum that condenses the world into instructional packages, but through direct engagement with the environment.
• According to Jiddu Krishnamurti, the purpose of education is not merely acquiring knowledge, gathering and correlating facts; it is to see the significance of life as a whole. Internal freedom – deeper freedom of the psyche and the spirit – is both the means and the ends of education. If you dominate a child, compel him to fit into a pattern, however idealistic, will he be free at the end of it? Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education. Education should in fact awaken intelligence and not simply reproduce a programmed machine or trained monkey.
• Waldorf Education, developed by Rudolf Steiner, cultivates imagination, creativity, cognitive growth and a sense of responsibility for the earth and its inhabitants. Under the warm and active instruction of their teachers, children are provided with a creative and nurturing environment in which to develop, grow and learn.
• Maria Montessori approached education as a scientist by using the classroom as her laboratory for observing children and finding ways to help them to achieve their full potential. The philosophy underpinning her work is one of respect and care for all children: the ideal Montessori teacher is gentle, sympathetic and always looking for the best in every child. Montessori saw the child as a motivated doer, rather than an empty vessel. She observed that learning was enhanced when people have a sense of control and interest over what they are learning. This allows children to enjoy learning and not learn for the sake of an extrinsic reward such as a good mark.
• Gist:
  • Education: holistic
  • Learning environment: child-friendly
  • Children: motivated doer
  • Teacher: sympathetic facilitator