Click here to take 60 seconds of contemplative time-out.
GHI
Grammar – on the teaching of as a pre-requisite for learning well one’s mother tongue:
“Most adults tend (even when they are not aware of it) to speak to infants in a simplified gitchy-goo kind of way. This is not a sensible or efficient way to teach a child the difference between, say, present tense and past tense, and yet the child learns it. Indeed, s/he increasingly masters his native tongue, s/he tries to make it conform to more logical rules than the language it self may possess, saying ‘buyed’, ‘eated’ and ‘goed’ because, even though s/he has never heard such words spoken,
Major thinkers and major ideas
Here I have listed many of the practitioners and thinker wjho have made major contributions to understanding of holistic education – and at least one major idea from each they seem more logical to him/her –as indeed they are, if you stopped and thinked about it.”
Happiness:
Happiness is not something owned. or power achieved. It is not a place, a person or a possession. It is that state of being which exists when mind, feelings and will are in harmony. Uncle Fred
Heart: heart-mind:
Have a heart, take heart, he doesn’t have heart – only a swinging brick etc
The symbolic centre of the individual’s spirituality. In the Hidden Words Baha’u'llah says, “Thy heart is my home; sanctify it for My descent.” “O Son of Spirit!” My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.” ” O Friend! In the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love….”
A Basic Baha’i Dictionary ed Momen p 101
Hermeneutics;
hermeneutics, branch of philosophy dealing with the theory of understanding and interpretation. “Understanding” is viewed as a circular process whereby one can understand the whole only in terms of the parts, but the parts only from the whole. First used to interpret biblical texts in the early 19th cent., the theory was extended by SCHLEIERMACHER beyond scriptural interpretation, and by the end of the century DILTHEY construed it as the general methodology for all the social sciences and humanities. Both held that a universal human capacity for empathy—the personal experience of that which has been expressed by someone else—was the bridge between past and present. In the 20th cent. HEIDEGGER and his student Hans-Georg Gadamer rejected this psychological foundation, instead basing their hermeneutics on the study of linguistic phenomena such as translation and etymology.
Concise Columbia Encyclopedia
Higher Order:
This term in SunWALK is applied to a set of elements including ‘thinking’, ‘acting or living or behaviour ’ etc. ‘Higher Order learning’ is learning that the teacher arranges that maximises nurturance in higher order forms of the various elements, caring, creating, criticality, community, service, thinking etc., in her/his teaching. For example the higher order levels in the developmental models created by Piaget ( ), Lipman( ), Kohlberg ( ) and Fowler ( ). Or the view of what it is to be human offered by Heschel ( ) as opposed to say pornographic TV channels.
In the case of acting or living or behaviour I had in mind the definition Prof. John Hull gives in answer to the question, “What is spirituality?” He replies, “To live for others.” Although it would be easy to savage this statement with lots of ‘yes, buts’ and ‘what about ifs’ it makes the essential point – more good is likely to come from lives that are (healthily) other-centred than from lives that are self-centred.
The great Rebbe A J Heschel similarly identifies our very humanity with such other-centredness;
“ Human is he who is concerned with other selves. Man is a being who can never be self-sufficient, not only by what he must take in but also by what he must give out. A stone is self-sufficient, (hu)man(s) (are) self-surpassing. Always in need of other beings to give himself to, man cannot even be in accord with his own self unless he serves some thing beyond himself.”
p. 138 Heschel A. J. (1971), Man is Not Alone, New York: Octagon Books
Within SunWALK a higher order curriculum is one that includes wisdom as its aim, as well as command of knowledge, information and data. A higher order model of knowing is one that includes……. A higher order model of learning is one that includes ………
Occasionally that which is higher order may not be clear in which case it becomes a matter for consultation and then agreement by the teachers.
Holism:
“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.”
Wilber Ken, (1997) The Eye of Spirit; an integral vision for a world gone slightly mad Boston & London: Shambhala p.1
When men lack a critical understanding of their reality, apprehending it in fragments which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole, they cannot truly know that reality. To know it truly, they would have to reverse their starting point: they would need to have a total vision of the context in order subsequently to separate and isolate its constituent elements and by means of this analysis to achieve a clearer perception of the whole.
Freire, Paulo, (1985), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books, London
Holistic education and holism are, says Miller (1992 p. 6),
“a person-centred perspective concerned with the fullest possible development of authentic personhood.” “Holism is a recognition of interconnectedness, context and meaning in all phenomena; it is a radical critique of the reductionism, technicism and Cartesian dualism that have alienated modern consciousness from the natural world and from a deep existential sense of meaning and wholeness.
Miller (1992) considers that holism essentially is a recognition of interconnectedness, context and meaning in all phenomena. It is a radical critique of the reductionism, technicism and Cartesian dualism that have alienated modern consciousness from the natural world and from a deep existential sense of meaning and wholeness.
Holism is a person-centred perspective concerned with the fullest possible development of authentic personhood as in Maslow’s sense of self-actualization and individuation in the Jungian sense. The holistic thinker, Miller says, would argue that it is reductionistic to understand persons only in terms of analytical or judgmental categories (such as IQ or SAT scores) or merely in terms of social role such as ‘patient’, ‘client’, ’student’ or ‘voter’. To be a person is to be a complex whole which is greater than the sum of its parts or roles. Yet holism, nevertheless, recognizes multiple levels of wholeness; the person living in ever larger contexts of meaning – family,, community, sub-culture, social order, biosphere and the universe at large. Thus says Miller, the person-centredness of holism is not atomistic or ahistorical; holism is a radical, global, ecological and (in a broad, not sectarian sense) spiritual perspective. Education he believes should be as its Latin roots suggests, a humane and nurturing art of drawing forth the potentials that reside in every young person.
Miller echoes Clark (1992) in saying that while empirical research does provide information that is useful in particular contexts, it cannot adequately answer questions about value, purpose and meaning, Holistic educators, he says, believe that such foundational questions are too seldom asked and that addressing them squarely must be the first task. Clark says that he sees holistic education as a philosophy rather than an approach. He considers that to understand the structures of holistic education it is necessary to understand the philosophy and the theory. Clark considers fundamental to the new paradigm for education is a radically different set of assumptions about the nature of reality. One of the fundamental characteristics of the old paradigm, rooted as it is in the Scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is fragmentation of thinking. The physicist Jeremy Haywood described this perspective as, “The tendency to regard the world as made up of separate entities, things, having their own separate existence and identity and only accidentally related to other things’.” The new paradigm is characterized by the integration of thinking.
According to Lemkov (1990) holistic education starts with the “wholeness principle” – the premise that everything is connected. to everything else. Implicit in this principle says Clark, are certain corollary assumptions about the nature of the world and consequently about that nature of knowledge, intelligence, and thinking and learning, which compel us to reconceptualize every aspect of educational practice. These new assumptions form the foundation upon which a new, holistic educational system will be built. The essential task for educators will be to design educational models which more nearly conform to these emerging assumptions, including to integrated thinking as opposed to fragmented thinking. If it is true that some think fragmentedly and some integratively a fascinating question arises – what in individual lives leads to two such different ways of thinking? Does thinking spiritually lead to more holistic thinking (or vice versa perhaps)? Is there such a thing as authentic education. If the purpose of holistic education is the fullest possible development of authentic personhood then what is authentic education?
Holistic Education:
Defining Holistic Education can be a matter of debate but here is the definition issued by the American Society for Curriculum Development;
“Learning based on the principle of interconnectedness and wholeness. Thus the student is seen as a whole person with body, mind, emotions and spirit. Holistic learning seeks to develop approaches to teaching and learning that foster connections between subjects, between learners through various forms of community. Holistic Learning also seeks a dynamic balance in the learning situation between such elements as content and process, learning and assessment, and analytic and creative thinking. Finally, Holistic Learning is inclusive in terms of including a broad range of students and a variety of learning approaches to meet their diverse learning needs.”
Miller R (1992 p. 6)
“a person-centred perspective concerned with the fullest possible development of authentic personhood.” “holism is a recognition of interconnectedness, context and meaning in all phenomena; it is a radical critique of the reductionism, technicism and Cartesian dualism that have alienated modern consciousness from the natural world and from a deep existential sense of meaning and wholeness.
I define holistic education as;
education that in giving due weight to the development of competencies in all aspects of the self; the affective, the cognitive, the volitional, the behavioural and the social – experienced in a spiritual and moral milieu – recognises the mysterious singleness of the human spirit from which flows the caring, thinking, willing and acting.
“A main strength of the holistic education movement, to be sure, has been its recognition of sources of meaning and reality largely ignored, if not militantly denied, by mainstream modern education – sources such as ‘the new science,’ primordial and esoteric wisdom traditions, humanistic psychology, contemplative and prophetic religion, aesthetic experience, and others. To throw all of these indiscriminately into the same mix, however, tends to create a kind of educational-spiritual slush that can only obscure the clarity which the holistic education movement now most urgently needs.” Douglas Sloan (Foreword) The Renewal of Meaning in Education
“A second challenge to the holistic education movement is the extent to which it, like every other new movement in our time, is vulnerable to infection by the very assumptions of modern education it would seek to overcome. After all, the dominant materialistic, reductionist, and mechanistic assumptions of our culture are ones in which we have all been reared and educated.” Douglas Sloan (Foreword) The Renewal of Meaning in Education
“I consider these scholars to be holistic in their orientation; that is, they represent an emerging paradigm in educational thinking that emphasizes wholeness and integration in the learning process, a nourishing and democratic community both inside the school and without, a global and ecological perspective on social and economic problems, and a recognition of the spiritual dimension of human existence (R. Miller, 1992; J. Miller, 1988; Lemkow, 1990). The holistic education movement is still working out its theoretical foundations ….” Ron Miller p.8 The Renewal of Meaning in Education
HOLISTIC ED – RELATIONSHIPS – MIND/BODY- INDIVID/COMMUNITY -Self/self
The focus of holistic education is on relationships – the relationship between linear thinking and intuition, the relationship between mind and body, the relationship between the individual and the community, and the relationship between self and Self. In the holistic curriculum the student examines these relationships so that he/she gains both an awareness of them and the skills necessary to transform the relationships where it is appropriate. Miller John P p.73
Holarchy:
Virtually all natural hierarchies are composed of holons – wholes that are simultaneously parts of other wholes. For this reason, Arthur Koestler pointed out that the word hierarchy should really be holarchy. All natural hierarchies – that is, all natural holarchies are composed of whole/parts or holons, and they show increasing orders of wholeness, unity, and functional integration.
In a holarchy (or hierarchy) each successive holon transcends but includes its predecessors. Each senior element contains or enfolds its juniors as components in its own makeup, but then adds something emergent, distinctive, and defining that is not found in the lower level: it transcends and includes. For example, atoms contain neutrons, but neutrons do not contain atoms; molecules contain atoms, but not vice versa; cells contain molecules, but not vice versa.
Holon
A holon is a whole that is simultaneously a part of another whole: a whole atom is part of a whole molecule, a whole molecule is part of a whole cell, a whole cell is part of a whole organism, and so forth. Each element is neither a whole nor a part, but a whole/part.
Arthur Koestler coined the wonderful word holon to refer to such “whole/parts.” Virtually all natural hierarchies, in any domain, are composed of holons, wholes that are simultaneously parts of other wholes. For exactly this reason, Koestler pointed out that the word hierarchy should really be holarchy. All natural hierarchies-that is, all natural holarchies are composed of whole/parts or holons, and they show increasing orders of wholeness, unity, and functional integration.
Virtually all natural hierarchies are composed of holons – wholes that are simultaneously parts of other wholes. For this reason, Arthur Koestler pointed out that the word hierarchy should really be holarchy. All natural hierarchies – that is, all natural holarchies are composed of whole/parts or holons, and they show increasing orders of wholeness, unity, and functional integration.
In a holarchy (or hierarchy) each successive holon transcends but includes its predecessors. Each senior element contains or enfolds its juniors as components in its own makeup, but then adds something emergent, distinctive, and defining that is not found in the lower level: it transcends and includes. For example, atoms contain neutrons, but neutrons do not contain atoms; molecules contain atoms, but not vice versa; cells contain molecules, but not vice versa.
Wilber, Ken (1998), The Essential Ken Wilber, An Introductory Reader, Boston & London: Shambhala p 50 et al
See also Bohm’ s writing especially
Bohm, David, (1980), Wholeness and the Implicate Order, London : Ark Paperbacks
Bohm, David, (1981), Insight, Knowledge, Science, and Human Values in Toward the Recovery of Wholeness: Knowledge, Education, and Human Values, Columbia University, New York, Teachers College Press
Bohm, David, Insight and Reason: The Role of Ratio in Education, p.654 in Matthew Lipman (Ed.) (1993) Thinking Children and Education, Iowa, USA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co.
Bohm, David, edited by Lee Nichol (1998), On Creativity, London & New York : Routledge
Bohm, David, and Peat, F. David, ((2000), Science, Order, and Creativity, Second Edition, London and New York: Routledge
Heuristic:
Heuristic: 1 Helping to learn; guiding in investigation. 2.Allowing pupils to learn things for themselves. 3 Maths, science, philos. Using, or obtained by, exploration of possibilities rather than following a set of rules. Collins
Human nature/being/ Human Reality:
The central concern of the humanities
is to serve as “custodians
of the human image.”
Huston Smith
SunWALK subscribes to the notion that we are spiritual beings having an earthly experience. It follows that we have a non-physical reality, that we call the soul. The Baha’i argument is that the body because it is composed, de-composes, but the soul because it is not composed does not de-compose i.e. it is eternal.
Only after death will we find out whether the remarkably similar teachings contained within the great world religions, concerning the separate existence of the soul, and of the afterlife, are true. If they are not true both ‘camps’ will never know!
The soul is spirit, not matter and refers to the individuation we call a human being. The light of the mind, its chief power, is, according to Baha’i teachings the mind. In this world we are free to turn the mirror of the soul-mind to either goodness or darkness. We reflect what we choose to reflect.
The ‘individuation of the human spirit’ that we call a soul or person, i.e. the non-physical self, is an entity (not a set of non-physical organs). The individuated human spirit is a single entity which responds, or wills itself to engage with the world in several different modes, as described in this extract;
it (Human Reality) is the same reality which is given different names, according to the different conditions wherein it becomes manifest. Because of its attachment to matter and the phenomenal world, when it governs the physical functions of the body, it is called the human soul. When it manifests itself as the thinker, the comprehender, it is called the mind. And when it soars into the atmosphere of God, and travels in the spiritual world, it becomes designated as spirit. Star of the West 7.19 (March 1917):190
It is from this description that the model of SunWALK takes its notion of ‘modes of engagement’ i.e. caring, creativity and criticality as the three ‘primary colours’ of the intrapersonal world. However the Baha’i quotation corresponds more to the triad; thought, feeling and action, than to
Human being:
Humankind
Man . . . knows only when he is satisfied and when he suffers, and only his sufferings and his satisfactions instruct him concerning himself, teach him what to seek and what to avoid. For the rest, man is a confused creature; he knows not whence he comes or whither he goes, he knows little of the world, and above all, he knows little of himself.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist. Quoted in: John Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe (1836).
“To be human is to engage in relationships with others and with the world. It is to experience that world as an objective reality, independent of oneself, capable of being known. Animals, submerged within reality, cannot relate to it; they are creatures of mere contacts. But man’s separateness from and openness to the world distinguishes him as a being of relationships.”
Paulo Freire p.3. Education: The Practice of Freedom
While the problem of humanization has always been, from an (ethical, aesthetic and religious) point of view, man’s central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern….both humanization and dehumanization are possibilities for man as an uncompleted being conscious of his incompleteness…….while both….are real possibilities only the first is man’s vocation…..
Dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human…..
This struggle is possible only because dehumanization….is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.
….the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.
This then is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed; to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.
Paulo Freire p.20/21 Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Socrates, who is never in tune with the time, has ample character, while the Machiavellian prince, whose character is always in tune with the times, has no character at all.
Lipman p59 Education for Thinking 1991 Cambridge
Human nature -
THE SPIRIT & MYSTERY OF:
From “An Idealist View of Life“
When the supreme light in us
inspires the intellect
we have genius,
when it stirs the will
we have heroism,
when it flows through the heart
we have love,
and when it transforms our being,
the son of man
becomes
the son of God.
Jarvepalli Radhakrishnan
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. Hamlet Act II. Scene 2.ll 303-307
The humanness of being human:
The central concern of the humanities, according to Huston Smith, is to serve as “custodians of the human image.” Sloan p
Humility:
“Humility has nothing to do with low self-esteem. It is the capacity to distance oneself from ones private, separate ego to the point where one can see it objectively and therefore accurately, as counting for one, but not more than one, even as charity sees one’s neighbour as counting fully for one. Both these initial virtues, which pertain to the human order, announce the arrival into that order of the third virtue, veracity – the capacity to see things in what Buddhists call their suchness, the way they actually, accurately, objectively are. With ‘self’ and ‘other’ made interchangeable through his objective, numerical ‘one’, humility is seen as looking on oneself as if one were another (and as severely as truth allows, but not more), while charity is to look on the other as if s/he was oneself (as indulgently as truth allows, but again not more).” Smith, Huston, (1989 2nd ed.), Beyond the Postmodern Mind, Wheaton, Illinois: Quest Books
Smith’s discussion of humility, charity and veracity is interesting in relation to a range of elements in the SunWALK model including the following: the Baha’i second Hidden Word (see Authenticity and Autonomy above); the maintenance of subjectivity and the selflessness to achieve objectivity and therefore justice; the avoidance of excess in both bringing oneself to account (a daily discipline for Baha’is) and in identifying empathetically with others;
Image:
“…an image is a synthesis of feeling, knowledge and inner sensation, captured in an episode of time…”
McAdam Dan, P., (1993), Stories We live By, New York: Wm. Morrow and Co Inc. p65
from
Charme, S T (1984) Meaning and Myth in the Study of lives, Philadelphia: Uni. of Pennsylvania Press
Imagination: particularly poetic imagination
“I have come strongly to believe that it is the cultivation of imagination which should be the chief aim of education, and in which our present systems of education most conspicuously fail , where they do fail.” Warnock, Mary, (1976), Imagination, London : Faber & Faber Ltd.
“This splitting of imagination from knowledge is a false separation to start with, and it consigns to second place that which is primary.” Sloan p.140 Insight-Imagination
“… Mary Warnock speaks of the imagination as ‘our means of interpreting the world’ and ‘also our means of forming images in the mind. The images make possible our interpretations’ .” Sloan p.140 Insight-Imagination
“… there is no perception separated from interpretation”. Sloan p.140 Insight-Imagination
“The imagination is an unbroken field encompassing the whole human being. And it is that which joins us in knowing-interplay and participation with others and the world. To neglect the imagination, to mis-educate, to abuse it, to narrow and confine it, is to choke the human lifeline at its source.” Sloan p.140/141 Insight-
Imagination
And imaginative fancy can also be extremely limited and stultifying. Because mental images are intimately linked with the entire person, including will, desires, fears, wishes, and so forth, they have a powerful effect on the whole of a person’s perceptions and behaviour. When such fancy is taken as absolute it becomes a barrier to further knowledge. If the images in imaginative fancy bring to expression particularly powerful memories imbued with fear and anxiety, for example, they can distort all of life. Or, when in literary or scientific thought, certain images are accepted as absolute, perhaps because they have been associated with long periods of successful application and have acquired professional approval and public acceptance, they begin to function as unquestioned presuppositions that also block, that than facilitate inquiry. This is not to say that whole books, research programmes, and entire disciplines may not be dominated by such images and consist largely in the learned spinning-off of associated images and thoughts in imaginative fancy that fills lectures and libraries, is awarded fellowships and funding grants, and is a great cloud of endangerment. To challenge the sanctity and absoluteness of many publicly and professionally accepted images often means not only having to join what to the respectable appears as the lunatic fringe, in order to get any chance of fresh perspective, but is also to invite disregard, professional banishment, or worse. Imaginative fancy may be very helpful; it can be harmful; and it does not necessarily usher in new insight.”
Sloan p145 Insight-Imagination
“Similarly, for Bohm, formal logic must be seen as an abstraction from a larger movement of rationality. It is in his view “the intellectual counterpart of the imaginative rearrangement of known images that takes place in imaginative fancy.” Sloan, p145 Insight-Imagination
“The recognition of the centrality of imagination in our knowing, however, promises a fundamental change of approach, for the imagination is first and foremost an awareness of the primacy of wholeness and of the relation of the parts to the whole.” Sloan, p.154 Insight-Imagination
” ‘Every imagination’, writes John Davy, ‘is born as a whole, as some kind of picture of concept; yet it is also an organic part of all the rest of conscious life, intimately related to our memories and past experience. It has the same relation to our inner life as a part of an organism has to the whole. It can be studied as an independent entity – but if completely separated from its living context, it dies. Both in our consciousness and in living phenomena, organism and the whole are primary, parts and atoms are secondary’. Here in this statement of Davy’s we can begin to get a firm grasp of what the wholeness of the imagination entails.” Sloan, p.154 Insight-Imagination
“We apprehend a great work of art, for example, as a whole. We may marvel at the many and intricate details with which the artist has executed the specific parts of the picture, but they have their meaning and worth only in relation to the whole.” Sloan p.154 Insight-Imagination
“And we would never think of cutting the painting into smaller pieces on the assumption that, if perhaps we could not find a buyer willing to pay the whole price, we could find several buyers willing to take the bargain reductions. The value of the painting is in the whole.” Sloan p.155 Insight-Imagination
“Recognizing a plant, for example, a rose, is itself an act of imagination. We never have before us the full being of the plant, but only its partial manifestation at a particular moment. The full plant exists only in time, from the seed and its sprouting, to the growing and leafing shoot, to the budding and blossoming flower, to the final drying up of the plant and the deposit of a new seed.” Sloan p.155 Insight-Imagination
Indoctrination:
Hare (1964) distinguishes between indoctrination and education as being a matter of aim, not content or method. For example with his young child he might be less than rational in teaching that it is wrong to lie but the purpose of this is to bring the child as quickly as possible to his or her own rational decision-making, not to bind the child to perpetually obey, unthinkingly, the parent.
Information;
Insight:
“All genuinely new knowledge comes by means of passionate, energy-filled insight that penetrates and pierces through our ordinary ways of thinking. The function of insight is twofold: to remove blocks in our customary and fixed conceptions of things, and to gain new perceptions. When we fail to attend to the central role in knowing of this deep imagination, or insight, we become trapped in the already given. In order to enable us to understand better the primary importance of insight, Bohm says we need to look closely at the different aspects of our “. Sloan p.141 Insight-Imagination
“Insight, Bohm describes as ‘an act of perception, permeated with intense energy and passion’, that penetrates and removes barriers in existing thought and frees the mind to serve in new ways and directions. Insight announces itself as a whole, as a perception that includes ‘new forms of imagination [new images] and new orders of reason’. Insight is an act of inward perception, ‘not only in the sense of looking into the very essence of the content that is to be known and understood, but also in the sense of looking into the mind that is engaged in the act of knowing.’ Insight is undivided, ‘total and immediate’, it cannot be captured in thought, and ‘it affects all the different functions of the mind – physical, emotional, intellectual, and so forth’. And, above all, ‘insight is not restricted to great scientific discoveries or to artistic creations, but rather it is of crucial importance in everything we do, especially in the ordinary affairs of life”.
Sloan p.143 Insight-Imagination
“Formal logic is secondary to insight and is never the source of new knowledge. Formal logic and discursive reason not in the service of insight simply lock us all the tighter into our given presuppositions and rigid mental compartments, and stand as obstacles to further perception”. Sloan, p146 Insight-Imagination
“Reason, imagination, and insight in the fullest sense are nearly identical – each is a way of bringing out different aspects of an unbroken whole – but when they are narrowed and fixed, as in fancy and logic, they separate and close. And fancy and logic by themselves, either separately or together, do not lead to insight”. Sloan, p.146 Insight-Imagination
“Insight according to Bohm operates in two ways, negatively and positively”. Sloan, p.146 Insight-Imagination
“Perhaps there is some disadvantage in portraying as the chief examples of insight only persons such as, say Einstein and Kekule .. for whom insight comes as a flash. They do serve to illustrate vividly what is essential in insight – its wholeness and immediacy, its appearance as image and perception, the clarity and energy it requires. But these examples may, although they need not, also obscure the possibility of a more gradual and indirect working of insight. This would come from regarding new images and perceptions as potential insights, in much the same way that one might entertain a hypothesis.” Sloan, p.147 Insight-Imagination
“Essential thoughout however, are attention and energy – an intense awareness of the questions to be asked and a passion for pursuing them. This twofold driving power of insight Bohm is also willing to describe in older, more traditional terms: clarity and passion, mind and heart; but mind and heart concentrated, focused, and fused. Insight itself is this fusion, an ‘active intelligence’ beyond any of the energies that can be defined and grasped by ordinary thought and emotion.
It is in this sense that we have used insight and imagination interchangeably, and will continue to do so, to speak of the active participation of the knowing mind in the known. Both are ways of talking about the source in our knowledge of new meaning and new understanding.” Sloan p.148 Insight-Imagination
“In fact consciousness of being a separate, self-contained individual, rather than being immersed and sustained in the communal and the world-whole, would have been experienced in a loss of meaning and reality – a pulling away from the source of things. But the emergence of a sharpened sense of self-identity can be seen as just such a contraction of consciousness from an immersion in the whole to a point of heightened concentration in the individual. ” Sloan p.152 Insight-Imagination
“In our atomistic individualism and mechanistic manipulation of nature we seem to be past the point of diminishing returns, approaching, some would argue, the brink of no return. Sloan, p.153 Insight-Imagination
Visions of society composed of agglomerations of atomistic individuals lend themselves to systematic collectivisation and the denial of individual rights for the sake of an abstract totality (a totalitarianism). What is initially greeted as a ‘liberation of the parts’ leads to the reassertion of a false wholeness in which intrinsic meaning and essential freedom are both sacrificed.” Sloan p.153 Insight-Imagination
Inspiration:
I began to write poetry in 1963, craft-ridden, but compulsively attracted to those guardians of technique like the water-diviner and the untutored musician, (wo)men whose wrists and fingers receive and uncode energies into meanings. To learn their ease and grace in the half-way station between the cellars of self and the courtyards of the world around them has been and will be my study so long as I continue to write.
Seamus Heaney p101 Corgi Modern Poets in Focus No 2 Ed Jeremy Robson 1971
SEE article at http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1728943,00.html
Integrity/integration:
All elements of the model are seen as having to be, or working towards, integration e.g. Wise and Willing Action through loving and Knowing’ is a notion of inner integrity. The answers provided for the criticisms of education e.g.
Neil Postman: “There is no longer any principle that unifies the school curriculum and furnishes it with meaning.”
John Goodlad: “What students are asked to relate to in school [is] increasingly artificial, cut off from the human experiences subject matter is supposed to reflect.”
Harlan Cleveland: “It is a well-know scandal that our whole educational system is geared more to categorizing and analyzing patches of knowledge that to threading them together.”
Robert Stevens: “We have lost sight of our responsibility for synthesizing learning.”
themselves have to contribute to the integrity of the whole, as well as to their own ‘internal’ integrity.
Intelligence;
Within this model we find Gardner’s (1983) view of multiple intelligences useful. He argues for 6 forms of intelligence: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic and personal intelligence.
Intention/al/ity: SEE WILL
“The more significant aspect of intention is its relation to meaning ……
…. The voluntaristic aspects of the experience lie in the fact that already the mind is turned toward an object which has a certain import and meaning for us.
…. (‘tend’ refers to movement toward something + we tend to our affairs)…..our meanings are never purely ‘intellectual’ or our acts purely the results of pushes from the past; but in both we are moving toward something.
Thus, when Husserl says, “Meaning is intention of the mind,” he includes both the meaning and the act, the movement toward something
Intentionality is what gives experience meaning and it begins as an epistemology, a way of knowing reality. Understanding itself is then constitutive of its world.
Interiority:
In teaching basically good children, in a good Roman Catholic school, I became aware that they didn’t have a good sense, or articulative sense, of the interior self (heart-mind, consciousness). My solution was to write the first chapter of a story about a boy fishing and the thoughts that were passing trough his mind as he watched the river flow by. I then asked then to critique my chapter and to write their own second chapter (I did the same). From here we preceded to write an extended story and poetry and to explore the nature of heart-mind, consciousness, reflection, the implicit in story writing etc.
Interpersonal:
The Interpersonal refers to the domain of an individual’s relationships and interactions with others. In this 3 domain model the Interpersonal Domain, the other two being the Intrapersonal Domain and the Domain of Teaching & Learning, is seen as The Wider Web of Interpersonal Contexts & Resources that are potentially or actually available to the teacher and that actually or potentially are part of their ‘shared universe’. As such this domain is not confined to actually human relationships since the wider contexts can include other potential resources.
Gardner H 1983 in Frames of Mind: the theory of multiple Intelligences Fontana Press London groups personal and interpersonal in his category of ‘The Personal Intelligences’. The personal is dealt with as the ‘intrapersonal’. He sees the Intrapersonal and the interpersonal as the two focuses for thought in the whole of the 20thC. He sees this in relation to the two views of self represented in Freud, who was preoccupied with the individual’s self-knowledge, and in William James, and the social psychologists who followed him, whose concern was with the individual’s relationship with the outside community (p.239). The intrapersonal is concerned with internal aspects of a person, the capacity to access one’s own feeling life. Gardner (p. 240) the capacity to effect discriminations among these feelings & eventually to label, to enmesh them in symbolic codes, to draw upon them as a means of understanding and guiding one’s behaviour.
With the interpersonal Gardner (p.240) sees the core capacity as the ability to notice and make distinctions among other individuals and, in particular, among their moods, temperaments, motivations and intentions.
Being able to read, balance and nurture the intrapersonal and interpersonal domains is seen as a core skill for teachers in this model.
Gardner 1983 p 243 uses the term sense of self to refer to the balance struck by every individual – and every culture – between the promptings of ‘inner feelings’ and the pressures of ‘other persons’. He (p.242) includes personal intelligences as a type because most societies place tremendous importance on them, hey have an identifiable core, a characteristic development, a number of specifiable end-states, , evidence for neurological representation and for patterns of breakdown plus some evidence of evolutionary development and for exceptional individuals. Lastly in his list of criteria he says p243:
while one does not ordinarily think of forms of personal knowledge as being encoded in public symbol systems, I deem symbolization to be of the essence in the personal intelligences. Without a symbolic code supplied by the culture, the individual is confronted with only his most elementary and unorganized discrimination of feelings: but armed with such a scheme of interpretation, he has the potential to make sense of the full range of experiences which he and others in his community can undergo. In addition, it seems legitimate to construe rituals, religious codes, mythic and totemic systems as symbolic codes that capture and convey crucial aspects of personal intelligence.
Intrapersonal: SEE Interpersonal
The Intrapersonal refers to the inner world of the individual. Her or his consciousness, feelings and thought and how feelings and thought, and all the other dynamics of the ‘inner world’ might affect each other.
Intuition:
Intuition: immediate apprehension by the mind without reasoning; immediate insight
Concise Oxford Dictionary
Intuition: {Gk. nohsiV [nóêsis]} Direct, non-inferential awareness of abstract objects or concrete truths. Plato held that intuition is a superior faculty, and Spinoza supposed that intuition is the highest sort of human knowledge.
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme.
a.j. heschel, p.89, who is man?
The insights of genuine intuition are synonymous with wisdom, as Hart indicates;
Wisdom cuts to what is of importance, but not through calculations or shrewdness. The deepest insights, the authentic revelation, the healing vision, often come more directly, as an intuition. Such insight is described as an inner experience or inner knowing to indicate that we intimately embody this knowing within ourselves.
Hart goes onto say;
The sacred traditions suggest various means such as prayer, meditation, service, and contemplation to awaken this inner knowing, but wisdom cannot be trained or acquired directly. We cannot say, “memorize this and you will be wise.” It is brought forth more subtly. But it can be nurtured by our practices and priorities in the classroom.
Hart, Tobin, (2001), Teaching for Wisdom, in Encounter: Education for Meaning and Social Justice Vol. 14 (2): 3-16
In SunWALK we take the view that wisdom cannot be trained for, or implanted, but the duty of education is to proceed in such a way as to maximise the chances of wisdom being realized.
Wisdom we would say is innate and education that dumbs down children simply prevents its realization.
Intuition, in philosophy, a form of knowledge or of cognition independent of experience or reason. The intuitive faculty and intuitive knowledge are generally regarded as inherent qualities of the mind. The term intuition has been used in different, sometimes opposing, senses by various writers and cannot be defined except with reference to its meaning in the writings of an individual philosopher. The concept of intuition apparently arose from two sources: the mathematical idea of an axiom (a self-evident proposition that requires no proof) and the mystical idea of revelation (truth that surpasses the power of the intellect).
Intuition was important in Greek philosophy, particularly in the thinking of such philosophers as Pythagoras and his followers, who were trained in mathematics. The concept also had great significance in much of Christian philosophy as one of the basic ways in which a person could know God. The philosophers who relied most on the idea of intuition were Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and Henri Bergson.
In Spinoza’s philosophy, intuition is the highest form of knowledge, surpassing both empirical knowledge derived from the senses and “scientific” knowledge derived from reasoning on the basis of experience. Intuitive knowledge gives an individual the comprehension of an orderly and united universe and permits the mind to be a part of the Infinite Being.
Kant regarded intuition as the portion of a perception that is supplied by the mind itself. He divided perceptions, or “phenomena”, into two parts: the sensation caused by the external object perceived; and the “form”, or the understanding of the perception in the mind, which results from intuition. Such apprehension as space and time are types of pure intuition, or Anschauung.
Bergson contrasted instinct with intelligence and regarded intuition as the purest form of instinct. Intelligence, he believed, was adequate for the consideration of material things but could not deal with the fundamental nature of life or thought. He defined intuition as “instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely”. Intelligence, on the other hand, can only analyze, and the function of analysis is to produce what is relative in an object, rather than what is absolute, or individual. Only by intuition, Bergson declared, can the absolute be comprehended.
Some ethical philosophers, among them Spinoza, have been called intuitionists or intuitionalists because of their belief that a sense of moral values is intuitive and immediate. This view contrasts with that of the empiricists, who hold that moral values result from human experience alone, and that of the rationalists, who believe that moral values are determined solely by reason. Encarta Encyclopaedia
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, the rational mind a faithful servant. It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine.” Albert Einstein (quoted in Righting the Educational Conveyor Belt Michael Grinder pub metamorphous press Portland US 1991)
The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition.
Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation
Noddings
Kant also referred to intuition although he called it reason. He argued that we know in 3 diff ways: 1) sensibility-sense experience; 2) understanding – conceptual and scientific intelligence; and 3) reason which intuits transcendent ideas. these categories parallel knowledge within the transmission (sensibility), transaction (understanding), and transformation (reason) frameworks
Intuition is direct knowing. in contrast, linear thinking involves a sequential, observable process. Noddings and Shore (1984) characterise intuition as “seeing without glasses, hearing without filters, touching with an ungloved hand. The immediate character of intuition does not imply accuracy, rightness, or moral goodness. It does imply commitment and clarity .”(p57-59) In the intuitive mode there is no mediator. Noddings and shore derive there view of intuition from Kant and Schopenhauer. From Kant comes the view of intuition as direct knowing and from S comes the idea that intuition is linked to the will. For Noddings and Shore the will is similar to what I (Miller) have referred to as the Self or Centre. The will directs intuition and “subordinates analytic and algorithmic activity to its needs, quieting the continual humming on the internal logic machine.” Miller John P p.74
In these (intuitive) moments I know. But my knowing is not enough. I must struggle to comprehend what I know. My intuitive knowledge must be expressed in order to be communicated. Herron E (1976)
“Sometimes you learn what you already know.” Six year old boy when asked what you learn when doing Philosophy for Children.
Another reason for an intuitive pedagogy is the research by Jerome Singer (1976) which suggests that the risks of an undeveloped imagination include “delinquency, violence, overeating and the use of dangerous drugs” (p32). According to Singer’s research, this tendency appears early in children who are impulsive, who are excessively dependent, and who lack a developed inner life……These studies indicate that those individuals with an underdeveloped inner life seem to be more vulnerable to external stimuli. Thus, a developed inner life connected to intuition and imagination can be a source of autonomy.
Miller John P p.77
54 Weil (1972) suggests that intuitive consciousness or non-linear consciousness is “an innate, normal drive, analogous to hunger or the sexual drive.”
Miller John P p.77/78
55 There are several ways in which we can build intuition into our pedagogy e.g. visualisation (can be seen as a particular type of meditation where the person uses a set of images in either a directed or undirected way) or through the use of metaphor. Concerning role-taking in metaphoric thinking Gordon (1966) identified four levels; 1) person merely describes an object by drawing out the obvious similarities between the two objects or ideas 2) the person describes the emotions that arise from identifying the similarities 3) the student makes an empathic identification with a living thing 4) involves empathic identification with a non-living object.
Miller John P p.83
MAIN SITE
