Module 16: Knowing, Knowledge and the Unknowable
Module description:
In relation to a working definition of the process of holistic development this module looks at the nature of, and use of, the idea of ‘knowing, knowledge and the unknowable’ by the teacher, or other practitioner, so as to encourage learning, professional development and/or personal growth.
” Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
” Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
(Someone also added, “where is the information we have lost in data?”)
T.S. Eliot Choruses from `The Rock’
“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Everyone enacts theory, performs it, embodies it, debates it, contests it, as social
practice, on a daily basis in the ways in which they read and write,
speak and listen, see and look, behave and live. Few,
however, are helped to have any explicit
knowledge or understanding of what it is that they
are doing [. . .]. It is my contention that it is not
enough for teachers in the present situation to never know
completely what they are doing, at least
with respect to theory. Somehow
one needs a map, something that will make the system legible [. . .].
Terry Threadgold, The Teaching of English
“Holistic knowing is deep self-knowlege that engages the person morally and spiritually with the life around oneself.”
Ron Miller in writing about Parker Palmer’s To Know as We are Known
http://www.infed.org/biblio/holisticeducation.htm
Introductory reading/s to get started:
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/intro/wayknow.html
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-JOCP/jc26597.htm
on knowledge
“An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but it is dispersed and unorganised. We need a sort of mental clearing house: a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared.”
- H.G. Wells in “The Brain: Organization of the Modern World”, 1940.
A sense of the field can be obtained from Roger Stack’s ‘Map’ of Holistic Education see also his blog
