Module 18: Wisdom as an essential quality in Holistic Education
“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”
H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal BBC Newsnight 9th Feb 2006
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 ‘wisdom’ by the teacher, or other practitioner, so as to encourage learning, professional development and/or personal growth.
Labouvie-Vief (1990p. 52/53) sees wisdom as ‘smooth and relatively balanced dialogue between’ ‘objective’ processes such as cognition and intelligence and ‘subjective’ ones such as emotions and interpersonal processes. Her own path came to see Piaget and others as having an ‘objective bias’. ‘Bias’ seems to me to be too weak a term for what is, in the case of most of the theorists she is thinking of, an almost exclusively cognitive developmental approach. However is she showing herself to be trapped in the very paradigm that she wants to displace, when she refer to her own work, in her paper’s title as ‘integrated thought’. And she refers to personhood as ‘mind’, for example where she objects that;
Many recent writings suggest…that theories of cognition and intelligence…are based on the assumption of the primacy of objective forms of knowing provide an incomplete and possibly distorted picture of the human mind.
Introductory reading/s to get started:
http://www.cop.com/tw-ch01.html
This comment about Educating for Wisdom and Compassion by John P Miller is very interesting
“In Educating for Wisdom and Compassion: Creating Conditions for Timeless Learning, John Miller creates the category of timeless learning and describes its qualities and aspects. For someone new to this perspective, the book provides an enormously rich introduction to these insights and offers ready access to a set of detailed and wide ranging resources, including many activities the reader can experience at once. For those who are more knowledgeable, the book offers an opportunity for significant deepening of their understanding about the value and enactment of timeless learning. Educating for Wisdom and Compassion: Creating Conditions for Timeless Learning is clear and direct. It’s a book that provokes reflection, engagement, and a deeper vision.” – David Marshak , Professor of Education, Seattle University
RP Can there be such a category as ‘timeless learning’? Is what is t and how does it function?
A sense of the field can be obtained from Roger Stack’s ‘Map’ of Holistic Education see also his blog
