Holistic Education

Vision 2030

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 Why Holistic Education - from ‘Small is Beautiful’
by E.F.Schumacher
“It is easy enough to see that all through our lives we are faced with the task of
reconciling opposites which, in logical thought, cannot be reconciled.”

“How can one reconcile the demands of freedom and discipline in education?
Countless mothers and teachers, in fact, do it, but no-one can write down a
solution. They do it by bringing into the situation a force that belongs to a
higher level where opposites are transcended – the power of love.”

“G.N.M Tyrell has put forward the terms ‘divergent’ and ‘convergent’ to
distinguish problems which cannot be solved by logical reasoning from those
which can... Convergent problems are man’s most useful invention; they do
not, as such, exist in reality, but are created by a process of abstraction. When
they have been solved, the solution can be written down and passed onto
others, who can apply it without needing to reproduce the mental effort
necessary to find it... Divergent problems, as it were, force man to strain
himself to a level above himself; they demand, and thus provide the supply of,
forces from a higher level, thus bringing love, beauty, goodness and truth into
our lives. It is only with the help of these higher forces that the opposites can
be reconciled in the living situation.
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 Why Holistic Education (continued) - from ‘Small is Beautiful’
by E.F.Schumacher

“The physical sciences and mathematics (as practiced today) are concerned
exclusively with convergent problems. That is why they can progress
cumulatively, and each generation can begin just where their forbears left off.
The price, however, is a heavy one. Dealing exclusively with convergent
problems does not lead into life but away from it.”

“All divergent problems can be turned into convergent problems by a process

of ‘reduction’. The result, however, is the loss of all higher forces to ennoble
human life, and the degradation not only of the emotional part of our nature,
but also, … of our intellect and moral character. The signs are everywhere
visible today.”

“The true problem of living – in politics, economics, education, marriage etc. –

are always problems of overcoming or reconciling opposites. They are
divergent problems and have no solution in the ordinary sense of the word.
They demand of man not merely the employment of reasoning powers but the
commitment of his WHOLE personality.”

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 Holistic Education – The Mandate

 The Holistic Education Program seeks to provide an induction into a

balanced, inclusive and compassionate worldview to its recipients, that will
serve a cause including but beyond the personal self.

 The Curriculum will distil the best of Eastern and Western heritage,
wisdom and experiential learning, contextualized for and updated with the
21st century events and state of the world.

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 What is Holistic Education

Education, in the larger sense of the term is about building human

character and capabilities that enable the realization of the full
potential of ourselves and our civilization. Holistic Education is that
which serves the ‘Whole Personality’ of the student, which includes:
 The Body, or Physical Faculty

 The Mind, or Intellectual Faculty

 The Heart-Soul, or Spiritual Faculty

While education in the sense above applies to people of all ages and
walks of life, this presentation focuses on the ‘primary education’ as
applies to ‘first time’ recipients.

http://www.pathsoflearning.net/articles_Holistic_Ed_Philosophy.pdf

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 Holistic Education – Structural Components

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 An examination of the ‘As Is’: Body Inputs

The Body Inputs offered today are mainly in the sports and physical
exercise arena. There is virtually no care and attention on quality of
food inputs. Parents and teachers, afflicted by the consumerist culture
as they are, unfortunately know no better. The practices of ‘Subtle’
Body practices such as Yoga, Pranayama, or Tai-chi, which restore
inner energy balance, are virtually unknown to most children, mainly
because their elders do not practice themselves. The Body-Mind
connection is at best weakly felt, and at worst unknown.
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 An examination of the ‘As Is’: Mind Inputs

The Mind Inputs in contemporary education are reasonably

sophisticated and effective, though mostly for the Left Brain.
Technology has helped improve both content and dissemination
processes on a continuous basis. The only constraints in the Mind
Input domain will be the quality of parental involvement in the
children’s formative phase, the quality of available teachers, and a
moral compass that determines what is the Right Thing to do.

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 An examination of the ‘As Is’: Heart Inputs

The Heart / Soul Inputs are virtually non-existent in our

educational system. Except a few curricular items such as Art,
Crafts and Literature, the overwhelming focus is on the Left Brain,
more so because of future career option correlations. As far as
values and wisdom inputs go, it is not difficult to see that the
child’s chances of receiving anything meaningful here is directly
linked to the ‘value’ index of the society he grows up in. In the
absence of emotional maturity and awareness, analytical
intelligence is highly prone to be misguided.

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 ‘As Is’ Conclusions

 Inordinate focus on the ‘Left Brain’ aspect of Mind.

 Standalone educational inputs can only go so far, unless
complemented by a shift in the nature of parents, teachers and
fellow students. In other words, the overall culture evolves through
the dynamic interplay of the individual and the collective.
 While body, mind and heart inputs have a lot of individual merit, it
is only as a combination of ‘Whole Personality’ that they multiply in
effectiveness.

Body
Mind
Collective
Individual Heart
‘Cultural’
Intent
Climate

Whole Personality

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 From ‘As-is’ to ‘To-Be’

One cannot change an existing system by

fighting it; one must create a new system
that makes the old system obsolete.

~ Buckminster Fuller

Only when a better model is available will

a paradigm shift occur.

~ Thomas Kuhn

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 The ‘To Be’ Holistic Education System (HES) – A formulation

Conceive of the HES both as a noun and a verb, each with three aspects or
dimensions:
 As a noun, the three dimensions are: the impersonal or ‘It’, the inter-
personal or ‘We’, and the personal or ‘I’. The impersonal ‘It’ comprises
technical aspects such as effectiveness and efficiency of the HES – the
objective reality out there. The interpersonal ‘We’ realm comprises relational
aspects such as trust and solidarity – the culture of the HES which is an
inter-subjective thing. The personal ‘I’ realm comprises psychological aspects
such as happiness and fulfillment of each stakeholder – the subjective
domain within the student, the parent and the teacher.
 As a verb, the three dimensions are: the ‘having’ or results dimension, the
‘doing’ or process dimension, and the ‘being’ or infrastructure dimension.
Achieving or having specific results such as marks or performance requires
behaving or doing things in a certain way that produces such results, and
behaving in such ways requires being the type of person capable of such
behavior or action. Thus, the highest leverage comes from becoming the
person or organization capable of behaving in the way that produces
results.

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 a 3x3 superposition of
HES Architecture – a 3x3 superposition of the Noun and Verb
the Noun and Verb

Noun
Verb

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 The ‘It’ Platform (Entity)

Two options of structuring the entity to build and run HES:

 A Government owned enterprise which draws upon the world’s

best talent to run the show (Singapore model)

 A PPP venture that is jointly owned and managed, and draws upon

• The Government for Hard Infrastructure Provisioning, umbrella

sponsorship and influence resources for socio-economic facilitation
• The Private enterprise for ‘Business Management’ of the entity with
qualified goals of ‘Return’ and Output accountability

 The HES board will draw upon the world’s wisdom and expertise in an
open, non-proprietary manner.
 The HES will cater to three key stakeholder bases of the educational system,
each of which are incomplete without the other two: students, parents and
teachers, all in interaction with the societal body.
 The HES will have both a physical and virtual presence in its earmarked
domain of influence, which will eventually be borderless.

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 The ‘It’ Platform (HES organizational structure)

HES BOARD

STAKEHOLDER INFRA
FACULTY
RELATIONSHIPS MANAGEMENT

See next ・ Outcome metrics for ・ Facilities

slide for the ・ IT Platform
detailed ‘I’ and ‘WE’ columns
・ HR
structure and ・ Admissions
mandate ・ Finance
・ Ongoing contact
・ Legal
management
・ Compliance
・ Evangelization & media
・ Academic relationships

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 The ‘It’ Platform (Delivery organization)

Each Faculty Unit will

be responsible for:
PARENT FOCUSED
1. Curriculum design for
FACULTY

FACULTY

FACULTY
a. Child
b. Teacher
c. Parent

2. Teaching
CHILD FOCUSED
3. Learning outcomes

HEART
MIND
BODY

4. Global benchmark
management

TEACHER FOCUSED 5. Continuous evolution of

both curricular product
and process
(points 1 and 2)

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 The ‘It’ Process
 Learning materials (Content) will be prepared and designed
leveraging sources of similarly inspired initiatives, though not
necessarily limited to them:
• Rudolf Steiner’s Waldorf Education System,
• A. S. Neill’s Summerhill Model,
• Dee Dickinson’s Whole System Learning / New Horizons,
• The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-based Education.
 The following processes will be defined for each recipient segment
(child, teacher, student) with room for mass customization
• Instruction and evaluation,
• Ongoing connection and mentorship.

 These processes will leverage both the physical and digital medium
to optimize cost, reach, time and effectiveness.
http://bit.ly/NHYAUu

 The processes will embrace both theory, practice and application

components to make for holistic learning and assimilation.
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 The ‘It’ Product

 The HES offering will be positioned as a ‘social upliftment service’ and will
solicit the active participation and contribution from various segments of
society.

 A multi-tiered pricing policy will be adopted, so that recipients pay as per

their capacity to pay, subject to some overall guidelines.

 A separate offering will be designed for the socially marginalized who have
missed out on primary education. This offering will be made available to
‘first time recipient’ adults in a compressed form.

 It is envisaged that the HES offering can be offered both as

• A standalone version owned by HES,
• Affiliate versions where HES works with existing schools to
complement and enrich their current curricular structures,
• Parents and teachers will have the opportunity of receiving ‘part time’
weekend-based curricular packages.

 Once the content and curricular structures and processes become mature, a
‘Franchise’ model can be adopted for reach and scalability.

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 Evolving Education

 The Product, Process and Platform will all be dynamically

evolutionary rather than statically bound in rule-set and
prescriptive structure.

 The entire ‘It’ constitution will evolve with the new patterns of
human thinking in the 21st century:
• The transition from mechanical predictability to inter-relational flux of
living systems;
• The philosophical transition from modernism to post-modernism and
beyond;
• The transition from disciplinary to multi-, inter-, post- and trans-
disciplinary;
• The emergence of new rational discourses on spirituality not limited by
religious doctrine;
• The transition from studying the past to an awareness of the value of
foresight and futures thinking, in parallel, paradoxically with the
deconstruction of the modernist, linear narrative of time.

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 The ‘I’ and ‘We’ Outcome Measures

 ‘I’ Column: Multi-intelligence quotient of all recipients:

• Linguistic
Think SAT – Classic IQ
• Logical-mathematical
• Musical
• Bodily- kinesthetic
• Spatial
• Interpersonal
Emotional Intelligence
• Intra-personal

 ‘WE’ Column: Social GNH (Gross National Happiness) metrics:

• Domestic violence
• Divorces
• Crime
• Public health (mental and physical)
• Delinquency and addictions

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 Next Steps

 Determine a ‘Bounded Space’ for piloting the HES initiative. This

could be a state in the country, with its autonomous Education
Ministry.

 Find an ‘executive sponsor’ for the HES initiative in that Bounded

Space.

 Constitute a management task force for the HES initiative, including

academicians, education scientists, political sponsors, mind-body
practitioners, systems theorists, nutritionists, behavioural scientists,
child developmental psychologists, business management
professionals.

 Create a Strategic ‘Plan’ with a twenty-year horizon, where ‘return’

is measured both in financial and non-financial terms.

 Kick-off the HES initiative.

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What changes our planet is consciousness.
What creates consciousness is education.

[email protected] , +91 9051044410

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