CES Fall Forum 2015/ EdCampCES

What can Whole Child Education bring to the CES 10 Common Principles? We all want our students to succeed. But shouldn’t success include more than grasping basic skills and prescribed content? Why shouldn’t it include becoming mature, caring individuals who can pull learning from life? To the extent that we narrow the purpose of schooling to what can be measured, we fail to engage and acknowledge those sides of children that would one day make us want to have them as friends, partners, or fellow citizens. We also increase the likelihood that they will be bored, question the value of school, or even drop out. Instead of starting with the questions “How do we prepare kids to compete in the 21st century global marketplace?” or “What will insure that graduates all have command of basic skills?” suppose we start by asking what qualities we want to encourage in children as they grow toward adulthood and become active, critical participants in a democracy.

To develop his whole child approach and his book called Educating for Human Greatness, Lynn Stoddard surveyed parents for the qualities they felt an education should seek to develop in their children. They include: initiative, integrity, imagination, an inquiring mind, self-knowledge, interpersonal skills, and the ability to feel and recognize truth on different levels. Alternative approaches, of which this is only one, aim for more than job readiness or getting into a good college. Drawing on the best holistic approaches and recognizing that children have multiple intelligences, Educate the Whole Child identifies six elements that together can make learning memorable, can fully engage the child.

They are:
• cognitive-intellectual activity, associated with the left brain
• creative-intuitive activity (the arts), associated with the right brain
• structured physical movement and unstructured, self-directed play
• handwork, making things that are useful
• engagement with nature and community.
• meaningful relationships that build respect, tolerance and understanding

These Whole Child elements can complement the great work of our CES Colleagues over the last 31 years, particularly the principles of Personalization and A Tone of Decency and Trust.