Where is Soul in Education?

BY MAGGIE DENT (texto en inglés)

“Without soul education is bland, disconnected and can create students that appear
“dead” in our classrooms.
Essentially holistic education recognises that the whole child needs to be encouraged to grow through learning in caring and supportive environments. Educators the world over recognise we all learn differently and have different ways of processing information and transferring it into knowledge or wisdom.
Integrated learning allows the curriculum to flow just as life and living does.
All learning is now known to be influenced by emotions and happy kids learn best.
Essentially classroom teachers know what can improve schooling, and yet politicians make the decisions based on intellectual and fiscal directives!
So what does “soul of education” mean? How does it work? Where is it happening?
Essentially soul attends the recognising, valuing, encouraging and nurturing of the non-academic or the non competitive qualities in education. This means the commitment to being respectful of diversity in our schools–colour, age, gender or culture. This means building connectedness between and within all those who attend a school through the building of genuine relationships between and among all who share in this amazing journey called education. This means celebrating the ancient ways of actualization or personal growth through songs, dance, art, story telling, poetry and ritual. This means the equal valuing of the vocational programs.
It means making learning fun and valuing the role of laughter and lightness in building emotional competency and safety and interpersonal bondedness in groups. It means helping children learn how to think and how to use their own minds to interpret the world and to find that elusive thing we all search, MEANING.
Finally it means that parents and teachers work together with the same agendas, the same intentions and the same positive commitment to “bring forth the greatness within each child.”
Maybe the education of our children will continue to rely on those amazing teachers who turn up everyday with passion for their career, their students and the schooling system.
Daily they give hope to kids and their parents that what matters most is the gift of life. They make a positive difference everyday and thankfully, they make our world a better place to be”.

(este texto está extraído de la página web de Maggie Dent a la que se puede acceder desde este blog a través del link correspondiente)
Maggie Dent
Author, educational consultant,
resilience specialist.
www.esteemplus.com
Dunsborough Western Australia.