Holistic Approach to Education

We all sat listening to the deliberations of a seminar-cum-workshop, we teachers. The resource person was talking on Quality Control Management in schools. He discussed point-wise on goodness, confidence building through encouragement, the importance of reading and aggressive innovation etc. According to him, goodness comprises three things:

1.Purity of mind, heart and spirit
2.Being value based
3.Remaining healthy and fit

Besides this, his eight fold path resembling The Buddha’s, included exalted ideas like giving the children a dream, making each child believe that he or she was outstanding, promoting holistic development, reading a lot of books, assessing ourselves etc which are definitely practical and fairly rational instruments of holistic teaching and quality improvement. At the end of the talk a questionnaire was asked to be filled which most of the teachers would find themselves insufficient to complete because they were mostly queries on subjective self-assessment and a partially evolved consciousness would shrink away from such questions. A few questions were asked which were not of very serious nature, yet thought provoking. But some fundamental questions bothered my mind.
In the beginning of his talk the speaker went back to the past and narrated the experiences of his school days; how once he left his box of marbles behind at the bus stop and when he realized it after the bus has covered a certain distance, he didn’t think twice before getting down and walking back to his bus stop, picking up the marbles and walking all the distance to school again. Going back home and seeking the help of the parents to be taken to school never occurred to him. He had reached school on the third period that day, but that was the most natural thing for him to do. He regretted that today’s children are growing up in a way that is quite discouraging. They shy away from physical labour, and are being made useless by relentless pampering of the parents.

Value-based and quality teaching is highly desirable and our children should be given a dream. But the question is how to make these children dream? Teachers are supposed to be good mentors, the light bearers. But the forces working in the educational sector are so contradictory that sometimes they struggle to see a ray of light. It is a period of transition which has no end. But we will have to continue with the striving, efforts and initiatives. The ultimate truth is that experience is the best teacher. Our children may waver, stumble, falter and fall, but they will also learn to get up and move forward. That is how the entire human history has been formed.