Hole-Whole-Holy

One of the catchwords in progressive education is cultivating the “whole” child. It is a way to acknowledge that traditional education is too narrow if limited to the 3R’s plus football. When Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences came forth in the 1980’s, it affirmed the intuition that there are many ways to be intelligent and school would do well to cultivate them all. 

 

At the school I had the grand pleasure of working at for almost half-a-century, indeed, we did. Kids rarely went through a day without calling forth their musical, visual-spatial, kinesthetic, linguistic, mathematical intelligences, social-emotional, intrapersonal skills, not only in the classes that highlighted them—Music, Art, P.E., Language Arts, Math and Science, morning circle—but in the way each one was woven into the other. 

 

Music, for example, included the visual-spatial designs of folk dances and movement choreography, the kinesthetics of dance and instrumental technique, the use of speech pieces, chants, rhymes, poetry and song, the inherit mathematical structures of every aspect of music—4/4 time, quart and eighth notes, 60 beats per second of Adagio tempo and 120 of Allegro, perfect 5ths, major 3rds, whole and half steps, I, IV and V chords, 440 =A tuning and yet more. The social-emotional demands of playing in an ensemble, dancing in a circle, playing clapping games with partners where musical harmony depends upon social harmony, make the inspired music class one of the strongest trainings in interpersonal connection. The opportunity to stand out and express one’s unique thoughts and feelings through solos, to feel so many nuanced shades of feeling acknowledged and expressed by diverse musical styles, cultures and composers, is a fine training ground for intrapersonal awareness and intelligence. You get the idea.

 

Wholeness is a good thing. Not only cultivating the vast possibilities of the human mind, body, heart and spirit, but feeling how they all are woven together, holding hands in the dancing circle of our capacity for beauty and communion. 

 

These thoughts about wholeness were sparked from Michael Meade’s Thanksgiving post about gratitude: 

 

In a world of radical changes, extreme beliefs and lost hopes we have to find moments of wholeness that can keep our hears open and ease our minds. The need to be touched by grace and feel the underlying holiness of life is at the root of many healing traditions as “to heal” means to “make whole again.”

 

So when we take seriously the idea of nurturing the whole child, school becomes a place of healing, a holy place born from practice, not dogma. We have fallen into a hole or ostrich-like, have buried our head in one, a place where we feel stuck, in the dark, unable to move, with limited options.That’s the signal to move from hole to whole to holy.

 

Meade goes on to say that “Practices of giving thanks are intended to bring a sense of wholeness that often goes missing in the world.”  In another etymological playground, gratitude is connected to grace and gracious. 

 

So just this short reflection on Thanksgiving Day, a renewal of vows to restore wholeness in all places—our own lives, our country, our schools— and bring genuine gratitude and grace into our local and national conversations.

 

Please pass the potatoes.