W. Keith Bookwalter holds a Ph.D. in human development with specialization in cognitive development and education from The Union Institute, Cincinnati; an M.S. in educational administration with specialization in the Anisa Model of Education from National University, San Diego; and a B.S. in secondary education with specialization in English and social psychology from Ohio State University, Columbus. At Marymount School in Barranquilla, Colombia he is the Assistant Director in Charge of Special Projects and the Director of the "Sciencing" Center for the Development of Logical Thinking. His research interests include the development of concrete operational structures in children, holistic approaches to education and personal transformation, community development, and Bahá'í studies. (He may be contacted via e-mail at wmkeith@metrotel.net.co.)

 

DESCRIPTION AND COMPONENTS

THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF WES

THE RELIGIOUS, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS OF WES .

RELIGIOUS/ SPIRITUAL NOTIONS UNDERGIRDING WES

PRINCIPLES OF PROCESS PHILOSOPHY WHICH UNDERPIN WES .

SCIENTIFIC TENETS WHICH GUIDE THE DEVELOPMENT OF WES

THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING

THE THEORY OF CURRICULUM

THE THEORIES OF TEACHING, ADMINISTRATION

AND INSTITUTION-COMMUNITY RELATIONS, AND EVALUATION

FIELD-TESTING OF ANISA/WES

A SAMPLING OF LEARNING SCENARIOS

PROGRAMS IN HARMONY WITH WES

THE FUTURE OF WES

CONCLUSION

Figure 1: Components of the Wholistic Educational System

Figure 2: Components of the Anisa Model of Education

Figure 3: WES--Curriculum Summary Chart

Figure 4: The Anisa Process and Content Curriculum: Summary Chart

Figure 5: Hierarchical Ordering of the Environments

Figure 6: Hierarchical Ordering of the Curricular Strands

THE WHOLISTIC EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

This paper presents an overview of The Wholistic Educational System (WES). The background sections set forth a description of the system, its components, and the history of its development. This is followed by an exposition of the religious, philosophical and scientific foundations of WES. The theory of development and learning, the king-pin theory of the system, is then delineated and overviews of the theories of curriculum and teaching which were derived from it are presented. Next, the theory of administration and institution-community relations and the theory of evaluation are discussed briefly. A sample of learning scenarios is then sketched and several educational programs which are in harmony with WES are briefly mentioned. Finally, the future of WES is considered.

I would go so far as to say that the lack of a common frame of reference and the absence of any unifying concepts and principles, is now, if not the world's major disease, at least its major serious symptom.

--Julian Huxley, UNESCO's first director general

`The Wholistic Educational System is a comprehensive, systemic, research-based^a Practitioners who contributed to the development of the Anisa Model include the many teachers at the various implementations sites in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Ohio, California, Canada, Honduras, and Colombia; especially Irene Hartley, AbD, who was the first teacher to field the model, the first to become a state-certified Anisa curriculum specialist, the first to become the directress of an Anisa laboratory/demonstration school at National University, California, and one of the staff members who continued to implement and develop the Model after the passing of its founder, Professor Daniel C. Jordan. approach to education which can be characterized as being religious in its inspiration, organismic in its philosophic orientation, and scientific in its method. Drawing upon the three corresponding bodies of knowledge and human experience--religion, philosophy, and science--a theory of development and learning was derived which posits the interdependence of the actualization of human potentiality and the acquisition of knowledge. From this theory three others were derived: a theory of curriculum, a theory of teaching, and a theory of administration and institution-community relations. From these three theories practical applications were generated. A fifth theory--the theory of evaluation completes the educational system and assures that inductive knowledge gained from praxis and research will continually renew all of the constituent components of the System. (Figure 1 shows the relationship of these various components of the Wholistic Educational System and Figure 2, for purposes of comparison, shows the components of the Anisa Model of Education.)

The Wholistic Educational System represents the author's attempt to recast, elaborate and refine the Anisa Model of Education which was developed by the late Rhodes Scholar, Dr. Daniel C. Jordan, his close colleague Dr. Donald T. Street and their associates during the 1960's under the auspices of the Institute for Research in Human Behavior at Indiana State University and during the 1970's as the principal purpose of The Center for the Study of Human Potential at the School of Education, University of Massachusetts, Amherst under the auspices of Dean Dwight Allen. Nearly a million dollars in grants were invested in the research and development of the Anisa Model (Jordan, 22). During the late 1970's the Model moved to California where it became the foundation for the School of Education at National University, San Diego. Until 1982 Dr. Streets served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and professor of several education courses. Dr. Jordan served as Dean of the School of Education until his untimely death in 1982 which resulted in the Anisa program being dismantled as a formal endeavor. Since that time a group of former founders, colleagues, and students have continued to develop the Anisa Model at various locations throughout the world and to apply it in their particular fields.^b (For purposes of comparison, see Figure 2: Components of the Anisa Model of Education.)

The Anisa Model; while at the apex of its development in California when it was being considered as an organizing framework by the city school system of Los Angeles, the state school system of Utah, and the Association for a World University; can be considered to have been a developmental approach to education which was one of the finest fruits of the human potential movement. In 1978 Charles, Gast, Servey, and Burnside (12), in their description of a paradigm shift in education from being authoritarian and top-down to being bottom-up in orientation, stated, "For 2,000 years, all standards, purposes, and subject matter of education had been dictated by grand plan, right reason, religious dogma, wisdom of the past, and laws of nature." They described how the insights of Rousseau and Pestalozzi led educators to place the learner at the center of the educational process:

With the belief that man is basically good, education was no longer seen as an instrument to discipline the will, suppress the animal appetites, or save the worthless soul. With the belief that children do not learn like adults, the content, sequence, and approach to subject matter changed. . . . Education could also help put man in control of his own destiny. In short, education was seen to begin at the bottom, based on the natural and social realities of the world. Man and his practical concerns were the new starting points in the educational quest. (13)

In regards to a corresponding paradigm shift in teaching methodology, in 1977 Ragan and Shepherd stated:

The pouring in, the drilling in, and the tricking in of content have all been practiced as methods. The conditioning of, training of, extension of, and reinforcement of have also been practiced as methods. . .

The method or methodology of good teaching is now being viewed as a concomitant element of a good learning environment. . .

We now describe a supportive environment as one in which the learners are actively participating in the definition and manipulation of what is to be learned. (156-57)

Over two hundred years ago Rousseau complained, "The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know, without asking what a child is capable of learning (3)." The writings of Robert Gagné, Carl Rogers, Lawrence Kohlberg, A. H. Maslow, Jean Piaget, Daniel C. Jordan and his associates, and many others carried forward this fundamental concern with the nature of the learner as the starting point of all educational endeavors.^c Unfortunately, because education is a pre-paradigmatic field, its endeavors to become a science have not been successful. Hence, its pendulum swings back and forth between weak attempts to address the unique self of each individual learner and a mass, government-decreed, mechanistic approach in which all students within a narrow age-range are expected to learn the same thing at the same time and in the same way and to the same extent (or suffer the humiliating consequences). It was Jordan and his colleagues who made a conscious effort, through the development of the Anisa Model, to give birth to a fledgling science of education with all of the necessary criteria: a unit of study, first principles, data language, explicit assumptions, testable hypotheses, and the results of testing the hypotheses in the world of actuality (Bondra).

THE RELIGIOUS, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS OF WES

Because the primary unit of study of the Wholistic Educational System is the human being and because, from an organismic point of view, no entity can be understood apart from its context, the entire educational enterprise becomes very much entwined in fundamental questions which have traditionally been considered the concerns of religion, philosophy, and science: What is the nature of the human being? What is the essence of reality? What is the purpose of the universe? What is the destiny of human life on this planet? What are the spiritual, philosophical, and scientific truths which can illumine our understanding of human nature and human development? just to state a few.

The religious principles undergirding WES have been drawn from all of the major religious traditions--the common heritage of the entire human race--such as Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, Native American religious traditions, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and the Bahá'í Faith. WES views the great revealed religions as being hierarchically organized according to the chronological order of their appearance, each one embracing those which have come before while adding to their richness and complexity--like the cardinal nature of numbers in which each successive number contains the previous numbers while adding one to their value. Hence, the greatest source of religious inspiration for WES has been the Bahá'í Faith--the most recent of the revealed religions.

The philosophical foundations of WES draw most heavily from the organismic cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead (1925/1967, 1929/1967, 1929/1978, 1933/1969, 1938/1968)^d, the work of Abraham Maslow, and, to a lesser extent, from that of Henri Bergson and Charles Pierce^e.

Historically religion was the mother of philosophy and philosophy, in turn, was the mother of science, mathematics, and other branches of knowledge. WES utilizes all of the sciences which either illumine human nature or contribute to human health and well-being, e.g., genetics, neurobiology (especially brain research), agriculture, nutrition, medicine, ecology, social-economic development, developmental psychology and many others. Hence, WES's theory of development is informed by the highest wisdom available from theology, the most coherent and comprehensive schemes of general ideas to be found in philosophy, and the latest scientific research.

Because the Wholistic Educational System views education as being an inclusive enterprise which is illumined and guided by religion, philosophy, science, and theories of human development, learning, curriculum, teaching, administration, institution-community relations, and evaluation, the term "system of education," as used by Shoghi Effendi Rabbani (1939), was chosen in lieu of "science of education" as used by Jean Piaget (McKenna, 1976), "model of education" as employed by Jordan and Streets (1973a), or "philosophy or theory of education" as recommended to the author by Robert Brumbaugh (1989). A "system," according to Webster, is defined as "a complete exhibition of essential principles or facts, arranged in a rational dependence or connection; . . . a complex of ideas, principles, etc., forming a coherent whole (863)." Seeing education as a complex system also allows it to be informed by general systems theory (Laszlo, 1987).

The following are the principle religious/ spiritual notions which undergird the Wholistic Educational System and which are ever present in the mind of a WES educator^f:

- There is one Creator Who is referred to by various names and titles.

- The manifold purposes of human life include:

- to prepare one's soul for life beyond death.

In order to create a logically consistent link between religion and WES's process philosophy (summarized below), the statements above need to be viewed from a process perspective which views the nature of reality as the continual actualization of potentiality into actuality (Wheatley, 1994). Reflecting the image of God in one's life, i.e., manifesting His/Her attributes, is a God-given, personal potentiality which is actualized through such processes as the acquisition of knowledge, love, prayer, meditation, and service to humankind. The Kingdom of the Father on earth is a social potentiality. When it is actualized through collective processes and enterprises, divine attributes such as justice, unity, and peace will be reflected in human affairs at all levels of society.

The following principles of process philosophy underpin the Wholistic Educational System^g:

The Wholistic Educational System is scientific in its method and its foundation and draws on the work of Kuhn (1970), Bondra (1980), 'Abdu'l-Bahá (1981, 1982), Bohm (1987), Laszlo (1987), and Wheatley (1994). It upholds the following science-related tenets:

(Due to the close connection between development, learning, and curriculum in WES, for the reader's benefit, the Curriculum Summary Chart of WES (Figure 3) precedes the exposition of the principles of the theory of development and learning. For purposes of comparison, The Anisa Process and Content Curriculum: Summary Table is presented in Figure 4.)

In addition to being informed by religious and philosophical thought, the theory of development and learning of the Wholistic Educational System has drawn on the work of Piaget (1972), Werner, Erikson, Gesell, Epstein, Baldwin, Hunt, Havinghurst, Mussen and Langer, Harris, Buhler, Bonner, Scott, Jordan and Kalinowski (1973), Gardner (1983), and Goleman (1995). As it stands at this point in time, the theory of development and learning of WES upholds the following principles.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to delineate all of the principles underlying WES's theory of curriculum. However, the sources of ideas and research will be presented along with the most fundamental propositions.

The theory of curriculum has drawn on the work of Taba, McDonald, Goodlad, Tyler, Jordan and Streets (1973b); Bahá'u'lláh, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, and Shoghi Effendi (1987), Oliver and Gershman (1989), and Doll (1994). It is coherent with the theory of development as can be gleaned from Figure 3. Curriculum is defined in terms of educational goals as determined by society and the learner^u and what learners do (with or without the assistance of teachers) to achieve them. The over-arching goals of the curriculum (and the aims of education in general) are to enable the person, through a personalized approach which accommodates his/ her uniqueness, to consciously and continuously:

There are six curricular strands or sets of objectives (See Figure 3): (1) process, (2) content, (3) higher-order symbol systems, (4) values/ virtues and their related ideals, (5) higher-order competencies, and (6) the Self. Just as the five environments are related hierarchically (Figure 5) so too are the six strands of the curriculum. Each higher strand builds upon, fuses, and subsumes the lower strands with the Self being the highest level, the embodiment of the sum total of all other curricular strands. (See Figure 6.)

Due to the limited scope of this paper the presentation of all of the principles included in the theories of teaching, administration and institution-community relations, and evaluation is not possible. Suffice it to say that the theory of teaching has drawn on the work of Bruner, Phenix, Broudy, B. Othanel Smith, Woodruff, Gage, Glaser, Streets and Jordan (1973), and Moore (1991) and it is derived from and is coherent with the theory of development and learning. Diagnostic/ prescriptive in approach, the theory defines teaching as the arranging of environments and the guiding of the learner's interaction with them to attain the goals of the curriculum.

The theory of administration has been influenced by the work of Barnard, Follett, Argyris, Walker (1975), Streets and Hershey and Blanchard. It places administrators in the role of "ministers" whose services include the management of the school's accumulated resources (as an expression of immanence) and leading the actualization of the potentiality of students, teachers, parents, and the school as a whole (as an expression of transcendence). Consultation is utilized as the principle decision-making process which seeks to draw input from those persons with expertise in the topic at hand and from those persons who will be most affected by the decision. The theory also specifies the need for administrators to lead the process of working with parents to lessen the disparity between the student's experience at school and the home environment.

The theory of evaluation was developed from the work of Cronbach, Hambelton, Swaminathan, and Bondra (148-235). The role of evaluation in relation to the curriculum and teaching is to relate the degree of goal achievement to particular interactions prescribed, encouraged or permitted. The theory of evaluation emphasizes the importance of not only assessing the students' attainment of both the process and content goals of the curriculum but also the assessment of each component of WES, the related programs which support the components, and the system as a whole.

The predecessor of WES--the Anisa Model of Education--was successfully fielded at several sites in New England during the 1970's (Suffield, Connecticut; Hamden, Maine; and Falls River, Massachusetts to name a few) and was validated as an early childhood program by the U.S. State Department of Education in 1974. During the 1980's and 1990's components of the Model were also implemented at the Laboratory School of the School of Education at National University in San Diego; at the Kapothakaw Education Centre in Morinville, Alberta, Canada; at the Four Worlds Development Project, Faculty of Education, Lethbridge University, Alberta, Canada; at the Mayan School in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; at the International School of San Pedro Sula, Honduras; at the Marymount School in Barranquilla, Colombia; and at The Bilingual School of Santa Marta, Colombia. At present, to the author's knowledge, there are no educational institutions which are explicitly using the Anisa Model or WES as a framework for planning.

All of the following activities were inspired by the author's and his wife's understanding of and application of WES.

Scenario 1: Elementary students enter the "Sciencing" Center for the Development of Logical Thinking and sit on the floor. As names are called each child delightedly chooses one of some seventy, fascinating, hands-on activities such as classification and ordering sets; materials for exploring buoyancy, balance, electricity, and pendulums; and objects for building structures. A teacher circulates amongst the students observing what each child has done; asking questions to diagnose the level of concrete operational thinking in relation to classes, order, number, space, measurement, and time; asking further questions, giving suggestions, or making challenges to stimulate the formation of mental structures which will help the student in all subjects which require logical thinking such as math and science; and recording observations of the level of progress.

Scenario 2: Each third grade student decides how many books he or she wants to read during a grading period. As each self-selected book is read the child chooses how to respond to the reading: making a journal recording, telling the class about it, making a scene from the story with clay, making puppets, writing a book report, etc. As each child announces the achievement of his or her reading goal the whole class applauds.

Scenario 3: As part of a third grade social studies unit on rural life and a science unit on flowers, a field trip to a farm is organized. The teacher and aide have visited the farm in advance to plan activities which will develop the whole child--spiritually, psychologically, socially, and physically. Upon arriving students gather for prayer and singing. Children divide into groups led by an adult to engage in various activities: collecting leaf specimens to be classified later; figuring out how to follow a map for observing targeted flowers, blossoms, animals, and geological features of the farm; making and sampling various herbal teas; making measurements of distances using informal units; and playing games. Before leaving the class gathers for a sack lunch, songs, expressions of gratitude to the hosts, and prayers of wonder and thankfulness to the Creator.

Scenario 4: The day after the field trip each child writes a description of something that interested him/ her about the trip to the farm. The following day, as four groups rotate, each student in one of the groups, led by the teacher, reads his/ her description to the group. Compliments, suggestions for improvement and corrections are made by the students with occasional guidance and mini-lessons given by the teacher. Changes are then made by the students for the final draft. When the next writing conference occurs the teacher notices significant improvements.

Scenario 5: Seniors enter English class at the beginning of the school year at a bilingual school. The teacher asks them what they want and/or need to learn during the course of the year. The students state that they are tired of literature and that they want to learn how to speak English (their second language). The teacher puts aside the literature course's syllabus and redesigns the program of studies trying to strike a balance between units on conversational English, speech, literature, and, finally, debate as a cumulative activity involving research, reading, writing, logic, consultation/ conversation and speech.

Scenario 6: During the above-mentioned literature unit, while discussing a piece of fiction about racial and social prejudices faced by an African family, the teacher notices that the experiences of the students, most of whom are from the upper class, with members of the black race has been limited to their contact with Negro street vendors. In order to help them break this stereotype the teacher invites a very warm and out-going African-American friend who is a nationally known educational leader to speak to the classes about his experience as a black person in their society. The selected social environment was of high quality--a living person, not just a written story--and the interaction--a give-and-take, informal discussion guided by the teacher via the selection of the general theme--was also of high quality. At the end of the session the speaker, at the teacher's request, shook hands with every student (a new physio-social experience for them). The repertoire established was so friendly that the guest was invited back, an invitation which was enthusiastically accepted.

Scenario 7: After consultation with students and teachers the school's director chooses "change" a school-wide thematic unit. Teachers participate on a voluntary basis. As lead teachers take the initiative others join the project. "Change" becomes an object of study which is viewed through multiple lenses: physical/biological change, social change, psychological change, spiritual change, and all of these as they apply to personal change in each student and teacher. Student and teacher understanding of the theme finds expression in various ways: bulletin boards, poetry, journals, formal investigations, skits, study of popular songs, discussions, oral presentations, and much more. Suddenly, at an undefinable moment, a new level of collective consciousness is reached in which the entire school realizes that change pervades every aspect of life.

There are several programs for curriculum, teaching, and evaluation which are in harmony with the Wholistic Educational System. Because the system is an inclusive, open one, experience has shown that as WES interacts with educational programs developed by those who are not cognizant of the System, on the one hand, the System itself is influenced by the program, and, on the other, the program must be "filtered" and adapted in order to be in harmony with the System. That is, particular programs and methodologies have each informed WES and each, in turn, has been transformed by WES. A few examples of lesser known, but compatible and promising programs and methodologies follow.

The developmental activities program (dap) is a Piagetian, research-based, integrated, individualized, student-constructed math/science program for preschool through sixth grade (D.G. Phillips, 1994, 1996; D.R. Phillips, 1998). According to co-founder Dr. Dale R. Phillips, "Dap is the best-kept secret in education."^v It is currently being used by some 110 school systems in 10 states and at the Marymount School in Barranquilla, Colombia.

The Dunn and Dunn Learning Styles Model is an individualized program which enhances a person's ability to concentrate on, process, and retain new and difficult information (Dunn and Dunn, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995). It has been successfully fielded internationally and at all grade levels including higher education.

Young Children in Action by Hohmann, Banet and Weikart is a well-rounded, child-development-centered, research-based program for children which draws heavily from the thinking of Piaget and Dewey.

The criteria published by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs are very much in harmony with WES.

The Foxfire program (Wigginton) is an individualized, high school program which offers the choice of participating in the publication of a student periodical in lieu of regular English class (traditionally this is only offered as an extracurricular activity for a small group of students). It is a superb example of how multiple educational objectives can be achieved through a real-life, integrative experience.

Various intriguing programs have been developed from Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.^w

George Bondra and his colleagues at the Institute for Self-Managed Success in Torrington, Connecticut have developed a program for identifying "motivated abilities" in youth and adults and how to capitalize on these for learning, teaching, team building, and career planning.

For the development of values and virtues exemplary programs include The Virtues Program by Kavelin-Popov, Popov and Kavelin, Thoughts: Education for Peace and One World by Irene Taafaki, and New Tools for International Understanding: A Peace Education Curriculum for Elementary School Students by Dale L. Hudson.

The Learner-Centered Classroom and School (McCombs and Whisler) offers a wide range of very compatible strategies and methodologies for instruction and assessment. For example, as was noted in Scenario 7 above, WES's curriculum framework lends itself well to a theme-based curriculum because any topic can be viewed from the perspective of any of the five aspects of reality and, via the holistic study of the topic, any of the six strands of the curriculum can be developed. Whitehead (1929/1967) himself seemed to call for such a thematic approach when he stated:

The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark of vitality. Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child's education be few and important, and let them be thrown into every combination possible. (2)

In the area of evaluation there is a movement for more authentic and performance-based assessment which is very much in tune with WES's process approach to education. The ideas of Vita Perrone, et. al. (1991), for example, are very compatible with the System.

What is needed for the development of the Wholistic Educational System (and any other similar enterprise aimed at creating a holistic, process-oriented, world-embracing approach to education) is a university-based research program; a teacher training program; laboratory, demonstration, and pilot schools based on WES and other compatible programs; and means for dissemination of the results. To my knowledge, very few if any of the above-mentioned, compatible, curricular programs are standard fare of teacher training programs in any university. In the meantime the individuals and groups committed to developing and applying Anisa/WES-based principles can take advantage of the Internet to facilitate communication. As technology advances and becomes more affordable, it may be possible to create a "virtual university" dedicated to this project.

This paper has presented the religious, philosophical, scientific, and theoretical foundations of the Wholistic Educational System--a fledgling "loom" or framework invoked by the poet Edna St. Vincent-Millay:

Upon this gifted age,

In its dark hour

Reigns from the sky a meteoric shower of facts;

They lie unquestioned, uncombined.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill

Is daily spun,

But there exists no loom

To weave it into fabric.

The emphasis in this paper has necessarily been placed on delineating the System's philosophical principles and its theory of development and learning from which was generated the theories of curriculum and teaching. Unfortunately, what has been beyond the scope of this paper is the presentation of an entire, WES-based curricular unit. Nor has it been possible to convey the sheer excitement of learners when even just a few components of the system are implemented.

This author, after having received three years of initial classroom training in the Anisa Model, found that what Professor Daniel C. Jordan and his colleagues (including those upon whose shoulders he stood, those who worked closely with him, and those students who continued to labor after his passing) had given educators was an exquisite grand piano. But even though this author could sense the vast potential of the instrument, he felt that he had only learned to peck out the notes of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." It will, no doubt, take a future generation to perform the concertos which such an instrument is capable of producing.