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Re: "Integral Teacher, Integral Students, Integral Classroom"

  •  08-21-2006, 12:02 PM

    Re: "Integral Teacher, Integral Students, Integral Classroom"

    Yay! Someone else beat me to it! Now I only have to fill in the couple of extra thoughts I had, instead of writing out all the stuff that Zak did :-) I absolutely agree with everything he said, and was planning on saying it myself. (So, thanks Zak, for making my life easier!)

    A few other thoughts that Zak didn't mention:

    1. From my experience, ethnocentric thinking actually can start much, much younger than many people realize. I see it even in one year olds. No, the application of it is not sophisticated, but the intent is there. And even in 2-3 year old's there is a tendency to start creating culture on a small scale. By preschool (3.5 - 5 years) healthy kids will be moving from diad play (two individuals playing together) to large group play. In my experience, by the time they are 5, all healthy kids are ethnocentric and have a group of friends who they will defend and whom they care deeply for. This may challenge old developmental stages, but it's pretty standard in the early childhood educational field, from what I understand.

    2. It might help to include the destinction between teaching Integral theory, and being an Integral teacher. The latter is the overall goal, while the former is fine, too, but may not be necessary. Oh, and a third category, teaching people to be Integral (sans the theory) is useful, but, again not necessarily appropriate.

    3. I do think that this paper, and basic ideas of Integral Education can be broad in scope, and I think it pretty much already is! It really only needs a little re-wording to be more inclusive, and maybe some broader examples from other age groups.

    4. (And this is my area of expertise outside of Education) The graphics want some love and attention! They are feeling lonely and bored. They need enrichment! And some visual clarity. We shouldn't need to read an endnote to understand the basic design of a graph (page 10, I think). The order of the three elements (essentially KW's Body, Mind, and Spirit) changes between the graphs, as well. And the terminology seems to change confusingly too. Why not use the basic circles within circles that KW usually uses, and show the graphs (such as Fig.4 and Fig. 5) with the terms Body, Mind, Spirit for each listing?

    By the way, I will offer my services in creating diagrams if no one else is available. I've been a professional graphic designer in the past, and still dabble in the field when I need to. Though I'm not really swimming in free time these days, and I can't guarantee I'd be able to get anything done right away. But I would be interested in helping out here, as I have an interest in making this paper really useful for people.

    Finally...

    5. I sort of understand the distinction being made among the "holistic" and the "traditional" and the "Integral" forms of education, but I'm not sure if the terminology is working to clarify these distinctions. To me, holistic is Integral. The description of "holistic" that the author gives seems more like "new age" or something else that might fall into the pre-conventional. The holistic education that is so popular with my collegues in early childhood education (and I believe in Elementary Ed, too) now definitely includes both concrete/external education and subjective internal education. I don't think I've ever run into a teacher who only teaches the subjective stuff, at least not in a normal school setting (yoga teachers, not included). So, maybe the non-Integral teacher is less frequent than the author realizes?

    Ok, that looks like that covers all my notes so far. Though I still haven't gotten a chance to read section 2... But those are examples, right? And since I haven't done much teaching to adults, I'm probably not going to have enough experience to comment much there.

    Peace (UR, LR), Love (UL, LL), and Bicycles (exercising the quads in Body, Mind and Spirit)!
    -Turtle
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