Wholistic Educational System (WES)
Learn about a cutting-edge, developmental system of education that views the learner as a seamless whole composed of hierarchically-nested dimensions– spiritual, psychological, social, and physical.
The Wholistic Educational System (WES) is a multidimensional, developmental approach to education that seeks to translate learners’ potentialities—physical, social, psychological, and spiritual–into actuality at an optimum rate. WES is informed by the accumulated wisdom and bodies of knowledge of the world’s cultures, i.e., by divine guidance provided primarily via sacred scriptures and secondarily via personal, spiritual inspiration; by the arts and other humanities, especially process philosophy; and by science. It views reality as being composed of organic processes or events rather than solid, mechanically operating, material substances. Its most fundamental, spiritual principle is the organic unity and oneness of the human race. Its philosophical organizing principle is: “The potentiality of an entity is translated into actuality via purpose-guided interaction with and positive and/or negative prehension of entities in its environment.” From this organizing, first principle and a set of other first and corollary principles, a coherent and comprehensive body of research and evidence-based theory concerning human development, learning, curriculum, teaching, administration, learning community/environment relations, and evaluation were derived.
An Explanation of the “Major Components” Diagram of The Wholistic Education System by William Keith Bookwalter
This diagram shows the eleven major components of The Wholistic Educational System (WES): the major fields that inform WES, the major subfields (theories) of education, praxis, and the relationships amongst them.
The fields that inform WES are divine guidance, philosophy, science, the arts and other humanities, and, of course, all of the subfields of education.
The components of the field of education are: educational philosophy; educational theories of development, learning, curriculum, teaching, administration, learning community-environment relations, and evaluation; and educational praxis.
Divine guidance is the guidance received from spiritual sources: the Creator, His Messengers, the Holy Spirit, souls in this world (including one’s own soul), and souls in other spiritual realms. The means for receiving divine guidance include, but are not limited to, the study of the sacred scriptures of the world religions, prayer, meditation, contemplation, insights, intuition, visions, dreams, day dreams, and serendipitously being led to particular people, books, conversations, consultations, and other experiences which, in turn, provide solutions to problems and answers to questions regarding one’s understanding, implementation, and development of the Wholistic Educational System.
Philosophy–humanity’s thinking about humanity and the reality of which humanity is but a part –has been a major contributor to Anisa and WES. The Anisa team reviewed the major philosophies of the world covering over 2,000 years of recorded thought, and arrived at Alfred North Whitehead’s process / organismic / speculative philosophy or cosmology that was considered to be the most comprehensive and the one that best harmonized Eastern and Western thinking. In my opinion, it also harmonizes the thinking the indigenous peoples of the world with Eastern and Western thought. According to Whitehead, his cosmology is actually closer to Far Eastern philosophies:
The philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian or Chinese thought than to western Asiatic or European thought. (Process and Reality, p7)
There are other process philosophers of great importance. For example, Association for the Process Philosophy of Education (APPE), founded by Malcolm D. Evans, also focused on the works of John Dewey and Henri Bergson. Charles Pierce and Charles Hartshorne. (See Hartshorne’s comment on Whitehead on slide 67 in the attached PowerPoint presentation on WES. See slides 70 and 71 for examples of fields that have been influenced by Whitehead.)
The fields of science that inform the Wholistic Education System are many. They include human development, sociology, developmental psychology, neurology, nutrition, technology, communication, information systems, and many more, including the fields of architecture and engineering as they apply to the design of physical plants for schools and universities, learning environments and didactic materials and equipment. One of the problems with science, especially brain research, is that it is currently experiencing such a “boom” of output that educators are finding it difficult to learn about the multitude of research findings and apply them to teaching. Hence, a WES-oriented institution or institutions are needed to process all of the research findings and run them through the educational philosophy and the other components of the System, thereby organizing them and making them more “digestible,” understandable, and applicable for educational practitioners.
The arts and other humanities may seem, at first, to contribute little, other than subject matter, to the development of the field of education. But, as C.P. Snow stated in The Two Cultures, “Great literature reveals aspects of humanity that science ignores and formal religion distorts.” Jean Jacque Rousseau’s novel Emile, for example, was the most influential book in Western Civilization on education since Plato’s Republic. And, closer to the development of the Anisa Model, Dr. Jordan would combine his lectures with playing a grand piano in front of the class in his lecture hall at National University of San Diego, California in order to illumine and give examples from music of the fundamental principles underlying its philosophy and theories.
The top-to-bottom arrows in the diagram indicate lines of deductive generation of the system components. Bottom-to-top arrows originating from praxis and evaluation indicate lines of inductive development of WES, thereby assuring its perpetual renewal. (In practice, bottom-to-top arrows extend to all components because all components are continually evaluated. For the sake of visual clarity, however, this was not done.) It should be noted that the evaluation of divine guidance as it is given to humanity via the great, revealed, world religions, does not mean the evaluation of the Creator’s Revelations, but, rather, the continual reconsideration of our understanding of the revealed Word and its implications for education, the results of which will evolve from one generation to another.
Podcast
Tools for Change: What are the keys, tools, and must-do’s of education and parenting?
Other projects
Life in Dynamic Harmony (LDH)
Explore how to increase your happiness, health, and effectance by leveraging the power of an ancient archetype—the mandala–that incorporates 4 foundational principles and 34 key life processes.
Program for Developing Cognition (PDC)
Un enfoque innovador para la enseñanza del pensamiento lógico, las matemáticas y las habilidades del proceso científico.