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Why the importance of happiness in the educational task and what is the holistic education There are two obligatory questions that lead to two terms that have been divorced for years when suddenly happy relationships with education.
From 17 years of experience as founder, teacher and director of an elementary school, I can say that happiness is part of the essence of any human being, externalizing naturally in infancy, and therefore indispensable in education
The root meaning of education, means “to make out, extract, delivery, lead from the inside out.” Regarding the term “happiness” according to the Royal Spanish Academy, is the “state of mind that takes pleasure in owning something,” Mary (1988), adds that there is a verb that expresses happiness, when expressed as action, is always accompanied by adjectives or verbs “Ser” or “have.
Having “places us in the center of the materialist philosophy that as pointed out by Dr. Ramon Gallegos Nava, us towards a philosophy of the word, that three centuries has led students to hedonism, loss of sense, attachment and dissatisfaction and therefore suffering, is a culture based on finite asset accumulation.
Regarding the “Be” definitions of happiness and education have in common that they both speak of the inner world of humans: happiness, be referred to the term education and speaks to extract from the inside out, which leads to the assumption that the interiority is naturally involved in education and happiness, although this has not always been so considered.
Our educational history is full of abuse against children is a hot topic as indicated by publications on child abuse but also very old, we can go back to times of the Egyptians or Hebrews and their teaching of writing (considered as “exasperating”) through shocks and beatings, or the same Greek base of our culture, but to identify education with happiness through virtue, not linking the two issues in educational practice. (Cherobim, 2009).
It is reported that the Hellenistic education advanced by other harsh methods of punishment applied to students and the ancient Romans impose stringent punishment as part of the teaching procedures. (Homet, 1978).
In each period it seems that in education lies happiness, even in the medieval monasteries that promise happiness through divine contact, but apply strict disciplines together to guilt, abuse, sacrifice and sin. (Jaume Trilla, 2002). Renaissance Europe emerges as Luther’s ideas to fight against a Catholic inquisitor who seeks to regain the supremacy over men.
And in this context arises precisely from within the church, Copernicus’ heliocentric theory, which places the earth as the center of the universe and that breaks with the traditional view of the world (Russell, 2001) Comenius influencing educators and by analogy with that theory collapses to master pedestal and place the learner at its core.
Possibly because of their painful experiences as a student within a context of chaos and war Comenius was the first to change the rod of punishment for a smile, cementing the foundation of a new educational vision. Comenius and his contemporary Descartes ‘reason’ as a starting point, route to the West until the modern age. (Jaume Trilla, 2002).
But even in these moments of history, the need political, social and economic to serve many students with a small number of teachers. Disorder in the classroom aims to transform the “challenge” that a single preceptor attend large groups, however what you get is “what Foucault called” teaching machines and discipline, as a gimmick to make people docile, uniforms and therefore useful “(Jaume Trilla, 2002).
According to Dr. Gallegos Nava is in this period where the man in an effort to get rid of superstitious thinking ecclesiastical genuine spirituality unknown (Gallegos, 2001), places its interior out of it, man is divided and sentenced at the same time live without spirituality and inability to achieve genuine happiness.
The relationship that exists between teacher and student in this time is totally impersonal and cold, the teacher sees the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge to be memorized. (Gallegos, 2001)
Schools thrive as founded by Father La Salle, applying to all order and control. Successful learning is personal obligation of the student and education is far from fun or happiness, it is even frowned upon by religious schools that children have fun and live moments of joy, because pleasure is associated with sin. (Varela and Alvarez Uria, 1991; Pineau Dussel and Caruso, 2001).By the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution where the importance lies in the money, there is a profound change in the political, social and cultural rights not only in Europe but worldwide, continuous growth processes and technical innovations changed everything playing and of course education becomes.
Born school organizations like the then growing textile mills, the factor “discipline” is decisive, changing the creativity and freedom of the craftsman for the accuracy and speed of the worker, factory-like spaces, large classrooms with hundreds of students different levels, sitting on benches in rank (Gvirtz, 2007). At this point requires mass education, happiness has no place here.
“Recess is a necessary catharsis for back to school … because students in the class must be static, sitting staring at the motionless face … the students go to recess stampede in disarray as if from a cage or running of the bulls …
Robert Walser. (Jaume Trilla, 2002).
The new type of education is happiness or play as a hindrance, although the latter is missed, valued and fought among students. According to Dr Gallegos mechanistic education, based on the assembly line of factories (S. XVIII, XIX) resembles industrial production of an object. “Students are like objects that are produced in series, which aims to standardize the knowledge, all are evaluated under the same criteria, basing everything on mechanical processes of instruction rather than education …” (Gallegos , 2001).
Stefan Zeig, (2002) in his book “the world of yesterday. Memoirs of a European” draw wonderfully obscure and forgotten place where happiness at this time.
“If I am to be honest, all my school time was not constant boring and tiring, which increased from year to year because of my impatience to get rid of that annoying routine.” Do not remember feeling “cheerful and happy” at no time in my school years …. Monotonous, heartless and tasteless, which we thoroughly embittered the more free time and beautiful life “… learning was listless and dull, directed not toward learning but to life itself, things that we imposed the old pedagogy. And the only time really happy and glad that school I was the day when its doors closed behind me forever “…
This new approach results in students falling within a few centuries into nihilism and hedonism (Gallegos, 2001) and leads to learning what UNESCO describes today as “catastrophic” for their low educational levels, high dropout rates, violence, depression and drugs, among other serious problems. (UNESCO, 2005).
By the late twentieth century concerns are beginning to take shape as a result giving the appearance of new education ideas, issues such as freedom, respect, individuality and the rescue of spirituality are present.
Among these proposals, features a gathering in the 90s in Chicago to educators around the world, which aims to investigate a new education that is capable of forming a new human being, living responsibly and wisely in this new century begins. (Gallegos 2001).
The new paradigm is education, “holistic”, which is based on the thought of great teachers, recent scientific contributions, and the essence of the spiritual philosophies that remain intact over thousands of years and who meet in what is called perennial philosophy. (Gallegos 2001). It seems that humanity after living for several centuries without spirituality is transported suddenly looking for meaning and thoughts of great men from various disciplines revives longing.
Holistic education proposals takes great educators, such as Comenius, Decroly, Rousseau, Pestalozzi and Steiner, among others where they begin to express their concerns when the child seen in great need of freedom, joy and play. Express their deep concerns of life precisely in relation to Being and having, however, even within large dominant materialist theories, philosophies of Maria Montessori as we can see that the child and he rises to the level of the cosmic and recovers his natural inclination towards happiness. (Mayle, 1985).
But the initial question of why the importance of happiness in education, Invites us to reflect on the present condition facing humanity, the entire planet moves in the pace of economic and technological globalization and the crisis in all areas globalization also showed a surplus in the red: stress, violence, devastation, hunger, inequality and senseless are some of the problems we all share right now and that certainly affect us all.
As a symptom of this we can cite the widespread depression and live worldwide in 2020 is forecast to be the second disease in importance according to reports given by the World Health Organization. “Currently 25% of Europeans and 27% of Americans profess to be deeply depressed “(Shimoff, 2004).
Another symptom is the increase of publications on happiness are made every day to find definitions and formulas reveal that although the term is still blurred, man of the twentieth century as one of the old seeks happiness is sought Golden Fleece.
At present different disciplines approach the happiness and in some cases and are linked to education, from the 50′s humanistic psychology Carl Rogers proposes a different learning, not based on data, memory or knowledge, but on learning that permeate the whole person and to change their actions. (Rogers, 1996).
In the current educational psychology and constructivism and cultural psychology, the concept of open learning and include subjective aspects of the students that should influence educational practice in order to achieve greater prosperity and happiness as the socio-emotional imbalance and deficits at maturity, are directly related to increased rates of school failure.
For its part, science, put on the scale of happiness and located in the human brain, arguing that since everything can be learned and developed. You will find uses and health benefits for the optimization work, and of course for learning and is from utilitarian approach comes a powerful reason that happiness and education begin to touch, later clarifying that talk about levels of happiness.
In science we find great contributions as Dr. Patch Adams, who realizes that the closure of happiness in education has come to cause problems of dehumanization and health problems. (Adams, 2009).
Positive psychology promoted by Anglo seek psychological currents of postmodern man welfare and development of human potential, opposing the negative psychology focused almost exclusively on pathologies and traumas, Dr. Seligman is one of the most prestigious neuroscientists and asserts that the real happiness is not only possible, but far from relying on luck or genes, can be cultivated by identifying their strengths and traits that already possess.
In his book “Authentic Happiness Seligman quoted Dr. Fredrickson, who said that positive emotions broaden the intellectual, physical, and social and make them more durable. (Seligman, 2006).
Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi meanwhile, in his book FLOW (A psychology of happiness), relates the happiness with better learning, says it’s crucial to learn how to transform work into activities that produce flow because the flow brings happiness. (Csikzentmihalyi, 1998).
A leading German biophysicist and lead author on neuroscience, Stefan Klein, also says that students feel comfortable in class and if they laugh, learn better, since he believes that there is an inextricable link between learning and experience of happiness. In the gloom, he says, the serotonin level falls and depression increases mortality of gray cells. Positive emotions, on the contrary, keeping alive the brain while facilitating the formation of new connections. Happiness is therefore a source of eternal youth brain. (Klein, 2008, p.108, 159).
Marci Shimoff in his recent book “Happy because” (2008), reports that existing studies on happiness, conducted by researchers in the field of positive psychology, confirmed that half of our happiness is due to genetics, 10% is determined by circumstances such as wealth or marital status and 40% depend on our habits in terms of thoughts, feelings, words and actions. He also wrote on the great discovery of brain plasticity, “the different ways you think and feel and act, cause the brain to change and do vary the configuration of the connections.”
It was discovered that all thoughts and behaviors typical of the past, have raised some specific neural channels, a particular way in which the brain is wired. Thoughts or behaviors that are repeated reinforce and deepen these grooves. Unhappy people tend to have more negative neural tubes. (Shimoff, 2008, p. 36, 48.49).
If we reflect on the contributions mentioned above, we realize that progress on the knowledge of the human being has made great progress. Science in the beginning it set out to investigate only the physical aspects of man as the organic operation, the constitution atomofisiologica, pathologies, etc. as time passes, their jobs evolve and take him to investigate and not just on the subject, but on aspects of the mind, such is the case of contributions psychological, philosophical, educational, or sociological, we see that transcend these levels, science research lies unexplored levels, which as mentioned above from the eighteenth century are denied, it is subjective aspects of being, that roam the edges of spirituality.
Science begins to consider issues such subtle, such as awareness and conceiving are as fundamental as space, time or matter, they mentioned Peter Russell, physicist, psychologist and computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, won awards his publications on the brain as seen from the whole. (Russell, 2001).
Alongside this, schools come away from the factory model and placed in the center of spirituality, one example is the case of school-based Hindu Transcendental Meditation and directed by Maharishi M. (2009) they offer, as he says, a way to immerse yourself in happiness and bliss with benefits such as improved memory, creativity, reflection, health benefits, health, toxics reduction, stress and violence, among others. (Maharishi, (2009).
Another educational program that stands out for its features is that of a Japanese teacher named Kanamori, who bases his teaching on the pursuit of happiness through learning to think of others, he says, this is the key to happiness “from the bottom of my heart. ” (Kanamori, 2008).
Emphasize the importance of holistic approach, it is the first that brings us full knowledge, offering a total vision of reality through a Holarctic model of wholes / parts, where everything is whole and at the same part of something bigger, exceeding traditional concepts of hierarchy and Heterarchy. (Gallegos, 2001)
The new scientific contributions, support and give strength to what holistic education raises that man is made not only of matter and mind, but also is a spiritual realm that is inherent
And holism Dr. Ramon Gallegos makes a big contribution, with the creation of the holistic model of intelligence “, which certainly helps to clarify the levels of happiness. Refers to the worldview that gave us San Buenaventura, (the three eyes of knowledge) that takes after one of the most prolific theorists of our time, Ken Wilber.
“A man with one eye you can not see reality, all you see material and measurable, the vision is partial. (..) The three eyes that are powers of consciousness allow us access to three different levels of seizures of knowledge, direct data fields, mental and intuitive: (Gallegos, 2001).
For St. Bonaventure, all knowledge is a kind of Illuminati that allows us to illuminate what we want to know: the eye of meat known sensory objects, conceived of as primitive or crude manifestation of God. The eye of reason gives us knowledge of philosophical truths, designing this way highlights the perception of God through the mind and eye of contemplation that reveals the true healing. (Wilber, 2006).
Dr. Gallegos on a classification of Intelligences, the eye of the meat gives the correspondence of the emotional intelligence of Gardner and classified as level 1, the eye of the mind relates to intellectual intelligence, also associated with Gardner’s multiple intelligences and gives the level II, and the third level, correspond to spiritual intelligence, which alone can give us everlasting happiness. (Gallegos, 2006).
With the above classification, it would be easier to understand the happiness and education from the three levels and also understand the different approaches that through history have been raised by scientists, educators, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, teachers so spiritual.
If we return to Ken Wilber, this classification in more detail the levels at which we could place the proposals are 5 epistemological relationships (Wilber, 2006).
The level of scientific experiments would be at level 5 in the eye of the subject. The scientists explain their mental field of matter would correspond to level 4. Educators, psychologists, sociologists, etc.. essentially doing mental work would be at level 3. Level 2 corresponds to the philosophers and theologians who try to explain the spiritual world from mental reasoning. And the ratio of 1 would be one that has the highest level which corresponds to the spiritual world, ie is transmental or beyond the mind.
From this perspective, Gallegos defines happiness as “a state of being, that as a spring without cause, arises from within when you remove the harmful of mind because, happiness is the natural state of Man. (Gallegos, 2007 .)
In his writings on holistic education, invites us to rule out superficial concepts of happiness, rooted in material and mental aspects, it says, this all changes with circumstances and at some point ends. He adds that the suffering is not part of the essential nature of man, conceived as an aggregate, as an overlay.
Takes a holistic vision for the understanding of consciousness a scheme proposed by Wilber and offers levels that are called memes, which relate to different times than men in their journey of consciousness is transcending. This approach is found in the book by Ken Wilber “the three eyes of knowledge.”
The proposals of this author are a strong support that supports my experience, it allows me to ensure that happiness is a fundamental part of any education provided this is visible from spirituality.
Holistic education as its main objective the development of consciousness, ie the realization of our true nature and live life from the internal order.
We understand that a human being immersed in the education, experience and live from their spiritual, lights their way with the light of its interior, is consistent and harmonious, full of love towards him and everything around you, free and respectful viviendose from the certainty of his being, autonomous, independent and compassionate and therefore happy.
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