BOOKS
- Holistic Living: Tips for Youth (Excerpt)
- The New Village (Excerpt)
- The Modern Roots of Holism (Excerpt)
- The Ancient Roots of Holism (Excerpt)
- American Determinism: Holistic Politics
Holistic Living: Tips for Youth
From Chapter Seven, "Thinking and Feeling":
Charting the Course:
Brainstorming Holistic Education Ideas
I'm going to share with you my vision for a futuristic school system I think will help all character-types, including people who think primarily linearly, and primarily by association. It's a single, closed system, which interweaves the modern education system with holistic, closed systems.
Environment
To start off, and very easy to describe, school environments in the new system would feature organic furniture, like chairs and desks made of wood, or recyclable fibers. There would also be more subdued lighting than flourescent lighting, in all schools. And gradually, school buildings would become 100 percent green and sustainable.
Kindergarten
School, at this age, and every age, shouldn't be so busy that minds don't have time to ruminate. Creativity should begin to be combined with every lesson plan, starting in kindergarten.
Creativity would remain a part of all lesson planning throughout the education experience.
Since creativity involves activating the senses, interactivity of discussion; formation of chairs in a room, perhaps being circular, or around small, round tables; and "hands-on" activities, will help activate the creative mind.Buckminster Fuller's daughter attended a school in New York City, the Dalton School, which helps students in elementary school express themselves holistically through things like dance, in addition to the written word and written exercises.
3rd grade
This is the age that I'd argue, based on my experience in 3rd grade, when I recognized social networking differences between my peers and self, to start educating kids about the inherent and subtle differences between people which matter in terms of being able to understand one another the best we can, and also don't in any way stop us from treating each other as equals. I am referring chiefly to left- and right-brained thinking and the subtle differences between characters of each type. For example: A left-brained character-type may be more inclined to social interactivity by way of groups without prompts towards the arts and meditation, and conversely, a right-brained character may be more inclined toward the arts and introversion, and desire more prompts or help in gaining social admittance.
In this grade, too, to bring about awareness, early roundtable talks helping kids to learn from each other, their unique skill sets, versus the kids growing apart from one another, can take place, building on the true and "holistic" dynamics of the classroom.3rd grade is arguably not only a preferable time to introduce cursive writing, but cursive might be complemented by integral art classes to serve all students.
Though right-brained or associative thinking, prevalent until around age 10 in the total student population, involves much more than traditional, artistic ambition, it early on in childhood development may be expressed by way of the arts and meditation fruitively. Right-brained thinking involves, in general, creative/associative thought, often highly analytical in nature. It can become more so, and remain, integral to education, and maintained by it, in direct connection with more left-brained and linear thinking.5th and 6th grade
(In these grades, enter facts being taught in what seemed to me to be nonemotional ways, especially history, my favorite subject, but it's the same, I think, for all of the core subjects.
Meanwhile, the right-brain literally processes language using chiefly emotion and feeling, and so the education system could, I'd say, utilize this right-brained skill much more than it currently does.
Additionally, in 5th and 6th grades specialization starts, though kids, in the old days, when I was in school, used to still spend most of the day with the same grouping or class of kids. Now students begin, at the same time as specialization begins, to break off for parts of the day to be with different groupings of kids, for example, for math, history, English and science, disrupting what can be a more fluid and home-like, feel, during the school day.
When I was young, back in the 1970s, it was in 4th grade when I began to experience the home-like, or community-like, feeling, at school, that was associated with being with the same group of kids all day, sharing, as well, one teacher. In this instance, at this age of development, coming to know one another personally, in a communal setting, was complemented by a newfound sense of independence each child shared. 4th was actually, for this reason, my favorite grade during k-12.
As an adult, too, working at National Geographic Television, and later going and filming at Nader Khalili's architectural site, experiencing the "circle" in both places, always recreated a communal feeling like the one I experienced in 4th grade, which I knew as well to a lesser degree in my high school years, since it was a small enough school so that I knew almost everyone there.
It's perhaps advantageous to reinforce the community-like feeling that resides with the 4th, and possibly, 3rd, grade classroom, in 5th through 12th grade, which is also a step beyond the natural feeling of the "circle," or community, that exists, and that lacks social rigidities, in k-2nd grade. I have some ideas for how to do this listed below.Finally, subject-matter, which was always easy for me to grasp, in K-12, and in college, also forced me to think, starting in 5th and 6th grade, more linearly, which this proposal tries to even out, or balance, with associative thinking strategies.)
Change that can be implemented from 5th grade through the high school years:
Utilize big picture teaching (see more details about this approach below). Start utilizing the natural overlap there is between subject-areas, strongly recognizable via their associations, including for all subjects, including science, history, math, and English lessons, and begin demonstrating, at this still early period of development of the proposed program, how it is certain core subject-areas overlap the most, and progressively, becoming a powerful tool for teaching, even while more immediately instituting this sophisticated series of changes at the college level, and via new focuses of majors that become exceedingly "holistic" (see, again, more details below, pertaining to the college years).
Teach, as year progresses, in graduated, whole stages, instead of more strictly, linearly.
STAGES: Stage 1) SUMMER READING. Start with introductory reading assignment for summer months to prepare students for coming coursework. Reading will include relevant and inspiring books of biography to set stage of subject-matter, plus nonfiction that is sweeping, vivid/synthetic, big picture historical, analytical and creative, of the subject-matter. The reading creates a combined associative and linear learning experience. Stages 2&3 are combined. Stage 2) Lessons during the school year become more lab-like, and targeted. Classes can take the form of a science lab, or they may feature dynamic teacher lectures combined with class discussion. In both cases, the object is to constantly engage students in learning. Students think in associations and linearly. Classes during the year draw on summer reading, and additional reading assigned over the school year, and simultaneously are drawn to form, in a learning way, assurances that associative ideas and understanding combines holistically with linear/chronological order. Stage 3) KIDS OF ALL CHARACTER-TYPES CHOOSE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR MULTIPLE SPECIAL PROJECTS THAT ENGAGE THEM IN PERSONAL LEARNING NEEDS; PROJECTS CAN BE OFF THE CHARTS. FOR EXAMPLE, AN EXTREME-RIGHT-BRAINED THINKING CHILD COMES TO UNDERSTAND HISTORY THROUGH LAND MASSES, EARTH SCIENCE. PROJECTS STRETCH BACK, AS A RESULT OF THE CHILD'S IMAGINATION, WHICH IS RESPONSIBLE FOR PICKING THE PROJECT, TO EACH CHILD'S ROOTS OR SPECIAL INTERESTS. HAVING FOUND A FOUNDATION FOR UNDERSTANDING LIKE THIS, NEXT, IN THIS CASE, SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING, WITH GUIDANCE, AND THROUGH EXTRAPOLATED ASSOCIATIONS, WHICH INTEREST THE CHILD, LOGICALLY AND INTUITIVELY LEADS TO CULTURAL/HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING.
Stage 2) of big picture teaching doesn't have to be linear, it will rather be a combination of linear and associative thought, but it's applied actions, being rational, sequence, and rhythm, are very linear and students ably gain on linear thinking this way. Stage 3) the personal projects, have to be linear in order to trace events, but they are steeped in a student's own associative thinking process.
Create whole classrooms, by creating fluidity in class structure. Firstly, create classrooms that feel a bit more like home, instead of school, where desks/chairs regularly form a circle (creating a roundtable effect), for example. Meanwhile, administrators, teacher-training programs and teachers work toward classroom sizes becoming smaller. Secondly, make sure all of the kids who are in a grade together, get together, so there is a functioning whole. Even if there are four classrooms in one grade, ensure they come together regularly for special meetings, lectures, Q&A sessions following lectures, to make presentations of group or class projects, brainstorming sessions following group presentations, field trips and to watch films together.
Junior High
*Continue with big picture teaching however lab or coursework and projects become more complex and sophisticated with each passing year between 7th and 12th grade.
Change that can be implemented from junior high through the high school years:
Uniforms: Starting at least in junior high and extending through the 12th year of high school, have students wear uniforms in public as well as private schools. I make this suggestion for the following reasons: 1. Students won't spend time worrying about what to wear. 2. Parents will spend less money on clothes and can spread their money elsewhere for school activities. 3. Students can still dress up and down their uniforms so to be comfortable at school, and will likely find it to be more comfortable this way than not. 4. To help teach students appropriate ways to dress. 5. Schools can choose soothing colors that will be worn, for example, blues and grays. 6. To avoid 'sexual thoughts' in schools the result of students being overly focused on fashion.
Institute art class through the high school years. Create in art classrooms, either cubicles or semi-private desks, or the opposite, wide open classrooms, by way of unobtrusive tables/stools and larger rooms. Both private space and wide open space may enhance creativity in the different character-types, including associative thinkers.
Institute music/dance classes through the high school years. Courses will involve singing, playing an instrument, reading and writing music, or a combination of the three, and ballroom or classical dance.
Skip study halls in both junior high and high school to make time for the arts.
Sports:
Make a sport a year compulsory. Students can choose individual or team sports in any year but must graduate high school having done one of both for at least two years, between 7th and 12th grade.
Teach sports according to holistic science. Have student athletes use mind, body and spirit to improve athleticism. Have them utilize self-care that's mind, body and spirit, too, including diet, sleep and exercise. Teach yoga and meditation to enhance sport.
Make sports, in general, be about working in wholes, whether it's an individual or team sport. The goal will still, at least initially, be winning an event or game, but students should understand that the goal of their sport is ultimately working together as a team, first, and showing sportsmanship between teams, second.
For certain students, particularly those on the autism spectrum, they may elect to take part in separate leagues, and team sports, designed to have a purpose besides winning. For example, the objective of a sport could be everyone working together. I actually substitute taught an elementary gym class and the students in class were first asked to form a circle and learned to throw a ball to one another, back and forth, and around the circle. I made it so the objective of the game, however, wasn't for a student to 'get out' or feel penalized if they dropped the ball, were hit by it, or let it roll outside the circle. Instead, they were taught the purpose of the game was to work together. Whatever they achieved, it was the result of the process of working together. And the emotions around the circle were 'good' feeling in response, as the kids joyously played together. This rough concept may be a starting point for creating a holistic sport for non-competitive or generally non-sports-oriented people.
Sports/Competition: There will most likely always be an element of competition in future sports games because some people are more naturally competitive than others, which tells me there really is a place for competition. Competition can teach us to work toward our very best capacity, in all areas of life. We compete with ourselves too to be the best we can be, at least in some small way. But, that said, competition has a delegated place within the whole.
Change that can be implemented from junior high through the college years:
Teacher's Preparatory Notes: Have junior high and high school teachers, and college professors, prepare 'teacher notes' from their lectures they can share with students of all character-types following lectures, that people with autism or Asperger's traits might utilize more regularly. Make sure sports coaches at the high school and college level leave extra time between courses and practice for teacher-student meetings.
High School
*Introduce evolutionary systems design.i
*Create and teach actual “learning arcs,” which I wrote about above, that act like levers for heightened understanding, within curriculum, that draw from associative comprehension.
*Extend high school to include two-year apprenticeship program or college degree, so to have a dual high school / college program. (Start educating everyone as a result, including future factory and restaurant workers and janitors, beyond high school educations, in things like first and second-year 'advanced' evolutionary systems design, astrology, evolution and consulting/coaching. The higher education for all will contribute to cultural change that approaches greater harmony, or utopia, whether the job market essentially stays the same and people are just more educated while holding jobs of all sorts, and more often find themselves in side jobs, like writing or coaching, and or jobs actually do change and become more holistic, not in the direction of blue collar or white collar, but toward increasingly fulfilling and whole positions.)
*Continue with big picture teaching however lab or coursework and projects become more complex and sophisticated with each passing year between 5th through 12th grade.
*Offer both theoretical and combined theoretical and applied physics at the high school level, requiring students take one or the other, having in addition to, or also, introduced physics as a foundational course, of the sciences, in ninth grade, if not earlier.
*Offer a course in architecture at the high school level.
College
*Start teaching, in first and second year of “dual high school, apprenticeship or college program,” advanced, evolutionary systems design and systems thinking and make it integral to coursework.
*Apprenticeships increasingly available, combined with online/classroom training, and two-year degrees from community colleges, are both available for those not, at least right away, interested in a PhD program, who don't want to spend five to seven full years in college.
*For all character-types, institutional off campus and campus living available starting from freshman year. This accommodates, especially, people on the autism spectrum who may need more isolated, quiet places to study and live. For all character-types, classes are spread across campus, as usual.
Big picture teaching at the college level:
At the college level, continue to merge science, math, history and English (language) lessons within specializations, exhibiting, in a way that's exhaustive, the areas in which there is overlap.
Sophisticated learning/coursework is steeped in both the modern education system, and teaching systems from the recent and more distant past, that are closed, holistic systems. The modern and ancient cultures, and eras, ultimately complement eachother.
The college year is still broken into semesters or trimesters but courses now run for the duration of the year.
Coursework will require, at least in one year, an internship.
Specializations would potentially incorporate the following combinations of subject-matter:
I. MATH AND MEDICINE Astrology/mathematics/medicine.
II. LANGUAGE STUDIES
Evolution/left-brained-right-brained thinking/cultural influences/the art and science of language.III. BUSINESS SYSTEMS
Introductory understanding of mathematics&language/advanced systems theory training/cultural training/accounting&consulting/business systems understanding. (For this advanced business degree, interestingly, accountants would become trained business analysts, as well as accountants, who could as a part of their job write reports for government, business and institutions, related to taxes, potential for earnings and social welfare.)The new specializations would lead to PhDs which would not require students start and stop college, but work all the way through, spanning 7-10 years.
The new system, a more intensive immersion of linear and associative thought, makes allowances for deficits in linear or associative thinking/learning.
Learning stages at the college level:
Stage 1) 1) SUMMER READING (Summer reading is optional at the college level and is there to make the semester's courseload a lighter load on students who are slow readers or tend better to concentrate on one area of study at a time. With summer reading, students can make preparatory notes based on their own “big picture” analyses, to better prepare them, through the formation of well-understood “associations,” for school year.)
Stage 2) Lessons are labs, they become more discussion-based or lab-like, featuring hands-on innovation, experimentation, group dynamics and guest lecturers. Assigned reading supports labs and discussions, it's not exhaustive so to put too high of demands on students, but may include selections from popular periodicals, scholarly journals, government documents, nonfiction, essays, fiction, poems. The reading assignments run parallel to optional summer reading. A potential model of coursework would be, Professor Madhu Thangavelu's University of Southern California's Space Exploration Studio, http://astronautics.usc.edu/student-projects/space-exploration-studio/. In Professor Thangavelu's class, students do individual and group projects. At midterm time, they present their individual project, and for the final, their group project. Projects involve developing architectures for space habitation and development. During the semester, guest lecturers at every class are experts from all fields that apply to space architecture, so they may be from NASA, Lockheed Martin or government, or they could be private space entrepreneurs.
Stage 3) Student projects will be discussion- and lab-inspired. Since students are no longer taking general coursework, projects become more individualized to match a student's specific interests. The projects that run throughout the year are supervised by a professor and his or her assistants. The purpose for them follows the same schema as in 5th through 12th grade but projects are now much more specialized and thorough.
Between 5th and 12th grade learning is currently organized according to linear thought. Part of what this involves is the notion that by 12th grade matriculation we will have achieved success if we've learned all there is to know about history between 5th and 12th grade, or else we could view it as we've achieved success if we've learned all of the facts between targets (e.g. 5th and 12th grade). Success becomes dependent on linear constructs and goals.
Rather than having more linear constructs and goals working alone, a “linear-associative construct” would make space for thinking on history, for example, that also relates to the other subjects, and what kind of concepts and projects can be built using the added associative knowledge. The added knowledge draws increased understanding of subject-matter by accessing what there is to know between topics, both within a subject (like world and European history, including their culture and arts), and between core subject-areas, like mathematics and history. Linear-associative constructs would also teach students to apply what they've learned about associations, the new “learning arcs,” making associations much more integral to the success of the system.
In the adult world, a vice president at a bank learns that success to him or her means making their bank the best it can be. The vice president will, while achieving his or her goals at the bank, also be able to see and understand the big picture, by doing things like tuning into the news. But what has happened is that while the vice president understands the big picture from, for example, the news, and likely from books and movies, too, he or she doesn't have mechanisms in place at work that easily allow for big picture thinking to be applied directly. The banker would, just as when they were in secondary school, be invested in linear constructs and goals.
There are otherwise different means for achieving success in a more associative framework and world. In this framework, now supported by an increasingly progressive education system, mechanisms are consistently in place that allow people to apply big picture thinking at work and at home.
Universal Teaching Approach
The 'Charting the Course' proposal would rely on a universal teaching approach. Teachers would work with student populations, classes of 15 to 30 students, by engaging them in conversation and dialogue which is intercultural between all students, including youth with developmental disabilities or mental illness. Students now in special education classes, too, would be a part of the generalized (in terms of population) discussion.
Students during class discussion time would engage each other even as their teacher engages them in conversation.
Lab work, or class work, which is either lab specific or involves students giving presentations followed by Q&A, would also, akin to the 'special projects,' be student specific, meaning students would be given assignments for school and home that are inspired by Individualized Education Programs.
IEPs can, in the proposed closed, holistic system, be for each student, not only for the special education population. The IEPs will be issued by the teacher instead of a counselor, and only involve two meetings per year between student, teacher and guidance counselor. The IEPs will be positive and help focus attention on each student's strengths. In the schools, there will also be a culture that promotes respect amongst students and between faculty so that IEPs are valued and not used to make fun of one another. They'll, the universal IEPs, in time speak to character-type, perhaps with new mental health labels for balanced students of all kinds. Immediately, they'll be informed by the nature and trajectory of the student's 'special projects' and the aptitude they show in different subject-areas. Current mental health diagnoses won't be included on the IEP, but teachers will be made aware of students that may be more left or right brained thinkers.
So the IEPs don't give offense in anyway, and a 'holistic' teacher will be responsible for creating them. In turn, the teacher benefits from a closer relationship to his or her students and can really help guide that student toward their high school graduation.
Grading that will inform IEPs will include grades on special projects, class presentations, essays and lab work (i.e. creative problem-solving assignments in-class and for home). Grades will ultimately be based on understanding of a subject according to its big picture, or the concept, the sum is greater than its parts, which will show differently for each student: total understanding of a subject.
There will be less assignments per week and they'll, continually, thoroughly capture what's important about the nature of a subject.
So teachers, in the proposed system, create IEPs. They help create a culture in which students only share information from IEPs voluntarily, and students simultaneously respect one another's differences and privacy. The newly-trained teachers give less assignments, but tailor them, at least on occasion, to students' specific IEPs. For instance, one student may need a computer or digital device because they're severely autistic, another they get English assignments, for example, English being a subject which they're naturally poor in, that causes them to think of the rules of another subject their strong in. And teachers could devise homework assignments that achieve this balance.
In the new proposal, students then take IEPs to college with them. College admittance is based on the kinds of strengths student exhibit, versus standardized test scores.
In order to get this system underway, I would say it's possible to train teachers in as short as two months over the summer, using money allocated from special education funds for following year, which will no longer be necessary, and added stimulus dollars. A manual would be used that teachers can learn from in a week during their training which describes for them the attributes of the left and right brained continuum,and the character types of Enneagram and Ayurveda.
Amongst the people who do the training would be teachers who already have experience working with diverse student populations. For instance, Andrew Greenwald of Ballston Spa High School in upstate New York. Mr. Greenwald has worked with students who've been diagnosed with Asperger's and severe autism both, which is really right brained thinking.
Period for Self-Exploration
Self-exploration and knowledge is already strongly incorporated into the 'Charting the Course' education proposal. It might, in addition to becoming a larger part of formal schooling, however, typically take up the space of months, or even years, outside of the classroom (See Nader Khalili's story in, The New Village, and the notes below about both Ansel Adams and Jan Smuts). While self-exploration is integral to every person's education, students, in order to experience it in full as youth, might best have it be routine that they can opt to take some time off from school, or right after school, for this natural part of the self-growth cycle, typically a year or two:
It involves time to:
Let the mind freely associate and ponder, about the world and your place in it.
Come to know the world, and in terms of your particular interests.
Apply yourself with work that's a reflection of your thinking and engagement with the world, you've discovered by way of exploration, or self-exploration.
Self-exploration is a period in youth for becoming in touch with the larger world, and its needs as well as your own, that's in line with building the details of your life and career. The three phases listed above may happen concurrently, or in stages.
Ansel Adams, who was home taught for much of his youth, frequently attended for the duration of a year, the 1915 San Francisco World Fair, when he was about fourteen-years-old. During this remarkable period of growth for him, he must have viewed many exhibits with cultures frozen-in-time. Then, after seeing the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with a new camera that was a gift from his father in toe, the idea of photographing the mountains in still life, for the world, increasingly occurred to him.
Jan Smuts, being a natural academic, was well able to experience a true flowering of self-growth in his undergraduate years at Stellenboch, in South Africa. He readily grasped of all kinds of academic knowledge, as if in a stupor, including what became his life-long hobby, botany, which also allowed his mind to freely associate between, in this instance, nature and political life. He then went on to write, in his law school years, in England, Walt Whitman: a study in the Evolution of Personality, which was a reflection of an extension of his own period of self-growth. In Stellenboch and England, he needed to set time aside for botany, and then the writing of his first book, to actually engage in self-growth.
Education with Digital Devices
Education with iPods can and does include using interactive diagrams and maps that can add to the dynamics of class discussion.
But programs on these devices might narrow what a teacher teaches, and still provide so much food for fodder that the teacher has no space to discuss outside-of-the-lines of the program.
Teachers may also not get to discuss what they want to because the program from the digital device veers away from regularly scheduled curriculum.
With the use of these devices, students could also not be taught just one set of methods for handling the rules and formulas of a subject.
In the proposed education system, there would only be a holistic use of digital devices in classes, in which they accentuate the learning already going on inside the classroom.
The 'Charting the Course' proposal would encourage students learn method from their teachers and only a uniform set of rules and principles from technology.
To encourage inventiveness, teachers might be assisted by digital devices in teaching the rules of a course, then, in addition to teaching the methodology, teachers may let students try to figure out ways to solve problems, or methodology, on their own, as is often done in math at the college level. Students would learn to tackle methodology to spur their creativity, however while guided by a teacher.
Learning through experiences both digital and hands-on can show students how to invent or solve problems independently.
Multiply Handicapped Students
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, 1985, Oliver Sacks, if you ask me, does wonders to inform special education teachers about the potential for working with students and adults who are multiply handicapped.
In 2005, reading Sacks' recollections from 'The Autist Artist,' a chapter of the book, showed me how, ultimately, the world can be such a different place when those who can, help those in need. The chapter of the book recounts when Sacks entered the life of a young man named Jose, who'd recently been admitted to a state hospital after 15 years of isolation in the cellar of his mother's house. Sacks described how he was able to enter Jose's tormented life at this stage, and make him smile. Jose couldn't talk or function well, because of his severe autism, but Sacks gave of himself and helped to guide him toward drawing. Using visual memory and imagination, Jose drew multidimensional, well-proportioned renditions of images he'd seen for only a few moments, and his spirits lifted.
Understanding an integrative school system:
The goal of k-12 in the above school system is to interweave associative and linear thought in the reading, coursework and in individual and group projects, for all students, so that studies or courses are consistently a combination of left and right-brained logic. High school physics, for example, would be a combination of the applied and theoretical interpretations of the science. And, in the case of physics, theoretical physics would also be offered separately for students who are more analytical and can grasp the theory but have more difficulty working with the formulas of applied physics.
At the university level, progressive change may happen more quickly, as it usually does at this level, while in k-12 change will be more gradual and subtle, even after the new system has been implemented. In k-12, change begins with associative and linear thought processes complementing one another more and more, as described in the “Charting the Course” outline above. Courses for secondary school students will be more complete combinations of the associative and the linear, that is, until they become, like college coursework before them, models of closed, holistic systems incorporating applied sciences. For example, advanced sciences taught in the near future at the college level will eventually be able to be accessed already in the secondary school system, as what is intelligent about them becomes more commonly placed within an already existing whole system, that's just not a closed, whole system yet, as its missing some of its parts, like astrology in math and design and architecture in art. At the university level, more immediately, closed, holistic systems will serve to completely incorporate the applied sciences and put them into the context of the whole. Students won't miss out on any aspect of learning (since learning will be whole) under this new system, even while people will still become 'specialized.' Specializations will be part and parcel of advanced studies, on a five to seven-year track, and those studies will also be a mixture of liberal arts and highly technical studies. (Whole learning is learning that is applicable (applied in an immaterial sense) according to the law of universals, or the law of One, that lends itself to students gaining total understanding of a subject to the extent that they become able to apply that complete understanding to facts as they arise.)
In addition to describing above in the 'reading' section how associative thinkers develop and work within holistic systems to assist and complement their thought process, and what they do, I also wrote about some of the ways associative thinkers benefit from utilizing left-brained thinking and systems to ensure they know, for example, what art exhibits there are in the city that might contribute to their whole thinking. The left-brained or neurotypical person can stand to benefit from the modus operandi of the “in touch” right-brained way, and does. But more universally, the two, left- and right-brained people, can and should work closely together on a continual basis. That is, sophisticated whole brain thinking should be a constant, and a goal.
An example of how and why the two dominant ways of thinking should be more entirely interwoven in the real world, and in schools too, is stages of development. Stages of development are what right-brained people, and left-brained people too, both accessing associations of the right-brain, use to imagine what the future will look like. Sometimes people come up against roadblocks, though, when the plans they envision don't unfold as planned. While the associative mind has much to do with the development of stages, or vision, the linear or left-brained mind orchestrates the unfolding. Both left and right-brained thinking are totally dependent on one another, and so one should be strong in both. This is part of the reason for the proposed education system described above. Because in the real world our thinking can truly benefit from whole brain thinking, which is already accomplished to some degree, but could be so much more rewarding for us all.
iAlexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner, “Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development,” J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998) Ch. 3, 47-74. Manuscript version submitted for publication in 1997. 21-22. http://archive.syntonyquest.org/
elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf.
Holistic Living: Tips for Youth will be available soon.