On the education of the whole person

Abstract

Against the prevailing outcomes-based education and the instrumentalization of education, a movement has arisen towards holistic education. This aims to go beyond objective measurement of the outcomes of education in order to treat the student as a whole person. In this paper, we shall examine some strands of education in Japan which in some way or another feature the idea of the whole person. This includes the tradition of clinical pedagogy, which originated in Kyoto University, Yukichi Shitahodo’s educational anthropology (Kyoiku-Ningengaku), Kuniyoshi Obara’s Zenjin Education (the education of the whole person) and holistic education. Notwithstanding the fact that such education is benevolent in intention, it can be miseducative in some respects. In the light of this, and with some reference to criticism of the idea of the whole person, we shall point to an alternative vision of education of the whole person following Cavell’s Emersonian moral perfectionism – a perfectionism that is thoroughly anti-foundationalist and that transcends self-entrapment in circulatory discourse on the whole. In critical dialogue between the rich traditions of Japanese thought and the critical voice of liberalism raised from within the West, we hope to find a more nuanced answer to the question of how being a whole might make sense.

Keywords:

• Education of the whole person
• clinical pedagogy
• holistic education
• Emersonian moral perfectionism
• cross-cultural dialogue

Notes

1 J. P. Miller, The Holistic Curriculum, OISE press, 1988, revised 2ed., 1996.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Naoko Saito

Naoko Saito is Professor at the Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University. Her area of research is American philosophy and pragmatism and their implications for education. She is the author of The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson (2005), and co-editor (with Paul Standish) of Education and the Kyoto School of Philosophy (2012), Stanley Cavell and the Education of Grownups (2012), and Stanley Cavell and Philosophy as Translation: The Truth is Translated (2017). Her most recent publication is American Philosophy in Translation (2019). Email: [email protected]. URL: http://www.educ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/nsaito/

Tomohiro Akiyama

Tomohiro Akiyama is Researcher and Part-time Lecturer at Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University. He is also Visiting Professor at Nanjing University, Visiting Professor at Kobe Institute of Computing, Visiting Associate Professor at Tokyo City University, Honorary Research Associate at University of Cape Town. He pursues integral studies and integral practices for humanity and nature. His representative publications include: Integral Leadership Education for Sustainable Development (2012), Perspectives on Sustainability Assessment (2012), Environmental Leadership Capacity Building in Higher Education (2013), Sustainability Science (2016), Toward Creation of Integral Science (2016). E-mail: [email protected]