Back to Ken Robinson’s TED speech, cited earlier.
We are instantly into the notion of the embodied mind here, and reach back to Plato, to medieval Christian mistrust of the body, and so on. I’m not suggesting there’s a quick fix for this change in thinking. Educationalists look – or can too often look, if we’re more phrasing it more cautiously – at intellectual activity as the sole or principal purpose of education. The debate about testing using SATs (which is not quite an annual event, but does reappear often) brings it mind to again, although it’s interesting to note one of the sources of the current disquiet is the Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee report, published today.
The Ecclestone-Furedi scrutiny of the therapeutic in education [see for example, Kathryn’s fascinating professiorial lecture, the text of which can be accessed via this page] explores whether dealing with feelings is a valid way of treating learners – but might, of course, not move the ‘embodiment’ notion any further, seeking rather to look still at activity that is primarily non-embodied: the emotions rather than cognition. In other words, well-being is less the polar opposite of cognition in educational terms than the debate might suggest.
nicktomjoe 