The “Whole Person” Approach to Education
Even in years without a pandemic, most families I know go through stretches where the kids seem to get sick with one thing after another. No sooner does the three year old gag down her final dose of antibiotics for an ear infection than the seven year old turns green and doubles over…hello stomach bug. It’s a string of stressful days and sleepless nights.
But that’s just the way it is when you’re a parent: Taking care of a child means taking care of the whole child. It’s not like you break out the Tylenol for your daughter’s fever but then step over her and go on about your business when she’s writhing on the floor with belly pain. Or if your son runs into a hand dryer and needs to go get stitches in his head (actually happened), and then the next day gets hit in the face with a baseball (also actually happened), it’s not like you tell him sorry, but he’s already reached his quota for Urgent Care visits.
Nor do you don’t stop a well-visit at the pediatrician’s halfway through — just because the kid’s spine is looking good, it doesn’t mean you tell the doc she can forget about checking blood pressure.
A child isn’t well unless he’s wholly well. As parents, we wouldn’t want anything less.
I believe it’s the same with education. Children aren’t well-educated unless they’re wholly educated — unless they’re given the tools and opportunities to develop to their full intellectual, physical, social, and spiritual potential.
I would not, for example, send my kids to a school that offers excellent academics but neglects character formation: It doesn’t matter how smart the kids are, if they turn out to be a bunch of bullies, something went wrong. Nor would I send them to a school that teaches students the importance of faith but doesn’t invest much in their academic growth; my kids have brains, and I want them to be able use them to change the world for the better.
That’s why I love Our Lady of Mount Carmel. OLMC takes very seriously its duty to educate the whole student – mind, heart, body, and soul. I’ve been amazed to learn what OLMC considers essential to education — the things that absolutely cannot be neglected if you’re going to call yourself a school.
A daily encounter with Beauty, for one thing. Not a lecture about Beauty – an encounter with it. In every classroom, through every lesson. My 5th grader came home one day and explained how he finds Beauty in Math, of all things. It was a real shock to my poetry-loving, English-major mind, but the more he talked about it, the more I realized that he was right, and my imagination had been limited.
Then there’s the school’s emphasis on Truth — no matter how long it takes, no matter how complicated it becomes. A science lesson, for example, isn’t considered finished just because the chapter is over. Actually, at OLMC kids come to understand that learning is never over, because discovery is infinite. But even a discrete lesson about volcanoes or gravity isn’t “complete” unless and until the students’ questions have been explored and their understanding formed as well as possible.
And finally there’s the emphasis on Goodness. I see this mostly in how teachers interact with the kids and consistently model for them the kind of love St. Paul describes in his famous passage. I also see it in the school’s approach to faith: It neither force-feeds it nor lukewarmly presents Jesus as a mere afterthought, but rather invites children into deep thought, prayer, and genuine relationship with Him.
OLMC’s approach to education resonates with me because it starts the same place I do: A conviction that every child is a miraculous being with vast potential and purpose known to God alone. The goal of education, therefore, should be to help kids fully develop their minds, hearts, bodies, and souls. A school should exist to help a kid become the most whole, most fully alive, version of himself. As a mom, I wouldn’t want anything less, and that’s exactly what OLMC offers.
Johanna Webber is a mom of 8, including 7 current, former, and/or future Chanticleers.