A student bends down to shuffle through his backpack for an assignment, only to find papers out of place, pencils missing, and the blood of his peanut butter and jelly seeping through canvas fabric. Zoom out. At a semester training, a teacher is asked to reflect upon why he teaches. He mulls swiftly through the recess of his mind, scans the essential skills of his content, argues for the future of the nation, and thinks, “Well, I like kids.” What is the difference between these two individuals? Simply put, scale.
As a geographer by training and a teacher by practice, I find myself continually returning to a core tenant of geographic and spatial thinking: scale—proportional values set to provide measure and relation between two objects. A unique feature of geographic thought is its insistence upon wholism, lending itself to an apt relationship with classical education. Geography is best suited to communicate, practice, and apply the lens of wholism, which claims that individual parts of a whole entity (physical or non-physical) are so intricately connected that they cannot exist without one another. Geography defined is the relationship and interaction between humans and the environment and can be studied at various scales. In the field of study, scale can be literal ratios of distance on a map, can be applied to describing various conceptions of regions e.g. local versus global, or taken more broadly and conceptually. In one instance, an environment can be seen as simply a forest or ocean. However, environments when viewed at various scales can be seen as: a city, a cave, a bedroom, a classroom, a desk, a chair, a backpack. If we study how space (location without meaning) becomes place (location given meaning and value), we do this through understanding the relationships between people and environments at various scales.
No place has such manifold relations, and therefore meaning, than within a school or classroom environment. The multi-faceted relationships between each individual student, teacher, and administrator lead to an infinite and dynamic web of interactions: student to student, student to desk, student to room, relations to content, environmental context cues, memory, morals, values, etc. Teachers attempt to manage each of these microcosms of scale, to the best of their ability (as well as make sure they have enough Kleenex), while also guiding and leading these growing humans to the Good and shepherding their souls. Praise be given to all working teachers past, present, and future.
Within the realm of classical education, which we may be familiar with to varying degrees, there is a common phrase that is tossed about, and even my own current school finds itself using the decades-old motto, “the whole child/person”. We know that classical education seeks to create well-rounded lifelong learners who engage their minds, bodies, and souls in pursuing truth, beauty, and goodness through wisdom and virtue in order to serve others within their community. This is not an explanation of these pillars, nor a call for stricture or precepts regarding their implementation; those can be found elsewhere and have been borne by educational theorists for generations. Instead, lend an ear to this simple reminder and call to return to scalar harmony.
The goal of Socrates through the Socratic method, after the maieutic and ironic stages of dialogue, was to bring about harmony: oneness with truth and riddance of internal inconsistency. Applied to the ‘whole person’, harmony is a unity of personhood, an ordered and balanced mind, body, and soul—a being of oneness. C.S. Lewis paints this image in his analogy of the ordered man. I will not feign to argue the need for and necessity of building the whole person and bringing the modern student to harmony. Instead, I plead for a scalar reflection of harmony and turn to an analogy of a balanced being.
Using a geographic lens, I propose a way of viewing the various scales that teachers and administrators alike lead and foster: staff, teachers, students, and parents. For this, a basic template is applied. The three parts of man are the mind, body, and soul, and respectively but rudimentarily, the soul is where nonphysical value (virtue, purpose, eternality) resides, the mind where conceptual thought and knowledge are contained, and the body the physical actualizer of mindful and soulish action. If this is the case, then the soul is the ‘why’ of the person, the mind becomes the ‘what’, and the body the ‘how’. This oversimplified template becomes a helpful guide for educators viewing their sphere of influence, allowing for a transmutable framework to reflect upon our practices at the various scales we interact with. Namely, the mind, body, and soul of an educational institution, the classroom, and the individual teacher or student.
In providing this framework, I shy away from prescribing methods, book lists, and programmatic structuring and simply encourage the use of a reflective tool, a mode of questioning.
The Mind – What We Teach
- What content do I teach in my classroom? What modes guide my selection of content?
- What books and texts have I selected for my students to read? Why?
- What curriculum have I implemented or recommended for school or home use?
- What knowledge: facts, dates, vocabulary, and discipline-specific information have I deemed necessary to teach? To include in our scope and sequence? Why?
- What skills: thinking routines, writing formulas, problem-solving strategies, calculation techniques have I prioritized? Why?
The Body – How We Teach
- What is the key tenant of my pedagogical approach in the classroom? Why?
- Do I primarily lecture, coach (one-on-one), or engage in seminars with students? Why?
- Is my classroom teacher-centered or student-centered? Why?
- How often are the students’ voices heard? Is their voice deemed significant?
- Does my method of content delivery lead to further understanding?
- Does my structure or method allow for reflection? Synthesis? Personal application?
- What role and significance do I place on feedback?
- Where do I physically locate myself in my classroom, school campus, or home?
The Soul – Why We Teach
- Why am I here – in this room? At this school? Talking with this person?
- What is the ultimate outcome of learning in my classroom and school?
- How does the environment I create, physical and non-physical, build the human soul?
- How do I speak to students, teachers, administration?
- What is my role in the classroom? At my school?
- How do I measure success and determine accomplishment?
- What is an example of the fruit of my labors?
Thus, if the balancing and unity of the mind, body, and soul of a person is essential for and better allows for eternal communion with the True, Good, and Beautiful, then similarly, we may use this reflection as a practice for balancing the various scales we encounter. Ask yourself these questions at each scale: in the individual relationship, the classroom, the school. We need balanced institutions. Just as I, an individual, have a mind, body, and soul, so too does my classroom, my department, and my school. Balancing these and intentionally knowing and addressing these questions is essential. Programs, schools, and classrooms that know themselves well emulate oneness and harmony, which leads to more effective soul-tending and lifelong learning.
