Holistic Schooling: An Emerging Paradigm in Education

In India, parents often start sending their children to school around 3 and half to 4 years. School plays a formative and crucial role in the spheres of cognitive, language, emotional, social and moral development of students. Education at school level is the key and forms the basis for the future development and success of the students. Traditionally, imparting education to a child would mean teaching literacy and numeracy skills i.e. the ability to read and write and learn to identify numbers. The purpose of education at school level, however, is broader than just literacy. Its purpose is holistic development of children in terms of their intellectual, social, emotional, interpersonal, moral and spiritual abilities. The strong educational foundation can only be laid in children if the schools aim and facilitate ways and pathways for the holistic development of their students. In order to achieve this goal, the teachers and staff need to be sensitized about this and should involve students' parents too in the process. Teaching and learning is basically a collaborative process involving motivated teachers, students and their parents. The most significant aspect that need to be focused in current schooling system in India is to teach and train school students to learn to transform their knowledge into action. The purpose of the current conceptual paper is to sensitize the a) Educators, parents, policy makers and common masses about the nature and purpose of holistic schooling b) Educators, parents and policy makers about imparting training in holistic education. The holistic education aims to foster students' cognitive, emotional, behavioural, moral and spiritual abilities so that schooling in India not just focuses on literacy skills but rather the overall development of the students which will make them self-responsible and self-sufficient and later enrich their personal and professional life. This will significantly contribute in our Nation building process.