For education to be meaningful, it should be holistic, having as its ultimate goal the development of the whole person. Holistic education helps an individual to grow and develop in all dimensions: emotional, psychological, creative, social, imaginative, physical, intuitive, and spiritual as well as intellectual.¹ The focus is on acquiring knowledge, skills, and values not to get the best scores in standardized tests but to prepare them to engage in the real world. Holistic educators seek to engage students in their real-life worlds to the greatest extent possible.²

Have the schools of the 21^st century been approaching education holistically? Do they deliver the kind of education that enables their students to achieve their full potential? Are children in schools trained merely to be workers in their chosen fields or prepared to take on the multi-layered challenges they have to face in real life?

Answering the foregoing questions definitively is difficult. The ones in the best position to answer them are the graduates themselves. Only after a few years of completing schooling can people really evaluate whether the education they receive is meaningful or otherwise.

In evaluating the value of the education people receive, they need to answer: “What have they achieved and become through it?”

What education allows people to achieve determines only half the value (or even less) of that education. The other half (or even more) lies in what people become through it. It is not enough that people succeed in their chosen careers – either by being gainfully employed or having a business of their own – to say that their education is meaningful.  What they have become as persons needs to be examined as well.

Psychologists have identified the different aspects of personality as physical, emotional, social, moral/spiritual, and intellectual. It is all in these areas that the evaluation of the process of becoming should be anchored upon.

Tests such as Big Five Personality, HEXACO, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and Core Self-evaluation can be used to determine a person’s dominant personality traits. In China, they have their CPAI (Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory). These tests can help people analyze what they have become (or are becoming).

There are only two ways to classify personality traits or characteristics: positive or negative. The HEXACO model of personality structure, for instance, is very specific in describing people in the honesty-humility (H) dimension – sincere, honest, faithful, loyal, and modest/unassuming versus sly, deceitful, greedy, pretentious, hypocritical, boastful, and pompous.

What people become can only be labeled in two ways as well – good or bad. There are no gray areas. Ethics (as a branch of Philosophy) established clear guidelines in determining good and bad, right and wrong.

Education should help people prepare for a career and develop positive traits and attitudes. A child is not only a future employee or businessman. When a child eventually becomes an adult, there are other roles he/she has to play in society – as a citizen, community member, fellowman, neighbor, friend, and family member. Life is not all about work. The workplace is only a small part of the world where the child lives.

Achieving is succeeding in one’s chosen career or business – enjoying the fruits of one’s labor. Becoming is the process of developing into the best person one can become – physically, emotionally, socially, morally/spiritually, and intellectually. The person a child becomes would directly impact how he/she performs in the workplace, community, and society.

The process of achieving enables a person to have the means to earn a living.  But earning a living is different from living a life. The process of becoming empowers that person to live a life beyond work.

Education should be considered functional only if it successfully guides the child in achieving and becoming.
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* (1 & 2) Andrew P. Johnson, Ph.D. Minnesota State University, Mankato
andrew.johnson@mnsu.edu