The Indian philosopher, spiritual speaker and writer, Jiddu Krishnamurti, claimed that ‘[t]he highest function of education is to bring about an integrated individual who is capable of dealing with life as a whole’. Krishnamurti’s ideas inform a holistic teaching and learning approach to ESL.

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky was first published in 1864. It is a first-person narrative in the form of a "confession" which rebels against the idea that everything, including the human personality and will, can be reduced to the laws of nature, science and mathematics.