Holistic Education

This week I attended a PD session led by my peers on holistic education.

A leader in holistic education is Ron Miller; he's written a lot of books and even founded a journal on the subject. I went to find out what his definition of holistic education is, and he says it's essentially democratic education. In previous discussions democratic education has come up, but I didn't realize it was interconnected with holistic. 

The PD session consisted of a community circle, sitting on the floor with no pencils or books. We had various activities relating to communication (one of these was called telephone pictionary, I highly recommend it). 

It made me recall hearing about the democratic learning style used at A. S. Neil's Summerhill School. This schooling system is interesting to me, but I don't really know how well it can work on a larger scale. 

Continuing with Ron Miller's definition, he says it is concerned with individual freedom and social responsibility. In our session we had a lengthy discussion about the teacher's responsibility for helping the student develop their sense of self and building the classroom community. I noticed on my practicum that most students didn't even know their classmate's names and I think that's not a very nice environment at all. I think that more enjoyable a classroom is for a student, the better they will succeed at the course. Perhaps they might not be getting the validation from high grades, but they can get the validation from coming to the class every day and feeling welcomed. 

However, my favourite part of holistic education is Miller's final statement, "It is education for a culture of peace, for sustainability, and ecological literacym and for the development of humanity's inherent morality and spirituality. 

Just like the medicine wheel in Aboriginal culture, schools need to cater to the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental needs of the students. 

Too often we are too grade driven and we need to take a step back to see how these youths under our care will become adults in the future. 

Maybe they don't need a perfect GPA to be a perfect person.