Holism sees everything in the world is part of unity or the whole that cannot be separated or divided and pursues the wholeness(Miller, 2002: 56). Holistic education based on holism places value on 'relationships' along with balance, inclusion, and co...
Holism sees everything in the world is part of unity or the whole that cannot be separated or divided and pursues the wholeness(Miller, 2002: 56). Holistic education based on holism places value on 'relationships' along with balance, inclusion, and connection not being restricted to a certain theory. It tries to learn from the natural growing process of a life and wholeness of life. That is, it's a perspective regarding human beings as the center of education.
Needed to solve dehumanization and fragmentation that have surfaced as critical problems in today's education and to recover the original meaning of education is a holistic view of education to see education not as a part but as the whole.
Understanding the need, this study conducted an analysis of holistic theories of education with interpretative research technique based on the related literature. The frameworks used in the analysis include the goals, contents, and methods, which made the major elements of curriculums. Then the results were used to design a holistic school model and investigate the possibility of holistic education in school.
The backgrounds of holistic education can be reviewed in philosophical, psychological, and social aspects. There was perennial philosophy saying that every being in the universe is connected in invisible unity. There was also transpersonal psychology that asked people to get interested in their own spirituality based on their inner self and focus on how to fulfill themselves. Environment and ecology also played a part in the formation.
Holistic education offers the direction toward whole person education rather than a technology or curriculum, being hard to define. But one sentence can be enough to get the nature of it; it sees everything as connected and offers directions.
The goal of holistic education is to stimulate and cultivate the inner life energy and potential that human beings are born with. In other words, it is to help people realize the meaning of their existence based on wholeness and relationships. In its applications to today's school, the teacher and students integrated the goals of holistic education into the current ones and set them as follows: (1) children with a warm heart, (2) children with a health body, (3) children of creative thinking, and (4) children with interest in environment as global citizens.
The ten principles of the Education 2000/A Holistic Perspective were used to pick the four areas of educational contents, which were personality, experience, ecological education, and spirituality. The school should provide children with an environment where they can grow wholly in the process of their participative knowing process in order to put those educational contents into action. Suggested in the study included a human scale school, a familiar school with live colors, a school with great smells, a live school with music, an ecological school with a forest, and a meditating school.
Taking the principle of 'wholeness of methods,' the methods of holistic education are not limited within a certain area and subject to changes and uses under different contexts. The result is extremely diverse applications with no one fixed version. A consideration was made of eurythmie that's a physical approach, visualization that's an image approach, a story model that's a thinking approach, and meditation that's a spiritual approach in the Seventh Curriculum.
The results indicate that holistic education has enough possibility of being applied to current school as education pursuing children's growth as whole persons in the relationships with the whole.
The teachers should have a deep understanding of education and solid philosophy of holistic education so that they can provide good education in a holistic school model. It's only when elementary school plays a pivotal role in the community and plays it truthfully that holistic school that's caring and sharing will shine with the community. It's also desirable to provide education according to the local characteristics out of the national curriculums. With those supports from the social environment, holistic education will surely be applicable to schools.