What is Holistic Education?
Holistic Education is a methodology which focuses on preparing students to meet any challenges they may face in life and in their academic career. The most important theories behind holistic education are learning about oneself, developing health relationships and positive social behaviors, social and emotional development, resilience, and the ability to view beauty, experience transcendence, and truth.
Holistic Education takes current cultural influences such as the media and music and teaches younger people how to be human, since said cultural influences do not. It conceptualizes questions regarding the biggest challenges in life and how to overcome obstacles, achieve success, and what basic concepts need to be learned first in order to accomplish all of those later on in life.
Understanding that support which once came from traditional families, religion, or old tribes no longer exists, holistic education seeks to modify learning of human goodness, personal greatness, and the joy of living both in trials and in successes. Pressure from competition in school, after-school activities, and the social pressure to look a certain way, as well as the violence which typically accompanies school children both physically, psychologically, and emotionally, takes away from a child's ability to learn. Holistic education rectifies this.
Holistic education notes that children need to not only develop academically, but develop the ability to survive in the modern world. They need to be able to rise and meet challenges presented to them in the future and contribute to the world in which they live. This type of learning is said to begin during childhood. Children need to learn to first value themselves, their worth, and recognize their abilities and how to be able to do what they want in life. Doing what they want ties into the relationships that they build and how they treat those relationships. Holistic education teaches children about their immediate relationships with their friends and family as well as social development, health, and intellectual development. The idea of resilience is a learned quality, not one which is inherent and thus children must be taught to face difficulties in life and overcome them. The last concept inspires children to observe truths, natural beauty, and the meaning of life.
Teachers working in this alternative education system focus their teacher resources and lesson plans on learning more than just academics in their classroom, leaving the positive impact on children altering their behavior and outlook on life for the best. Study skills should be demonstrating respect and the ability to work within a given structure instead of trying to fight it and being opposed. Teachers support conflict and fear as much as friendship and happiness as a basic and natural part of life which children need to master.
Holistic education aids children by working at their pace. Instead of maintaining that all children work at the same level and speed, holistic education takes the creative outlook on education and academics and provides children with a pace attributed to their individual needs to avoid boredom, a loss of interest, or frustration.