Holistic Curriculum

Holistic curriculum is a description of educational practices intended to cultivate fully developed human beings by attending to their physical, emotional, psychological, moral, and spiritual growth. Cultivation of personal meaning and fulfillment, love for lifelong learning, and connection to others and the natural world are among educators' aims in the holistic curricular tradition.

Holism, in this curricular orientation, means both oneness and interrelatedness. Advocates of this curriculum disavow common dualisms—such [Page 446]as mind–body, logic–intuition, art–science, or group–individual. They also reject the fragmentation, standardization, and competition of modern society and schooling so that individuals can develop without experiencing systems that limit or stifle their growth and potentials. Moreover, holism entails recognizing the interconnectedness of the universe, including all of life and nature.

Educators began to refer to the term holistic curriculum in the late 1970s, and this designation became established with Ron Miller's publication of the Holistic Education Review in 1988 and John P. Miller's book, The Holistic Curriculum, published in the same year. Nonetheless, the intellectual foundation of holistic curriculum has been attributed to the Platonic ideal of a well-balanced education of intellectual, physical, and spiritual development and to 19th-century and early 20th-century child-centered theorists and educators including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel, Francis Parker, and A. S. Neill. More contemporary influences on holistic curriculum are the open school movement of the 1960s and 1970s and works by Richard Jones, Fantasy and Feeling in Education, and Joseph Chilton Pearce, The Magical Child. Montessori and Waldorf schools are viewed as both antecedent and contemporary models of holistic curriculum. In addition, other curricular models—experiential, whole person, self-directed, peace, global, and ecological—feature parallels to holistic curriculum.

Although holistic curricular practices vary, for instance, to the extent of emphasis on practical learning, creativity, and spirituality, all enactments share essential commonalities. Three interrelated themes characterize holistic curriculum: the need to cherish and nourish children's natural goodness; creation of an integrated, thematic, and well-rounded curriculum to create individuals' full and balanced development; and encouragement of connection to communities and the natural world to instill a desire for nonviolence and peace.

Descriptions of holistic curriculum emphasize love and respect for children and their developmental processes. As follows, holistic educators trust learners' interests, ideas, emotions, and experiences to be principal influences on curriculum. Child development itself is seen as the process of unfolding—to reveal the inner nature of each child and to encourage children's natural curiosity, passion for learning, and sense of wonder and spirituality. In delineating the role of teachers, emphasis is on nur-turance rather than on control and on guidance rather than on anarchy.

A goal of holistic educators is to create a balanced curriculum that fosters integration of individuals' personalities with respect for seemingly contrasting elements of human nature such as the feminine and masculine, intellectual and emotional, or physical and spiritual. In particular, holistic curriculum centers on physical development through kinesthetic learning, movement, and rhythm; it also centers on creativity and expanded consciousness through storytelling, meditation, and visualization activities. So, too, holistic educators believe that well-rounded development emphasizes awakening spirituality by enhancing intuition, metaphoric thought, and appreciation of the mysteries of existence.

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