What is Holistic Education?

Many people believe that intellectually gifted children tend to be anti social, or difficult to get along with. Many would say that natural leaders are not necessarily the brightest person in the crowd. Many would say that spiritually focused individuals abandon education. Holistic education tries to develop students in all of these areas.

What is a holistic education? According to wikipedia.org, "is a philosophy of education based on the premise that each person finds identity, meaning, and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to spiritual values such as compassion and peace." In short, holistic education aspires to education and develop the whole child instead of just academically.

What are some approaches to holistic learning? There is no one approach to teaching a child holistically. Instead there are many approaches that attempt to bring out the best in the child. Some of the more popular approaches to holistic learning include:

Whole Brain Learning attempts to integrate analytical, imaginative, language skills into each activity. This way, the child not only has a better chance of grasping information, but also trains all parts of the brain to work together.

Multiple Intelligences (or learning styles) is the theory that people have many different intelligences, or ways of learning and processing information. They are visual, lingustic, logical & mathmatical, musical, bodily & kinestetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. (more forms of learning continue to be defined). Individuals may have one or more of these intelligence types. If a teacher can key into how person learns through multiple intelligences, than they can best teach that person according to his or her own way of prcessiong information.

Emotional Literacy focuses on emotional intelligence which can indicate that a person has a higher chance of being successful in life. Unlike the IQ which measures basic intelligence, the EQ (emotional intelligence test) will recognize how people react in different situation.