107 WCD as a (W(H)olistic Response 2 Holistic education, above all else, is an expression of profound respect for the deeper, largely unrealized powers of our human nature. Holistic educators see each child as a precious gift, as an embryo of untapped spiritual potential. This attitude is similar to the Quaker belief that there is “that of God in every one”—or at least an unfathomed depth of personality, contained in the soul of every person. (p. 2) The second came from John P. Miller himself: The focus of holistic education is on relationships—the relationship between linear thinking and intuition, the relationship between mind and body, the relationships between various domains of knowledge, the relationship between the individual and community, and the relationship between self and Self. In the holistic curriculum the student examines these relationships so that he/she gains both an awareness of them and the skills necessary to transform the relationships where it is appropriate. (1988, p. 3, as cited in Miller, 2019) In later editions, the connection to the Earth was included, and the soul replaced the self: Holistic education then, is about education the whole person—body, mind, and spirit—within the context of an interconnected world. Although the term is relatively new, as a practice holistic education has been going on for centuries. (Miller, 2019, p. 5) From the previously presented meta-ethnographical matrix (Appendix 1), it is clear that, over two decades, a synthesis was produced between the holistic and the wholistic perspectives. With the influence of the Porticus Foundation and, possibly, the influence of different countries with a strong Roman Catholic presence, the spiritual domain was added to the whole child approach. The International Handbook of Holistic Education also contains a contribution by Spier, Leenknecht and Osher (2019) from a whole child perspective. However, when defining their holistic educational approach, they did not mention the spiritual domain and, in reference to the ASCD documentation, just referred to ‘the cognitive, social, emotional, physical, and talent development of children and youth from diverse backgrounds’, adding that ‘a holistic framework embodies relational and bioecological principles of child development’ (Spier et al., 2019, p. 287). By bioecological principles, they mean ‘the interaction between a child’s genetic predispositions or potentialities and his or her environment’ (Spier et al., 2019, p. 292).
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