A Response to Social and Familial Dysfunction from Holistic
Education
There is widespread concern about the breakdown of families and
communities; about increases of neglect and abuse of all kinds;
about conflict, isolation; and about the psychological consequences
of these. Holistic education has long felt that it should address
these issues, and address them in a fundamental way to give young
people an opportunity to live without such dysfunction in the
families they create and the society they will inherit.
In brief, holistic education has contended that education must
deliberately help children learn about the nature of society,
themselves, and relationships. These are very complex things, full
of potential joys as well as sorrow. To not learn about them and
then expect to lead a successful and happy life, is as reasonable
as not learning about mountaineering and then expect to climb Mt.
Everest.
Parents, in the main, try very hard to teach their children about
their society, themselves, and relationships, but the influence of
parents is vastly overshadowed by popular culture as promoted in
the media and marketing. The media and marketing portray (and in so
doing unconsciously promote) relationships, ways to resolve
conflicts, and values that are at odds with what most parents want
for their children. Relationships which are the greatest source of
both happiness and misery for all of us are too often portrayed
superficially in popular culture, as caricatures or comic book
versions of real relationships. Adults in the media who are
presented as immature are seen as funny or endearing. Children who
are unnaturally precocious are seen as heroes or icons.
The real sensitivities and depths of perception required to meet
the complexities of relationships are rarely presented. Conflicts
in the media are rarely resolved through negotiation or developing
larger understandings; force and violence are normal, and are
thereby normalized. If popular culture is, in fact, the major
source of most people's learning about how to live life, it would
seem we are being trained to have dysfunctional families in
dysfunctional societies. From reading our newspapers, it would
appear that the training is working.
Values are deliberately manipulated by marketing. Children are
"targeted" by experts; a phrase that should itself be worrying.
This is usually accomplished by targeting the self-image of
children, and this occurs at a time when the sense of self is being
formed and is at its most vulnerable. This pressure on children's
self-images leads to insecurity, and yet we know from research that
children need security for healthy development and learning. We
know from reams of research that childhood insecurity often
produces psychological wounds that are very difficult to heal, and
childhood pathologies (which are on the rise) are a source of
social and familial dysfunction in adults.
Brutality, not just physical but emotional and social as well,
seems commonplace. Peer groups become enforcers of values (like
being "cool") that stem from the popular culture rather than
healthy traditions or forms of wisdom. As a consequence, children
learn to act for the sake of appearances and not authenticity; for
presentation rather than substance. Such appearances and
presentation are in themselves another source of insecurity as they
are always fragile and carry with them the constant threat of
exposure for the falsities they are. This is a very dysfunctional
position for children to find themselves in and to try to
maintain.
Holistic education has maintained that children need to actively
and deliberately learn about relationships and values. Both must be
discussed and examined in the classroom. Relationship dynamics that
emerge must be addressed, not for the sake of "correcting" them,
but for the sake of learning about relationship. Values, all
values, need to be explored and questioned. Children should not be
inculcated with values, but they should be helped to find values
that are deep and complex and that will sustain them in the moral
dilemmas that are part of everyone's life. While both relationships
and values are worthy of study in their own rights, and not as
adjuncts to other subjects, holistic education has maintained that
these lessons need not be separate from lessons of literature,
history, etc., but that the various academic disciplines are
wonderful areas for exploring these dynamics in children's lives.
Such an approach also keeps lessons meaningful to children.