Source: holisticthinktank.com
WHY?
Today’s schools are a contradiction of the sense of education.
They convey knowledge and facts but do not show how to understand them and use it in everyday life. They strengthen competition for grades and achievements, but not teach how to cooperate and communicate with others. They require continuous teaching progress, but do not show how to achieve it in accordance with the child’s predispositions. Yet each of us is different, and this uniqueness constitutes a real value for society.
It is high time to restore meaning to school as a place of shaping responsible and conscious generations, but – above all – happy and fulfilled people.
Our phenomenographic research carried out in 10 countries around the world showed that an overriding goal of teaching every single subject at school should be learning and developing humanistic values, based on freedom and respect for others, as well as the ability to build good interpersonal relations and understand each other. This is the foundation of our culture and civilization.
HOW?
The mission of Holistic Think Tank is to change the priorities of education towards humanization of the school curricula, through implementing a holistic way of teaching all the school subjects. Our guideline is a list of “What School Ought to Teach” (see: https://holisticthinktank.com/article/what-school-ought-to-teach-wsot-list), prepared by our Researchers.
We are convinced that knowledge acquired in the course of learning for ex. mathematics, history or chemistry is only a means of getting to know oneself and others and shaping the ability to cooperate with them. This is the real purpose of education. Hence, all the school subjects should be taught in the same, coherent way, using universal power skills as the basis in the process of gaining specialized subject knowledge. At last, human beings are the most important subject of the whole process of education.
We propose an original approach to working with students, as a tool for changing educational priorities in primary schools, based on the adjusting to reality system of guidelines for teaching all the school subjects. We call it “humanization of school curricula”, understood as instilling into the teaching process of all subjects at school a new teaching methodology, called the “Interdisciplinary Subject” (IDS). The purpose of IDS is to convey to students the system of universal, humanistic values, which will enable them to have a conscious and fulfilled adult life.
WHEN?
The change, we are striving for, implies also a modification of the criteria for assessing knowledge in each subject, where the focus should be shifted to the field of information processing skills, the ability to use knowledge (and not only to gain it), but – above all – in the area of communication, relations and cooperation in the social environment. We focus on addressing the holistic needs of the individual as part of society.
For as human beings, we can only learn ourselves in contact with others. We don’t come from ourselves, we are not for ourselves and we don’t die for ourselves.
A caring, humanized school is possible. We can start building it together today.
