1  Introduction: - what am I actually doing with this thing called holistic education?

What is your answer when someone says about Holistic Education, “What exactly is that?”   How happy are you with the answer you give, especially if it is in just a short conversation, when you sense that you, and the other person, are ‘from different planets’, metaphorically-speaking?   This has happened to me and I’m first going to tell you the story of how I didn’t handle such a situation very well at all.

A few years ago I was invited to Windsor castle for a weekend.   Its not the kind of thing that has happened before, or since,  and I don’t know how I came to get the invite, but I did.   It wasn’t from Her Majesty or the Duke, but from the man in charge of running courses, mainly Christian weekends, in a centre attached to the very beautiful St George’s chapel, which is the royal family’s own sacred spot, within Windsor castle.    By the way we all had to pay for our accommodation. 

No member of the royal family attended that course, though apparently they quite often do.  Instead, at a pre-dinner drinks party, I found myself, for a few minutes, with the General, that is the Governor-General, who is the boss of the castle, on behalf of her majesty.  He must have been a general from one of the guards regiments because he was about 3 metres tall, and wearing very very expensive Harris Tweed suit.  “Hello”, he said, “ and what do you?” 

This is the answer I didn’t give;  

“Well General I devote myself to that ineffable space, mystical almost, between the three modes of engagement of the human spirit, caring, creativity and criticality, that, for me, perform a magical dance, when I’m in holistic education dialogue with children or adults.”                                

That’s what I didn’t say.    But that’s the truth of the matter.   That’s what I actually do.  That’s what I, and many who seek to teach holistically are about.   Hopeless idealism I know - but it stops me from hanging around street corners, or entering organized crime!

 I couldn’t really tell it as it is.  So instead, of course, I muttered, a bit half-heartedly, something about trying to cater for the whole child, the usual stuff that is written in every school prospectus, but which, if you scratch below the surface, has little or no meaning compared to what actually goes on.