why (w)holistic?
Organic. Authentic. Aesthetic. All words that end with and subsequently (to my personal taste) illicit an "ic..k" primarily due to their obscene overusage and thus lack of clarity in true definition. Holistic fits right in with this slew of positive connotation adjectives. While I do believe the heart of a holistic-oriented life is perhaps THE core value of Seedthyme, I wanted to implement a branding strategy that drove at the "whole" often forgotten in holistic.
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Advertisements propagating the newest line of "holistic skincare" scroll adjacent to a "Try this weekly meal plan for your holistic home" and "Six holistic remedies for a sore throat." In these three examples, holistic may mean "nontoxic," "peaceful," and even "non-traditional medicinal"; however, the latter usage of the three may be the closest to the its true form.
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​Cambridge English Dictionary defines "holistic" as follows:
"dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part."
Whole--somewhere in the dropping of the "w" from the beginning of "whole," it became easy to distance ourselves from the true meaning of the term. ​Life that is not just "clean," not just "healthy," but living as an interconnected, integrated whole being not segmented into but a sum of the parts of oneself that are physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, rational, creative, etc. ​
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Thus the (w). To not appear ill-educated by misspelling as wholistic while still retaining the intentional visual that adding the "w" allows.
what about "(w)holistic" in education?
Outside of "crunchy mom" Instagram algorithms, there is little more ill-use of the holistic concept than in the field of education. It is rebranded with the term "whole-child." Textbook after journal article after strategy book after school website "Our Mission" page plaster this two word phrase everywhere and make claims that are nearly impossible to fulfil in a traditional classroom environment.​
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When I was in college, almost every education-major, or even people-oriented major (social work, psychology) peer of mine would agree that teachers should teach to and care for the "whole child." We study Maslow's hierarchy of needs and discuss how children's physiological and safety needs must be met in order for them to progress in the classroom. We discuss integrating a variety of learning styles as we design lessons to reach all students with the content. I cannot recount the number of times we broke down content into categories addressing the physical, social, emotional, behavioral, etc. all as an array of separate, segmented factors.​
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A proper, biblical view of the "whole child" must begin and end with viewing children as a specially created, unique souls. Charlotte Mason articulates this in her first of twenty principles: "Children are born persons."