In correspondence with Dr Jeff White from the US the idea came up that holistic might be defined by the model/reality being holographic - in which each shard reflects the whole.

I wonder whether the only way we can get to being "holographic" - with each shard reflecting the whole - is through the consciousness of the teacher being in muti-level dialogue with her/his class/es. The consciouness of the teacher and the decision s/he makes, in multi-level dialogue, is at the heart of the SunWALK model.

Of course we never embrace the Whole, that of which we are part, but often people when talking about Holistic Education appear to have in mind a 'bitsa' model i.e. a limited bits-and-pieces approach. Of course if you take the 'let's identify all of the component elements and all of their relationships' approach you have impossible complexity.

But the genius of the human being mind/soul (heart-mind) is such that s/he (the teacher) doesn't have to have all of the elements and all of their relationsdhips 'up-front' for them to be playing their part - they are in the background, below consciousness. Education needs to be within the best possible conceptualization of what it is to be human. That includes working with the infinite nature, and mystery, of the teacher's soul and the souls of the students. We are far more that we can measure with any and all of our sciences - we are more than we can objectify. So the holographic reality lies as a possibility in the consciousness of the teacher. But what does this mean in practice?

I think that my chosen definition of being a holistic practioner helps;

the holistically minded practitioner is trying to do each particular thing, theoretical and practical, with consciousness of connections with, and between, all pertinent contexts - environmental context, social justice context etc. - right up to - and most essentially - with some sense of the Whole.

I tried in SunWALK to get as near as possible to the 'holographic' reality. I probably failed but others can go further. In the meantime perhaps the 'proceeding with a sense of the Whole' makes the holographic imaginable and therefore, more usefully, closer to reality than the 'bean-counting' approach involving measuring 'all of the elements and all of their relationships'.

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