Holistic Education: The Human Embedded in the 4 Kingdoms of Nature

Last week, we introduced the concept of a regenerative education for children and youth. In this post, we are going to elaborate some details about that. A regenerative education is by nature a holistic education since regeneration comes from a recognition of the wholeness we are striving to regenerate.

Such an approach cannot be more timely than it is now. Our extraordinary modern intellectualism has achieved much. It has also sacrificed living thinking on the altar of materialistic progress. What we took for granted in past ages – namely, the existence of a living reality beyond what is perceived with the senses – we no longer acknowledge, at least not publicly. The result has been a calcification of our thinking. Put another way, our thinking is a corpse of what it once was. The destruction of the environment, increase of chronic diseases across the population, expanding economic disparities, and other troubling facts only testify to this.

Humanity needs to recover a living thinking that stitches ourselves and the world back into an interconnected whole. Then, we need to apply that holistic view practically to all aspects of human life. Last week’s post was a kind of manifesto on that. Enkindle Academy is committed to providing an education that regenerates this inward life of soul, that our children may steward a re-enlivening of the earth and her creatures.

The Foundation of a Holistic Education

How do we provide a holistic education? In this post, we will discuss the foundation, which is to educate the child within the context of nature. This doesn’t merely mean spending time outside, although, that is vitally important. It is to place the human within the four kingdoms of nature from a spiritual scientific perspective to answer the questions, “Who am I?” and, “What is my place in the world?” Creative, loving, and noble deeds proceed from such a way of educating.

The Four Kingdoms of Nature

So, we start by placing the human within the kingdoms of nature. They are: stones, plants, animals, and human beings. Beginning with the stones, how are we like them? How are we unlike them? What do we share with them? What more do we have that they don’t? We should not do this abstractly with students. Rather, we should have them spend time observing stones, touching them, holding them, walking on them, drawing them, writing about them. In short, experiencing them. Understanding grows from this.

After the stones, we move onto the plants. We ask the same questions as above, but we also compare plants to stones as well. The more comparisons and contrasts, the better. We learn what we are and everything in the world is through comparisons.

Next, we work with the animals in the same way. Some students may get stuck here. They may either personify their pets or fall prey to a more pernicious error. There is a common notion in modern intellectual culture that we are nothing but the most highly developed animals, devoid of anything truly spiritual. Some also refer to us as biological machines, nothing more. This materialistic fallacy underlies traditional Marxist philosophy. It’s more common than some think in the youth of today, and it points to their inability to perceive, or even consider, the possibility that humans are something more than mere bodies. Indeed, humans are not made in the image of machines; machines are made in the image of humans, and this concept is becoming increasingly difficult for today’s youth to grasp.

The Human Being

Finally, we arrive at something like the following conclusions. First, the stones have mineral bodies, nothing more. They are inert and utterly subject to outside forces. Plants have mineral bodies like the stones. However, they have brought the mineral into patterns of life and growth. They circulate fluids and breathe. Third, animals have mineral bodies and habits of life and growth like the plants, to which they add a new capacity: sentience. They have desire and volition, coupled with the ability to move towards what they want and away from what they don’t.

Humans have all these capacities, and something more. Whereas an animal can only obey its instincts, a human can disobey his or hers. For example, we can stop ourselves from striking another, even when instinct compels us to do so. This ability for self-mastery comes from full self-consciousness, which humans, alone, possess. How do we know this is true when, for example, the highest animals like chimps share much of our DNA and have language like us? We explore this question in depth in our 8th Grade Anatomy Block. In short, it is because they have concrete language, only, lacking the symbolic language required to say “I” to themselves. Humans have this capacity, and with it comes the possibility to develop conscious awareness of unseen, eternal realities underlying ourselves and the sensory world. “I” is a completely super-sensory thought.

This may sound heady – pun intended, I guess – and we wouldn’t go there with a second grader, for example. However, we would lead students into this exploration in age-appropriate ways. It looks different in 2nd vs. 8th grade, but we can still make progress each year. It’s a living process that grows as they grow, and it’s the foundation of our holistic education journey.

Why A Holistic Education Like This Matters

The seeds of our future human culture are planted within our children, today. If we want to know how society has gone astray in the present, we only need look back to how we were educated in the past. The feeling selves of human beings most strongly develop between ages 7-14, aka, 1st-8th grades. That is why it’s crucial to lead students through these experiences during this time. It’s when their heart-forces, aka, their moral and aesthetic sensibilities, are forming. The right experiences given during this time will plant seeds of the good, beautiful, and true in students’ souls which will blossom later in life.

New Directions and How to Connect

It goes without saying that if we want a healthier, more alive world, we have to change how we’re doing things. A holistic, regenerative human education begins by placing the human being within the context of the whole of nature. By leading students into such active contemplations as I have here described, we preserve the wholeness they come from. Such children grow up to steward a bright human future for all. I hope you will join me on that path.

Enkindle Academy sows such seeds by inspiring young minds using a regenerative, Steiner-based approach to homeschooling. We offer prerecorded and live lessons for students in grades 5-9, encouraging students to deepen their reverence for nature and the living reality that permeates it. We teach all academic subjects plus creative writing and language arts, empowerment groups for teens, and soon to add fine arts.

Signup for a free sample lesson now.