Rationale for Holistic Approach to Science Education 

     Science as described by the Ministry of Education in its Science Curriculum Document, is a "way of knowing".  Further it involves "exploration, experimentation, observation, and measurement and analysis and dissemination of data.   Students need to develop the attitudes or 'habits of mind' that are considered for meaningful work in science and technology including: commitment to accuracy, precision, and integrity in observation or safety procedures; and respect for living things and the environment."    Unfortunately, this "way of knowing" does not include wisdom, intuition, awe, wonder, reflection (except in terms of problem solving), appreciation of our interconnectedness, imagination, creativity, or in short, most things that are connected with Holism.    

     Science Education needs a new philosophy.  The day when objectivity was as sacred to science as the Trinity was to Christianity are gone; objectivity without subjectivity is science at it’s most reckless, it’s most blind.  The faith of science has been totally placed, yet totally misplaced in objectivity.  Physicist Niels Bohr, whose general scientific principle is that every scientific observation is really a participant/observation, that is an interaction between the observer and the observed that changes the state of the observed, was arguably the most important discovery of the twentieth century.  When will science and science educations start to appreciate that at the heart of science is relationship?

     Enraptured with science as the great answer to the Global Economy's desire for faster, stronger, and better, has meant that the mechanistic models of efficiency and productivity have reigned supreme in many areas of science.  If science is to truly appreciate the principle of participant/subject observation, then relationship must take its appropriate position in the study of science, along with the philosophy centred on relationship and interconnectivity, that of perennial holism.

     For these reasons, we have put together a website that will encourage students to explore their creativity, fire up their imaginations, open their eyes and enjoy the awe and wonder in the world around us, contemplate the scientific issues of the day with a compassionate heart, feel for that which is beyond them, as they reach down more deeply to discover that which is within them.  This is the approach to science that we would encourage.