An Educational "Pie"
A Recipe for Holistic Education

Albert Einstein famously stated that “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.“

Homeschoolers often use that quote to knock the traditional school system, but let’s stop and ponder for a moment what Einstein meant. Most of us are products of the school system and we generally consider ourselves “educated” even though we recognise the many shortcomings of the school system.

Unfortunately, most of the time, we think of education very narrowly, only in terms of academics, but that is only part of the whole pie we need to offer our children to help them develop to their full potential. Here’s a summary of five types of learning to give children a holistic education:


1. Academic Facts

True education is not just the memorisation of facts and information that we studied to pass school exams. It may include that, afterall, you probably still know many of the capital cities and countries of the world or dates of World War 2 because you learned them by rote, but academic facts and so-called general knowledge is only a part of the pie that makes up an effective education.

Another major part of education is SKILLS. While exploring many subjects and academic topics, we develop useful skills that stay with us for life. Skills like reading comprehension, written communication and arithmetic are skills we all need everyday. Research skills and the ability to evaluate and think critically about the results we find are vital in this era. Practical skills like the ability to change a car tyre or swap a light-bulb are necessary too. Solving quadratic equations with parabolas - not so much!

It's not what you know, but what you can DO with what you know!

The above two types of learning are likely to be very familiar to you. The remaining three might not always come to mind: