"Negotiates to inform Government of wholistic awareness. Seeks funding as wholistic consultant. Paradigms developed since 1993 shaped & shared across the board. Seek funding for 7 online outreach 'Wholistic consultants'. Units banked with NOCN. Volunteers practice the Wholistic self, documenting experiential learning for the provision of wholistic awareness. Founder listed with NHS Directory of Complementary and Alternative Practitioners & Member of a Registered Charity. Expect on consultation to arrive at the real meaning of the word "Holistic" & awareness 'bridging the gap' between mainstreams of education to the complementary (post 16) fields of Learning. Objective- share experience of wholistic learning techniques in the ‘digital age’ to statutory agencies, organizations and communities that wish to develop a simple understanding of the word wholistic."
I'm impressed. Fully fifteen people so far have understood this petition (and presumably also its notes) well enough to feel able to sign it. I wish one of them would explain it to me!
The petitioner lists herself as belonging to Universal Learning Volunteers, so I visited their website to see if I could get any sense out of that. I must say they have an exceedingly pretty butterfly-of-light background image to their first page - it's a pity it is so high-contrast that you can't read all the text. And indeed that the HTML of both the index page and the main page beyond it are invalid, so that it renders hopelessly in the browsers I have available to me. All overlapping text and stuff.
I do not find the website deeply enlightening. "Universal Learning is committed to bridging the gaps between 'mainstreams' of education and the 'complementary' fields of learning", which is all very laudable. "The Association for the Development of Universal Learning - is an on-line network of individuals who support the development and application of a Universal approach" - OK - for people who believe in a holistic approach to everything, apparently. Dirk Gently would be thrilled.
Aha! A button labelled "Principle" - where it says "The process of W*Holistic Management entails two steps; 1. ANALYSIS (taking-apart the 'problem' to see what makes it 'tick;') & 2. SYNTHESIS (putting it back together, ticking better!)" That sounds to me like ... er ... the only way to solve a problem. A perfectly normal method employed by ... anyone. What's "W*Holistic" about it?
I took a trip over to the Quackometer and found to my amusement that in the Little Black Duck's opinion, "The quacking noise is deafening. This web site is riddled with loosely defined terms and possibly pseudoscientific language. It shows no sceptical awareness and so should be treated with a suspicious mind."
I must say I agree with the Duck. I find it very difficult to put a finger on why this all sounds nonsensical and psychobabble-y - some of it, of course, sounds perfectly sensible, only expressed in a flowery and almost-incomprehensible way.
Undoubtedly there are times when a holistic approach - to use the conventional spelling - is valuable. Particularly with psychological health problems, but also in all sorts of other cases.
Which doesn't mean we need quackery and incomprehensible gibberish like this.
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