Integrative education

1. Integrative education involves the acceptance of a new corpus of universal principles and an appropriate pedagogy. As distinct from integrated education (representing the most advanced stage at a lower, previously conceptualized, level of social development), integrative education represents the next, or higher level which, in consonance with the principle of emergent levels, possesses its own, unique qualities and functions. These comprise the ordering element both to integrate activities within that emerging level itself and also to direct the activities of the lower, previously conceptualized, levels as well. An integrative approach within the educational process, makes it possible to move either horizontally or vertically in an appropriately structured new curriculum. Integrative principles can then be employed to deal with topics and problems so as to develop interdisciplinary linkages, or alternatively probes can be made into specific areas or disciplines, as deeply as such specialization warrants.

A fundamental distinction is drawn between integration in the sense of synthesizing presently accepted postulates with their attendant corpus of knowledge, methodologies, and modes of behaviours, and integration in the sense of employing a new conceptual model constructed for the express purpose of developing a holistic educational philosophy and methodology capable of understanding and documenting the principles inherent in the natural and social sciences, together with the major humanistic systems of mankind. The distinction is between integration within an existing model and the development of a new model based upon universal integrative principles.

2. The central tasks of a unifying, general or integrative education are: to demonstrate, in the most effective way possible, interrelationships between all disciplines; to teach the individual how to discover such relationships for himself; and to put this integrative know-how to work in every life situation. Individuals with such an integrative education can understand themselves and their universe as organic wholes.