Great History of Education site

Selected Moments of the 20th Century
Ontario Institute

Constructivism

Friedrich Froebel(1782 - 1852).

Friedrich Frobel was born in a village near Weimar in what is now central Germany in 1782, and grew up in the political and intellectual turbulence of the Napoleonic era. He read widely in contemporary philosophy and, much influenced by the Swiss educators Rousseau and Pestalozzi, he came to believe in the importance of the pre-school period as laying the foundation for not only a sound education for the individual, but also for the health of society at large.

Friedrich Froebel's enduring significance was through his formulation of the 'kindergarten system' with its emphasis on play and its use of 'gifts' (play materials) and 'occupations (activities). He believed that humans are essentially productive and creative - and fulfilment comes through developing these in harmony with God and the world. As a result, Froebel sought to encourage the creation of educational environments that involved practical work and the direct use of materials. Through engaging with the world, understanding unfolds. Hence the significance of play - it is both a creative activity and through it children become aware of their place in the world. He went on to develop special materials (such as shaped wooden bricks and balls - gifts), a series of recommended activities (occupations) and movement activities, and an linking set of theories. His original concern was the teaching of young children through educational games in the family. In the later years of his life this became linked with a demand for the provision of special centres for the care and development of children outside the home.

The concept of 'unity' was the driving force of his philosophy and educational practice. His belief in the unity of mankind and nature, and of the inanimate world and living things, led to his conviction of the crucial importance of a harmonious relationship among home, school and society. The kindergarten was to be an environment in which children could reach their full creative potential under the protective and interactive guidance of an adult. In his view, the concept of the mother was the crucial link between child and home, and he established training courses for female 'kindergartners', at a time when teaching was an all-male profession.

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Holism in Education

Holism: The view that parts of a system have significance mostly in virtue of their interrelations with other parts.

Throughout the 200 year old history of formal schooling, a widely scattered group of critics have pointed out that the education of young human beings should involve more than simply molding them into future workers or citizens. The Swiss humanitarian Johann Pestalozzi, the American transcendentalists Thoreau, Emerson and Alcott, the founders of progressive education - Francis Parker and John Dewey, the psychologists Maslow and Rogers and pioneers such as Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner, among others, all insisted that education should be seen as the art of cultivating the moral, emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions of the developing child. During the 1970s, an emerging body of literature in science, philosophy and cultural history provided an overarching concept to describe this way of understanding eduation - a perspective known as holism. A holistic way of thinking seeks to encompass and integrate multiple layers of meaning and experience rather than defining human possibilities narrowly. Every child is more than a future employee.; every person's intelligence and abilities and far more complex than his or her scores on standardised tests.

Holistic education is based on the premise that every person finds identity, meaning and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to spiritual values such as compassion and peace. It aims to call forth from young people an intrinsic reverence for life and a passionate love of learning. This is done, not through an academic 'curriculum' that condenses the world into instructional packages, but through direct engagement with the environment. Holistic education nurtures a sense of wonder. Montessori, for example, spoke of 'cosmic education': help the young person feel part of the wholeness of the universe, and learning will be enchanted and inviting.

There is no one best way to accomplish this goal, there are many paths of learning and the holistic educator values them all.; what is appropriate for some childrem, in some situations, in some historical and social contexts, may not be best for others. The art of holistic education lies in its responsiveness to the diverse learning styles and needs of evolving human beings.

Holistic education, therefore, reflects and responds more fully to the understanding of what it really means to be human. It recognises that we perceive and understand in the world in different ways and that a love of learning is something innnate within us. It seeks to provide us with environments that protect, nurture and encourage this love of learning as a most precious inner resource.

Some of the more recent voices advocating holism include Jiddu Krishnamurti, David Bohm, John P. Miller, Parker Palmer. Ron Miller, and The Dalai Lama.,

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Homeschooling

Homeschooling has become the largest alternative learning approach in the United States with the number of homeschoolers becoming an estimated 1.5%+ of the K-12 student population. Numbers are also seeing an increase throughout the world as parents seek more personalised educational alternatives for their children.

The goals of homeschooling vary as widely as the goals and purposes of schools around the world. Like other educational alternatives, homeschooling expands well beyond traditional modes of teaching and learning as well. With the freedom to explore the best alternative theories around many homeschoolers turn to Montessori and Waldorf approaches along with other holistic philosophies that recognise the importance of nurturing mind, body and spirit.

With the growth in interest around this subject many parents are joining together to offer co-operative learning resources. We are, therefore, beginning to increasingly see the introduction of learning communities where children are actively involved in being collaborative learners within the dynamic support of family and community settings.

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Humanistic Education

Humanistic Education refers to an educational philosophy that believes humans are, by nature, self-developing creatures. The educator's primary responsibility, therefore, is to create an environment in which students can do their own growing. Humanistic educators have a broad understanding of the knowledge that children acquire as they grow, and highly value a student’s affective and social development as well as their intellectual development. The goal of humanistic education is to contribute to the development of energetic, positive, self-respecting,caring human beings who can meet all challenges.

The basic assumptions of humanistic education suggest:

Students learn best what they want and need to know as individuals. When provided with interesting and challenging environments they will be naturally drawn to levels of activity that will further their own self development.

Learning how to learn is more important than simply memorising data.

Learning processes are more important than results.

Self-evaluation is the only meaningful evaluation of a student's work. The emphasis is on internal development and self-regulation.

Feelings are vital components for successful learning

Students learn best in non-threatening environments.

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Krishnamurti Education

The philosopher and educator Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was very concerned about traditional educational systems, feeling that they failed to provide children with the understanding necessary to live their lives fully. His schools recognise that academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but give equal importance to an ongoing inquiry into complex ways of existence. They recognise that the challenges facing humanity are the outcome of deeply held attitudes, beliefs, and ideals, most of which have gone unexamined and therefore are strengthened in ordinary schooling.

The key elements of Krishnamurti schooling are:

To educate the whole human being;

To explore what freedom and responsibility are in relationship with others and in modern society;

To see the possibility of being free from self-centred action and inner conflict;

To discover one's own talent and what right livelihood means;

To learn the proper care, use and exercise of the body;

To appreciate the natural world, seeing our place in it and responsibility for it;

To find the clarity that may come from having a sense of order and valuing silence.

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Learner-centered Education

Learner-centered education places the student (the "learner") at the center of education. It begins with understanding the educational contexts from which a student comes. It continues with the provision of learning environments that offer constant opportunities for further individual development. This approach strives to be individualistic, flexible, competency based, varied in methodology and not always constrained by time or place.

It is characterized by the use of clear, measurable goals and student outcomes, and the direct involvement of learners in activities that produce deeper understanding of the content through the development of skills that are readily transferable to life and work. An additional central goal is to prepare self-directed highly motivated learners who can enjoy and continue learning beyond their formal education.

Many key pioneer educators were advocates of such learning: John Dewey, Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner all felt that children should be allowed to develop as individuals with unique abilities and potential. And psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers also argued the need for such freedom. In the 1960s many educators and social critics including Paul Goodman, John Holt and A.S. Neill categorically criticised the constraints of traditional education systems and again called for a new way of seeing the child as a natural learner of immense possibilities. With our new understanding of how our brains work and the importance of mind/body/spirit connections many modern thinkers now see learner-centred education as the only way to nurture true human learning and development.

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Learning Communities

Learning communities are becoming recognised as a spontaneously emerging and self-organizing phenomena from the rapid growth of homeschooling and other self-learning movements.

They have been pre-dominantly self-organizing: without leadership, without planning, without design and attracting little political attention. They represent a microcosm of the larger progressive, alternative and transformational movements that are creating a transition from the old mechanistic, control-based systems to those based upon ecological and planetary awareness. The transformation of the learning system is more than a related building block of the cultural transition. It is a fundamental foundation for a deep fundamental holistic cultural change.

Future citizens learn from birth the role they will play in society. Today's schools teach by the mode they use -- hierarchy, self-interest, authoritarianism, patriarchy, competition, materialism, and survival of the fittest. It is becoming clear that Humanity cannot continue to develop with value systems that nurture neither the individual nor the larger society.

The new social paradigm is based on the scientific revelation that everything is connected to everything else. We are interdependent entities, systems within systems in a grand and mysterious holonistic cosmos. The family, community, values, economics, schooling, and other aspects of our culture need to change and are changing. The appearance of these new Learning Communities is already demonstrating a recognition of the urgent need for such change.

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Learning Rhythms

Piaget, Erikson, Montessori, Steiner, Gesell, and other theorists all argued that children grow in distinct stages, each with its characteristic qualities and social, physical, and spiritual needs. Learning Rhythms have therefore been recognised as playing a fundamental role in natural human development.

Parents, therapists, and educators need, therefore to better understand the tendencies and behaviors of children, and the social and environmental conditions children need to navigate through the different phases of growing and learning.The personality evolves through stages that are successively characterized by physical, emotional, volitional, and intellectual interests. The transitions between stages can be the most dynamic but also the most difficult times for children and their parents and teachers, as young people experience unfamiliar needs and urges.

In light of this understanding, education is not an effort to impart facts that every child “needs to know,” but a respectful assistance to each child’s naturally unfolding relationship with the world.

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Learning Styles

We each learn and process information in different ways, but we rarely realize that someone else's perception of an event can be very different to our own.

There are many different ways to classify learning styles, but most fall into three general categories: perceptual modalities, information processing, and personality patterns. The categories represent ways to focus on the learner.

Perceptual modalities define biologically based reactions to our physical environment and represent the way we most efficiently adopt data. It helps us to know our perception style so that we can seek out information in the most efficient way. Educators need to pay attention to our modalities to ensure that we really understand what they are teaching. Most people favor one dominant and one auxiliary style of learning. We usually rely on those modes to process information at an unconscious level, but we may be consciously aware of which modes we prefer. We access through all senses, but generally favor one. We process visually (by sight), auditorally (by sound), kinesthetically (by moving), and tactilly (by touch).

Information processing distinguishes between the way we sense, think, solve problems, and retain information. It is primarily about the way our brains work. Each of us has a preferred, consistent, distinct way of perceiving, organizing, and retaining information.

Personality patterns focus on attention, emotion, belief systems and values. Studying these differences allows us to predict the way we will react and feel about different situations.

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Mind Mapping

Mind Mapping was invented by a man calledTony Buzan following his research into note taking techniques. He studied the three common techniques for taking notes during a lecture:

Writing a complete transcript.
Writing a summary.
Writing key words only.

He then tested each of these and found that students connecting to key words had by far the best test results. With these results and other research Tony Buzan came up with a new method for taking notes. His new system was based on the idea of making the notes as brief as possible and also as interesting to the eye as possible. A mind map consists of a central word or concept, around the central word you draw the 5 to 10 main ideas that relate to that word. You then take each of those child words and again draw the 5 to 10 main ideas that relate to each of those words. The key features are:

Organisation

Key Words

Association

Clustering

Visual Memory - Print the key words, use color,symbols, icons, 3D-effects,arrows and outlining groups of words

Outstandingness - every Mind Map needs a unique centre

Conscious involvement

Mindmaps are beginning to take on the same structure as memory itself. Once a mind map is drawn, it seldom needs to be referred to again. Mind Maps help organise information.

Because of the large amount of association involved, they can be very creative, tending to generate new ideas and associations that have not been thought of before. Every item in a map is in effect, a centre of another map.

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Maria Montessori(1870-1952).

Maria Montessori is recognised as one of the key pioneers in the field of early learning.Those who studied under her and went on to make their own contributions to education and child psychology include Anna Freud, Jean Piaget, Alfred Adler, and Erik Erikson. Many elements of modern education have been adapted from Montessori's theories. She is credited with the development of the open classroom, individualized education, manipulative learning materials, teaching toys, and programmed instruction. In the last thirty-five years educators in Europe and North America have begun to acknowledge the consistency between the Montessori approach with what has subsequently been learnt from modern research into child development. There is currently a resurgence of interest in the work of this visionary educator who was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

As a physician, Dr. Montessori specialized in pediatrics and psychiatry. She taught at the medical school of the University of Rome, and through its free clinics she came into frequent contact with the children of the working class and poor. These experiences convinced her that intelligence is not rare and that most new born children come into the world with a human potential that will be barely revealed.

For Montessori, children were the main hope for peace in the world and the role of education was to provide environments that would free children to develop their fill empathetic potential. If met with sensitive understanding the 'spiritual embryo' within each child could be allowed to unfold naturally, gently moving for a place of profound self-awareness to one increasingly connected with others in mutual harmony. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace prize, both in 1949 and in 1950. These nominations followed her writings and lectures that increasingly tackled social issues that she considered were the results of inappropriate educational systems:'Establishing a lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is to keep us out of war' (Education and Peace, p viii).

The key elements that then became her focus were:

That children are dynamic natural learners with individual learning styles and intelligences and need to be recognised as such

That they experience Sensitive Periods of development when certain activities/tasks become the focus of their attention and are more easily learnt than at any other time

That children are reliant upon the sensitivity of the adults in their environment to help them become independent learners

That mind, body and spirit are interconnected with spirit being the dynamic energy seeking creative expression and fulfillment for each individual

That children need to be given the freedom to grow and learn as individuals

That concentration and intrinsic motivation are signs of natural learning processes

That innate sociality and compassion for others are the by-products of true self-fulfillment

That there must be great respect and appreciation for the Child and his place in the global community

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Multiple Intelligences

In 1983 the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences challenged the traditional view of intelligence as a unitary capacity that can be adequately measured by IQ tests. Instead, this theory defines intelligence as an ability to solve problems or create products that are valued in at least one culture.

Drawing upon findings from evolutionary biology, anthropology, developmental and cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and psychometrics, Gardner used eight different criteria to judge whether a particular ability could be counted as an intelligence. When he introduced the theory in Frames of Mind, Gardner suggested that each individual possesses at least seven relatively independent mental abilities or intelligences. Core operations are among the eight criteria he uses to evaluate one or another candidate intelligence. According to his definition, a core operation is a basic information processing mechanism--basically, something (like a neural network) in the brain that takes a particular kind of input or information and processes it. In Frames of Mind and his more recent writings on the naturalist intelligence, Gardner asserted that each intelligence should have one or more of the following core operations:

Intelligence Core Operations
Linguistic syntax, phonology, semantics, pragmatics
Musical pitch, rhythm, timbre
Logical-mathematical number, categorization, relations
Spatial accurate mental visualization, mental transformation of images
Bodily-kinesthetic control of one's own body, control in handling objects
Interpersonal awareness of others' feelings, emotions, goals, motivations
Intrapersonal awareness of one's own feelings, emotions, goals, motivations
Naturalist recognition and classification of objects in the environment

Linguistic intelligence allows individuals to communicate and make sense of the world through language. Poets exemplify this intelligence in its mature form. Students who enjoy playing with rhymes, who pun, who always have a story to tell, who quickly acquire other languages--including sign language--all exhibit linguistic intelligence.

Musical intelligence allows people to create, communicate, and understand meanings made out of sound. While composers and instrumentalists clearly exhibit this intelligence, so do the students who seem particularly attracted by the birds singing outside the classroom window or who constantly tap out intricate rhythms on the desk with their pencils.

Logical-mathematical intelligence enables individuals to use and appreciate abstract relations. Scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers all rely on this intelligence. So do the students who "live" baseball statistics or who carefully analyze the components of problems--either personal or school-related--before systematically testing solutions.

Spatial intelligence makes it possible for people to perceive visual or spatial information, to transform this information, and to recreate visual images from memory. Well-developed spatial capacities are needed for the work of architects, sculptors, and engineers. The students who turn first to the graphs, charts, and pictures in their textbooks, who like to "web" their ideas before writing a paper, and who fill the blank space around their notes with intricate patterns are also using their spatial intelligence. While usually tied to the visual modality, spatial intelligence can also be exercised to a high level by individuals who are visually impaired.

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence allows individuals to use all or part of the body to create products or solve problems. Athletes, surgeons, dancers, choreographers, and crafts people all use bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. The capacity is also evident in students who relish gym class and school dances, who prefer to carry out class projects by making models rather than writing reports, and who toss crumbled paper with frequency and accuracy into wastebaskets across the room.

Interpersonal intelligence enables individuals to recognize and make distinctions about others' feelings and intentions. Teachers, parents, politicians, psychologists and salespeople rely on interpersonal intelligence. Students exhibit this intelligence when they thrive on small-group work, when they notice and react to the moods of their friends and classmates, and when they tactfully convince the teacher of their need for extra time to complete the homework assignment.

Intrapersonal intelligence helps individuals to distinguish among their own feelings, to build accurate mental models of themselves, and to draw on these models to make decisions about their lives. Although it is difficult to assess who has this capacity and to what degree, evidence can be sought in students' uses of their other intelligences--how well they seem to be capitalizing on their strengths, how cognizant they are of their weaknesses, and how thoughtful they are about the decisions and choices they make.

Naturalist intelligence allows people to distinguish among, classify, and use features of the environment. Farmers, gardeners, botanists, geologists, florists, and archaeologists all exhibit this intelligence, as do students who can name and describe the features of every make of car around them.

In Gardner's theory, the word intelligence is used in two senses. Intelligence can denote a species-specific characteristic; homo sapiens is that species which can exercise these eight intelligences. Intelligence can also denote an individual difference. While all humans possess the eight intelligences, each person has his/her own particular blend or amalgam of the intelligences.

In a recent article, "Are there additional intelligences?" Gardner examined two more candidate intelligences, naturalist, and spiritual, but ended up rejecting spiritual--at least for now--because it does not meet the eight criteria named earlier. He is still amassing evidence for other suggested intelligences.

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Oko Suan

From his earliest childhood in India, Osho was a rebellious and independent spirit, challenging all accepted religious, social and political traditions and insisting on experiencing the truth for himself. He became enlightened (meaning a profound and irreversible spiritual awakening) at the age of 21. He spent 9 years as professor of philosophy at the University of Jabalpur, before dedicating his life to sharing his enlightenment with humanity.

Over the years he has spoken on virtually every aspect of the development of human consciousness, from Freud to Chuang Tzu, from Gurdjieff to Gautam Buddha, from Christ to Krishna. He distilled the essence of each religious tradition, based not on intellectual understanding, but on his own existential experience.

His talks to seekers from all over the world have been published in more than 600 books, and translated into 30 languages. An archive of Osho's books has been placed in the library of the Indian parliament and an Osho chair is soon to be established in the University of Jabalpur, for the study of his vision for humanity.

The commune that grew up around him still thrives in Pune, India, today, attracting thousands of international visitors throughout the year. The huge range of therapies, creative programmes and unique meditative processes on offer there, makes it the largest personal growth centre in the world. There is now a school in Britain that follows Osho's teachings.

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Pedagogy

(A short explanation of the term!)

PEDAGOGY The specific approach and methods used by different teachers/trainers to facilitate the learning process.

 

 

 

Person-centered Education

The psychologist Carl Rogers (1983) is credited with the first real insights into the person-centered approach and his conclusions were in direct conflict to the traditional, conventional philosophies, methods, and politics of education. The person-centered approach states that one precondition must exist before the other features may be experienced or implemented into any educational system, from kindergarten through graduate school.

The Precondition is: A leader or an individual who is viewed as an authority figure in the current setting must be sufficiently secure within him or herself and in his or her relationships with his or her colleagues and all others whom he or she may encounter. Only if this is true, will he or she experience the necessary trust in the capacity of others to not only think but also to learn for him/herself.

Thus, once this precondition is met, then person-centered approach followers believe that the following eight aspects will become possible and incorporated.

1. The facilitative teacher shares with others - students, parents and/or community members - the responsibility for learning.

2. The facilitator provides learning resources, from within him or herself and his or her own experience, from literature and/or community experiences.

3. The student develops his or her own program of learning, in cooperation with others.

4. A facilitative learning atmosphere is provided.

5. The focus of all activities within the school system revolves around the process of learning.

6. The discipline needed to attain the students' goals is a self-discipline. That is, because the sole purpose in the school is to foster learning, students take responsibility for their own learning process by exercising self-discipline.

7. The evaluation of the extent and significance of the student's learning is made primarily by the learner.

8. In this learner-oriented, growth-promoting setting, the student tends to excel and proceed in all aspects of whole-person learning at a faster rate than would be expected in a conventional learning environment.

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Johann Pestalozzi(1746-1827)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jean Piaget(1896-1980).

Over a period of six decades, Jean Piaget conducted a program of naturalistic research that has profoundly affected our understanding of child development. Piaget called his general theoretical framework "genetic epistemology" because he was primarily interested in how knowledge developed in human organisms. Piaget had a background in both Biology and Philosophy and concepts from both these disciplines influences his theories and research of child development.

The concept of cognitive structure is central to his theory. Cognitive structures are patterns of physical or mental action that underlie specific acts of intelligence and correspond to stages of child development. There are four primary cognitive structures (i.e., development stages) according to Piaget: sensorimotor, preoperations, concrete operations, and formal operations. In the sensorimotor stage (0-2 years), intelligence takes the form of motor actions. Intelligence in the preoperation period (3-7 years) is intutive in nature. The cognitive structure during the concrete operational stage (8-11 years) is logical but depends upon concrete referents. In the final stage of formal operations (12-15 years), thinking involves abstractions.

Cognitive structures change through the processes of adaptation: assimilation and accomodation. Assimilation involves the interpretation of events in terms of existing cognitive structure whereas accomodation refers to changing the cognitive structure to make sense of the environment. Cognitive development consists of a constant effort to adapt to the environment in terms of assimilation and accomodation. In this sense, Piaget's theory is similar in nature to other constructivist perspectives of learning (e.g., Bruner, Vygotsky).

While the stages of cognitive development identified by Piaget are associated with characteristic age spans, they vary for every individual. Furthermore, each stage has many detailed structural forms. For example, the concrete operational period has more than forty distinct structures covering classification and relations, spatial relationships, time, movement, chance, number, conservation and measurement. Similar detailed analysis of intellectual functions is provided by theories of intelligence such as Guilford, Gardner, and Sternberg.

Piaget explored the implications of his theory to all aspects of cognition, intelligence and moral development. Many of Piaget's experiments were focused on the development of mathematical and logical concepts. The theory has been applied extensively to teaching practice and curriculum design in elementary education.

Principles of Piaget's Theories:

1. Children will provide different explanations of reality at different stages of cognitive development.

2. Cognitive development is facilitated by providing activities or situations that engage learners and require adaptation (i.e., assimilation and accomodation).

3. Learning materials and activities should involve the appropriate level of motor or mental operations for a child of given age; avoid asking students to perform tasks that are beyond their currrent cognitive capabilities.

4. Use teaching methods that actively involve students and present challenges.

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Progressive Education

Between the late-19th and mid-20th cent. many educational programs grew out of the American reform effort called the progressive movement and its sources in the philosophies of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann Pestalozzi, and Friedrich Froebel. A pluralistic phenomenon, it embraced industrial training, agricultural and social education, and educational theorists' new instructional techniques. The progressives insisted that education be a continuous reconstruction of living experience, with the child the center of concern. The philosopherJohn Dewey maintained that schools should reflect society. His Laboratory School in Chicago (1896-1904), the public schools of Gary, Ind., and Winnetka, Ill., and such independent schools as the Dalton School and the Lincoln School of Teachers College, Columbia, were notable progressive institutions. Progressive education gained wide acceptance in American schools in the first half of the 20th cent., and by the 1950s, after its alleged collapse, the progressive movement had effected a permanent transformation in the character of the American school. Other reform movements in education similar to, or affected by, progressive education include the Open Classroom and the reforms of Maria Montessori.

The Progressive Movement was particularly influenced by the writings of John Dewey and promoted the idea that students be encouraged as independent thinkers, creative beings, and expressive about their feelings. This was a sharp contrast from prevalent educational approaches rooted in social efficiency in the early 1900s in the United States. Such approaches did not foster the importance of individualism and creativity, and instead emphasized classroom control, management, and a structured curriculum that focused on basic skills.

Progressive educators believed in a child-centered approach, with the emphasis on group projects rather than individual performance for grades. They spoke of a humanistic concern for the "whole child"-- hence their emphasis on social and emotional development, and the emerging sense of self-esteem. They advocated experiential, "discovery" learning led by the child, as opposed to direct instruction led by the teacher, and cooperative and collaborative activities, as opposed to the competition inherent in grades and tests. They also used differences in individual learning styles to determine both the process and content of learning. They were concerned with developing processes like critical thinking; less concerned with the transmission of factual knowledge. For them, factual knowledge was something that must be acted on by the learner. Their view of learning was influenced by "constructivist" models, which emphasized the active role of the learner in building understanding and making sense of information, as well as calling for the shared, social construction of knowledge.

The Progressive Movement was at its peak in the 1930's during the Great Depression in the United States. Previously, in 1918, the Progressive Education Association was founded. Many who supported the movement felt there should be less authoritarianism in the schools, an elimination of set standards for school curriculum, and an emphasis on teaching what the pupils desired to learn. However, the movement did have its share of critics that felt education needed a foundation of basic skills and more discipline. By the early 1940s, such concerns came to the forefront of curriculum theorizing and the Progressive Movement quickly lost its centrality in terms of influencing school practice.

The Progressive Movement made a lasting impact on American education in that it challenged traditional practices in education and conceptualized the student as an individual with special interests and needs. Without question, the child-centered curriculum emerged as a result of the Progressive Movement. It was within the tradition of Progressivism, too, that the vision of schools as sites for transforming society was maintained, laying a significant theoretical foundation for the work of critical pedagogues and radical education theorists at the close of the 20th century.

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Project-Based Learning

A project is defined as an in-depth investigation of a real world topic. The study may be carried out by a class or by small groups of children. Projects can be undertaken with children of any age. They do not usually constitute the whole educational program. Younger children will play and explore as well as engage in projects. Older children's project work will complement the systematic instruction in their program.

The Project Approach refers to a set of teaching strategies which enable teachers to guide children through in-depth studies of real world topics. The Project Approach is not unstructured. There is a complex but flexible framework with features that characterize the teaching-learning interaction. When teachers implement the Project Approach successfully, children feel highly motivated, are actively involved in their own learning, and frequently produce work of a highly creative and innovative standard.

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Quaker(Friends) Schools

Friends schools are distinct from many other religious alternatives in the extent of their person-centered practices. Known for their academic rigor, Friends schools also pride themselves on the development of a caring community within and beyond the walls of the school.Their goals tend not to distinguish the end of education from the process of learning. Both the purpose and process of education involves treating each person with dignity and respect, and understanding that different people learn in different ways. They sometimes describe the goal of self-direction as helping students to "uncover their own leadings." Personal and individual responsibility within the community are essential for success. In addition, lifelong learning, social justice, and challenging human oppression are often supplementary goals of the Friends schools. At the global level, Quakers like to think of it as "creating the world that ought to be." Many Friends schools emphasize simplicity, honesty, the peaceful resolution of conflict, the dignity of physical labor, mutual trust and respect, and care for each other and the earth.

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Reggio Emilia

Reggio Emilia is the name of a city in a fairly prosperous region of northern Italy, which has become acclaimed for its municipal system of early childhood education. Over the past thirty years the system has evolved to encompass both the philosophies of past and current experts in the field, but most importantly has created its own unique pedagogy. This was largely due to the extraordinary dedication of Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the programme and a man whose fight to emphasise the importance of early childhood can be likened to that of Maria Montessori.

Malaguzzi saw family and community as fundamental to the work of schools.The distinguishing feature of Reggio Emilia has been the continuing high investment and involvement of the community in the education of its young children. Rather than the schools occupying marginal spaces within the neighbourhood, they were seen to be of vital importance and were placed in full view of the public as a focus of community interaction. External spaces were seen to be as important as internal. The subsequent designs were both architecturally and aesthetically exciting and innovative. A great deal of attention was paid to the beauty and harmony of design.

The layout of the schools encourages exploration, communication and the development of relationships on all levels. Everything reflects a dedication to quality, beauty and to the children's own abilities to do things for themselves. Malaguzzi saw the child as someone of 'enormous potential', who was the subject of 'rights promoting development of all their languages - expressive, communicative, symbolic, cognitive, ethical, metaphorical, logical, imaginative and relational'. He saw relationship as the primary connecting dimension of the system - 'a dynamic conjunction of forces and elements interacting towards a common purpose.' In Reggio schools the adult is not seen as someone who could potentially undermine the ability of the child to develop freely, but rather as a fully co-operative partner in the learning process.

The key features that can be seenin Reggio schools are:

Emergent Curriculum: An emergent curriculum is one that builds upon the interests of children. Topics for study are captured from the talk of children, through community or family events, as well as the known interests of children (puddles, shadow, dinosaurs, etc.). Team planning is an essential component of the emergent curriculum. Teachers work together to formulate hypotheses about the possible directions of a project, the materials needed, and possible parent and/or community support and involvement.

Project Work: Projects, also emergent, are in-depth studies of concepts, ideas, and interests which arise within the group. Considered as an adventure, projects may last one week or could continue throughout the school year. Throughout a project, teachers help children make decisions about the direction of study, the ways in which the group will research the topic, the representational medium that will demonstrate and showcase the topic and the selection of materials needed to represent the work.

Representational Development: Consistent with Howard Gardner's notion of schooling for multiple intelligences, the Reggio Emilia approach calls for the integration of the graphic arts as tools for cognitive, linguistic, and social development. Presentation of concepts and hypotheses in multiple forms of representation -- print, art, construction, drama, music, puppetry, and shadow play -- are viewed as essential to children's understanding of experience.

Collaboration: Collaborative group work, both large and small, is considered valuable and necessary to advance cognitive development. Children are encouraged to dialogue, critique, compare, negotiate, hypothesize, and problem solve through group work. Within the Reggio Emilia approach multiple perspectives promote both a sense of group membership and the uniqueness of self.

Teachers as Researchers: The teacher's role within the Reggio Emilia approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide as she/he lends expertise to children (Edwards, 1993). Within such a teacher-researcher role, educators carefully listen, observe, and document children's work and the growth of community in their classroom and are to provoke, co-construct, and stimulate thinking, and children's collaboration with peers. Teachers are committed to reflection about their own teaching and learning.

Documentation: Similar to the portfolio approach, documentation of children's work in progress is viewed as an important tool in the learning process for children, teachers, and parents. Pictures of children engaged in experiences, their words as they discuss what they are doing, feeling and thinking, and the children's interpretation of experience through the visual media are displayed as a graphic presentation of the dynamics of learning.

Environment: Within the Reggio Emilia schools, great attention is given to the look and feel of the classroom. Environment is considered the "third teacher." Teachers carefully organize space for small and large group projects and small intimate spaces for one, two or three children. Documentation of children's work, plants, and collections that children have made from former outings are displayed both at the children's and adult eye level. Common space available to all children in the school includes dramatic play areas and work tables for children from different classrooms to come together.

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Right Brain/Left Brain Thinking

The duality between right and left hemispheres has become part of our lore, with frequent references in popular culture to "right-brain thinking" or "left-brain people." The following table gives the typical breakdown in the way the two hemispheres are seen to process information:

LEFT HEMISPHERE Logical Sequential Rational Analytical Objective Looks at parts

RIGHT HEMISPHERE Random Intuitive Holistic Synthesizing Subjective Looks at wholes

In general, schools tend to favor left-brain modes of thinking, while downplaying the right-brain ones. Left-brain scholastic subjects focus on logical thinking, analysis, and accuracy. Right-brained subjects, on the other hand, focus on aesthetics, feeling, and creativity.
According to recent research the reality is not so simple, but there is a degree of laterlization in many of the brain's functions, and scientists often treat the left hemisphere as the better half, with its superior abilities in language, problem-solving, and logic. The differences in awareness between the two hemispheres have even been compared to those between humans and other species. But recent research shows that self-recognition, one of the hallmarks of human consciousness, may be largely a function of the right hemisphere.

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Rudolf Steiner(1861-1925)

RUDOLF STEINER (1861-1925) called his spiritual philosophy 'anthroposophy', which can be understood as 'wisdom of the human being'. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal 'science of the spirit', accessible to anybody willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations, Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education - both general and special - agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are literally thousands of schools, clinics, farms, and other organizations doing practical work based on his principles. His many published works (writings and lectures) also feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6,000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

Steiner founded Waldorf Education in 1919 and it has now grown to encompass over 650 schools throughout the world, over 125 of them in the United States and Canada. Waldorf education balances artistic, academic and practical work educating the whole child, hand and heart as well as mind. Its innovative methodology and developmentally-oriented curriculum, permeated with the arts, address the child's changing consciousness as it unfolds, stage by stage. Imagination and creativity are cultivated as well as cognitive growth and a sense of responsibility for the earth and its inhabitants. Steiner's detailed psychology of child development, described early in the 20th century, has been supported by modern research in education and neuropsychology. Through Waldorf education, Steiner hoped that young people would develop the capacities of soul and intellect and the strength of will that would prepare them to meet the challenges of their own time and the future.

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Self-actualization

Self-actualization is a term used to describe realizing our potential as human beings. Abraham Maslow placed this term at the apex of his hierarchy of human motives. Carl Rogers also emphasized the importance of self-actualization. Like Maslow, he used the term to designate a universal and innate tendency toward growth and fulfillment that governs the human personality. Rogers believed that self-actualization is closely related to each individual's perceived reality and self-concept — the way in which one thinks of oneself. According to Rogers, a person's self-concept can become distorted by the need for approval by others, which can lead to alienation from his or her true beliefs and desires and suppression of his or her self-actualizing tendency.

While self-actualization is considered to be the most desired state, in many cases we are too preoccupied with lower needs to achieve our full potential in life. Many of us go through life thinking that we could "do more" or "be better," and that "circumstances" somehow prevent us from achieving. It is not the "circumstances" in our lives that get in the way but rather our approach to life. Self-actualization is the ultimate goal for those who strive toward growth and work to make the most of their lives. It propels us forward, toward wholeness and uniqueness, and gives us the confidence to face the world.

The term is now in common use in many spiritual teachings and denotes a particular level of spiritual development when the individual becomes aware of the nature of the Self and can thus rise beyond it to function at a higher spiritual level, in alignment with the true purpose of the Soul.

Characteristics of Self Actualizing People

Realistic
Realistically oriented, a Self-Actualizing person has a more efficient perception
of reality, and has comfortable relations with it. This is extended to all areas of life.
A Self-Actualizing person is unthreatened and unfrightened by the unknown. He
has a superior ability to reason, to see the truth, and is logical and efficient.

Self Acceptance
Accepts himself, others and the natural world the way they are. Sees human nature
as is, has a lack of crippling guilt or shame, enjoys himself without regret or
apology, and has no unnecessary inhibitions.

Spontaneity, Simplicity, Naturalness
Spontaneous in his inner life. Thoughts and impulses are unhampered by
convention. His ethics are autonomous, and Self-actualizing individuals are
motivated to continual growth.

Serenity
He has a sense of true purpose to life, is serene, characterized by a lack of worry, and is devoted to duty.

Detachment: The Need for Privacy
The Self-actualized person can be alone and not be lonely, is unflappable, and
retains dignity amid confusion and personal misfortunes, all the while
remaining objective. He is a self starter, is responsible for himself, and owns
his behavior.

Autonomy: Independent of Culture and Environment
He has a fresh rather than stereotyped appreciation of people and
the basic good in life. Moment to moment living for him is thrilling, trans-
cending, and spiritual as he lives the present moment to the fullest.

Peak experiences
"Feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being
simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before,
the feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in time and
space with, finally, the conviction that something extremely important and val-
uable had happened, so that the subject was to some extent transformed and
strengthened even in his daily life by such experiences." Abraham Maslow

Interpersonal relations
Identification, sympathy, affection for mankind, kinship with the good, bad,
and ugly. Truth is clear to him as he can see things others cannot. He has profound, intimate relationships with few and is capable of greater love than others consider possible as he shares his benevolence, affection, and friendliness with everyone.

Democratic values and attitudes
Able to learn from anyone, humble and friendly with anyone
regardless of class, education, political belief, race or color.

Creativity
Enjoys an inborn uniqueness that carries over into everything
he does, is original, inventive, uninhibited, and he sees the real and true more
easily.

Resistance to enculturation: Transcendence of any particular culture
Have an inner detachment from culture. Working for long term culture
improvement, indignation with injustice, inner autonomy, outer acceptance, and
the ability to transcend the environment rather than just cope.

Imperfections
Self Actualised people are painfully aware of their own imperfections and joyfully aware of
their own growth process. They are impatient with themselves when stuck and
feel real life pain as a result.

Values
Realistically human due to a philosophical acceptance of self,
human nature, social life, physical reality, and nature.

Resolution of dichotomies
Polar opposites merge into a third, higher phenomenon as though the two have
united; therefore, opposite forces are no longer felt as conflict. Work becomes play and desires are in excellent accord with reason.
The Self Actualised person retains his childlike qualities yet is very wise.

Maslow said there were two processes necessary for
self-actualization: self exploration and action. The
deeper the self exploration, the closer one comes
to self-actualization.

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Small Schools

As the name indicates, size is one determining characteristic of a small school, yet small schools are about much more than size. The concept of small schools is based on the premise that, in contrast to large, factory-model schools, small schools can create a more intimate learning environment that is better able to address the needs of those within the school. Students, teachers, and parents may all be better served if the school is small enough to allow for communication to flow, opportunities for collaboration to be cultivated, and meaningful relationships to be fostered.

COMMON FEATURES

Each small school is unique to the community that it serves, however, there are some common features that often characterize good small schools:

A maximum population of 250-300 students in a heterogeneous mix that represents the local school community

A non-exclusive admissions policy

A consistent educational experience for students over an extended period of time (more than one year)

A coherent focus and philosophy of education, and a curriculum that is integrated around that focus

A cohesive group of teachers that collaborate and discuss the needs of their students

A sense of shared leadership and investment among those in the small school
Involvement of families in the school community

WHAT DO SMALL SCHOOLS LOOK LIKE?
Organization:
Each small school may be configured differently. Small schools may be:

Free-standing small schools: Small school with their own facilities and administration
Schools-within-schools: One or more small schools which develop within a larger, "host" school
Multiplex: One building specifically intended to house several small schools
Scatterplex: Two or more small schools at different sites that share a principal
Charter schools: Independent, often small, public schools, designed and operated by educators, parents, community leaders, educational entrepreneurs and others

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Social & Emotional Learning

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process by which learners can harmonise their intellectual and their emotional responses to learning situations. In the l980s, Howard Gardner, in his important work on multiple intelligences, outlined the presence of seven domains of intelligence; two of them were interpersonal and intrapersonal - these combined were the forerunner of what we now know as emotional intelligence. The term was first coined by Peter Salovey, professor and psychologist at Yale University, and John Mayer, professor and psychologist at the University of New Hampshire. In l995 Daniel Goleman, the leading expert in this field, reported "IQ is only a minor predictor of success in life, while emotional and social skills are far better predictors of success and well-being than academic intelligence."

Developmental research has now clearly identified the social and/or emotional competencies that are predictive of healthy development and children's ability to learn. Recent neuroscientific research has shown that there is a biological foundation for social and emotional competencies and psychosocial research has proven that we can successfully teach children these specific skills, knowledge and values and that they have a profound and positive effect on violence prevention, pro-social behavior and, often, academic achievement.

The core principles that define effective SEL are:

1) Self and other awareness: understanding and identifying feelings; knowing when one's feelings shift; understanding the difference between thinking, feeling and acting; and understanding that one's actions have consequences in terms of others' feelings.

2) Mood management: handling and managing difficult feelings; controlling impulses; and handling anger constructively

3) Self-motivation: being able to set goals and persevere towards them with optimism and hope, even in the face of setbacks

4) Empathy: being able to put yourself "in someone else's shoes" both cognitively and affectively; being able to take someone's perspective; being able to show that you care

5) Management of relationships: making friends, handling friendships; resolving conflicts; cooperating; collaborative learning and other social skills

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Suggestopedia

A man called Georgi Lozanov introduced a technique called Suggestopedia into his classroom in the Seventies. Suggestopedia is basically a technique of introducing positive suggestion into and eliminating negative suggestion from the learning process. Dynamic descriptions and key points of the material to be learned are fixed into the subconscious using music during "concert" sessions and later activated to provide the basis for the detailed learning. Lozanov discovered that the brain has an almost infinite potential for learning if the subconscious mind receives information in the right way.

His work was treated with great skepticism at first and, in order to quantify the benefits of his method of teaching, he founded a language school and proved that Suggestopedia could deliver a 300% improvement in the speed and effectiveness of learning. He visited the United States and developed a course to teach his techniques to other teachers. Even then it was a number of years until his techniques gained widespread acceptance and other teachers such as Peter Kline, Eric Jensen, Sheila Ostrander and Bobbi DePorter started to develop his ideas further. Howard Gardner also contributed his theory of Multiple Intelligences at this time and Win Wenger published his work on increasing intelligence.

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Unschooling

The word "unschooling" was coined by author and educator John Holt, appearing for the first time in issue #2 of his newsletter, Growing Without Schooling, published in November, 1977. Holt wrote, "GWS will say 'unschooling' when we mean taking children out of school..." but before long the term was being used to indicate any non-schoolish approach to learning. Over the years, unschooling has come to mean a more relaxed, casual form of homeschooling to many people, but there are bona fide unschoolers who use textbooks and curricula - the truest definition is more of a mindset than anything else.

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Vygotsky and Social Cognition

Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist and philosopher in the 1930's, is most often associated with the social constructivist theory. He emphasizes the influences of cultural and social contexts in learning and supports a discovery model of learning. This type of model places the teacher in an active role while the students' mental abilities develop naturally through various paths of discovery.

Vygotsky's Principal Assumptions

Making Meaning
The community places a central role.
The people around the student greatly affect the way he or she sees the world.

Tools for Cognitive Development
The type and quality of these tools determine the pattern and rate of development.
The tools may include: important adults to the student, culture, language.

The Zone of Proximal Development
According to Vygotsky's theory, problem solving skills of tasks can be placed into three categories. These are as follows: (a) those performed independently by the student; (b) those that cannot be performed even with help; and (c) those that fall between the two extremes, the tasks that can be performed with help from others.

Vygotskian Principles in the Classroom
Learning and development is a social and collaborative activity that cannot be "taught" to anyone. It is up to the student to construct his or her own understanding in his or her own mind. It is during this process that the teacher acts as a facilitator.
The zone of proximal development can be used to design appropriate situations during which the student can be provided the appropriate support for optimal learning.
When providing appropriate situations, one must take into consideration that learning should take place in meaningful contexts, preferably the context in which the knowledge is to be applied.

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Waldorf Education

Waldorf education is a unique and distinctive approach to educating children that was introduced by a man called Rudolf Steiner in the early 1900s. Waldorf schools collectively form one of the largest and fastest growing group of independent private schools in the world. There is no centralized administrative structure governing all Waldorf schools; each is administratively independent, but there are established associations which provide resources, publish materials, sponsor conferences, and promote the movement.

The best overall statement on what is unique about Waldorf education is to be found in the stated goals of the schooling: "to produce individuals who are able, in and of themselves, to impart meaning to their lives". The aim of Waldorf schooling is to educate the whole child, "head, heart and hands". The curriculum is as broad as time will allow, and balances academics subjects with artistic and practical activities. Waldorf teachers are dedicated to creating a genuine love of learning within each child. By freely using arts and activities in the service of teaching academics, an internal motivation to learn is developed in the students, doing away with the need for competitive testing and grading.

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David Bohm

David Bohm (1917-1992) was a distinguished physicist who is best known for his work on the fundamentals of quantum theory and relativity theory and their implications for other fields. David Bohm struck up a close friendship with Jidhu Krishnamurti. They carried on an intensive dialogue over many years ranging over the ultimate meaning and nature of thought, insight, existence, death, truth, reality and intelligence.

Bohm introduced the concept of 'Deep Dialogue' following his concern that a pervasive incoherence in the process of human thought was the essential cause of the endless crises affecting mankind. The word "dialogue" derives from two roots: "dia" which means "through" and "logos" which means "the word", or more particularly, "the meaning of the word." The image it gives is of a river of meaning flowing around and through the participants. In Dialogue, a group of people can explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions. It provides an opportunity to participate in a process that displays communication successes and failures. It can reveal the often puzzling patterns of incoherence that lead the group to avoid certain issues or, on the other hand, to insist, against all reason, on standing and defending opinions about particular issues.

Dialogue is, therefore, a way of observing, collectively, how hidden values and intentions can control our behavior, and how unnoticed cultural differences can clash without our realizing what is occurring. It can therefore be seen as an arena in which collective learning takes place and out of which a sense of increased harmony, fellowship and creativity can arise.

Because the nature of Dialogue is exploratory, its meaning and its methods continue to unfold. No firm rules can be laid down for conducting a Dialogue because its essence is learning - not as the result of consuming a body of information or doctrine imparted by an authority, nor as a means of examining or criticizing a particular theory or programme, but rather as part of an unfolding process of creative participation between peers.

In Dialogue, a group of people can explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions. It provides an opportunity to participate in a process that displays communication successes and failures. It can reveal the often puzzling patterns of incoherence that lead the group to avoid certain issues or, on the other hand, to insist, against all reason, on standing and defending opinions about particular issues.

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Critical Theory

The primary characteristic of Critical Theory is that social theory, whether reflected in educational research, art, philosophy, literature, or business, should play a significant role in changing the world, not just in recording information. The first generation of critical theorists working in Frankfurt between the two world wars rejected rationalism, or the positivist understanding of research, although not scientific analysis as a whole, and embraced modernism and the philosophies of Kant, Hegel, and Marx.

Critical pedagogy is concerned with the issue of power in the teaching and learning context. It focuses on how and in whose interests knowledge is produced and 'passed on' and view the ideal aims of education as emancipatory. It seeks how to create conditions in which empowerment is a defining feature of the school experience and frequently focuses on the recaliming of power and identity issues surrounding race, gender, class, and ethnicity. It is interested in breaking down disciplines in the search for interdisciplinary knowledge.

Curriculum study in the United States has progressed from the critical theory of the early Frankfurt school to researchers who now attempt to become actively engaged in promoting social change within the education system and the culture itself. They seek to promote change by becoming part of the self-consciousness of oppressed social groups.

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Reuven Feuerstein

Dr. Reuven Feuerstein is a clinical psychologist who studied at the University of Geneva under Jean Piaget, Andre Rey, Barbel Inhelder, and Marguerite Loosli Uster and went on to earn his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the Sorbonne. He is currently the director of the Center for Development of Human Potential in Jerusalem. From 1970 until the present Dr. Feuerstein has served as Professor in the School of Education at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel; he is also the Director of the Hadassah-Wizo-Canada Research Institute, in Jerusalem, Israel (www.newhorizons.org/trm_feuerstein.html)

Feuerstein became fascinated in the process of human cognition, believing that “Intelligence is not a static structure, but an open, dynamic system that can continue to develop throughout life” If intelligence is modifiable, he says, and if indeed intelligence can be taught and learned, education has a much greater role than might have been previously imagined.

His life's work has been the development of the Theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability and its emergent practices of dynamic assessment, active intervention, and placement of both children and adults in “shaping environments” Instrumental Enrichment (IE) is an intervention program designed by Feuerstein to enhance the cognitive skills necessary for independent thinking. The goal of the IE program is to shape the cognitive structure of the individual and to produce and set in motion his further development. The aim is to modify the performance of developmentally delayed children and to change their passive and dependent cognitive styles into that characteristic of autonomous and independent thinkers. As a result of his work thousands of students from around the world have changed from passive recipients of information to self-confident and active learners.

There are currently under way more than 1,000 research projects on his work throughout the world involving all age groups from infancy to old age, in every setting from jungles to board rooms, and with every ability level from the profoundly retarded to the highly gifted. In 1990 the President of France decorated Dr. Feuerstein for his work in training French workers, managers, and executives in the skills of intelligence.

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John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto was born in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a river town thirty-five miles southeast of Pittsburgh where his grandfather, Harry Taylor Zimmer, was the town printer. After college, Mr. Gatto worked as a scriptwriter in the film business, was an advertising writer, a taxi driver, a jewelry designer, an ASCAP songwriter, and a hotdog vendor before becoming a schoolteacher.

Gatto climaxed his teaching career as New York State Teacher of the Year after being named New York City Teacher of the Year on three occasions. However he resigned from teaching in a very public way by having his resignation letter printed in the OP ED page of the Wall Street Journal in 1991 while still New York State Teacher of the Year, claiming that he was 'no longer willing to hurt children'. Later that year he was the subject of a show at Carnegie Hall called "An Evening With John Taylor Gatto," which launched a career of public speaking in the area of school reform, which has now taken Gatto over a million and a half miles in all fifty states and seven foreign countries.

In 1992, he was named Secretary of Education in the Libertarian Party Shadow Cabinet, and he has been included in Who's Who in America from 1996 onwards. His books include: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992); The Exhausted School (1993); A Different Kind of Teacher (2000); and The Underground History Of American Education (2001).

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Daniel Goleman

Born in Stockton, California, Dr. Goleman attended Amherst College, where he was an Alfred P. Sloan Scholar and graduated magna cum laude. His graduate education was at Harvard, where he was a Ford Fellow, and he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology and personality development. Dr. Goleman now lives in the Berkshires of Massachusetts with his wife Tara Bennett-Goleman, a psychotherapist. He has two grown sons.

Dr. Goleman became internationally well known through the publication of his best-selling 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence. In it he argues that human competencies like self-awareness, self-discipline, persistence and empathy are of greater consequence than IQ in much of life, that we ignore the decline in these competencies at our peril, and that children can—and should—be taught these abilities. Emotional Intelligence was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half, with more than 5,000,000 copies in print worldwide. It has been a best seller throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America, and was translated into nearly 30 languages.

Dr. Goleman was a co-founder of the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Center (now at the University of Illinois at Chicago), with the mission to help schools introduce emotional literacy courses. One mark of the Collaborative—and book’s—impact is that thousands of schools around the world have begun to implement such programs .His 1998 book, Working With Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books), argues that workplace competencies based on emotional intelligence play a far greater role in star performance than do intellect or technical skill, and that both individuals and companies will benefit from cultivating these capabilities. Dr. Goleman is co-chairman of The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, which seeks to recommend best practices for developing emotional competence.

Dr. Goleman has received many journalistic awards for his writing, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize for his articles in the Times, and a Career Achievement award for journalism from the American Psychological Association. In recognition of his efforts to communicate the behavioral sciences to the public, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Paul Goodman (1911-1972)

In the 1960s Goodman was recognised as one of the most influential social critics. His famous book Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society (1960) was an indictment against what he saw as the spirit-stifling conformity of pre-1960s postwar America.

Goodman began his intellectual career in the late 1930s as an avant garde novelist and poet, as well as a social philosopher on the margin of the left. His focus was on everyday experience: what upsets people, what they yearn for, what restricts their ability to create. He wrote about education, linguistics, media, education, city planning, architecture, poetry, literature, politics, psychology. “It is false that I write about many subjects,” he once wrote. “I have only one, the human beings I know in their man-made scene.”

Here Now Next describes Goodman's collaboration with Fritz Perls in the writing of Gestalt Therapy, a book still considered the bible of the gestalt therapy movement. In an era when Freudian orthodoxy insisted that mental health meant helping individuals adjust to society, Goodman insisted that society had to be made to adjust to individual needs. If, as Goodman believed, neurosis is the response of a creative individual to a repressive or coercive situation, and if that situation was replaced by human community and mutual aid, then self-healing would become possible. Goodman saw people as unfinished, capable of growing. He saw therapy as an open-ended exercise that activates the mind, unleashes intelligence, encourages self-reliance, and creates healthy citizens able to perceive things accurately and effectively take care of life's business. Because politics impinge on life's business, a healthy citizen is, by necessity, politically active.

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John Holt(1923 - 1985)

John Holt was an author and educator now very well known among Homeschoolers. His methods and ideas about education live on today through books he has written and through the "Growing Without Schooling" magazine he founded in August of 1977, which is believed to be the world's first Homeschooling magazine. The magazine was directed at those who learned to acquire useful skills and make use of those skills in the working world without the process of formal schooling. Also, its purpose was to unite people with similar beliefs as a means of support and sharing information. Through it he became known as the father of the term 'unschooling'.

The magazine was based on John Holt's theory about how social changes came about. During the 60’s he was a sought-after speaker of the progressive school reform movement. He was a degreed teacher and an outspoken advocate of "free schools"— schools where children are free to take charge of their own education. He was quite outspoken with his beliefs, such as how school children develop as a result of peer pressure in a school setting. At first he believed that the only way to improve the school system (and preserve the rights of children) was to transform public schools into free schools. Places where children could learn what they wanted, rather than what the teacher dictated they should learn. Gradually, however, he became disillusioned with changing the entrenched school systems, and finally concluded that unschooling was the best option.

John Holt lived from 1923 - 1985 and left an impressive legacy behind. He believed that children who were provided with a rich and stimulating learning environment would learn what they are ready to learn, when they are ready to learn it. His two best known books are 'How Children Fail' and 'How Children Learn'

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Loris Malaguzzi

Loris Malaguzzi was the visionary educator behind the development of the revolutionary new municipal system of early childhood education in Italy known as Reggio Emilia. He was asked, by a group of parents, to help open a small village school in 1945, just after the war. After seven years of teaching he left to study psychology at the National Centre for Research in Rome and when he returned he started a town sponsored mental health centre for children with learning difficulties. He then went on to develop truly innovative early childhood centres.

Malaguzzi saw family and community as fundamental to the work of the school. The distinguishing feature of Reggio Emilia has been the continuing high investment and involvement of the community in the education of its young children. The school buildings themselves reflect a profound respect for the needs of the children. Rather than the schools occupying marginal spaces within the neighbourhood, they were seen to be of vital importance and were placed in full view of the public as a focus of community interaction. External spaces were seen to be as important as internal. The subsequent designs were both architecturally and aesthetically exciting and innovative. A great deal of attention was paid to the beauty and harmony of design.

The layout of the schools encourages exploration, communication and the development of relationships on all levels. Everything reflects a dedication to quality, beauty and to the children's own abilities to do things for themselves. Malaguzzi saw the child as someone of 'enormous potential', who was the subject of 'rights promoting development of all their languages - expressive, communicative, symbolic, cognitive, ethical, metaphorical, logical, imaginative and relational'. He saw relationship as the primary connecting dimension of the system - 'a dynamic conjunction of forces and elements interacting towards a common purpose.' In Reggio schools the adult is seen as a fully co-operative partner in the learning process. Reggio schools, therefore, see children as rich in potential, strong, powerful, competent, and most of all, connected to the environment of adults and other children.

Most of the work in Reggio schools is based around projects that arise out of the children's own interests. This 'emergent curriculum' is a way of introducing such work by 'following the child' and, as in Reggio, the results of such work have proved to be astounding as the children demonstrate a depth of knowledge and qualities of creative expression that vastly exceed previous adult expectations.

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Abraham Maslow(1908-1970)

A member of the Chicago dynasty of psychologists and sociologists, Abraham Maslow published his theory of human motivation in 1943. Its popularity continues unabated. Like his colleague Carl Rogers, Maslow believed that actualization was the driving force of human personality, a concept he captures in his 1954 book, Motivation and Personality.
"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be."

Maslow's great insight was to place actualization into a hierarchy of motivation. Self actualization, as he called it, is the highest drive, but before a person can turn to it, he or she must satisfy other, lower motivations like hunger, safety and belonging. Malow's hierarchy has five levels:

Physiological (hunger, thirst, shelter, sex, etc.)
Safety (security, protection from physical and emotional harm)
Social (affection, belonging, acceptance, friendship)
Esteem (also called ego). The internal ones are self respect, autonomy, achievement and the external ones are status, recognition, attention.
Self actualization (spiritual awareness)

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's work on "flow" also suggests that internal motivation is a fundamental element for successful human learning.

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John Miller

A professor at the University of Toronto, John (Jack) Miller is an author and holistic education theorist who has been studying and working with some of the most innovative thinkers in the world. He is a well-known speaker and lecturer and is the facilitator of the Holistic Learning and Spirituality in Education Network for ASCD in America.

His publications include: Nurturing Our Wholeness: Perspectives on Spirituality in Education, Education and the Soul: Towards a Spiritual Curriculum, and The Contemplative Practitioner: Meditation in Education and the Professions.

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Ron Miller

Ron Miller is an internationally known author, editor, speaker and activist and is among the best known and best informed interpreters of the modern holistic education movement. He holds a Ph.D in American Studies from Boston University, specializing in the cultural history of education. His early work—the founding of Holistic Education Review (now called Encounter) in 1988 and the publication of What Are Schools For? Holistic Education in American Culture in 1990—contributed to the emergence of the contemporary holistic education movement. He has continued to reflect on the definition and mission of holistic education, and on the challenges facing the movement, and has gone on to develop the Foundation for Educational Renewal and the web-site and magazine 'Paths of Learning'.

Miller is concerned about the standardization and narrowing of learning in this age of global corporate power. While political and economic forces have defined education as a process of fashioning consumers, workers and managers for a competitive marketplace, holistic education seeks to reclaim the fullness of our humanity—the moral, aesthetic, emotional, psychological and spiritual dimensions of human existence that make us more than mere processors of information or consumers of material goods. Miller sees human experience as an expression of the ongoing evolution of life in a meaningful cosmos, and from this perspective, education ought not be so concerned with preserving imperfect social institutions as with enabling each new generation to express the creative energies that surge from within the human spirit.

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A.S. Neill

A. S. Neill was born in Forfar, Scotland in 1883, the fourth of 13 children. He was son of the village schoolmaster or `Dominie', a stern, puritanical man who ruled his classroom with a rod of iron. In those days the strap or `tawse' was commonly used in schools in Scotland and when at the age of 15 Neill was taken on as a pupil teacher by his father, he was expected to use it on the other children. At the age of 25, Neill went to Edinburgh University and took a degree in English. Afterwards he became a journalist, and later head of a small school in Gretna Green. It was there that he wrote his first book, A Dominie's Log, and began to form his ideas on freedom for children.

In 1917 Neill visited Homer Lane's `Little Commonwealth', a community for delinquent adolescents, and saw self-government at work. Lane was a firm believer in the innate goodness of children. He acquainted Neill with Freud's `New Psychology' and later became Neill's psychoanalyst. Thus he introduced Neill to two elements that were essential to the founding of Summerhill: the self-government meeting, and the importance of a child's emotional well-being over academic development.

The Summerhill school was founded in 1921 in Hellerau, a suburb of Dresden. It was part of an International school called the Neue Schule. There were wonderful facilities there and a lot of enthusiasm, but Neill became progressively less happy with the connection. Together with Frau Neustatter (afterwards his first wife), Neill moved his school to Austria. The setting was idyllic - on top of a mountain - but the local people, a Catholic community, were hostile. By 1923 Neill had moved to the town of Lyme Regis in the south of England, to a house called Summerhill. The school continued there until 1927, when it moved to the present site at Leiston in the county of Suffolk. Neill continued to run the school - later with the help of his second wife, Ena - until he died in 1973. Ena then ran it until her retirement in 1985 when their daughter Zoe, the current headteacher, took over.

Summerhill today has not changed fundamentally since it was first started. Its aims could be described as the following:

To allow children freedom to grow emotionally;
To give children power over their own lives;
To give children the time to develop naturally;
To create a happier childhood by removing fear and coercion by adults.

Summerhill has now been running continuously for seventy-five years and is held up as living proof of Neill's notion that `The absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child.'

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Neo-Humanism

Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar lived from 1921 to 1990. A philosopher and a master of Tantrik Yoga, he dedicated his life to the all-around development of human beings -- physically, mentally, and spiritually. He also proposed an extensive and practical ideology that fosters this development in a balanced manner with all life systems.

Sarkar's ideology, which he called Ananda Marga (the Path of Bliss) integrates the spiritual science of yoga with a dynamic social philosophy he called Neo-Humanism. Mr. Sarkar held that not only human beings, but all living beings are the expressions of the same Divine consciousness. His social ideas integrate a theory of evolution, history and social dynamics. They also address the questions of civilization and culture and the importance of art and literature in society.

Sarkar first delivered this vision in 1982 in his book Neo-Humanism: The Liberation of Intellect. Since then an ever growing body of scholars, teachers and social workers have turned to this work as inspiration for their own endeavors. Developing educational practices that reflect these principles has not been easy but there are now schools all over the world that owe their vision and purpose to this dynamic and challenging philosophy.

Neo-Humanist Education seeks to redefine the human experience. Current educational practice works on a model of the individual as a singular entity pitted against the forces of the universe. Competition and the need to dominate and control are the hallmarks of this system. Neo-Humanist Education rejects this vision of humanity and proposes instead that we are all beings intimately linked with the fabric of the universe. As such the insecurities, born of alienation and loneliness, that drive our society become meaningless.

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Parker Palmer

Parker J. Palmer is a very pro-active writer, teacher and speaker on issues involving higher education, community, leadership, spirituality, and social change. His work spans a wide range of institutions: colleges and universities, public schools, community organizations, churches and retreat centers, corporations, and foundations. He serves as Senior Associate of the American Association of Higher Education, is Senior Advisor to the Fetzer Institute, and is founder of the national "Teacher Formation Program" for K-12 teachers. In 1998, "The Leadership Project" (a national survey of 11,000 faculty and administrators sponsored by AAHE, ACE, AAUP, & AGB) named Dr. Palmer as one of the thirty "most influential senior leaders" in higher education and one of the ten key "agenda-setters" of the past decade.

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Johann Pestalozzi (1746 - 1827)

Born in Zurich in 1746, Pestalozzi took up the ideas of Jean Jaques Roussea and, in his school at Yverdon, developed what became known as the 'Pestalozzi Method'. Instead of dealing with words, he argued, children should learn through activity and through things. They should be free to pursue their own interests and draw their own conclusions.

In 1801 he published 'How Gertrude Teaches Her Children' within which he stated that he wanted to establish a 'psychological method of instruction' that was 'in line with the laws of human nature'. As a result he placed a special emphasis on spontaneity and self-activity. Children should not be given ready-made answers, he said, but should arrive at answers themselves. To do this their own powers of seeing, judging and reasoning should be cultivated, their self-activity encouraged. The aim, as he saw it, was to educate the whole child - hands, heart and head.

The educator William H. Kilpatrick summarized six principles that ran through Pestalozzi's pedagogy:

The Personality is sacred.

As 'a little seed... contains the design of the tree', so in each child is the promise of his potentiality.

Love of those we would educate is 'the sole and everlasting foundation' in which to work.

Anschauung - direct concrete observation, often inadequately called 'sense perception' or 'object lessons'. No word was to be used for any purpose until adequate Anschauung had preceded. The thing or distinction must be felt or observed in the concrete. Pestalozzi's followers developed various sayings from this: from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the abstract.

Out of this demand for action came an emphasis on repetition - not blind repetition, but repetition of action following the Anschauung.

 

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Carl Rogers (1902–1987)

Carl Rogers provided us with an outstanding contribution to our understanding of human nature, with works covering the fields of education, counseling, psychotherapy, peace, and conflict resolution. A founder of humanistic psychology, he has profoundly influenced the world through his empathic presence, his rigorous research, his authorship of sixteen books and more than 200 professional articles. His best known books are: On Becoming a Person, Client Centered Therapy, Freedom to Learn for the 80’s, A way of Being, Carl Rogers on Personal Power, and Becoming Partners: Marriage and Its Alternatives. Two of his books have been published posthumously: The Carl Rogers’ Reader, a collection of his most influential writings, and Carl Rogers’ Dialogues, which features interchanges with such other giants in the field as Paul Tillich, B.F. Skinner, Gregory Bateson, and Rollo May.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)

Rousseau felt that people were born inherently good, but that they were then influenced by the evils of society. In his book Émile he made an argument for wholeness and harmony, and a concern for the person of the learner. Central to this was the idea that it was possible to preserve the 'original perfect nature' of the child, 'by means of the careful control of his education and environment, based on an analysis of the different physical and psychological stages through which he passed from birth to maturity'. This was a fundamental point. Rousseau argued that the momentum for learning was provided by the growth of the person (nature) - and that what the educator needed to do was to facilitate opportunities for learning.

Rousseau's key statements:

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless we need aid; foolish we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education.

This education comes from nature, from men or from things. The inner growth of our organs and faculties is the education of nature, the use we learn to make of our growth is the education of men, what we gain by our experience of our surroundings is the education of things

We are each taught by three masters. If their teaching conflicts, the scholar is ill-educated and will never be at peace with himself; if their teaching agrees, he goes straight to his goal, he lives at peace with himself, he is well-educated.

Now each of these factors in education is wholly beyond our control, things are only partly in our power; the education of men is the only one controlled by us; and even here our power is largely illusory, for who can hope to direct every word and deed of all with whom the child has to do.

Viewed as an art, the success of education is almost impossible since the essential conditions of success are beyond our control. Our efforts may bring us within sight of the goal, but fortune must favour us if we are to reach it.

What is this goal? As we have just shown, it is the goal of nature. Since all three modes of education must work together, the two that we can control must follow the lead of that which is beyond our control.

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Whole Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is a way of understanding reality that emphasizes the relationships among a system's parts, rather than the parts themselves. It therefore looks at wholes rather than parts, and stresses the role of interconnections—including the roles we all play in our own home, school or work situations. Based on a field of study known as system dynamics, systems thinking has a practical value that rests on a solid theoretical foundation.

What exactly is a system? A system is a group of interacting, interrelated, and interdependent components that form a complex and unified whole. Systems are everywhere—ecological systems and human social systems are living systems; human-made systems such as cars and washing machines are nonliving systems. Most systems thinkers focus their attention on living systems, especially human social systems. However, many systems thinkers are also interested in how human social systems affect the larger ecological systems in our planet.

Systems have several defining characteristics:

• Every system has a purpose within a larger system.

• All of a system's parts must be present for the system to carry out its purpose optimally.

• A system's parts must be arranged in a specific way for the system to carry out its purpose.

• Systems change in response to feedback.

• Systems maintain their stability by making corrective adjustments based on feedback.

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