Educate
the
Whole
Child

It’s time to let the wholeness of the child engage with the wholeness of the world.

WHAT IS

WHOLE CHILD EDUCATION

AND HOW DOES IT WORK?

To the extent that we narrow the purpose of schooling to what can be measured, we fail to
engage those sides of children that must be developed in order for them to pull learning
from life. We also increase the likelihood that
they will be bored, question the value of school,
and in some cases even drop out.

Instead of starting with the questions “How do we prepare kids to compete in the 21st century
global marketplace?” or “What will insure that graduates all have command of basic skills?”,
suppose we start by asking what qualities we want to encourage in children as they grow toward
adulthood.

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OUR

SCHOOLS

Guilford Elementary

Guilford, VT

Guilford Central has an outdoor classroom for every grade level, pre-K through 6. Students engage in a farm to school program, learning about nutrition, and spend a large part of every day outdoors.

City Neighbors

Baltimore, MD

The learning environment in City Neighbors schools deserves special recognition because it has been achieved despite formidable challenges, especially entrenched poverty, and lack of funding for innovative educational programs and practices.

East Kingston Elementary School

East Kingston, NH

East Kingston illustrates what can be achieved at a rural school that is small enough so that each child is known well and with whole child practices can grow and be nurtured to reach his or her full potential.

OUR

RESOURCES

Educate the Whole Child expects to offer a graduate level 12-credit certificate–Teaching the Whole Child. It will consist of four online courses that may be taken as a series or independently. See details here.

The Finland Phenomenon

In The Finland Phenomenon Harvard, education professor Tony Wagner lays out clearly why Finland has the best public school system in the world.

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Vivian Gussin Paley

Discussions of play-based learning can be found in the works of Vivian Gussin Paley, notably in  books such as The Boy Who Would be a Helicopter and a Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play.

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The Recovery of Man in Childhood

A. C. Harwood, The Recovery of Man in Childhood, 2nd edition provides the best in-depth introduction to child development and education from a Waldorf point of view in one volume.

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