"When schooling is not forced and children have the freedom to choose from a variety of ways to learn, they will have achieved the rights they deserve," Brent Cameron in Self Design

Rudolf Steiner (1996) noted:
"We are not really aware of the fact that we have regressed in human evolution. In the past, children were allowed to grow up without being educated: their freedom was not invaded. Now we violate this freedom when we begin to educate them in the sixth or seventh year."

Steven Harrison in The Happy Child  states that “the current school environment of force- feeding information to passive students” will never allow the “element of self- direction” essential to a whole person who will be able to “meet the future fully, without fear” and use intelligence to understand and meet new challenges. He adds that the only way children can be shipped off to a warehouse and “educated by strangers from a curriculum designed by politicians and academic theorists” is because the parents, too, ship themselves off to be “warehoused at work.” The modern person is convinced that this is for their own good. A population that has experienced a disconnected education cannot imagine an integrated education. 

My Educational Philosophy

Clare Puskarczyk PhD

As a child, I loved playing “teacher” with my two younger brothers. I was eight when I taught the younger of the two to read. As an adult, he told me that he was thoroughly bored in first grade because he could already read. I was a good Catholic school student, compliant, but felt concern for those who obviously did not like school, especially the boys who kept getting into trouble. I did not understand why they were having difficulties. After graduation in 1966, what I was learning in the Education Department at the local university did not feel relevant to how children learn. I dropped out and went to California because I felt something important was happening there. In a moment of inspiration, I realized that I was happy because I was doing what I loved, and therefore, education should involve learning about what one loves. At the time, I thought it a novel idea. Those boys in school were not doing what they loved. From that point, a child-centered or child-directed learning experience made sense to me.

I read Joseph Chilton Pearce and John Holt while my own children were young. I did my best to facilitate learning experiences they would enjoy, that would keep their curiosity alive. Integrative learning seemed natural — a match for how living systems are interrelated. Standardized testing, labelling, or grading children did not make sense to me. After my children were grown, I went back to school and studied multiple styles, theories, and philosophies of education: Piaget, Montessori, Waldorf, Sudbury, Mead School, Summerhill, etc. Following the child, supporting what they love doing, being sensitive, respectful, and available to them remained uppermost in my approach and in the design of the learning center that became my Master’s Degree project. My early sense that children tend to learn well, to be innovative, when they love what they’re doing, what is meaningful to them, has been confirmed for me many times.