We’ve all been to some sort of school, otherwise we wouldn’t be reading this blog!

Maybe you went to a state school. Basic  literacy is taught all over the world, although boys are more likely to get an education than girls in some countries. Many children are taught at home. Such training is often focused on the scriptures of the family’s own religious tradition.  Girls in the developing world are more likely to be given training in the domestic arts, while boys are trained by their fathers in farming methods or the practice of the family business.

In the West, home schooling is growing in popularity among secular parents who seek higher standards of excellence than are provided by state-run schools. The wealthy have traditionally hired tutors for their children, but this is a very small section of private education.

Private schools are often linked to religious traditions, such as the Madrasah didiyyah and the Madrasah Islamiyyah in Arabic-speaking countries.  Jews, Catholics, Methodists, Quakers, and many more sects have their own religious schools, and there is an organized movement among evangelical Protestant Christians in America to marry Bible-based programmed home schooling with church-school academic and sporting activities.

Non-religious foundations also exist. The private Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York is one of many. It was founded by a Jewish rationalist, Felix Adler (1851-1933), and holds as its ideal “to develop individuals who will be competent to change their environment to greater conformity with moral ideals.” Its courses include ethics, moral philosophy, and community service.

In higher education,  Shimer College, Chicago, helps its liberal arts students in small classes to “develop their capacity for critical thought and interpersonal communication” through careful reading and discussion of a wide selection of  Great Books—from Homer and Plato to Freud and Darwin—which sustain a life-long passion for learning.” Senior students are encouraged to design their own curricula.

Powerful and widely admired among educationalists are schools that have adopted the method of the Italian physician/educator Dr. Maria Montessori (1870-1952). She focused on teaching children to develop their own skills at their own pace. Her principle of “spontaneous self-development” saw  children “as they really were” and created an environment which fostered the fulfillment of their highest potential—spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual—as members of a family, the world community, and the universe.

While Montessori schools are best known for work among small children, they are highly successful at every age. Solid learning is fostered by the supportive environment of the schools, which use a mixed-age group approach.

WODEN SAYS: “The Child is father of the Man.” (Wordsworth)

It doesn’t really matter if your children go to this school or that, or are educated in the home. What matters is the quality of their educational experience.

Here is one school’s mission statement: “The program addresses the physical, emotional, and intellectual capacities of the developing child through an age-appropriate curriculum that integrates the disciplines of movement, fine arts, and practical arts into the study of humanities, science, math, and technology. Through the development of these capacities, we strive to educate the whole human being in a healthy and balanced manner.”

Not surprisingly, the school is the New York-based Rudolph Steiner School that uses the Waldorf method.  No doubt many other educators would want to express their own mission in similar terms. So why pick on that particular statement?  Well, it is a good statement because it looks forward to the end product, a healthy and well-balanced person who has been educated in a healthy and well-balanced manner.

It won’t help children to be filled with judgmental doctrine of any kind, sacred or secular.

It won’t help children if they only have their eyes on the prize, developing above all else an unhealthy competitive spirit.  The goal of the human soul is to learn to exercise its freedom of choice and not to live in conformity to the narrow rules and aspirations of society.

That does not mean the child should not master the arts of reading, spelling, counting, and behaving in a sociable manner. At a young age our sons and daughters need to be given guidance in such respects. It takes years for patterns in the mind to develop into a unique personality. But that uniqueness depends on being taught to think for oneself, not to  conform to the letter of the law—and, not least, what may be regarded as the “holy” law.

The greatest people and the finest souls have always had that spark of self-reliance when it came to thinking about things. If we cultivate young minds that know how to think for themselves, we will harvest a thoughtful, understanding, and caring society of men and women. A crop of which we may be happily proud.