Recently, I visited the Palo Alto Living Wisdom School in my role as the school’s web manager, to video a pair of talks by the school’s principal, Helen Purcell, and longtime middle school teacher and present school administrator Gary McSweeney.
There’s a strong, growing interest in Living Wisdom School among parents, which is wonderful and reason for rejoicing. Yet Helen and Gary lamented that, too often, parents lose sight of the benefits of an Education for Life and choose a school that feels comfortably traditional and familiar instead.
The sad irony is that traditions are evolving wholesale today in every major field of human endeavor, and most schools are only beginning to catch on.
Since approximately 1900, every significant invention has been based on a growing awareness that the fundamental reality of creation is energy. Think of the marvels of modern technology, and the vast array of devices that aid us in our work and at home. To claim that these changes have taken us backward would label us as unrepentant Luddites.
In education, too, there is a new understanding that each student’s success in school depends to a very large extent on how wisely and sensitively the teachers are able to work with the unique energetic qualities of the individual child.
Happiness & Success at School –
What Did “Traditional” Education Actually Look Like?
In ancient Greece and Rome and throughout the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Enlightenment, and in Asia since ancient times, schools have been divided into the approximate equivalents of our modern elementary school, middle and high school, and college, corresponding to ages 6-12, 12-18, and 18-24.
Educational methods were adapted to the needs of children during each stage of their development, as the primary focus naturally shifted from the body (Pre-K and K), to the feelings (grades 1-6), will power (grades 7-12), and mind (college). Because class sizes were smaller and the grades were often mixed, the teachers were able to get to know the students and work with them individually, often over many years.
It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century that government officials and manufacturers decided that schools should be run like assembly lines to train children to be good laborers and factory managers. Thus, math, science and practical subjects such as wood shop, metal shop, and auto mechanics were to be given highest priority, and other matters, such as the child’s emotional, moral, and spiritual development, were to be eliminated from the classroom, as it was assumed these areas would be adequately addressed at home.
The result of this system is the public school system of today, with its large class sizes, government-mandated, one-size-fits-all curriculum, and heavy emphasis on academics to the exclusion of almost everything else.
The mission of the Living Wisdom Schools is to rescue children from this system, whose weaknesses have become abundantly clear, in the form of pandemic bullying, an alarming number of student suicides, and children rebelling and acting out their frustrations with drugs and violence. Programs such as the disastrous “No Child Left Behind,” which force every child into the same rigid curriculum, have left one-third of the students struggling, one-third more or less keeping up, and another third bored out of their minds.
The Highly Efficient Classroom
Over their 50-year history, the Living Wisdom Schools have demonstrated that educating the whole child – body, heart, mind, and spirit – far from neglecting the children’s intellectual development, actually achieves the opposite effect. By engaging the whole child in the learning process, vast reserves of energy and enthusiasm are released to fuel the highest accomplishment, leading to exceptional test scores and high school and college grades. (See the Addendum below.) Because the children are happy and fulfilled, distracting discipline problems are few, bullying is nonexistent, and learning is more efficient than in “traditional” classrooms.
The changes brought by the new awareness of energy are not confined to the Living Wisdom Schools. As hinted earlier, they are sweeping the globe. Education for Life very deliberately prepares children to live effectively in this rapidly changing new energy-aware world.
Happiness & Success in Academia
At Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and other elite schools today, admissions officers are no longer looking only at applicants’ high school grades and SAT scores; they are also weighing individual qualities of emotional balance, enthusiasm, engagement, happiness, and an expansive ability to empathize, communicate, and cooperate – all of which are important predictors of school and life success.
Happiness, Success, & the Science of Positive Feelings
Science is confirming what the Living Wisdom Schools long ago discovered about the intimate links between happiness and success.
Scientists at the Institute of HeartMath™ Research Center (IHM) in Boulder Creek, California have studied the effects of positive feelings such as love, cooperation, compassion, and kindness on our bodies and brains. Their research supports the notion that it’s important for children’s school success that they learn to “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and don’t mess with Mister In-Between.” The IHM research is described in The HeartMath Solution by Doc Childre and Howard Martin (HarperSanFrancisco 1999), as well as in research papers on the organization’s website, www.heartmath.org.
Here are some of the IHM findings:
The heart and brain communicate continually through the nervous system, thus the heart’s powerful positive or negative, harmonizing or disruptive messages are carried instantly to the brain, where they either enhance or interfere with our ability to remain cool and concentrate. (The heart is the body’s most powerful oscillator, sending out electrical signals roughly 60 times as strong as those emitted by the brain.)
Harmonious feelings enhance mental focus, calmness, health, performance, intuition, and the frequency of spiritual feelings. They increase relaxation and alpha-wave output in the brain associated with a calm, meditative state, and synchronize heart-rhythm patterns, respiratory rhythms, and blood pressure oscillations.
When scientists from the Institute of HeartMath taught simple methods for harmonizing the heart’s feelings to school children in the greater Washington, DC area, the children’s test scores rose dramatically.
In the Living Wisdom Schools, the teachers lead the students in practicing heart-harmonizing methods daily. In the classroom and on the playground, the teachers pay constant, close attention to the quality of the children’s interactions. The teachers are trained to nurture a harmonious, safe, expansive school environment that is optimized for happiness, learning, and success.
Happiness and Success at Harvard
During Shawn Achor’s time as a Harvard graduate student, he served as a proctor, a role that required him to have hundreds of conversations with Harvard freshmen over Starbucks coffee.
Achor, a psychology major, soon noticed a trait that set the most successful students apart. It was an insight that, in time, would completely overturn his previous assumptions about success.
He realized that the Harvard freshmen who were most likely to excel were not those who buried themselves in the library stacks, grimly determined to grind out good grades. The most successful students were the happiest and most socially engaged. They interacted with their peers, formed study groups, continually asked questions, and approached their studies in a spirit of joyous adventure. They were connected, engaged with their work, and were skilled communicators.
Achor is the author of an influential book, The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work.
Shawn Achor ended up teaching the most popular course at Harvard, on the principles of positive psychology. Today, he applies his findings about the link between happiness and success to help corporate executives advance their careers and transform their companies’ cultures.
Achor realized that when it comes to success and happiness, our traditional assumptions are backwards. Most people assume that they will be happy after they’ve achieved material success. Yet Achor found that the opposite is true – that people who are happy, here and now, are the most likely to succeed.
Happiness and the Brain
Shawn Achor’s findings confirm a discovery by neuroscientists that people with high levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex of their brains – the brain area where happy attitudes, positive expectations, will power, and the ability to form and persevere in achieving long-term goals are localized – are more successful in their lives than those with weaker prefrontal cortex activation.
Neurophysiologist Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the prefrontal cortex. When Davidson studied the brain patterns of college students, he found that those with higher levels of prefrontal cortex activation were uniformly better at setting and achieving goals and had fewer problems with drugs and alcohol, compared to students with lower prefrontal activity.
To put it differently, our brains are wired so that happiness and success go together. The qualities that are essential for success – will power, planning, and perseverance – are localized in the same brain area where upbeat, happy attitudes reside. The very structure of our brains tells us that happiness and success are inseparable.
When Davidson and his team studied Tibetan monks living in India, they tested one elderly monk, a lifelong meditator, whose scores on left-prefrontal-cortex activation were the highest they had ever seen, reflecting the tremendous positive energy and joy his practices had brought him. At Living Wisdom School, the children are led in brief daily periods of meditation, using ancient meditation techniques that are designed to relax the body, uplift the feelings, calmly focus attention, and direct energy to the prefrontal cortex. The children find these practices extremely helpful to keep their outlook positive and cheerful while meeting daily challenges and while preparing for tests.
Shawn Achor would confirm that the happiness principle is not only valid for Harvard students but for successful people in all fields. The traditional expectation that happiness is a reward that we can expect to enjoy after we’ve achieved success, defined as a good job, a beautiful home, an impressive income, a trophy spouse, and a shiny car, was simply wrong. The most successful people are those who are happy from the outset – thus the title of Achor’s book, The Happiness Advantage.
If you were to ask school administrators to name the most important factor for school success, many would probably say, “Good study habits.” But a mounting body of evidence suggests that this is only one part of the school success equation, albeit an important one.
The Living Wisdom Schools have shown that the best determinants of school success more closely resemble Shawn Achor’s findings: a happy learning environment, permeated by a spirit of joyful exploration, where each child can be challenged at his or her own pace.
Happiness & Success at Google
When Google decided, 15 years after its founding, to re-examine its practice of hiring only job candidates with outstanding grades from top-tier universities, they were surprised to find that technical knowledge was eighth among the factors that predicted success in a high-tech business environment. The first seven were all “soft skills,” such as the ability to empathize, cooperate, and contribute harmoniously. A follow-up study found that Google’s most successful research teams were composed of people who shared qualities of inclusion, respect, and caring.
Happiness & Success in Sports
In the former age of matter-awareness, which ended at approximately the time Albert Einstein announced that the underlying reality of matter is energy, rigid forms and solid matter were thought to be the ultimate reality of creation.
Thus, in sports training, the needs of the individual were subordinated to rigid, one-size-fits-all methods. Today, in the dawning age of energy-awareness, young coaches and athletes are achieving unprecedented success with methods that put individual happiness and success first.
This should not be surprising, since we perform best when we’re doing something we love. And we all love experiencing success at our own level – as happens daily for each child at Living Wisdom School.
Example: Tony Holler was an honors chemistry teacher and track and football coach for thirty years at Plainfield North High School in the greater Chicago area. When Tony transitioned his teams from old-style coaching methods to practices that emphasized the efficient use of energy and were short, fast, and fun, his teams won the state 4×100 event, the prestige event in track and field, four of the next six years. In the same period, his football teams, similarly coached with short, efficient practices in a spirit of fun, won 44 games and lost 3.
Happiness & Success in the Military
Consider the U.S.S. Benfold, a destroyer that scored bottom-scraping performance ratings under a succession of captains who ruled with a rigid, top-down, micromanaging style in which the crew members were viewed as soulless drones whose purpose was to advance the officers’ careers, and deviations from the Navy’s rules and norms were considered anathema.
Then a miracle occurred, when a forward thinking young captain, D. Michael Abrashoff, took over Benfold and put energy-based principles in place. Abrashoff was convinced that the key to turning the ship around would be the happiness and success of each crew member. He talked with each of Benfold’s 300 sailors and gave them freedom to do whatever it would take to improve their departments, even if it meant bending the Navy’s rules. The result: within months, Benfold was beating the Navy’s best ships in at-sea trials. Abrashoff recorded his experiences in a deeply inspiring bestselling book, It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy.
At Living Wisdom School the teachers have long experience helping each child succeed daily at his or her own level. The result is a very happy school “ship” where the children are enthusiastically engrossed in meeting their academic and personal challenges. After Captain Abashoff transformed Benfold, other ships‘ officers and crews were soon seeking any excuse to visit the ship for the pleasure of spending time in its positive, dynamic, happy atmosphere.
If you are seeking a school for your child, why not arrange a visit to Living Wisdom School? We’re sure you’ll love your time here, as so many other parents have in the thirty-three years of our school’s existence. You can use the Contact form, or give us a call at 650-462-8150. We look forward to welcoming you to our school and giving you a tour of the campus.
Captain Abrashoff’s Operating Principles
1. See the culture through the eyes of the individual.
2. Communicate, communicate, communicate.
3. Discipline and motivation skyrocket when people believe they are doing something important, and they’re given the freedom to do it well.
4. Listen aggressively.
School Choice
In today’s fast-paced, energy-driven world, it’s clear that children’s prospects for a happy, successful life depend far more on their present, daily experiences of happiness and success at school, than on rigid adherence to a set of impersonal, assembly-line educational practices from the past.
About the Author: George Beinhorn graduated from Stanford University (BA 1964, MA 1966). He has published seven books in the last decade, including the following titles which are based on the 50-year experience of the Living Wisdom Schools (the links are to web pages where you can read the chapters or download a PDF).
Head & Heart: How a Balanced Education Nurtures Happy Children Who Excel in School & Life. Based on the experience of the Living Wisdom Schools.
Happiness & Success in High School: Educating Teenagers for Life: Answering parents’ questions about the surprising links between happiness and high performance in the classroom. How positive feelings and individual attention nurture success in high school, college, and for all of life. Based on the experience of Living Wisdom High School in Palo Alto, California.
Addendum: Does Individual Attention Support Academic Excellence? High School Grades Tell the Story
Parents often question whether devoting time to individual attention doesn’t somehow steal energy from the academic subjects. But the EFL teachers have found the opposite to be true.
Grades
We present these academic results by graduates of the K-8 Living Wisdom School in Palo Alto, California as evidence of the validity of the Education for Life approach to learning.
We invited Palo Alto LWS graduates (2011-2014) to share their high school and college grade-point averages. The Palo Alto school has 70-75 students in nine grades, K-8. On average, 4-8 students graduate per year; thus these 20 responses over four years are representative.
Presentation High (San Jose)
4.7
Mountain View High
4.5
Los Altos High
4.5
Harker School (San Jose)
4.18
Carlmont High (Belmont)
4.1
Summit Prep (Redwood City)
4.1
Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles)
4.1
Los Altos High
4.0
Menlo College Prep (Menlo Park)
4.0
Mid-Peninsula High (Menlo Park)
4.0
Palo Alto High
4.0
Harker School (San Jose)
3.9
Woodside Priory School, Bowdoin College
3.825
Menlo College Prep
3.706
San Lorenzo High
3.7
Gunn High (Palo Alto)
3.6
Gunn High, Cornell University
3.5
Summit Prep (Redwood City)
3.5
Bay High School (San Francisco)
3.23
Mid-Peninsula High (Menlo Park)
2.7
LWS graduates’ average high school GPA (2011-18): 3.85
LWS alumni have graduated from these high schools:
Bay School in San Francisco
Carlmont High School
Everest High School
Gunn High School
Harker School
Los Altos High School
Menlo College Prep
Menlo-Atherton High School
Mid-Peninsula High School
Mountain View High School
Palo Alto High School
Pinewood School
Presentation High School
San Lorenzo High School
Summit Prep High School
Woodside Priory
LWS alumni have graduated from these colleges:
Bowdoin College
Brooks Institute of Photography
Cal Poly
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dominican University
Dublin University, Ireland
Georgetown University
Humboldt State University
London College, UK
Loyola Marymount University
New York University
Oberlin College
Portland State University
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Santa Clara University
School of Visual Arts, New York
Stanford University
UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Barbara
University of Bremen, Germany
University of Michigan
University of San Francisco
University of Washington (Ross School of Business)
Living Wisdom High School (Nevada City, California) Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) Score Averages 2004-2021
LWHS Average
National Average
Above National Average
Language Arts
640
533
+20%
Mathematics
608
527
+15%
Total
1248
1060
+18%
We also assess our high school students’ progress using the Iowa Test of Educational Development. Over the past two years, our students have shown an average gain of 14 percentile points in comparison to other students their age.
“I always knew I wanted to be a teacher,” Narani Moorhouse says with a quiet smile.
It’s a January afternoon at the elementary school on a grassy hill above the “downtown” part of Ananda Village, a thriving, fifty-year-old spiritual community in the foothills near Nevada City, California.
The children have skipped down the hill after school and Narani is enjoying the mild winter sun as she chats about education.
“I very clearly remember walking into the schoolroom on my first day of kindergarten and thinking, ‘This is what I’m going to do when I grow up!’
“In school I was always watching my teachers, tracking their teaching styles and noticing what worked and what didn’t. And whenever I had babysitting jobs I would make up little lesson plans for the kids and play school.” When Narani laughs, it’s like a small explosion, a bright exhalation of joy.
Watching her teach her third and fourth graders, it’s clear that her enthusiasm wins their hearts. They might not betray the seven-year-old’s code so far as to admit that they like school, but watching them, it’s obvious that they love it.
In Narani’s classroom, “spiritual education” means encouraging all aspects of a child’s nature, with happiness as the constant goal. As she talks about her experiences, spiritual truths assume a living form.
The teachers in the Living Wisdom Schools understand that universal, non-sectarian spiritual principles are priceless keys for finding success and happiness in our lives. Modern research has shown that attitudes of kindness, compassion, empathy, and feelings of social connection have profound positive effects on our bodies and minds, stimulating electrical and chemical changes that benefit our health, promote mental clarity and calmness, and generate feelings of inner fulfillment and happiness.
Currently there are eight Education for Life schools in America and Europe. For information, visit edforlife.org.
Q: Can you recall an experience from your years as a teacher that revealed children’s spiritual potential?
Narani: I’m thinking of something quite wonderful that happened my first year at Living Wisdom School. I was reading books by or about Teresa of Avila, a great saint of the 16th century. I was teaching third and fourth grade at the time, and part of my way of being with the kids has always included sharing the uplifting things that I’m experiencing in my own life. I was so inspired by my reading, and in our morning circle, I said to them, “You guys, I just have to share this with you!”
St. Teresa had so much love for God. She dedicated her life totally to do whatever Christ might ask of her, and she had complete love for whatever came her way. So I was reading to the children about loving God so much, and doing everything for God, and how the nuns were symbolically wedded to Christ at the ceremony where they took their final vows.
I told them how the nuns lived in silence so that they could always be thinking about God. And then one of the little girls piped up and said, “I think we could do that!”
I said, “Weeellllll… How?”
So we played with the idea. I had wanted to be a nun in the worst way when I was young, but I’d never felt truly called to that kind of life. And yet, oh! – it seemed like such a wonderful thing. So I thought, “Okay, this is my chance.” [Laughs]
We worked out how we could play nuns and monks, and we decided that we would do our chores in silence, just like the nuns in Teresa’s convents, and that our “chores” would be our school assignments. We had someone be the bell ringer, and they would ring the bell every hour and we’d stop what we were doing and pray.
One of the kids said, “What will we pray about?”
I said, “You know, if you felt that you were married to God, you could talk to Him in the everyday language of your own heart. Maybe you would want to ask for help, or you might ask how you could communicate better with your mom or your dad or your best friend. That’s how you would pray.”
So we would stop and say our prayers, and I didn’t try to rush them, but whenever I stopped I was never the last one praying, because there was always at least one child still praying. And I knew it wasn’t play-acting, because their hands were clenched tight and you could feel the concentration in them.
The first recess came, and two of the little girls got a bucket and started cleaning the entryway floor. And – well! – I had said nothing to them about the happiness of selfless service!
I said, “Oh, you guys, I have to break our silence, because I just have to read this to you!” I got my book and read a passage where St. Teresa talks about service, and how, when you love God with all your heart, and you love others as your brothers and sisters, you just naturally want to do things to make their lives easier. And it’s not that you have to, but you just want to do things to help them.
I said, “I didn’t read this book to you, and you’re doing exactly what it says!” We had never scrubbed the floor before. [laughs] And they were out there with their buckets and rags scrubbing away, all without my asking, and it was amazing.
So the day went on, and it was so cute, because the little girls would button their sweaters over their heads like veils, and the boys were stuffing their arms in their sleeves like monks. It was a wonderful day, and everyone was real inward and happy.
The next morning, I thought, “Oh well, that was wonderful, but now it’s over.” And then at our morning circle one of the little boys said, “Can we do that again?”
I was feeling that I didn’t want to run it into the ground and spoil the blessing. So I said, “No, I think one day was enough.” And I had a rebellion on my hands! “No! No! We want to do it again! We want to do it again!”
Finally a little boy said, totally serious, “Look, I know God helped me with my work yesterday!” And I thought “Ooookkaaay….!” [laughs]
Well, we ended up doing it all week long. We spent the whole week in silence, and it was a little awkward to teach! [laughs] I mean, trying to figure out how to teach fractions without saying anything, where you can only write on the board. But it was wonderful.
It was unusually warm for January, and they were showing Friday night movies on the market lawn. “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” was scheduled for the coming Friday, and I thought, “Uh-oh, here comes all this St. Francis stuff!” And sure enough, when the kids came to school on Monday they were demanding, “Now we want to be Saint Francis and Saint Clare!”
I said, “Okay. How can we do it?” Well, the one thing they could think of was to beg for food. [laughs] And as a first-year teacher I just didn’t know if I could send them home with notes to their parents, “Please don’t send lunches with your children, because we’re going to go down to the market and beg from people after they’ve eaten their lunch.” [laughs]
So I said no, but later I thought, “What a shame!” Because Francis’ attitude was to accept whatever God gave him, and if God gave him food to eat, great, and if God didn’t, then God wanted him to be a little hungry, and that was okay, too. And I thought, what other chance would these kids have to be hungry and learn to accept it? Now, they probably wouldn’t have been hungry for very long as they walked among their families and said, “May I have what’s left of your sandwich?” [laughs] I doubt people would have turned them away, but it’s a shame that they didn’t have the experience.
I had shared with the kids about Teresa of Avila because I was so enthusiastic that I just couldn’t contain myself. And, in fact, that’s what I really garnered from the experience.
More than anything that I told them about Teresa, the kids picked up on my enthusiasm, and that’s really what gave it life for them.
It taught me something extremely important about encouraging children generally, and helping them understand spiritual principles, and ever since that time, whenever something really moves me, not only ideas but whenever something’s truly stirring me, I’ll share it with the kids. And, almost without exception, it’s been something that touched them deeply, too, because they could feel the love and joy in it. And it’s so different from when I’m just talking about some abstract aspect of academics or the spiritual life, because when it has that kind of enthusiasm behind it they’re able to feel it right away.
Q: Does that connection happen rarely, or is it a regular part of the education that children receive at Living Wisdom School ?
Narani: I believe you have to be open for it to happen at any moment. You can’t force it – if I were to try to recreate the experiment with the kids living as monks and nuns, I doubt that it would work, because it was a spontaneous thing that presented itself with inspiration, and I think it can happen at any time, but it has to come from that source of heartfelt inspiration and enthusiasm within.
Q: As a teacher at Living Wisdom School, do you have more opportunities to teach spontaneously than you would in other schools?
Narani: Because we work a great deal on the children’s character development, they need to be able to trust us, and to know from deep inside that we care for them as persons and as souls.
If you put thirty six-year-olds together for six hours a day, day in and day out, you have to spend an awful lot of time on classroom management: “Everyone, be quiet! Do this, do that.” But when it’s just twelve kids, there’s more time for learning and being together, and it does support a certain spontaneity.
If the sun comes out after the rain, and there’s a beautiful rainbow, and the most wonderful thing is to walk through this wonderful countryside, it’s nothing to manage it with twelve kids.
Q: How do you balance learning life skills with the academic side?
Narani: We have to prepare the kids for success in the real world. They won’t be able to feel really good about themselves if they aren’t successful in some outward way. So we’re very careful with the curriculum, to make sure that everything gets covered, and over the years in our school we’ve found that they’re very consistently ahead of grade level.
Last year a little girl from New Zealand visited our class. She was a first grader in a typical school where they moved the kids ahead quickly. She was in my class for two weeks, and she did fine. But after she left we got a call from her parents, telling us that her teacher was extremely puzzled. And then the teacher actually called me and said, “What did you do in your class?” Because this girl did not read when she left, and she came back able to sit down and read a book.
At first I couldn’t imagine what I had done. In fact, I hadn’t done anything more than I was doing with the other kids. We simply spend lots of time with books, and we sit down and read together. And that’s when I thought that our small, supportive group of children might have been all she needed to relax and allow her reading to flow forth with ease.
Of course it wasn’t as if I could have taught the girl to read in only a couple of weeks. But then it occurred to me that there might have been a degree of academic pressure at her school, whereas at Living Wisdom School we cover a great deal of ground in academics, but there’s always a warm, friendly feeling to it. The little girl was rather shy, and I daresay that she was able to relax and use the knowledge she had, and start moving ahead, free of the fear and tension that a large, impersonal classroom might generate.
One of the strongest attitudes I see in our teachers is a very, VERY deep respect for the children. Our role as adults and as leaders is extremely important, but at the same time we understand that these are souls, and they’ve been here before. They were old and they knew a lot, and while those past experiences may not be in their conscious memory, these souls are still very worthy of our respect, and of being treated in a kind, fair, and respectful way. And that attitude leads to a certain family feeling, and a genuine care and affection for the children.
Q: Has being on a spiritual path helped you as a teacher?
Narani: One of the first things that comes to mind is a certain inner knowing that it isn’t all riding on me, and that I’m not going to make or break these kids.
In class, I may come up with something that’s intellectually challenging, but if it doesn’t have an inner spirit behind it, and a resonance with their heart and soul, there will still be a lack. But if what I’m giving them has a resonance with their heart, and an attunement with their spirit, then I find that it tends to be much more meaningful to them.
I remember a meeting that we teachers had with Swami Kriyananda, the founder of Education for Life. He said, “Always look to the consciousness behind anything that you bring into the classroom. Whether it’s music or an art activity or a game or the way you present history, look to the consciousness behind it.”
So we’ve developed aspects of the curriculum that reach beyond the intellectual. In teaching history, for example, we look at the soul development of people such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and how they grew to be great leaders by embodying spiritual values of courage and compassion, and by nobly holding to justice and truth. And in everything we do in the classroom, we try to bring out those deeper insights.
When I put my heart and soul into a lesson, and I find that maybe it isn’t coming off terribly well, I know that I can ask for guidance within, because I don’t feel that my brain is the only resource I have, but that there’s a greater resource I can draw on, that cares about each particular child and knows exactly what they need.
I’m not one to sit down and pray and see flashing lights and hear a voice telling me what to do, but there’s a sense of “Ah, yes!” An impulse will come, and sure enough, it will be just what’s needed, whether it’s about an academic subject or a social situation with the children.
Q: As our country’s schools increasingly seem to be floundering in confusion when it comes to teaching children about morality and values, many people are saying that outward solutions are the answer, whether it’s by enforcing a certain academic rigor, or setting rules, or putting police in the halls. Whereas you seem to be saying, help them discover what works best and that gives them the greatest happiness.
Narani: I feel that the inner and outer are both extremely important. It basically does come down to what’s going to make a child happy. And it means that they need to have control of their energy, and they need to have control of their attitude, and they need to learn how to deal with the things that their life is going to throw at them.
In playing a game, there’s the outward skill and there’s the quality of your character, and just behind the struggle to learn math concepts and spelling the children are also developing spiritual qualities. We try to work with both aspects, helping the kids learn to deal with what they’re given and be the best they can, both inwardly and outwardly.
A conversation with LWS middle school teacher, founding board member, and parent Gary McSweeney
Q: What questions do parents typically ask about the middle school grades?
Gary: We’re asked about academics, of course, and specifically math, and then they might ask how it works to combine the three middle school grades, as we’ve done.
I learned recently that the Palo Alto Unified School District decided to do away with separate advanced math classes, and to begin combining the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders in a single math class.
I’m guessing they’d seen research that indicated the older model wasn’t working all that well, where you’re separating the advanced students from the others. It was particularly interesting to me because we’ve been combining the grade levels in math, science, and language arts for more than forty-five years.
Our experience is that with any cross-section of students, regardless of their grade level, you’ll have kids who seem to be able to absorb the subject almost by osmosis, and kids who can get it if you explain it to them, and kids who struggle. And of course they all need to be helped at their own level. So the teacher’s work doesn’t really change when the classes are combined.
Today I’ve just come from a math tutorial with two eighth-graders and a sixth-grader, and it was clear that the same concepts applied across levels. It was a simple question that involved the algebraic method, but whether you’re in seventh grade or doing postgraduate math, you’re still applying the algebraic method but at deeper levels.
Our school director, Helen Purcell, grew up in a family with nine kids. Her father was an attorney, and he would always pose a question for discussion at the dinner table. It worked out very naturally, because the younger kids would listen and learn, and the in-between kids would chime in occasionally, and the older kids would lead the discussion.
It’s the same synergy in our classrooms, where the kids will be helping other kids, and the teachers and aides will be walking around and working with the individual students, and the students who are a little reticent will be listening in on the conversation.
One of the greatest benefits we’ve seen for the children is that it helps their relationship to math. Our kids, by and large, have a very positive and wholesome relationship to math because of our approach. It works because it’s highly individualized, and we’re helping them become engaged at their own level, which is always very individual. And I don’t think it would matter if there were college seniors among them, working at their level.
The larger issue is, are they relating to math, or are they just hoping the class will be over?
Beyond individual instruction, we find that when the kids help each other, it benefits them both. The kids are constantly helping each other, and it’s been shown that when you explain a concept to someone, it helps you interiorize and absorb the material, especially when you know the person and you care about them.
Maybe they’ve grasped a concept, and a friend will raise a hand and they’ll go over and explain it. And whether the child who asked for help gets it right away is almost secondary, because by explaining it the first child has a chance to become more clear on the concept. So that’s just one more way the learning is deeper when you combine classes, apart from the teachers working with each student at their own pace.
Q: Do you have math aides and assistants?
Gary: We’ve always had them. This year we had Tandava and Ruchi and Diana’s grandmother, and it’s been a wonderful experience for the kids. When you have someone like Tandava helping the kids, with a degree in symbolic systems from Stanford and experience working at Google, and a great deal of enthusiasm for teaching, it’s completely amazing for the kids.
We’ve been fortunate to have very good math assistants over the years. I’m thinking of Richard Fouquet who had degrees from Stanford and Harvard, and Eric Munro who retired from the tech industry and graduated from MIT.
Teaching math at LWS takes lots of intuition and a personal touch, because you’re forming a relationship with the child and learning what works best for them. At Living Wisdom there’s less emphasis on the curriculum and more on the person – it’s about the teacher’s ability to reach the individual student in the way that will be most meaningful and helpful for them.
When schools talk about education today, it’s usually about how many of the teachers have advanced degrees, or the wonderful textbooks, or the online features. But I don’t think those are anywhere nearly as important as being able to answer a simple question, “Who is this child?”
How are the children able to relate to their teacher, and what is the school environment like? Those are the most important questions, and at Living Wisdom School we offer a wholesome environment where the kids can be relaxed and receptive.
Watch Gary answer parents’ questions during an LWS open house (50 minutes). Gary talks to prospective parents during the LWS Open House on February 1, 2020. The open house was attended by approximately 50 parents. After an introductory talk by school director Helen Purcell, the parents went to the various classrooms for Q&A’s with the teachers. In the video, Gary talks with parents of children of middle school age.
Q: The median high school grade point average of the LWS graduates over the last five or six years has been 3.85, so something seems to be working.
Gary: That’s another question parents ask – how will the students do when they leave our school? It’s why we track their high school grades after they leave us. The LWS alumni often come back to visit, and we ask them, “How’s it going for you at Saint Francis or Harker or Menlo?” We find that they are very well prepared, because they know the material and they’re thriving socially.
We’re extremely pleased that they do very well in their personal interviews, and that the high school counselors tell us how impressed they are by these young kids who demonstrate so much natural centeredness and self-possession and poise.
I feel that too much of education today is concerned with superficial things – the excessive focus on absorbing information today is very far from what kids truly need.
Q: There seem to be fewer discipline problems and classroom control issues at LWS than in other schools. Can you comment on that? Do the kids rebel when they don’t feel that the teachers understand them?
Gary: We were talking about this recently among the teachers. At our End of Year Celebration each child receives a quality, and then they stand up and give a short talk about the quality, and at the end of the ceremony the eighth graders give their graduation speeches.
We’ve held the ceremony for thirty years, and it’s one of the most inspiring events of the year. But we were speculating, half-seriously, about what would happen if a student stood up and went on a rant against the school. But I expressed the thought, “There isn’t a pent-up energy here that’s waiting to explode, because there isn’t an adversarial dynamic between the teachers and the children.”
The children are encouraged to think for themselves and voice differing opinions as a necessary part of their learning. If they say, “I don’t believe in God,” they are free to express their ideas and think them through, because we don’t shrink from facing the big issues.
It’s true that we don’t have a lot of the usual discipline problems, and I think it’s because we reach out to each child and motivate them individually. If you’re learning at your own level, it means that you’re having success experiences every single day at school, and it’s a very enjoyable experience, so you’ll want more, and you’ll be channeling your energies into the work because you enjoy that feeling.
Of course, what I’m saying is tempered by twenty years of working in the trenches as a teacher. Because you can’t hold out bright shiny ideas that aren’t related to what the students are actually experiencing day by day. You have to be very real, and it’s why we hire teachers who are capable of having a real relationship with the kids, a relationship that makes the child feel that they’re being seen. And as a welcome side-effect it eliminates a lot of the discipline issues.
Our founder had a significant dream that became the guiding impetus for the book Education for Life. He saw a group of teenagers lounging around, looking surly, and he talked to them about how the adults in their lives weren’t giving them anything to be hopeful about. So he wrote Education for Life to help teachers and parents reach kids and give them reasons to be positive and hopeful about life.
In a recommendation letter that I wrote for the high school applications of one of our graduates, I said, “You should consider this student, because she is very bright. She has real gifts, and her thinking is outside of the box. She’s very creative and able to come up with fresh perspectives. I marvel at her abilities. Many times I’ve thought that she is the definition of what a good school would be looking for, a student who is engaged and who thinks for herself.”
She needed some discipline, but I think we’ve proved that you can offer it in a way that doesn’t get the students’ backs up, because they know that you’re genuinely on their side.
When you can give them discipline with kindness, it frees up tremendous energy. We aren’t stressing the kids; we’re trying to work with them, encourage them, and inspire them. We would rather help the kids get to a point where they will show initiative of their own accord because they’ve discovered what they enjoy and what they really want. It’s far more effective to educate the child from the inside out, instead of from the top down or from the outside in.
Q: We talked earlier about how the students help each other in math class. Do you feel it’s a key to the success of the school? I remember helping my friends with math in high school, and what a happy experience it was.
Gary: Parents sometimes have trouble getting their heads around how our math class works, and I can understand why.
We go straight into math first thing in the morning after a brief Circle Time, and I don’t lecture during math class, because we’re all working independently. Everyone is sitting at a desk or a table working on math, and if they have a question we’ll go over and help them, or we’ll ask them to come over.
The ability to work independently, with complete focus, requires a great deal of inner motivation on the part of the students, and it’s why we spend so much time working with them individually. Because once you have that personal energy and enthusiasm flowing, you’ll have lots of successes that you can celebrate, so it becomes a self-feeding cycle that breeds motivation and initiative.
Some of the kids are unbelievably advanced in math, and others really struggle. One of the kids in my class was struggling in math this morning, and when he finally solved the problem we celebrated it. And the reason it can happen is that I’m free to work with him and make sure he’s having those success experiences, because I don’t have to answer to an administration: “Why is he behind in math? Why aren’t you making him keep up with where everybody else is?”
His parents told me that he’d been tested and that it was a brain issue – his brain simply doesn’t process math, so it’s like a foreign language to him. But I’ve never thought for one moment, “Oh, he’ll never be good in math.”
We had a student who didn’t feel that she was very good in math, and I kept telling her, “No, I think you are good, you just haven’t realized it.” And now she’s getting a PhD in genetics, which requires heavy math skills, and she has mastered them.
We give them the tools to be okay with themselves, and to be very real and work with themselves starting exactly where they are. And it’s something we don’t just talk about. We live it every day, because it works – making your own progress, helping the other kids, and feeling good about it. I see it all the time, how when you work with the kids at their own level, there are countless moments where the light will go on, “Wow, yeah, I know how to do it!” – whether it’s math, guitar, drama, sports, or language arts.
I’m talking about math because parents nearly always ask about it, but the principles are equally true in history or language arts or personal development. “Wow, I’m learning how to make friends.”
After morning Circle and just before math, we meditate briefly, and I doubt that any of the children would be able to say very much about what they’re getting out of it. But I’ve seen over the years that it serves them very well. When they meet life’s tests, they’ll be able to look back and remember, “I was able to focus and get calm and see things from a more solution-oriented perspective.”
It’s not just a mental exercise, it’s an experience of learning to get control of the energy in their body, heart, and brain. And it helps them gain access to inner mental resources that will be there for them the rest of their lives. I don’t have any illusions that they’ll all become lifelong meditators, but when we meditate briefly together in the morning there’s a tangible power in the room, of calmness, focus, and joy.
Q: I’ve observed that the kids know how to be very serious and concentrated. It’s amazing to see the kindergarteners and first, second, third, or fourth graders being really serious and intent about what’s going on, and in the next moment they’re laughing and happy. But they seem happy when they’re laughing and happy also about being serious.
I watched a fourth-grade girl reading a book at a table in the courtyard during morning recess. She looked completely absorbed, and I was curious to know what kind of book was capturing so much of her attention. I had my camera, and I said, “Can I take your picture?” She said, “Okay,” and immediately turned back to the book, as if she didn’t want to be distracted for a second. And I looked over her shoulder and saw that she was studying math.
It seems quite a testimonial for the school, that the kids can be both serious and happy. Because you can tell the parents, “We have a happy school,” and what are they going to do with that? It may be a completely foreign concept to them, or they might form the wrong impression, imagining that you’re indulging the kids, just letting them play.
Gary: It’s very unfortunate that it’s so foreign in education now. On the other hand, there are lots of forward-looking companies where cooperation and happiness have become a major part of the cultural goals, and where people are living these principles. And that’s what we have at our school, including the culture among the teachers.
Joseph Chilton Pearce, an author whom I greatly admire, said that when you’re dealing with children, you have to be what you’re saying. You can tell them to be good, but you have to model the behavior for them. So our faculty spend a great deal of time cooperating on being models for the kids, and it helps that we genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
There’s a spirit that you can feel when you walk onto the campus. It’s harmonious and joyful. We have the usual issues, of course. For example, putting on the play is a very intense experience for everyone, and this year we had just one dress rehearsal after seven weeks of intense preparation, before we had to pull the plug because of COVID-19. And that’s a subject that we’ll revisit with the kids, because it’s full of lessons about real life. And even though the kids may be young, there’s a soul there, and you can’t just brush these things aside, because the kids need to learn about life by talking about what’s going on.
I’ve had some very interesting conversations with five-year-olds here. And you might think that we’ve been asked virtually every question a child could possibly come up with, but there’s one group of kids that will always surprise you with something new and fresh, and that’s the teenagers. They will invariably find a way to come at it from a new direction, and maybe the ideas are wacky, but often they’ll be very fresh and insightful.
I’ll give an assignment, and I’ll find myself asking a student, “Where did you come up with the idea to do it that way?” [Laughs] But then I’ll have to admit, “Okay, it works.”
It’s a wonderful environment. My son attended LWS from kindergarten to graduation, and he’s in India now, developing Living Wisdom Schools. As part of his work, he’s been visiting other schools, and he tells me that these principles are showing up all over the world today.
There are principles that schools are tapping into everywhere, but the advantage that we have here is that when you have an entire faculty that’s dedicated to working in this philosophical space all of the time, something very special can happen, where you are no longer just a good teacher who happens to listen to their students, but there are lots of great teachers all around you. So you develop a faculty and a community and a school environment that are all supporting these methods, and you begin to see something extraordinary.
Q: The middle school students are at the age when they’re starting to flex their willpower. And how do you deal with that energy? Parents send their child here for six hours a day, and how are the teachers finding ways to help the kids express their willpower in positive ways?
Gary: I’ve given this a lot of thought. Because whatever you’re doing, you’re going to have to learn to set boundaries, and with the middle schoolers it often translates to something as simple as telling them, “Come on, guys, when you walk in the door you’re in silence – no, I mean silent!”
They’re going to need a certain amount of discipline to be able to weed out the distractions in their life and accomplish their goals,
One of the most interesting things I’ve experienced as a teacher is that I’ll set a firm boundary for a child, and maybe I’ll go home and wonder, “Gosh, did I go too far?” But invariably the next day the child will be right next to me during morning walk, because they feel safe. And maybe it’s a cliché in education and parenting, but there is no avoiding the fact that the kids need you to set boundaries for them.
When you set fair boundaries, and it’s done in a spirit of love, it nearly always works. And if it doesn’t seem to be working today, it does work in the longer term. We find that when the kids come back to visit they tell us how grateful they are for what they received at LWS.
Helen, our school director, also teaches language arts, and she has the students’ respect. Doug, our science teacher, rarely raises his voice, and whenever he says the slightest thing in the way of correction, I’ll revisit it with the kids. I’ll say, “You guys, Doug never says anything.” And because they know it’s true, they’ll correct their behavior, because they realize they’ve stepped over the line.
The need for correction is an integral part of our process, certainly in the upper grades. Because otherwise the kids just feel adrift, and it doesn’t serve them.
Great teachers – whether they are school teachers, sports coaches, drama directors, or spiritual teachers – discipline the people who can receive it. And those working under them love them for it.
I find that when it’s given in a spirit of kindness, it’s essential. I’ll say, “You have to put out more energy. You don’t have your homework.” And the kids will push you, because that’s what teenagers do – they want to know where the boundaries are.
I think of Steve Jobs, who was famous for his creative discipline that made so many contributions to Apple’s success. Bruno, our music teacher, is relaxed and cordial in his manner, but he’s super-dedicated to his craft, and the same is true of Claudia on recorder and keyboard, Rose in drama, and Helen in language arts.
We hire teachers who are serious and who have high expectations. Our fourth and fifth grade teacher, Craig Kellogg, is right on top of the kids when it comes to practicing good sportsmanship, or putting out energy in math, or being neat in their work.
The kids have to learn that there will be a need for an appropriate amount of discipline in everything they do. And it doesn’t have to be oppressive or depressing, because the trade-off is that when you develop self-control it’s very empowering, and it opens doors to success experiences that come with a significant amount of joy.
You can’t just tell every kid, “Oh, you’re empowered, let me give you a trophy.” That model doesn’t work. In truth, it’s good to include people, but you have to be real and let them know, “You can do better.” Because it’s what will serve them.
Q: You see kids blossoming at the school, and maybe they haven’t blossomed before, or maybe they are naturally upbeat and positive about everything. I’m thinking of a boy who graduated last year, and who did well at everything – sports, guitar, academics, theater, friendships. I see lots of kids here who are excelling in whatever they’re doing, and I get the feeling it’s because they’re in touch with the nature of who they are at their core, and they recognize what’s needed to achieve something in their own way and feel the glow of success. I’m assuming from what you’ve said that you don’t just try to help them develop those qualities in math class, but that you’re watching them on the playground and all the time.
Gary: There’s a term we use in Education for Life, “specific gravity.” And Gaurav, the boy you mentioned, is a very good example. He had initiative, and it didn’t matter what challenges he might be facing, he would always try his best. His whole family is structured that way. It’s an amazing family, very happy and wonderfully generous of heart. His sister graduated this year, and another sister is coming along in middle school.
We have a student now who, if you put a challenge before her, you know she’s going to rise to the challenge, and it doesn’t matter what it is. And maybe she doesn’t have the natural outward bubbliness that some of the other children have, but when she sees a challenge she meets it, because she likes the feeling of accomplishment.
There’s another girl who has a hard time accepting any sort of praise, even though her results are most impressive. She’s always driving, driving, driving. And you have to work with the child’s individual nature, and try to help them discover a little joy in the mix.
We only get the kids for a few years, and we try to guide and encourage them and show them what’s possible. As opposed to just helping them claw their way to a good grade point average in a culture where it’s all about the numbers – the grades and test scores, and admission to prestigious school X. And of course those are good things, because doing well in school is good, and exercising will power to excel in school is good.
But there’s an entire separate side to the education equation, where you’re looking at whether the child is happy. Because when you can bring the whole child to school, so to speak, you find that they all have tremendously important tools that will help them succeed as students and persons, beyond just warehousing facts in their brains.
The high school acceptance counselors always ask us how a child has been able to react to criticism or setbacks. It’s a classic question that they ask. And some of the kids frankly haven’t had a setback, so we don’t always know how to answer. But some kids have had big challenges. And the point is, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to evaluating a child’s potential and helping them. Some kids will come in with a heavy load, while some are more or less able to breeze through, and some will exercise their initiative from day one, and other kids won’t. So, again, you have to work with the individual child, and you have to build a relationship with them so you’ll know where the gaps are and what will work best for the child as you’re helping them develop their unique strengths.
Q: I’ve noticed that the children here aren’t overly concerned with trying to conform to an image. When I observed in Ruth’s third-grade class, I noticed that there was a group of girls who were close friends, yet they were very unique and different. One seldom smiled and was serious all the time, and one was always bubbling with laughter, and the third was somewhere between. It was interesting that there didn’t seem to be any sort of student-run culture where a child is always feeling pressured to fit a certain mold, for fear of being excluded.
Gary: No, you’re allowed to be yourself at Living Wisdom School, and it sometimes means that the individual child may be a bit of a curmudgeon, always thinking serious thoughts, and some are naturally bubbly and every day is amazing.
Of course they do change over time. A child can go through lots of changes if we have them for the full nine years, because they’ll be dealing with life’s challenges, and it’s part of an education for life, too. At LWS that’s part of what school is about for them. Parents will ask us, “What math book are you using?” Or “How do you teach three grades at once?” And those are important questions, but it’s ultimately about how well we’re working with the energy of the kids.
There’s a lot of interest in the middle school this year, with a waiting list, so we have several shadow students, and I talked to two of them at the end of their shadow days.
I said, “So what do you think of the school?” And one of them said, “All the kids are so happy here. It’s really unusual.” Because he hadn’t seen that in his school experience. The other child used the word “open.” She said, “Everyone is so open.”
One of the shadow students was running around with the kids as if she’d been here forever, and I assumed that she knew them. She was playing and laughing and hugging the kids, and I asked her, “Do you know these girls from your neighborhood?” “Never met them!” But she was wide open. And at our school there’s not this consciousness of constantly measuring people, “Oh, you’re just a shadow student.” There’s a deep acceptance that is really quite amazing, and it’s been there from the first days of the school.
Q: In many schools there seems to be a culture of power, where if you have the power of prestige or the power of being really smart, or the power of belonging to an inner circle, or from a wealthy family, you’re accepted, but if you aren’t, you’re nobody and you’re excluded and maybe mocked and shunned. “Maybe I’m not a jock, but I’m smart.” You have these categories, and you have to defend your self-definition and be really good at something or else you’re sort of a shadow person, like a mole.
Gary: It’s sad. After talking with prospective parents, our director, Helen, has often remarked that the bullying issue is not small in the school culture today. Many parents tell us, “Well, he’s been bullied.” And it’s not just a bit of teasing, it’s really nasty. And that ties into exactly what you’re saying, that it’s about power, or feeling un-empowered and turning into a bully to get power. And it’s very sad.
Our practices on exclusiveness are very clear, and we go a very long way beyond just giving them lip service, as some schools do. Every one of the teachers is constantly modeling inclusiveness, and if they see it’s not happening, or if there’s the slightest hint of exclusion, they address it immediately, on the spot. Because we take it very seriously, and we put real effort into it.
Q: I’ve heard many stories about how a teacher will notice something negative going on, whether it’s a tiny hint of bullying, or a kid in a bad mood, or someone saying something hurtful, and they’re all over it right away, starting in kindergarten.
Gary: Oh yes. And our kindergarten teacher, Lilavati, is very gifted and sensitive that way. We give it a lot of attention in our faculty meetings – “Have you noticed so and so this year?” “Oh, yeah, and what can we do about that?” “Well, I’ll see him on the playground.” Because among the teachers it’s all hands on deck, like an extended family of teachers each of whom might have different connections with the kids, and maybe someone can reach a particular kid, so they’ll reach out to them and respond, even if they aren’t the child’s classroom teacher.
Q: On the issue of test-taking, it seems artificial to study to the test, because it implies that you’re going to stay up late and ace the test, but then it’s gone. And I’ve observed in the middle school classroom during math that there appears to be a culture where each child is immersing in a subject not only because the school has an individual approach to teaching, but because of the approach to math specifically, which is that you’re constantly reviewing with the individual child and insisting and ensuring that they get a sound understanding of the principles at every step of the way.
Gary: The question of depth came up recently during the pandemic. Some of the kids will say, because we’re teaching remotely and the school is shut down, “Oh, I went online and did some math.” And maybe they’re watching some videos from Khan, and I have no complaint about Khan, but if I’m doing math online I’m naturally going to go to the problems I know how to do, and I’m going to avoid the harder word problems about percentages because I don’t like word problems.
The student said, “I haven’t been doing the math textbook or the curriculum, I’ve just been online.” And I said, “My experience is that when you do that you just end up jumping around.” And he said, “You know, that’s right, I was kind of jumping around.”
There’s a superficiality in education now, where you’re skimming the surface, touching all the right buttons, because you’re being dragged along with one eye on the mandated curriculum and the other eye on tests and grades. And every math teacher I’ve met feels this way. But what it neglects is the student’s need to understand the principles and concepts in depth. Have you actually mastered them, or are you just gliding over the surface? Because if you’re just skating over the surface it’s bound to catch up with you.
Any book you’re using, whether it’s CPM or Envision or Singapore, will help you build a solid foundation in math, just as when you’re learning guitar or keyboard and you want to learn the basics thoroughly and soundly – finger placement, chords, etc. And in math, too, you have to build a solid foundation, because there are no shortcuts.
In any good math curriculum, you need to keep circling back so the students are constantly getting exposed to the underlying concepts.
I may allow the students to go forward for a while, even though I know they haven’t fully mastered the concepts, because in our school they will always get a chance to fill in the gaps, instead of being dragged along by an externally mandated schedule. At some point, the gaps in their understanding will begin to show, and it might be a humbling experience to realize that, wow, I never really got it.
A student asked me why he needed to do proofs if he knew the answer. I said, “Don’t take my word for it. Go talk to our math aides, Eric or Richard.” Richard went to Harvard and Stanford, and Eric went to MIT. And sure enough, they gave him the same answer: “Proofs are good.” Because it isn’t only about getting the right answer, it’s knowing how to get the answer, which is the more valuable skill.
And that’s what math is ultimately about. It’s training the brain to think clearly, and to analyze things and come up with answers. Those are skills you can apply in any area. Computers can do math a lot faster than we can, but it’s about developing clear thinking and logic. The ability to solve any kind of problem is as important as being able to jump straight to the answer.
We have a student who can go straight to the right answer, because he’s very gifted. But it doesn’t really work at Living Wisdom. And in language arts, too, if you’re wanting to analyze a poem or write an essay with originality and spark, you can’t just check off the five bullet points and say, “I got the answer.” We want them to experience depth in everything.
Q: You mentioned Hazie, who graduated from LWS and now teaches math at the Living Wisdom High School. When he was twenty, he had basically exhausted what the American universities could teach him in math, so he had to go to Germany where they’re more advanced in math education. And now he’s come back after a long time away, because he said that he was getting along fine academically in those other school environments, but he realized that he had started to become depressed because he was accepting other people’s standards of behavior and values. And in his mind, he had to refresh the principles that had made him happy at Living Wisdom. He was in graduate school in Germany when he had that crisis of faith, and he decided to return and become a teacher at LWHS.
Gary: He recently said something interesting. He said that kids nowadays are asking their teachers, “What do I need to do to get an A in your class?” And he never answers that question, because we’re here to learn math and master principles. It’s not about following the steps to get an A – that doesn’t fly at Living Wisdom, because we all know that it doesn’t work in life.
When we had him as a student, Hazie was so precocious in math that the only way I could help him was basically to tell him to be a bit neater in his work. That was about the only help he needed. But he’s very grounded, perhaps because he’s also been active in martial arts for twenty-three years, so he has a great deal of inner discipline, and he says that the students have to learn the math foundations. Which is a very healthy approach, because there are no shortcuts in life.
Q: Kids who are as smart as Hazie can sometimes become isolated at school, but he never was at Living Wisdom. When I interviewed him, he told stories about being very socially connected all the way through school, even though he was often a great deal smarter than anybody else in math.
Gary: He was part of an interesting class that included several other very advanced math students. He had two buddies in particular, and they were rowdy and did wacky things. And after those three left, another group of three came, and now there’s another threesome. A professor at Stanford was the world’s leading expert on groups of three. [Laughs]
There are many teachers today in other school systems who essentially are Education for Life teachers, whether they call it that or not. Most of us have had an EFL teacher at some time in our lives. My high school history teacher didn’t have a great delivery, and he wasn’t there to please us or be funny, but I remember him for his fairness, and the respect we had for him, because he was deeply engaged with his subject and he made it alive for us.
I remember my geometry teacher who was so kind, even though he was a former Marine drill sergeant. And maybe you’d think he would have been a terror – you picture a drill sergeant yelling at the recruits. But he was so gentle. “Mr. McSweeney, you fell into the latrine on that one!” You know, “Let me show you where you made your mistake.” [Laughs] He was so nice, and I still love geometry as a result. I’m less fond of algebra, possibly because my two algebra teachers were like drill sergeants, always yelling.
I think education is gradually coming back to its senses, where teachers and administrators and parents have started to understand that you can’t just educate one part of the child for thirteen years and expect them to be happy and successful and well-prepared for life.
One of our LWS parents is applying to Nueva School for her child’s high school, and we asked her, “Oh, what’s that like?” She thought about it, and she said, “You know, they do a lot of the same things Living Wisdom does. They don’t give letter grades anymore, and they emphasize the individual approach.” And as she ran down the list of the similarities, I was thinking, “Well, that’s good.” They’re positioning themselves as a cutting-edge school, and we’re hearing about many other schools that are trying to be more humane.
Lots of schools went off the rails for a while with test scores and grades, and even UC is thinking of doing away with the SAT, or making it optional. And that’s no small thing, because it will have major repercussions.
The cynical side of me is thinking that education today is basically an industry, with powerful players that include the testing services and the textbook and test-prep course and book publishers. So there’s an element of greed to it. But parents can override that in a heartbeat by switching their vision. “I’m not putting my child on those cold and inhuman rails, I’m choosing a well-rounded school.” And if enough parents do that, the market will respond.
Q: I’m friends with an honors chemistry teacher in Illinois. who’s also a very successful track and field coach. He retired recently, and he has strong views about how education took a wrong turn, to the point where he felt that he had to become an advocate for the students, Because he saw that education was basically creating unhappiness concentration camps for thousands of kids, partly because everybody was so intimidated by the prevailing idea that success will come for kids at some indefinite point in the future if you made them suffer horribly now.
As a result there’s this ridiculous thinking that every child has to get into Harvard, or else they’re a failure. It’s extremely polarized thinking, and it’s so unrealistic that it’s heartwarming to hear that people are waking up and coming out of that hypnosis.
Gary: I think they’re trying to. It may be unrealistic to expect that the education mainstream will suddenly change. But there is a grassroots movement that seems to be leading to a shake-up, because people are looking for alternatives. Many of the kids at our school are really bright, so it’s not as if they couldn’t cut it in a mainstream school. But the parents have very carefully chosen not to do that. “I don’t want that competition for my child. I want my child to do well. I want them to learn the basics and excel, but I don’t need them to be indoctrinated with the wrong self-image: ‘I’m so great, I got an A in science and I’m going to make lots of money and be happy when I grow up.’” And all the attitudes that go along with that kind of thinking.
Q: There are some LWS parents with impressive credentials – they include tech industry executives and Stanford professors who’ve brought their children to Living Wisdom because they want them to have a balanced education.
Gary: We have friends in the School of Education at Stanford, and they applaud what we’re doing. Jack Dieckman told me, “What’s really important when a kid graduates from middle school is their relationship with math – how do they feel about math?” It’s not, “Are they doing geometry? Are they doing algebra?” It’s how they feel about their math ability. And if it’s intact, you’ve done well.
You do have to plan for the longer term. I mentioned the student who hated math, who’s now getting her PhD in genetics. Some kids struggle until after high school, and then the light goes on.
A teacher wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. She said, “I’m very sorry that I’m going to have to give up teaching. It’s been my whole career, and I love teaching. I love seeing the students, but this pressure to give standardized testing is taking all the fun out of it for me, and I can no longer teach.” She was a kindergarten teacher, and she was horrified that they are giving timed standardized tests to kindergarteners.
Q: They aren’t letting them have recess because it’s time away from math. It’s insane.
Gary: Well, again, there’s a huge profit motive when you get into that system, with the standardized tests and the textbook industry. So it’s not brain surgery to see where the impetus is coming from to keep that system going. There’s an industry around standardized testing, and when you start talking about how each child has unique gifts, I can’t imagine how you’re going to monetize that, but I’m sure they’ll try to figure out a way. [Laughs]
The book Education for Life begins with the question, “What do you want for your child?” And you might say, “Well, I want them to receive a good education.” And then the author asks, “What is a good education?” And he talks about how it includes questions of values, and how the child will grow as a person, and how this completely unbalanced view has come in, where it’s entirely about academics.
Because what you want them to become is people who tell the truth, who have integrity, who know how to work as part of a team.
When Google looked at the personal qualities of their most successful employees, they found that the most successful employees and research teams expressed qualities of cooperation, the ability to listen, the ability to change when proven wrong. And way down in eighth place on the list were STEM skills. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.)
They discovered that success at Google depends very strongly on the values we’re emphasizing in EFL. And I think the proof is in the power that the kids have when they get to high school. My son did very well in navigating high school and finding his way.
When our graduates leave college, we don’t want them to be thinking, “Wow, I got all these good grades, but I’m so poorly prepared for this job!” Because they don’t have the skills that Project Aristotle discovered people need to be successful at a company like Google.
Q: When I talked with your son recently, he said that when he graduated from St. Francis High School he knew everybody in the student body. So he was socially very well-adjusted.
Gary: [Laughs] When he went to his first dance, he didn’t know anybody, so he went out on the dance floor and met one kid, and she had a couple of friends, and the next thing you know fifty of them were dancing together. He ended up becoming the student body vice president and hosting a radio talk show.
He wanted to be involved in theater, but he didn’t get the part, so he said, “I’ll do tech.” And that’s pure EFL, where you learn to be resilient and optimize your options and resources. He ended up studying film, and it became his livelihood. But most important, he just kept putting out energy. In his freshman year he got cut from the soccer team, but he went out again sophomore year and made the JVs. And through it all, by being resilient and always finding opportunities, he had a lot of fun and he’s been very successful.
Q: You can hear it in his voice, which is strong and centered and aware of other people’s realities. You sense that there’s an ability to navigate any environment he’s in.
Gary: I would say you’re describing the typical LWS graduate. There’s a self-possession. There’s an ability to deal with life that is palpable when you meet these kids regardless of their grade level. I’ve been involved in the middle school for twenty years, and when I meet the kids from the other Living Wisdom Schools, they all have this awareness. They’re aware of others and they’re aware of situations and how to deal with them maturely and objectively.
Q: People in education don’t always visualize what they’re going to accomplish with the standardized curriculum and the tests. Because what kind of people are they trying to graduate? They’re going to graduate millions of people who are good in math, okay, and millions of people who know how to manipulate the system of the academic world. And when they leave school, you find them doing lots of things where math and STEM might not be the focal point.
Your son is making films very successfully in India, and he’s helping start EFL schools there. But you also have graduates like a young man who works at Motley Fool, a leading financial research and consulting company, and he’s one of their senior counselors because he’s a financial wizard. And then you have the person who’s doing genetics research, and you have Hazie who’s in love with math, to the extent that he was doing extremely abstract advanced math that didn’t have anything to do with the real world, but he loved it because it was his nature.
And who’s to say that any one of those people is not successful? And who’s to say that the geneticist was a failure because she wasn’t good at math initially? But she saw that she had to learn it, and she had the foundation of personal qualities that allowed her to solve the problem and succeed.
Gary: We give them a foundation that serves them very well as they go along, and when life throws curves at them they know how to cope. That’s what any parent would want for their child. That’s what a true education is. Are you ready to deal with what life is going to throw at you?
It goes back to when Yogananda laid out the principles for an Education for Life that will train you to be successful in your human relationships and your work, with all of the emotions and feelings and willpower and self-control that are required, and that we emphasize from a very young age.
Q: Your life is going to put you in those situations, in school and after, and if you aren’t trained to deal with them, they’re going to smack you and maybe you’re going to be spinning. But these kids know how to navigate the situations their lives might put them in.
And as Aryavan and Hazie described in my talks with them, when they got in those situations they could look back and remember, “I know how to be happy, and here are the qualities I need to manifest right now. I need to manage this with a little kindness, or a little inner strength, or a little resistance or perseverance.” And if you’re working with your academic skills at Google, you’re going to need those life skills. Otherwise, just the ability to be a computing machine isn’t going to get you through, if that’s all you’ve got, and it’s going to isolate you very quickly, because you won’t know how to get along with people.
Well, thank you, Gary, it’s been interesting. I hope it will help parents understand what their kids will experience at Living Wisdom School.
Can kindergarten influence your child’s chances of success and happiness in later life?
Most definitely! – but perhaps not in the ways you may have imagined.
What kind of education do you want for your child?
I would like to make a case for a complete, well-rounded approach that takes into account not only the child’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, but their individuality as well.
Play & Learning – Essential Partners
When we’re talking about a four or five-year-old, the first thing we need to consider is that children of that age absolutely need a playful, loving approach to learning. It is the single most important key to preparing little children for success now and in the years ahead. Once we have that playful, happy foundation, we find that the children feel inwardly free to achieve amazing things.
Many of our parents have come from rigid school cultures where the children were forced to sit at their desks most of the day and allowed very limited playtime. That model is neither creative nor realistic. As a result, it utterly fails to produce learning in the most efficient and natural way because it doesn’t make use of the child’s natural enthusiasm. Instead, it pounds information into young brains without opening their hearts to receive it. But that is not how children are made. Nor does this approach draw them into the learning experience in a way that helps them absorb learning naturally and efficiently.
In his wonderful book Where You Go, Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, Frank Bruni, a long-time New York Times columnist and feature writer, laments the tragic failures of the traditional approach of forcing children into a system that ignores the way they are made. He excoriates today’s approach which is oriented toward improving the children’s high school grades and SAT scores and preparing every child to be accepted at Harvard or its equivalent. I think it is a wonderful sign that St. Francis High School in Mountain View, for example, has made Bruni’s book required reading for every parent.
I often talk with parents of kindergarten children who are deeply concerned about this very false and misleading kind of rigor, which fails to tune into the child’s actual needs at each developmental stage, and which, in kindergarten, must include play.
In the very early years, children should be learning that learning is fun and that mastering academic challenges is exhilarating. At this age, they are very open to whatever is going on in the classroom and at school. And an instructor who can bring together the twin threads of learning and play, and do it in a happy, loving way, will be very successful. As we demonstrate in our book, Head & Heart: How a Balanced Education Nurtures Happy Children Who Excel in School & Life, our kindergartners are not falling behind their Harvard-acceptance competitors. Quite the opposite, as a direct result of the playful approach, some are even able to absorb concepts at more advanced curriculum level.
When learning is delivered in a format that matches their natural development, children become deeply engaged. Thus – believe it or not! – you will find four or five tiny tots working silently together, heads bowed in deep concentration.
We are intent on helping each child to be comfortable and happy within the school environment. With this goal in mind, a practice that helps us greatly is the inclusion of yoga and meditation at the start of the school day. If we can help children discover an enjoyable state of calmness and concentration within themselves – a state of happy, relaxed mental attention – they will be gaining a powerful tool that will help them to be successful throughout their school years.
At Living Wisdom School, children start the day with yoga and meditation, and then, most days, they go right into math class. When the teacher sets a tone which makes them comfortable and at ease in the environment, a great deal becomes possible in math, phonics, writing, art, and science. In fact, anything is possible when the children’s hearts are open and eager to dive into the day’s lessons.
The Incalculable Benefits of A Stress-Free Learning Environment
When you can give a child an experience every day at school of being comfortable and relaxed in the environment, they will inevitably gravitate toward the joy of learning.
When the learning environment is also alive with inclusivity and friendship, instead of cliques and competition, children are happier and learn better. In other words, learning and joy go together.
It is well documented that generalized stress at school interferes with learning. In a Washington Post article, “How Much Does Stress Affect Learning?” (June 10, 2011), education and foreign affairs reporter Valerie Post quotes Catharine H. Warner, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Maryland:
“Our findings indicate that stress in the classroom environment affects children’s likelihood of exhibiting learning problems (difficulties with attentiveness, task persistence, and flexibility), externalizing problems (frequency with which the child argues, fights, disturbs ongoing activities, and acts impulsively), problems interacting with peers (difficulties in forming friendships, dealing with other children, expressing feelings, and showing sensitivity, or internalizing problems (presence of anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, and sadness in the child). These findings suggest that stress – in the form of negative classroom conditions – negatively affects the way children pay attention in class, stay on task, and move from one activity to another.”
The tremendous energy that we devote to creating a calm, peaceful, joyful, accepting classroom and school environment frees children to be exactly who they are. When you’re allowed to be who you are, and when you’re challenged at exactly that level, you will have daily successes that will give you a joyful experience of learning. By contrast, just trying to meet someone else’s rigid demands and requirements all the time, at someone else’s level creates a tension that prevents learning by shutting down energy and enthusiasm.
As a teacher for more than fifty years, it has been my experience that tension is never a positive factor when it comes to learning. On the other hand, feeling free to make mistakes, and to have those mistakes accepted as a natural part of the learning process, is an amazing, blissful, and extremely helpful experience for the child. It fuels an exhilarating learning process.
In our school, we achieve that freedom by combining learning with play, and by making sure our kids have free time. We fight against the misguided compulsion to structure every minute of the child’s day.
Children Can Be Happy and Successful in School
Parents and educators who visit our school invariably remark on how every child is completely him- or herself, and how they show a remarkable level of maturity and confidence. Our children are typically centered in themselves in a natural and real way. And when they do become scattered or upset, they are given the tools to catch themselves with the support of a discerning teacher.
You can see their ease in their eyes and in how they carry themselves. A child will walk into the principal’s office, not at all intimidated, and say, “Helen, I need an ice pack for my friend.” Someone is hurt, and they are eager to help, without fear or hesitation. Or they’ll come in to share a birthday treat with me.
If it’s a difficult situation…they aren’t feeling well, or someone needs to call a parent, they’ll come in with absolute trust. In fact, they will be at ease with every adult in the school, including all the classroom and PE teachers, music teachers, and math tutors – because there is a family atmosphere that is consistent and consciously cultivated every day.
Theater Magic – An Extraordinary Experience of Learning and Growth
Our theater program includes every child from grades TK through eight. It creates an extraordinary atmosphere for learning, and for cultivating personal success qualities. The kindergarten children are on stage, rehearsing and performing with the older children, and they develop a level of comfort and confidence that is far beyond what most kindergartners get to experience at school. When they can engage easily and confidently with an adult or an older child, even in a playful way, they feel empowered to walk in the world in a very different way. So, Partner Reading and Partner Walks and play with older children are an extension of the confidence-building practices the children experience every day.
Our methods come to fruition most clearly, especially for the youngest children, during spring quarter, when you can watch a child get out of the car in the morning, brimming with confidence, the same child who wouldn’t look at you six or seven months earlier, or who would cringe with shyness and hold their mother’s hand tightly.
I’m thinking of a child who was extremely fearful at the start of the school year, and now when her father says, “Have a great day!” she will turn and look at me with a big, confident smile and say, “Good morning, Helen!”
It is a maturation made possible because at Living Wisdom School there is a definition of self that allows for the inclusion of everybody, not just one’s own classmates and teachers, but every single teacher and every single child.
Choosing Happiness
We don’t have an intimidating or fearful culture. This morning, I was explaining to a parent that the fundamental principles on which our school is based are most clearly expressed by two of our School Rules: “Choose Happiness,” and “Practice Kindness.”
To Practice kindness means learning to be considerate and loving with one another and to recognize that doing so helps create a loving and safe atmosphere.
To Choose happiness means learning that you have the power to choose how to respond to life’s challenges. The children learn to focus on the positive rather than the negative, to control moods, and to raise their energy to meet difficulties that arise.
These two rules define the culture of the school. If you choose happiness, it means that you don’t have the right to take out a bad mood on anybody. Rather, you have an obligation to use your will power and understanding to turn the energy around with the ready and willing help of both teacher and classmates.
It is amazing to watch the rules in action. For example, a child might come to school, and maybe they aren’t feeling well. Maybe they are feeling a little moody or even snarky, yet everybody is sympathetic. The teacher might say, “I’m so sorry you’re not feeling well. Take a moment on the pillows in the corner, and don’t forget to take your teddy.” So, there’s sympathy, but there’s also an expectation that at some point— and it should be soon—the child needs to choose to be happy.
And they do because they are shown how to do it. They are given the specific steps to take in order to be kind and choose happiness. They learn that they have the power to choose positive feelings and behavior. Because all the children in the school know each other and because the older ones sincerely love to help the kindergarteners, the older ones become role models.
The right behavior is constantly modeled for the little ones, and the teachers deliberately take time to give them instructions on how to choose happiness every time the need arises.
Over several months, the older children work with the younger children at play rehearsals, and they learn to be very sensitive to the well-being of the little ones. They want to take care of them, to help them, and guide them in the spirit of friendship. Thus, they develop a sense of responsibility for others, especially the little ones.
Four and five year old children can be especially selfish and self-involved. They need to grow into a sense of the other. To see exactly that constantly modeled for them by the adults and the other children in the school environment is a priceless gift. For such young ones, it is an invaluable foundation for acquiring the maturity that we must all achieve to be successful at every level, and it is an awareness that we instill in them starting on the very first day of kindergarten – an awareness of another’s reality.
Does Living Wisdom School Over-Emphasize Soft Skills?
Parents often ask a huge question about our school: “You have a wonderful school culture, but how does it translate to grades and test scores?” And, of course, the proof is in our graduates’ high school and college acceptance and grades, and in their adult success.
In our book Happiness & Success at School, there’s a wonderful account of how, in the military and in sports, individual attention, individual freedom, and individual acceptance create a culture based on what’s best for the individual and produce the highest success. We are not simply spouting wishy-washy, unrealistic ideas that we haven’t tested and that don’t work in the real world. The interplay of happiness and success is a real-life experience for our graduates who have gone on to major universities and corporations.
I received an application recently from a parent of a fifth-grade boy. Unfortunately, that class was full, so we were unable to take him. The parent was sad because the child’s predisposition to self-judge made him afraid to try anything. His fear precluded success. By contrast, our school culture supports an attitude toward learning that includes the ability to “fail happily” on the road to success and then try again—a wonderfully liberating gift.
In the late 1980s, a professor of computer science at MIT, Seymour Papert, published a book called Mindstorms in which he pointed out that the most wonderful lesson children can take from learning to program computers is that mistakes are a natural and necessary part of the process. He pointed out that professional programmers make, on average, at least 10 mistakes per hundred lines of their first code drafts.
Papert called it “the debugging approach to life.” Kids today have so much stress around success and on getting it right the first time. There’s a tremendous competitive and comparative emphasis in the typical approach to learning which results in children asking, “Am I as good as somebody else?” as opposed to, “What am I learning?” and “Was it fun?”
In our school, the children know who excels in this or that subject area, because we celebrate those successes. But we also celebrate the small, daily successes that lead eventually to greater mastery as the most important kind of success for every child. Included in those celebrations are our children’s beginning mastery as artists, poets, singers, scientists, dancers, and mathematicians.
Success builds upon success. I’m thinking of a boy who had some very significant challenges at school until he began rehearsing for the all-school play, whereupon he flourished amazingly. The success he enjoyed in the theater program translated to an ability to self-regulate in class in order to do well. He was motivated because he had experienced what it feels like to be successful.
Each of us has an inborn drive to experience happiness and to be free from suffering. The universal spiritual law is that whenever we expand our awareness by learning something new or by overcoming a challenge, we experience a corresponding inflow of joy. And if you’re having happy learning experiences every day, you’re going to want more and more of them.
The Straitjacket of Modern Education
I often wonder how our culture went wrong when it failed to take into account the link between learning and happiness. Children are so elastic, so ready to learn, especially when it comes to learning which thoughts and actions will give them joy. Instead, they too often find themselves bound in straitjackets of expectations that may or may not be realistic. Tragic.
Learning by rote and by drill no longer needs to be the foundation of a child’s school experience. What is necessary is the cultivation of imagination, resourcefulness, and creativity, starting at the earliest age. We need to support the children who are learning at the bottom end and take the limits off each child’s horizons. That way they can surprise themselves and keep growing every day.
We had a first grader whose artistic ability was beyond all imagining. He made several sketches of a ship, beautifully executed with lots of fine detail. We put one of them on the cover of our annual literary magazine. Traditionally, an older student was awarded that honor. We had a choice – to celebrate excellence, or to abide by a more rigid standard. But it was clear that what that little boy had achieved was not equal. So, he got the cover!
Everybody in the school acknowledged and celebrated the boy’s talent. The older kids were saying, “Whoa, who did that cover?” The truth is that we don’t shy away from celebrating every child’s success, and we ensure that there are plenty of successes to celebrate by having children operate at the edge of their ability all the time.
A girl who came to us in the fall absolutely flourished in the school play. She took to her role and developed it beautifully. That talented little girl had been very unhappy in her former school, but when she came here and felt embraced by the energy, she realized that she could let loose and be as creative as her abilities allowed.
Once I spoke with parents who are brain researchers at Stanford. The father was educated at a very progressive school in Israel, while the mother had a more standard education. They chose our school because they have friends whose children go to our school, and they recognized the level of acceptance and individuality that exists here and which results in the happiness of the children. More than anything else, they simply wanted their children to be happy during their time in school. This kind of prioritizing is truly refreshing.
Yet, sometimes, it is hard for parents to hold on to the idealism that brings them to Living Wisdom in the first place. When their children reach third or fourth grade, they’re tempted to buy into the culture that is constantly pressuring them to think, “Oh my God, how am I going to get my child into Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or Princeton?”
The parents I spoke with above understood the theoretical and practical aspects of our system, but they really didn’t want to talk about that side. They wanted to tell me how the families of children in our school had told them that their kids have never been happier, and that as brain researchers they knew that a great deal of learning goes hand in hand with a great deal of happiness.
It is really that simple. Happiness and school success are not mutually exclusive – in fact, the opposite is true: happiness is indispensable for the most efficient learning to take place.
We need to help children leverage their natural gifts. Maybe the process won’t be as linear as our culture would prefer, and maybe we won’t always be able to quantify it with numbers, but our successes have proved our methods year after year in terms of where our graduates go to high school and college, and their adult successes.
Follow this link to view a list of high schools and colleges
that have accepted our LWS graduates,
and examples of their inspiring careers.
Learning Priceless Personal Success Qualities
Another factor that makes our kindergarten so special and powerful is that from the first day, we practice leading with the heart. We teach our children what it feels like to appreciate another person’s reality, and how happy it makes them feel.
If a kindergartner gets some place first, it is their nature to let everyone know that it’s their place. They can be very territorial…It’s my toy, my place, my pencil. Yet, they can also have very open hearts if they are allowed to. By showing them that the greatest happiness comes from being unselfish, together we create a wonderful learning environment. Whether in the sandbox or on the tricycle, relating to a reality other than their own is something even the youngest children are learning at Living Wisdom every day. In fact, it is a priority.
Two children were arguing over a bike, so we did a conflict resolution, and one child said, “Okay, how about five minutes for him and five minutes for me?”
The teacher said, “That seems reasonable.”
The other child thought about it and said, “Well, what if we had it at the same time?”
The teacher said, “I don’t think that’s possible.”
He said, “Oh, yeah, it is, because one of us could drive and the other could stand on the back and then we could switch places.”
It is a defining story which illustrates how, once they understand the principle of conflict resolution, children can be creative and take it a lot farther than we might imagine.
We help our children have many experiences of happiness, and we teach them how to find it for themselves. Then, they begin to look for it all the time, and they become very expansive. Once, I was talking about something with one of the eighth graders in my office, when he suddenly said, “Oh, hey, Helen, I gotta go!”
I said, “Well, we’re not quite finished, are we?”
He said, “I know, but the younger kids are about to show up, and they want me to hide the ball for them.”
This eighth grader, RJ, a big, strong, athletic six-foot tall boy, was truly connected to the younger children—tiny kindergartners and first graders, and he wanted to honor that connection based on their game in which he would hide the ball somewhere on campus, and they would have to find it.
For an older child to hide the ball might be considered hostile, but not in our environment. Here, it was an expression of friendship. The little tots adored RJ, and he was willing to break off a lively conversation with me to indulge them.
“No Bullying!” – More than Just Empty Words
The principals of two of our local high schools were in conversation with me and asked me about the culture at our Living Wisdom High School, because I’m on the school board, and the high school was up for certification, which it did receive.
The conversation came around to what makes our school different, and I boldly and truthfully said, “We do not have bullying at our school.” Immediately, I noticed a sudden change in the atmosphere. They sat quietly, and I intuited why – because they couldn’t say the same about their schools. The issue of bullying comes up quite often in my talks with prospective parents.
I always say, “It is not allowed, and it’s not that we have to come down punitively in order to enforce that rule because we have actually created a culture of kindness. Our children understand from the inside out that practicing kindness, one of our school rules, gives them the highest happiness.”
I would say that at least 50 percent of the parents who come to my office are trying to escape a culture of bullying at another school.
I think that bullying comes from the highly competitive atmosphere in many schools today. I’m not talking about sports; I’m talking about grades, social advancement, and test scores. Unfortunately, a constant, brutal sense of competitiveness permeates so much of the social culture in schools today, particularly high schools.
Many parents in Silicon Valley have had to struggle to get where they are, and they naturally value material success. So, when you have an efficient and balanced environment such as we have here, one that brings the whole child, not just their will power and intellect, into the educational process, we can initially look a little suspicious, especially when there is anxiety about a child’s chances of getting into a “good college” – even though we can hold our heads high when it comes to our graduates’ successes.
Our supportive culture frees a child to do extraordinarily well. I’ve seen extremely introverted and fearful children, who were not able to thrive in the highly competitive cultures of other schools, blossom when they come to Living Wisdom School where they are respected, accepted, and naturally part of the group.
I’m sure that we will reach a tipping point in this country when parents will wake up to the simple truth, one we have demonstrated for many years – Children can be highly successful at school and be happy and well balanced at the same time.
Living Wisdom School of Palo Alto is overjoyed to announce the publication of a new book: Happiness & Success at School.
Our director, Helen Purcell, says, “It’s a wonderful book and fun to read. I hope that all parents who are seeking an education for their children that includes a balance of academic excellence and the development of indispensable personal qualities that will help to ensure their success in school and for all their lives will read this book.”
How to Read Happiness & Success. You can read the chapters online (see table of contents below), download the book as a PDF (2nd Edition, July 2022; 6mb), or purchase a copy on Amazon.
About the Author. George Beinhorn serves as our school’s web content manager. A graduate of Stanford University (BA ‘63, MA ‘66) he has been associated with the Living Wisdom Schools since 1976. George has enjoyed a long and fruitful career as a writer and editor with clients in technology, publishing, and academia. (Among his more interesting projects, he edited the “Best doctoral dissertation in computer science in 2008 at Stanford University.”) He is the author of The Joyful Athlete: The Wisdom of the Heart in Exercise & Sports Training.
To obtain a PDF copy of this book with clickable hyperlinks, visit the website of the Palo Alto Living Wisdom School: www.livingwisdomschool.org. Follow the links to articles that support the principles and practices of Education for Life.
Most education research focuses on how teaching methods affect academic performance. But forty-five years of experience have shown us that practices that enhance a child’s inner development can powerfully contribute to their academic success.
(If you come across supportive research, please let us know. You can send us a message through the contact form on the website of the Palo Alto Living Wisdom School: www.livingwisdomschool.org.)
Teaching/Academics
Education for Life online teacher development: http://edforlife.org/courses/. For teachers-in-training, and for continuing teacher education.
Active Focused Learning Approach. Quotes: “I’m not really held back anymore, just sitting in class waiting.” “There’s not a lot of lecturing, which makes it easier to stay focused.” “I really like working with other students.” Students spend more time working in groups. The strategy is getting more students to achieve better in class.
The Heart in Holistic Education. (PDF) Educational programs based on new scientific discoveries about the heart lead to improved emotional stability, cognitive functioning, and academic performance.
10 Ways to Improve Schools Using Coaching Principles. An important article by Tony Holler, a public high school honors chemistry teacher and football and track and field coach (Plainfield North HS, IL). Living Wisdom School has followed Tony’s 10 recommendations throughout its 40-plus-year history. And because we’re very clear that they’ve played a large part in our success, the principles are engrained in our school’s philosophy.
We’re destroying our kids — for nothing: Too much homework, too many tests, too much needless pressure. A Salon article argues that we’ve gone overboard on academics, destroying the enthusiasm in kids that’s essential for academic success. The result? “Children are born curious, and it’s pretty easy to facilitate that, to groom it,” says Vassar College neuropsychologist Abigail Baird. “We’re doing the opposite. We’re squishing their desire to learn new things. And I think that’s a crisis.”
Going in circles puts students on path to better choices. Quotes: “The goal is not so much to punish as to get students on paths to make better choices, to understand the impact of what they do, to deal with people better”… “We’ve become more like a family and not just kids who go to school together,” said freshman Leah Brito. “We’ve grown up big time in the last few months.” “One result of the new approach is that kids are giving more thought to the effect what they do and say can have on others,” she said. “In eighth grade, the he said/she said stuff was horrible when many of the students were together at Audubon middle school,” Brito said. “This year, there is much less of that.”
Is Test Prep Educational Malpractice? In many elementary schools there is little or no time for non-tested subjects such as art, music, even science and history.
Preschool Controversy – Academics or Play?Quotes: “People who attended play-based preschools were eight times less likely to need treatment for emotional disturbances than those who went to preschools where direct instruction prevailed. Graduates of the play-based preschools were three times less likely to be arrested for committing a felony.”
Why I pulled my son out of a school for ‘gifted’ kids. In this Mashable article, a mother tells how her son thrived after she transferred him out of an elite academically oriented elementary school in New York City. “If you are privileged enough to be selective about what schools your children attend, please consider how they are learning and not just what they are learning. School isn’t only about cramming as much as possible as quickly as possible into their little brains.”
Pressure Cooker Kindergarten. Quotes: “Kindergarten has changed radically in the last two decades in ways that few Americans are aware of. Children now spend far more time being taught and tested on literacy and math skills than they do learning through play and exploration, exercising their bodies, and using their imaginations. Many kindergartens use highly prescriptive curricula geared to new state standards and linked to standardized tests. In an increasing number of kindergartens, teachers must follow scripts from which they may not deviate. These practices, which are not well grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching. It is increasingly clear that they are compromising both children’s health and their long-term prospects for success in school…. Kindergarten has ceased to be a garden of delight and has become a place of stress and distress…. Blindly pursuing educational policies that could well damage the intellectual, social and physical development of an entire generation…. There’s ongoing concern about American children catching up with their counterparts in countries such as Japan and China. Specifically in areas such as science, math and technology, schooling in those countries before second grade is “playful and experiential.” And youngsters in Finland, where teens consistently score high academically, also attend play-based kindergarten and start first grade at age 7 rather than age 6.”
School starting age: the evidence. An article on the website of Cambridge University. “In England children now start formal schooling, and the formal teaching of literacy and numeracy at the age of four. A recent letter signed by around 130 early childhood education experts, including myself, published in the Daily Telegraph (11 Sept 2013) advocated an extension of informal, play-based pre-school provision and a delay to the start of formal ‘schooling’ in England from the current effective start until the age of seven (in line with a number of other European countries who currently have higher levels of academic achievement and child well-being).”
One in Five Girls in Upper Secondary School Suffers From School Burnout. Quotes: “A sense of optimism during university studies along with high self-esteem tend to predict job engagement ten years later on, while an avoidance strategy tends to predict work-related burnout…. The more encouragement the students got from their teachers, the less likely they were to experience school burnout.”
Explaining Math Concepts Improves Learning. Quotes: “Teaching children the basic concept behind math problems was more useful than teaching children a procedure for solving the problems – these children gave better explanations and learned more,” Rittle-Johnson said. “This adds to a growing body of research illustrating the importance of teaching children concepts as well as having them practice solving problems.”
Social Skills, Extracurricular Activities In High School Pay Off Later In Life. Quotes: “High school sophomores who … [had] good social skills and work habits, and who participated in extracurricular activities in high school, made more money and completed higher levels of education 10 years later than their classmates who had similar standardized test scores but were less socially adroit and participated in fewer extracurricular activities…. “Soft skills” such as sociability, punctuality, conscientiousness and an ability to get along well with others, along with participation in extracurricular activities, are better predictors of earnings and higher educational achievement later in life than having good grades and high standardized test scores…. Schools are increasingly cutting…activities that foster soft skills in order to focus almost exclusively on achieving adequate yearly progress on state-mandated standardized tests.”
Students Benefit From Depth Rather Than Breadth. Quotes: Teaching fewer topics in greater depth is a better way to prepare students for success in college science. Teachers who “teach to the [standardized] test” may not be optimizing their students’ chances of success in college science.
Teacher Teaming. (Teachers routinely engage in “teaming” at Living Wisdom School, thanks to the integrated curriculum and school environment that encourages teacher collaboration.)
Ten Steps to Better Student Engagement. Quotes: Students who have been shamed or belittled by the teacher or another student will not effectively engage in challenging tasks. To learn and grow, one must take risks, but most people will not take risks in an emotionally unsafe environment.
Creating Positive Classroom Management. (A teacher developed creative ways to encourage positive attitudes and behaviors in younger students. The method and theory are very similar to the “Rocks in the Basket” game used at LWS and described in this video.) Quotes: “I’d spent years offering students rewards (stickers, tickets, tangibles, intangibles) for good behavior and I’d come to realize how they were often self-defeating…. One change I had already made was … I would celebrate ‘great work’ by reading aloud the child’s name and stating what they had done well. Often their classmates would give an actual round of applause – which was lovely.”
Recess Makes for Better Students. Quotes: Study finds getting enough of it [recess] each day helps kids perform better in classroom…. Children learn as much on breaks as they do in the traditional classroom, experimenting with creativity and imagination and learning how to interact socially…. Conflict resolution is solved on the playground, not in the classroom…. The more physical fitness tests children passed, the better they did on academic tests…. Walks outdoors appeared to improve scores on tests of attention and concentration.
Physically fit students do better on tests. Quotes: “Physically fit students … are more likely to do well on … tests and have better attendance…. Fit students are less likely to have disciplinary problems.”
Schools use mind-body relaxation techniques to help kids fight anxiety. Quotes: “Mind-body relaxation, including yoga, can improve self-esteem and boost grades and test scores…. Regular exposure to the [relaxation] training boosted students’ work habits, attendance, and academic performance.”
Physical Activity May Strengthen Children’s Ability To Pay Attention. Quotes: “Following the acute bout of walking, children performed better on the flanker task…. Following acute bouts of walking, children had a larger P3 amplitude, suggesting that they are better able to allocate attentional resources…. The increase in reading comprehension following exercise equated to approximately a full grade level.”
A Fit Body Means a Fit Mind. Quotes: “Cardiovascular exercise was related to higher academic performance…. Regular exercise benefits the brain, improves attention span, memory, and learning … reduces stress and the effects of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder…. Aerobic exercise pumps more blood throughout the body, including to the brain. More blood means more oxygen and, therefore, better-nourished brain tissue. Exercise also spurs the brain to produce more of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which Ratey calls ‘Miracle-Gro for the brain.’ This powerful protein encourages brain cells to grow, interconnect, and communicate in new ways. Studies also suggest exercise plays a big part in the production of new brain cells, particularly in the dentate gyrus, a part of the brain heavily involved in learning and memory skills…. [Many] schools are cutting back on PE and reducing recess hours. It’s a huge challenge with budget restraints and No Child Left Behind.”
Most 1st Grade Classes Not High Quality. Quotes: “Only 23 percent of classrooms could be judged to be of ‘high quality’ in both their instructional practices and social and emotional climate.”
Happiness Contagious as the Flu. Posted on the LiveScience website. At Living Wisdom School, we create a joyful, caring environment among the students. When a new student arrives, he or she immediately feels supported and positively affected. Parents routinely comment that soon after their children enter LWS they seem happier than at their former school.
Meditation, Breathing, Yoga, Affirmations
Meditation Program in the College Curriculum. Quotes: “[Meditation] produced significant freshman-senior increases in intelligence and increased social self-confidence, sociability, general psychological health, and social maturity.”
Meditation in the Treatment of ADHD. Meditation-training showed significant decreases in levels of impulsivity [and significant improvements in] selective deployment of attention and freedom from distractibility in the behavior of the children.
Meditation seen promising as ADHD therapy. Quotes: “The effect was much greater than we expected.” – lead researcher Sarina J. Grosswald, a cognitive learning specialist in Arlington, Virginia…. The children also showed improvements in attention, working memory, organization, and behavior regulation.
Faith rites boost brains. Even 10 to 15 minutes of meditation appear to have significant positive effects on cognition, relaxation, and psychological health.
Schools use mind-body relaxation techniques to help kids fight anxiety. Quotes: “Mind-body relaxation, including yoga, can improve self-esteem and boost grades and test scores. Regular exposure to the [relaxation] training boosted students’ work habits, attendance, and academic performance.”
Meditation Program in the College Curriculum. Quotes: “[Meditation] produced significant freshman-senior increases on intelligence and increased social self-confidence, sociability, general psychological health, and social maturity.”
Music Education Can Help Children Improve Reading Skills. Quotes: “Children exposed to a multi-year programme of music … display superior cognitive performance in reading skills compared with their non-musically trained peers.”
Music Training Linked To Enhanced Verbal Skills. Quotes: “Music training … may be more important for enhancing verbal communication skills than learning phonics…. potential of music to tune our neural response to the world around us…. Music training may have considerable benefits for engendering literacy skills…. (Musicians have enhanced subcortical auditory and audiovisual processing of speech and music.)”
Other Articles and Papers
It’s Official: To Protect Baby’s Brain, Turn Off TV (from Wired online). Quote: “A decade ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics suggested that parents limit TV consumption by children under two years of age. The recommendations were based as much on common sense as science, because studies of media consumption and infant development were themselves in their infancy. The research has finally grown up. And though it’s still ongoing, it’s mature enough for the AAP to release a new, science-heavy policy statement on babies watching television, videos or any other passive media form. Their verdict: It’s not good, and probably bad.”
The Human Brain: Wired for Values? This article was published as a sidebar to an article in Mothering magazine that strongly praised Living Wisdom School.
The Heart in Holistic Education. (PDF) Quotes: “Educational programs based on new scientific discoveries about the heart lead to improved emotional stability, cognitive functioning, and academic performance.”
After Abuse, Changes In the Brain. Quotes: “Affectionate mothering alters the expression of genes in animals, allowing them to dampen their physiological response to stress. These biological buffers are then passed on to the next generation. [There is] direct evidence that the same system is at work in humans.”
Positive Action Program. (The program focuses on helping students be aware of which behaviors are positive and will increase their happiness in the long term.)
College prep math failure full study. (PDF) Quotes: “This study indicates that artificially pushing children beyond their current capability is counter-productive.”
Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected. The researchers’ recommendations for teaching children social skills uncannily reflect how LWS teachers practice conflict resolution during playground time.
Education in the Age of Energy. Human awareness is becoming less materialistic and more energy-aware. How will schools adapt? Living Wisdom leads the way.
When Friends Make You Poorer. Quotes: “Students tend to gravitate to a major chosen by more of their peers. And the students whose choice was driven by their peers were then more likely to end up in lower-paying jobs that they didn’t like.”