by Nitai Deranja, Co-Founder of Education for Life and the Living Wisdom Schools
A question parents often ask us is: “What is the curriculum like in the Living Wisdom Schools?”
I believe a better question would be, “How does Education for Life improve upon the curriculum that has been offered in schools for at least the last hundred years?”
We are living in an age that values mass production and standardization. It’s a way of thinking that began with the Industrial Revolution, when factory owners realized that they could produce goods in mass quantities much more efficiently by adopting assembly-line manufacturing methods.
The new approach worked well for making cars, refrigerators, and other products. So well, in fact, that when government officials met with leading educators to decide upon the best way to prepare workers for the prosperous new manufacturing age, they decided that schools should be operated as efficient, standardized assembly lines for educating factory workers, engineers, and business leaders.
Teachers, too, came to be seen as assembly line workers, tasked with repeating a fixed set of lessons that would move the “product” – the students – efficiently through the system. To facilitate the process, the teachers’ tasks were detailed in curriculum frameworks under which public schools were required to operate – and still do today.
The problem with this approach is that children are not cars. Anyone who spends time with children quickly realizes that each child is unique, with highly individual gifts and enthusiasms, and that attempts to standardize their education will, at best, be stifling.
Instead of cultivating a rich flowering of creative talents that could prepare the children to be successful and help solve the problems besetting our planet today, we now graduate students who excel at memorizing just enough material to pass the standardized tests.
Education for Life pursues an entirely different approach. It shifts the emphasis from a fixed series of rigidly prescribed lessons, to address the interests, enthusiasms, and ever-changing needs of the individual student.
Education for Life requires that the teachers form a close bond with each child, so that they will be able to identify the child’s unique gifts and devise an individualized approach to the curriculum that will build on the child’s natural enthusiasm, while giving them daily experiences of mastery at their level.
Education for Life in Action
I’ll share a brief example. A parent reported that her four-year-old boy wept bitterly every morning as she prepared to bring him to school. In a conference with his teacher, the mother noted that her son had expressed a strong interest in music.
The parents and the teacher decided to create a music unit for the boy. The following day, the boy’s tears vanished, as he realized that school was a place where his needs would be recognized and supported. Encouraged to express his enthusiasm for music, he soon began to find joy in other aspects of the curriculum and school activities as well.
Does Individual Attention Fuel Academic Excellence?
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 exact opposite to be true.
Consider our graduates’ high school grades – see “Happiness, Success, and Education for Life: Grades Tell the Story.” Consider also the following sampling of test scores from our high school.
Living Wisdom High School 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 additionally 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.
In an Education for Life Classroom, Discipline Problems Are Few
Because the children feel individually supported and engaged, there is an atmosphere of intense, sincere enthusiasm for the curriculum. Thus discipline problems virtually disappear, and the instruction is far more efficient than in a classroom with a standardized, lockstep curriculum.
A New Vision for the Curriculum
In Education for Life, we have re-named the traditional subjects to emphasize their relationship to the students’ personal interests. Instead of dividing them into seemingly unrelated silos of History, Language Arts, Science, English, etc., EFL arranges the same subjects under broad titles that emphasize the interconnectedness of knowledge.
For an in-depth discussion of the six curriculum areas, I invite you to browse “The Curriculum,” from Education for Life, the book on which our schools’ philosophy is based. A brief summary:
1. “Our Earth – Our Universe”
“The Sciences” conjures images of test tubes in a laboratory rather than the wonders of nature. “Our Earth – Our Universe” covers everything now taught under “the sciences,” but includes a suggestion of the orderliness of the universe; an appreciation for the ecological balance of planetary life; and a sense of awe before the universal mysteries, which, as Einstein said, is the essence of great scientific discovery.
“Our Earth – Our Universe” includes physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, general science, botany, geology, and anatomy.
2. Personal Development
Personal Development nurtures each child’s growth in three areas: physical, mental, and spiritual. Personal Development fosters the students’ ability to set and achieve personal goals, as well as personal qualities of perseverance, self-control, and joyful self-discipline. Subjects that foster growth in Personal Development:
| Physical education | Sports |
| Health and hygiene | Mental skills such as concentration, memory development and organization |
| Mathematics computation skills | Beginning reading skills |
| Spelling | Any subject matter involving memorization |
| Long-term projects | Learning new tasks such as handwriting, CPR, typing, etc. |
| Developing and using positive qualities such as gratitude, contentment, honesty, servicefulness, and responsibility. (This list could be unending.) |
3. Self-Expression and Communication
This category includes, for example, mathematics and grammar, both of which can help the students develop mental clarity. Also included are subjects such as how to develop creativity, and how to be differently creative in a variety of fields. Subjects might include those listed below, as well as instruction in how to develop more mundane but perennially useful skills such as carpentry, or salesmanship. Subjects that foster growth in Self-expression and Communication:
| Mathematics | Writing mechanics |
| Creative writing | Interpretive dance |
| Music composition | Music interpretation |
| Computer programming | Creative problem solving |
| Engineering | The use of the voice as a means of self-expression in singing and speaking |
| Public speaking | How to develop creativity |
| Visual arts | Drama |
| Vocabulary development |
4. Understanding People
“Understanding People” encourages personal expansion through opening ourselves to learn about the experiences and perspectives of others. A primary focus is on learning about what human beings everywhere want most deeply from life, and what leads to lasting happiness for oneself and others. Subjects that foster growth in Understanding People include:
| The study of other cultures, their customs and beliefs | Foreign languages |
| History | Geography |
| Psychology | World religions |
| The study of the lives of great people | Travel to other locations |
5. Cooperation
“Cooperation” encourages personal expansion by learning how to cultivate harmonious relations with others. The children are given many opportunities to practice the attitudes and skills that contribute to an experience of interpersonal harmony – for example, mental flexibility, a willingness to compromise, and respect for other people’s realities. Subjects that foster growth in Cooperation:
| The human realities of political science, economics and business | Supportive leadership |
| Listening skills | Etiquette |
| Historical people and events in which cooperation played an important part |
6. Wholeness
This curriculum area focuses not on a single aspect of personal or academic development, but on the many ways the various areas work together, each enhancing the development of the whole. Subjects that foster growth in Wholeness:
| Music | Meditation and other centering techniques |
| Art | Literature |
| Philosophy | Religion |
| Nature studies |
The Curriculum as a Cornerstone of an Education for Life
Education for Life is deeply concerned with helping each student find purpose and meaning during their time at school, and in their later lives. Thus the teachers are granted the freedom to introduce each curriculum category in a way that will help the individual student make a personal connection to the subject.
In Education for Life, our goal for the curriculum is not to dictate what must happen in the classroom during every hour of every day of the school year, but to provide an outline that allows the teachers and students to create a unique school experience that will enrich each child with wisdom, enthusiasm, engagement, proud accomplishment, and joy.
In the first fifty years of the Living Wisdom Schools, we have found that this approach produces excellent results, more efficiently and effectively than the older assembly-line system.