The Happy Child: Changing the Heart of Education

by Steven Harrison

Book Overview

Harrison proposes that the current system of education stifles a childs natural enthusiasm for learning. Empowering a child to follow their own educational path, he proposes, will enable the child's vibrant curiosity to fuel their learning.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591810000
• ISBN13: 9781591810001
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Sentient Publications
• Length: 154 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Absolutely must-read for all parents, educators, politicians, and public citizens

This is a terrific book, a tour-de-force, with quotable quotes on every page, indeed, almost every paragraph. Harrison thoroughly points out the abject and increasingly dangerous failures of the bulk of our present educational system (which terribly stresses out and disappoints most students, teachers and parents and weakens the real power of our economy), and also the tremendous *promise* of developing a system of true learning, true education--leading out of ignorance (such as Harrison and his colleagues have experimented with at The Living School in Boulder, Colorado, and which has been successfully developed by numerous other private schools and some public schools). This newer system, as Harrison sees it, invites and evokes the learning potential of both youngsters and adults, a shared learning situation in which "the educator is no where to be found" [i.e., as an outside agent imposing knowledge on youngsters] (p. 21). Along the way, Harrison explores issues of discipline problems, the inherent problems of a fear-based approach, the intensifying testing mania, the natural way of promoting children's intrinsic curiosity, the soundness and beauty of non-coercive learning, the vast importance of a spirituality of inquiry, and the need for adults working with children to be "masters" of one or more areas of life so as to be inspiring exemplars and living invitations for the children's own growth in excellence. Harrison asks all the right questions, scores of them, throughout this easily-read, always-engaging text. For instance, "Our educational system, like our economy, is set up to create a product. The product is a worker in industry. This is its historic purpose.... But is this system producing a worker for the post-modern information age or is it producing a vistigial, useless remainder from the past? Is an industrial worker what we need at this point, or does something else need to be engendered by our educational system? On a practical level, is a person who is taught not to think, but to jam information in and push information out, valued in our contemporary society? The children we are teaching today will be in their adulthood in a decade or two. In that world, the world of twenty years from now, will a child who has been filled with information--not even contemporary information, but information from a decade or two ago--be skilled, functional, prized?... Computers will be doing it better.... It is not information that will be useful, but the ability to understand how to utilize it.... [In the future,] [w]hat will be far more important than yesterday's factoids is the relationship our children will have to the then-existing systems of information. A child who is given the chance to explore and investigate the sources of information, the meaning of information, the utility of information, and the skills of manipulating and crafting information will be able to move fluidly into this future. The irony is obvious. Children explore infor

Easy fast read on alternative education

I have read many books about democratic and free school education. This one was so captivating that I read it in one sitting. He presents a very persuasive argument for child directed and community based schooling. Inspiring.

Harrison questions the reason for education

Harrison believes that the purpose of education is happiness, not "to get a good job." In The Happy Child, Harrison challenges our beliefs about education, why it exists, and what children really deserve from it. Harrison exposes how schools educate through fear and stamp out children's curiosity and creativity.This is one of the best books I have read on why we need to change our system of education. It is thought-provoking and should start many heated debates. Harrison asks many questions about our schools, our society, and what is really important.

The book to read on contemporary culture and education...

This book is about education, but a whole lot more. It takes a look at the root of the educational paradigm and the disconnection of our culture, the workplace, the home, the family as well as the schools. It is both a harsh critique of the materialism and violence of our society and a hopeful suggestion for the possibilities of a culture of change and connection. Highly recommended.

This is a very eye-opening book!

This is one of the most radical books I've read on education, because it thoroughly questions the ideas we hold as a society about what education is and what it's good for. As products of traditional education ourselves, most of us tend to just accept the basic tenets of it. Harrison examines the notion that there is a body of information and skills that everyone should learn in school. He asks how useful this approach really is, whether it prepares us adequately for our lives, whether we end up retaining or using much of the information we labor so hard to acquire, and whether it contributes anything to our happiness. In its place, he proposes a very different model for what education can be, which he developed through the process of starting a school. I've observed myself that nearly all the high school and college students I talk to have very little idea of what they want to do with their lives--their education does not help them with this basic question. The model discussed in The Happy Child would do a much better job of helping kids find this out. I highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about the state of education in our country.