Parent Testimonials

What Parent Could Wish for More?

We chose The Children's School for our son nine years ago (our daughter followed a year later). There was no question in our minds that the educational theory behind the program made sense. Children learn best when they are active participants. Well, of course. It not only makes pedagogical sense, but it makes practical, “this-is-what-you-experience-every-day-when-you’re-a-parent” sense. What we’ve found though, is that by sending our children to a school guided by this educational theory, learning and discovery have remained for them a natural part of their daily lives.

We chose The Children’s School not just because their philosophy matched ours, not just because we felt both the academic and social curriculums to be rich and meaningful, and not just because TCS rejects the commonplace assumption that testing a child into a coma will somehow make him smarter or more successful. We chose The Children’s School because of the students we met there. They were funny; they were confident. They had things to say, and they said them. They were interesting. And they were smart: scary smart. They spoke about their education and their school as if it were precisely that – theirs. And it was. And so it is for our son and daughter. It is their education, their learning, their lives. And they have become those children we met nine years ago – they are smart, articulate, knowledgeable and interested. (All these things and they score incredibly well on standardized tests, too!) They don’t see education as something apart from themselves. They don’t see the learning process as something they have to do. To them, it’s life – a life of asking questions, a lifetime of learning new things. It’s part of them. And it’s something that will stay with them as they continue their education. From technology to the arts, from the classics to cutting-edge theorists, our children have been given the tools, the skills and the knowledge to become whomever and whatever they’d like to become. What parent could wish for more than that?

Simon and Kira, TCS Parents

The Case for Child-Centered Active Learning: A Neurobiologist's Perspective

For most people, reading a recipe or a text on brain surgery confers little benefit to performance of the task.  Rather, we learn these things best by doing them.  Through active engagement, we acquire an understanding of time and space, we learn the meaning and utility of tools and materials, we develop an appreciation for the value of measurement, we internalize and apply concepts of logic, causality and interaction, and we attain the ability to make wise decisions and accurate predictions about the consequences of our actions.  We measure, mix and fold, poke and press, cut, paste, add, subtract, smooth, measure some more, evaluate our hypotheses, debate the alternatives, and consider the products of our labor.  And each time we do it better than before.

Most adults understand the value of active learning, at least implicitly, and it is richly incorporated in our lives.  We become “interns” at tasks as broad ranging as skiing, negotiating international peace treaties, practicing medicine, and designing aeroplanes. But when it comes to teaching our children, we have long followed the reigning philosophy of mass education, in which the mind of the child is viewed as an empty vessel filled with knowledge by recitation of facts.  We read our children the recipe and measure learning by their ability to repeat it back to us, without ever giving them the opportunity to bake the cake.

One might thus reasonably ask whether there is something to be gained by adopting a more active approach to childhood education. Intuition and adult experience would suggest that there is, but we can now document and supplement this view with findings from the fields of cognitive science and neurobiology.  Studies of cognitive development have discredited the widely-held view that children possess a generalized intelligence that can be filled like pumping gas into the car.  On the contrary, children possess many different intellectual capacities – e.g. spatial, linguistic, logical, social – that are best developed through action and problem solving in an environment tuned to each individual’s intellectual strengths.

Neurobiology also speaks to the issue of active learning.  There is abundant evidence that richness of the sensory-motor environment – an environment that encourages active exploration and hypothesis testing – during critical periods of development is correlated with the strength and selectivity of connections between neurons in the brain.  This early experience-based sculpting of brain circuitry is believed to lay the groundwork for further cognitive development and may be manifested throughout life as greater capacities for skill learning, problem solving, creativity and social intelligence – capacities that are at the heart of valued professions in our society today.

The larger picture that emerges from this research is thus one in which the developing mind is naturally acquisitive, configured by evolutionary pressures to function optimally when actively collecting, storing and recalling information, planning actions and testing predictions about the world.  This optimal state, in turn, serves to fine-tune the neuronal hardware to promote learning. Despite these arguments and facts, early childhood educational practices that are deeply rooted in active learning – that attempt to fully engage each child according to his/her intellectual proclivities – are rare.  Part of this is simply short-sighted economics; it takes less time and effort to lecture, and there is less to clean up at the end of the day. But it is also true that educational practices that defy the 20th century norm – the passive learning approach that most of us grew-up with – are often greeted with skepticism and apprehension.  Furthermore, the standard measures of success in childhood education – the ubiquitous tests of rote memory dictated by the state curriculum (and infamously reinforced by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) – are pitched to capture that learned by the standard passive approach, not the multiple intellectual capacities of the engaged child. In other words, the standard approach is not merely limiting, it is self-fulfilling.

We all wish our sons and daughters to succeed – not simply in the narrow guise of top scores on a standardized test, but to face the world with brilliance and confidence, to design and create, to understand and fulfill the needs of individuals and societies, to broker, to discover, to win, and to lead.  As we gain increasing knowledge of brain and cognitive development, the promise of such broad intellectual mastery offered by child-centered active learning has become evermore clear.

Tom, TCS Parent and Professor of Neurobiology at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies

It Was the Process

I just got back from an amazing math presentation by Evelyn (first grade teacher), Lisa B (kindergarten teacher), and Rebecca (third grade teacher) this morning - they are in the second year of a three year math training program called CGI. For those of you who couldn't make it, I was so blown away that I feel compelled to share how the presentation helped me remember what I love about The Children's School. It reminded me that there are teachers there who care so much, who are so talented, and who are spending so much time and energy training themselves to do the incredible job they do every day with our kids.

The presentation, like the education at TCS at its best, was hands on - we were asked to do an equation just as the kids would be asked to do it.  Suddenly, by doing it, we got it, in a way we wouldn't just by being lectured by the principles of CGI.  Actually, what I got first were genuine hot flashes, my discomfort level with math being off the charts. Flushed and uncomfortable, I sat there trying to write out my thinking process but I completely blocked and couldn't do it! Thank you conventional algorithmic education!

Then, as a group, we looked at how several people solved the problem, and I had an aha moment as I looked on the screen: Oh yes, of course, that makes sense, I would do it like that next time (sharing an uneven number of cookies among friends - notice the problem is about cookies, not trains - that's important, because CGI is about doing math that has some meaning for the kids). Looking at what others had done, it took about two minutes for me to get it. Two minutes!  And I know it would be the same for our kids. Lisa's unbelievable video of two kindergartners doing the same spoke volumes. No hours spent staring at abstract numbers that make no sense until they dance in front of one's eyes, unable to see or think, forbidden to talk with one's neighbor to help figure it out, and certainly not encouraged to think about different ways to solve the problems. I am SO grateful my son will never have to go through that! That he will be guided, with a sense of fun and exploration to discover, on his own, then with the help of his friends, how to solve a problem, and always - this is the important part - that there is no one way to solve the problem.

Driving home it hit me, why this simple presentation was so moving... it was the process. I thought, going in, that CGI was a new way of doing of math. But it's not. No notebooks, no special steps to solve equations.  It's a way of thinking. And by extension, a way of approaching everything, all sorts of problems, not just math problems. Working alone, trying out different approaches, brainstorming, seeing if there's a way, or two, or three, or four, to approach something that makes sense. Bouncing ideas off other people, getting feedback on your own ideas, getting new ideas from your peers. Finally, sharing the solutions with the group, and seeing what makes sense to you, individually.

Young people who are being encouraged to think this way are being given the greatest gift of education. They are not being taught what to think, but how to think, and even more importantly, that there is never only one way, or one right way to think. This obviously goes way beyond math. Imagine, with these critical thinking skills, how our kids are going to approach individual challenges, and also challenges for the world - political, environmental, and social challenges. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I have no doubt what they are learning in math is going to help them with all of that! I was so filled with hope after that presentation, and gratitude that my son is in an environment where there are such inspired teachers guiding him every day. The work those teachers are doing is so incredibly important and meaningful. And if you couldn't make it, when you get a chance, ask them about CGI, it's fascinating. Who would have thought I'd ever say that about MATH!

Laure, TCS parent