peterfritzwalter

[peterfritzwalter]

The Creative Curriculum

The Child‘s Individual Integrity Any school that wishes to serve both children and their parents needs to recognize the existence of individual, and individually gifted, children. To serve the individual child we need to safeguard the child’s natural sensitivity and focus upon the individual talents that this child manifests and desires to develop.  Education should go beyond the teaching of…

[peterfritzwalter]

Teacher Training

In consciousness-based and brainsmart education, the agenda of vocational training for teachers is different, on one hand, and more varied and expanded, on the other, than in conventional vocational training for teachers and day care workers. There are some rules of conduct and of attitude that are really different in such an educational setting, compared to traditional education. The stress is…

[peterfritzwalter]

A 'Brainsmart' Learning Approach

A ‘Brainsmart’ Learning Approach

How does a teacher have to perform in a school or pre-school with a brainsmart educational curriculum in place? I would say upfront that such a teacher has to perform in much a different way than in ordinary and traditional educational institutions! In one word, he or she simply have to be brainsmart in their personal and teaching styles and corresponding behavior. However, teachers cannot be…

[peterfritzwalter]

The Value of Art, Creativity, and Spontaneity

The Value of Art, Creativity, and Spontaneity

Spontaneity is not just the art workshop where the kids can draw whatever they like, and where they can compose forms and colors. The meaning of spontaneity in life is a vast space, and cannot be confined to specific activities, while it is true that spontaneity can be enhanced by doing things spontaneously, and doing every day more things spontaneously. But the meaning of spontaneity knows…

[peterfritzwalter]

Educating the Heart

After perusing the foregoing essays, the reader may have gained the impression that for sane education emotional and sexual freedom of the child alone are needed, together with emotional maturity on the side of parents and educators. This would however be a reduction of what I am saying, as things are not as simple as that. I include this paragraph here to clarify matters.  Let me give an…

[peterfritzwalter]

Sexual Knowledge is Always Contextual

Sexual Knowledge is Always Contextual

Mere intellectual knowledge that is not rooted in our affective life is devoid of meaning as it cannot be integrated in the whole of the personality. This is so much the more important when we are talking about children between ages two and six. For the small child, all knowledge is mediated by the body, for reaching the mind, and not the other way around.  You can compare the acquisition of…

[peterfritzwalter]

The Principle of Non-Interference

Nobody can teach us to love others or ourselves. To believe it is naive. Whoever loves himself loves others. Why does one love himself and another hates herself? It’s a question of self-respect. Self-respect can’t be taught. When children grow in a milieu where they are respected and loved, they have enough self-respect. You can’t quantify self-respect, you can’t quantify love. You can’t teach…

[peterfritzwalter]

The Value of Silence

The Value of Silence

Silence is essential for the mind. Without silence, the mind drowns in the turbulence of daily life, and of all our conflicting desires, thoughts and feelings. Traditional education hasn’t understood a bit of this fact. Children are silenced by force, held in shut-up compliance with ‘law and order’ by the use of educational violence, only to explode into outbursts of hatred and stupidity, once…

[peterfritzwalter]

Children and Morality

As a general rule, children respond rather poorly to a morality-based educational approach; they won’t say anything in the regular case, but they won’t build deep trust and they won’t experience real joy when they know the educators around them are following a strictly compulsive morality paradigm. It’s not morality but true love that helps children grow sanely, and that can heal distortions if…

[peterfritzwalter]

Children and Violence

Now, let me say a word about violence. There is no doubt that children, just like adults, are violent at times. Children are afraid of violence but that doesn’t exclude their being violent themselves once in a while. We have to be careful to not put up an idealistic scheme that posits a should-be reality, saying that ‘well, children may be violent, but they should not be violent.’ This leads…

[peterfritzwalter]

When Nature Manifests

Children are mirrors for us; they very easily tear our clothes down, to contemplate us naked, some of them even do it physically, but all of them do it metaphorically. I would say that in your quality of an educator, this is about the best you can experience in your daily life with the children in your care, for it will purify your relation with yourself, and your relation with the child, of all…

[peterfritzwalter]

Teaching the Ability to Choose

Teaching the Ability to Choose

Good education is not one that excludes things, is not one that renders things, thoughts, feelings or behavior taboo, but one that embraces all, while teaching, on a daily basis and a little step at a time, the wisdom to use all we’ve got. Television contains many good and useful programs, information about technology, about cultural events, about great people, about cultures you will perhaps…

[peterfritzwalter]

Embracing Technology

Our old idea of ‘general knowledge’ cannot be reasonably maintained because the amount of knowledge today is so immense that no human being can ever even remotely attempt to embrace it. This was certainly different two hundred fifty years ago, at the time of the Enlightenment when a man like Denis Diderot could write an encyclopedia that embraced almost the integrality of the knowledge of that…

[peterfritzwalter]

Do We Need to Teach Communication Skills?

Do We Need to Teach Communication Skills?

We are living in the information age which is a communication age; better communicators are rewarded in our times much more than at any time before in human history. However, our schools have not yet caught up with this new trend; in most schools, what you learn is to duck down and keep silent, to become non-communicative. This is especially disadvantageous for introvert males who are shy and…

[peterfritzwalter]

Music and Musical Education

Music and Musical Education

Music plays an important role in our psychic composure. Good music balances our mind and strengthens a sensitive and open mind. Bad music drives the psyche into a state of overexcitement; this state of mind is like a closed loop in that it prevents us from accessing our center, the infinite in us. A mind that is regularly bombarded with modern music cannot be reached by educational wisdom because…

[peterfritzwalter]

The Child's Emotional Life

The Child’s Emotional Life

For getting an idea of the emotional life of the child, we need to grasp what is intelligence. Many people confuse intelligence with knowledge; they don’t see that the accumulation of knowledge is purely mechanical and as such no indicator of intelligence. Intelligence is something entirely different from knowledge. It is not mechanical, but a natural byproduct of emotional vivacity and…

[peterfritzwalter]

Sharing and Gratitude

I have seen in several schools that educators were defending a paradigm of parental non-involvement in their educational strategies. I observed how this works in practice and saw it’s not for the best of the child. Such an approach leads sooner or later to an unspoken or open hostility between parents and educators, and results in the child being exposed to contradictory educational approaches,…