Millennial Child Transforming Education in the Twenty-First Century Eugene Schwartz
ISBN: 0880104651 Book (Paperback) SteinerBooks $19.95
320 pages October 1999
In assuming that children can assimilate a conceptual framework that was once considered fit only for adults, we have indeed turned children into “little adults” who (it would appear) can think logically, make decisions for themselves, and express precocious sexual desires. Deprived of the boundaries that once separated the “world of childhood” from the world of adulthood, these children of the 90s are also capable of promiscuous sexual behavior and violence toward themselves and others on a scale never seen before. Is there any way for childhood to be regained? How may the Millennial Child have a childhood? –Eugene Schwartz
Today’s children are an endangered species. As a result of the reductionism spawned by Freud and the homogenization of the stages of human life that followed, many children seem to have lost their childhood and been thrust into the confusing and chaotic world of adults.
Eugene Schwartz presents an incisive analysis of the ways in which the errors of the first third of our century have come back to haunt us at the century’s end. After carefully examining Sigmund Freud’s tragic misunderstanding of childhood and tracing its consequences for today’s parents and educators, the author points to the radically new paradigm of childhood development offered by Rudolf Steiner and embodied in Waldorf education.
Parents, teachers, and child psychologists will find a wealth of insight concerning such diverse subjects as the nature of play, the causes of ADHD, computers as teachers, and the power that love and imagination will have in the education of the Millennial Child.
Eugene Schwartz is a graduate of Columbia University and has worked with people at all stages of life, from the young children to the elderly and the dying. He began his teaching career by adapting the Waldorf schools’ curriculum to educate a group of handicapped and emotionally disturbed adolescents, after which he became a class teacher at Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, NY. In addition to his thirty years of experience as a class teacher, high school teacher, and Waldorf teacher educator, Eugene has served as a consultant to Waldorf endeavors throughout the U.S., as well as in Canada, Mexico, Norway, Austria, and Italy. Over the past decade, he has worked in this capacity with more than a hundred schools, including public schools in the New York metropolitan area. Eugene was awarded a Teaching Fellowship at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Princeton, New Jersey, a capacity in which he worked with public school teachers from across the nation. Eugene also worked closely with the late Ernest Boyer, the Foundation’s president, to establish new curricular ideas and methods. He has lectured on new ideas in education at Harvard, Columbia, University of Tennessee Medical Center, and the Aspen Institute and on Waldorf education in Turkey. Eugene is the author of numerous books on Waldorf education. See all titles by this author
Eugene Schwartz is a graduate of Columbia University and has worked with people at all stages of life, from the young children to the elderly and the dying. He began his teaching career by adapting the Waldorf schools’ curriculum to educate a group of handicapped and emotionally disturbed adolescents, after which he became a class teacher at Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, NY. In addition to his thirty years of experience as a class teacher, high school teacher, and Waldorf teacher educator, Eugene has served as a consultant to Waldorf endeavors throughout the U.S., as well as in Canada, Mexico, Norway, Austria, and Italy. Over the past decade, he has worked in this capacity with more than a hundred schools, including public schools in the New York metropolitan area. Eugene was awarded a Teaching Fellowship at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in Princeton, New Jersey, a capacity in which he worked with public school teachers from across the nation. Eugene also worked closely with the late Ernest Boyer, the Foundation’s president, to establish new curricular ideas and methods. He has lectured on new ideas in education at Harvard, Columbia, University of Tennessee Medical Center, and the Aspen Institute and on Waldorf education in Turkey. Eugene is the author of numerous books on Waldorf education.