In the midst of global instability that is accelerating and a national educational crisis that ties federal funding to national testing, two educational methods from the early 20th century are attracting increased attention. Waldorf Education and the Montessori Method – two similar, yet unrelated and unique, approaches to education – foster respect for children and honor sound principles of childhood development.

Both approaches are grounded in an understanding of childhood and children that appears to be at odds with mainstream education. Both Waldorf and Montessori recognize a child as an individual with unique talents and needs and see children as valuable, gifted and able to contribute to society despite differences in academic ability. Both rely on developmentally based, age-appropriate methods with the goal of educating the whole human being – body, mind and spirit. And, interestingly, students of Waldorf and Montessori educations demonstrate an uncommon joy while learning and a palpable delight in going to school.

Jennell Woodard and Marie Paul helped found Spring Garden Waldorf School in 1980 with the help of other parents. The school in Copley, the only one of its kind in Ohio, draws its 150 students in preschool through grade eight from Cleveland, Medina, Akron, Canton, Kent and Denison. Spring Garden follows the Waldorf curriculum originated by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), an Austrian scientist, philosopher, artist and educator. Steiner founded the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, Germany in 1919 for children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. The goal of Steiner's model of education is “to produce individuals who are able, in and of themselves, to impart meaning to their lives.”

Steiner based his educational curriculum from preschool through high school on his view of a human being as body, mind and spirit. He believed that children develop through a number of basic stages, and the Waldorf curriculum is designed to work with the child through each of these stages. At Spring Garden the aim is to educate the whole child, “head, heart and hands,” with a balance of academic subjects and artistic and practical activities. In the younger grades, subjects are introduced through artistic activities, storytelling and play. Steiner said play is the “work” of the child and is to be encouraged and protected.

The Main Lessons, as they are called in Waldorf Education, are math, science, English and grammar, literature and history, and geography. Literature and history are taught at Spring Garden in grade one (along with the alphabet and numbers) through folktales, fairytales and nature stories. As the students progress through eighth grade, literature and history are learned through a variety of modes that includes everything from fables to Native American stories to literature from the 1700s to the present. First-graders garden and study nature as they move through a science curriculum that includes zoology in grade four, botany in grade six and chemistry, anatomy, physiology and physics by grade eight. Math and geography follow a similar trajectory. Children learn through artistic activities, movement, speech and presentations by the teacher. Learning becomes an inner experience and a spontaneous process of discovery.

A Waldorf curriculum incorporates activities that have become expendable in many schools, such as music, art and foreign language. The Waldorf curriculum also integrates unique classes such as knitting, quilting and woodworking. Physical education stresses noncompetitive sports and rhythmic exercises in the younger grades and softball, basketball, kickball, gymnastics and volleyball in the upper grades. Fifth-graders recreate the Greek Pentathlon.

“We go against the grain,” Woodard admits. “In a Waldorf school, education is an art and the children have a self-assurance once they leave here.” This self-assurance transfers to the students' lives after graduating from the school; about 93% of Waldorf graduates go on to four-year colleges.

In Waldorf education, no grades are given. Textbooks are not used until grade five and, other than an annual Spring Iowa Achievement Test for grades four and up, there is no regular testing. Younger children produce their own “Main Lesson Books” which record their experiences and what they have learned. One of the most unique aspects of Waldorf Education is that the Main Lesson or classroom teacher ideally advances with the students from first through eighth grades. Providing a continuity of teaching, this approach also fosters a deep understanding of each child's needs as they mature, promotes mutual respect and provides a consistent link between home and school.

“Every single day my children run into Spring Garden,” says Cecelia White, “and every afternoon I have trouble getting them out at 3:30. Everything about Spring Garden makes me want to go to school there, to learn. I want to learn all over again, like my children are learning. My children are given five different ways to absorb information rather than just sitting at a desk and reading it out of a book like I had to do.”

Like Steiner, Maria Montessori was also a scientist who saw the importance of educating the whole child. She was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize before her death in 1952. Born in 1870 in Italy, Montessori was a physician who became intrigued by how children learn. Returning to school to study psychology and philosophy, she eventually left her medical practice and teaching post to work with the young children of working parents in Rome. Observing that children effortlessly absorb knowledge from their surroundings and have a tireless, natural interest in manipulating materials, Montessori concluded that children have the ability to teach themselves. She developed a method of education around these concepts and opened the first Montessori school in 1907. Her method is now used in thousands of classrooms around the world. Helen Keller, Thomas Edison and Alexander Bell were some of her many supporters.

Ro Eugene is the founder of Montessori pre-schools at many locations in Northeast Ohio, including Westshore Montessori in Westlake and Heights Montessori in Cleveland Heights. The schools offer toddler, pre-kindergarten and kindergarten classes in addition to all-day Montessori and summer enrichment programs.

Like Steiner, Montessori developed a curriculum for children from birth to age eighteen. Eugene explains that the life of a child from birth to age six is especially important to the development of mind and body. In a Montessori classroom, children are always in motion, “because children like to be active.” But the activity is peaceful and structured and the expectations are clear. “It's important to recognize children as human beings,” Eugene says.

The Montessori curriculum includes Practical Life (pouring, dressing, preparing food), Sensorial Life (tasting, touching, smelling, seeing, hearing) and the traditional subjects of math, geography and languagewhich are never approached solely in a traditional academic manner. Certified Montessori teachers act primarily as observers who intervene only when necessary, allowing children to develop self-confidence, inner discipline and a joy in learning. Math, for example, is taught through art, conversations and the sensorial items that are common in a Montessori classroom. Such an approach cultivates a child's concentration and self-discipline in a way that allows for the child to grow at his or her own pace. “The Montessori Method causes the child to think, to determine the characteristics of an itemand to gauge his or her interest in exploring it,” Eugene says.

Elizabeth Moosbrugger has two children in Heights Montessori School. “Oh, we've loved it,” she says. Her son began the program at age two and a half. “He just took to it. He loves the independence, he loves the Practical Life work, he loves watching the other children in the classroom and learning from them. We are absolutely thrilled with his learning and the care the children take of each other. It is a supportive and wonderful learning environment.”

The Montessori Method teaches children to “make silence” by encouraging them to take time to listen to the “voice inside.” As a related activity, Eugene has taught meditation and yoga to children. “Children are hurried everywhere todayto school, to sports, to events,” she says. “Children need more of the same thing that adults need more of: nature, silence, calm, togetherness.”

Similarly, one of Woodard's children, raised in the Waldorf method, now serves in the conflict in Afghanistan. During his spare time, he knitted an afghan, returning to the quiet practice as a way to get in touch with his feelings while creating something beautiful. He reports that his fellow soldiers were envious, wishing they knew something creative to do in their spare time.

Both the Waldorf and the Montessori teaching methods enact a belief that education's purpose is to facilitate a balanced learning process that encompasses the whole human being. Both methods seek to nurture the child's imagination and seek to cater to their needs rather than to the demands of government or economics. Both methods allow students to move forward at their own pace and to focus on the beauty in the world. And both methods create partnerships with the family and consider family-school-community an integral part of the child's development.

Both methods also have many supporters who are grateful for the difference these alternative approaches have made in their children's lives. “Children educated in the Waldorf Method learn to stand in the world in a definite way,” says Marie Paul.

And Ro Eugene explains, “Children educated in the Montessori Method learn to appreciate beauty of the mind, spirit and environment, in themselves, each other and all around.”

That bodes well for the future.

For more information on Waldorf Schools, please visit www.awsna.org. More information can be learned about Montessori Schools at www.montessori.edu.