Greenfields School – Children Learn Best by DOING!

06 Jul 2015

A really good education is not just about getting a set of certificates for the purposes of getting a paying job, but about enabling and empowering young people to become more whole as people. The test of any social institution, including a school, should be whether it makes for continued education and growth, and that education and growth occurs largely through doing.

A person can be encouraged to gain control of himself or herself, so that he or she will have full and ready use of all his or her capacities, so that the eye and ear and hand may become tools ready to command.

The perfect example of this at Greenfields is theGreenfields Theatre Company: students learn in the three weeks of rehearsals and in the performances themselves not only how to “put on a play”, but how to make judgements, how to use their eyes, ears and hands in harmony with others, how to grasp the conditions under which they have to work, how to work economically and efficiently. It’s a brilliant, end-of-year culmination of what Greenfields is all about. Students have to come up with their own methods of solving problems but in the context of the perception and appreciation of qualities. It’s not just a case of “We need to build this set” but “We need to build this set so as to achieve this particular aesthetic effect in this time-frame.”

Having the study technology* which enables barriers to learning to be removed is a key part of advancing our culture towards a greater ability to do and to accomplish great things.

Grant Hudson for Greenfields School

*The technology of how to study and retain what has been learned utilized by Greenfields.