The Happy Child: Changing the Heart of Education, by Steven Harrison, founder of the Living School in Boulder, Colorado, asserts that the goal of education should be to steer children toward personal fulfillment, including a sense of connection to their communities. A dynamic, lucid book.

—Mothering Magazine

I received a manuscript in the mail the other day from a publisher seeking a book jacket endorsement. At first I was mildly put off by the book's grandly expansive three-word title. But halfway through the brief introduction I realized it was the very simplicity of that title, as well as the author's messages that sets this refreshing book apart from so much of what is being written about children and education these days.

The Happy Child. That's it. Steven Harrison's choice of the singular is not insignificant. The entire focus of the ensuing pages remains on his belief that the true purpose of education is to help each individual child born to this earth to be happy. That's it. Our minds, however, almost instinctively tend to reject such simple ideas. Or, writes Harrison, perhaps our resistance to associating education with happiness is rooted in the fact that we are a little afraid of happiness. It was hardly the educational goal for most of us, after all.

No, the author points out, we were educated in a system that values compliance and consumption, and in which productivity is the measure of life. How many of us can remember a teacher ever asking us if we were happy, or, if we were showing signs that we weren't, why not? I certainly cannot.

And then the beat travels to the next generation. We grow up and start our own families. The school bus comes, our kids get on,and we go to work. Only a few parents step away from the relentless pace of modern life long enough to ask themselves and their children whether they are happy in school. We worry if they are doing well, not if they are being well. We want to know if they are keeping up, and ultimately, if they will get ahead. Preparation, progress, and achievement are the key words, not happiness.

Now I must also admit to liking The Happy Child for another reason. Steven Harrison, as do I, believes that the best way to marry happiness to education is in the context of a learning community that trusts children and empowers them to direct themselves; that is emotionally alive and fosters depth in relationships; and that is energized by creativity, imagination and the thrill of discovery. In fact, the book is an outgrowth of the discourse involved in the founding of The Living School, a new democratic, learner-directed alternative for children age five and up in Boulder, Colorado.

The Living School is Harrison's answer to his own rhetorical question: What else should we demand for our children other than their happiness? Take a moment and savor the simplicity.

—Chris Mercogliano, author of Making It Up As We Go Along: The Story of the Albany Free School

The Happy Child: Changing the Heart of Education is not a homeschooling book. Author Steven Harrison is more concerned with saving all children (and adults) from lives of dead, worthless "education." He believes a child who learns in a holistic democratic environment will be self-motivated to learn and develop his own personal potential. He adequately lists the problems with modern schooling and submits his own utopian model of how learning should look in a modern learning environment.

I like this book. I marked several pages to return to and mull over. Harrison's model is radically different from our modern-day lives in general, but much of what he says will ring true for individual homeschooling families. I hope he writes another book where he can spend more time on the solutions now that he has defined the problems with our modern educational model so well. The Happy Child is available from your local bookstore or online book dealer.

—Home Education Magazine
December 2002

Learning Communities

In the style of Illich, Holt, Priesnitz and others, Colorado-based author Steven Harrison has written a concisely worded call for a total rethinking of public education. The Happy Child: Changing the Heart of Education focuses on the integration of the whole child, the learning environment and the non-coercive spirit of curiosity-driven education as the path to a healthy society.

Harrison proposes that children direct their own education in democratic learning communities where they can interact seamlessly with their neighborhoods, their towns and the world at large. He says that all systems of education - core knowledge, progressive education, Waldorf, homeschooling, free schooling - miss the point. While we believe that Harrison misses the point about what homeschooling is really about (perhaps due to a lack of knowledge about the phenomenon), we agree with him that children don't need schools to learn. And in The Happy Child, he has provided an eloquent case for and description of learning communities.

—Life Learning Magazine

The Happy Child by Steven Harrison is a groundbreaking book that will have readers questioning every form of education in our society. Harrison forces the reader to consider the unthinkable: children can to learn without adults telling them how. Children naturally want to learn, so let them direct their own education in democratic learning communities. With practical suggestions, The Happy Child details how to provide a living and responsive environment that can meet the expanding heart and mind of a child. A happy child will flourish with an education that recognizes that the child is already fully expressive and relating to life. And a happy child, the author asserts, is at the core of a truly functional and creative society. Part social critic, part humanistic visionary, Harrison not only describes a reorientation of education, but the possibility of rethinking our families, communities, and workplaces, and ultimately what gives our children—and all of us—real happiness.

—Education Revolution: The Magazine of Alternative Education, Issue 37, Summer 2003.