What distinguishes a great education from a good and solid one is the extent to which the student’s curiosity and imagination flourish and grow and the extent to which a student remains curious and loves the life of the imagination after school is done. More...

I’ve spent my career talking to people about their inner lives, their hopes, their regrets, their entanglements, their harmonies and cacophonies, their pleasures and pains, their triumphs and disasters. What I’ve learned in talking to people—and in working with children and families—is that, despite the ruling paradigm of brain science and genetics, what happens to a person in childhood does matter. A lot. More...

One of the most helpful attitudes a child can develop growing up is an abiding, tough-minded faith that things will work out for the best no matter what, a fervent belief in life as a possibility rather than an impossibility, a reflexive tendency to recoil from disappointment with hope. More...

Okay, with a title like that I better have something off-the-wall good or issue a disclaimer right off the bat. In fact, I have something off-the-wall good. More...

Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “There can be no moral education without an habitual vision of greatness.” One must first determine what is great before one can determine how to become great. I believe, and I know the people at Avenues believe, that the evolution of a child's vision of greatness is one of the most formative dramas of childhood.  More...

In its mission statement, Avenues states its intent to graduate students who are “architects of lives that transcend the ordinary.” In other words, Avenues wants its students to achieve greatness. That’s what “transcend the ordinary” means. But what is greatness? More...

In the last few blog posts, I’ve offered a five-step method I call the cycle of excellence, in counterpoise to the prevailing pyramid model, which currently perverts and corrupts education and childhood. The cycle of excellence is rooted in science and truth, while the pyramid model is rooted in fear and ignorance. If children are raised at home and at school in a connected culture, More...