Alternative education
Non-traditional schooling emphasizing holistic development and community.
Alternative education covers teaching philosophies that step away from mainstream and evidence-based methods. These programs can appear in public, charter, private, or home-based settings, often focusing on smaller classes, strong teacher-student bonds, and community. Local laws shape whether these schools must follow standard tests and grades. Approaches vary, including open classrooms, Quaker or free schools, and Waldorf or Montessori curricula.
History
Alternative education emerged as a response to the establishment of standardized and compulsory education over the last two to three centuries. Educators such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, American transcendentalists Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, progressive education founders John Dewey and Francis Parker, and pioneers Friedrich Fröbel, Maria Montessori, and Rudolf Steiner believed education should cultivate children on multiple levels—intellectually, morally, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and physically.
After World War II, the Reggio Emilia approach to early-childhood education was developed in Italy by Loris Malaguzzi. Cultural critics including John Caldwell Holt, Paul Goodman, Frederick Mayer, and George Dennison examined education from individualist, anarchist, and libertarian perspectives. Other writers, from Paulo Freire to American educators Herbert Kohl and Jonathan Kozol, criticized mainstream Western education from liberal and radical political viewpoints.
Research suggests a learner-responsible model is more effective than a teacher-responsible one. Ron Miller identified five common elements among educational alternatives: respect for the person, balance, decentralization of authority, noninterference among political, economic, and cultural spheres, and a holistic worldview. In modern times, the legal right to provide educational alternatives has become established alongside a duty to provide education for school-age children.
Localities
In Canada, education falls under provincial jurisdiction. Alternative education is provided in some public schools, such as Mountainview Montessori School and Trille des Bois Waldorf school in Ottawa, as well as in independent schools like Toronto Montessori Schools and Vancouver Waldorf School. Alternative education in Canada stems from two philosophical viewpoints: Progressive and Libertarian. The term 'alternative' was adopted partly to distinguish these schools from the independent, parent-student-teacher-run 'free' schools that preceded them and to emphasize boards' commitment to options within the public school system. The Libertarian tradition focuses on the rights of parents and children to make their own educational and life choices, rooted in the belief in upholding individual freedom and the innate goodness of the child against institutional and social conformity.
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