Raising Curious, Creative, Confident Kids: The Pestalozzi Experiment in Child-Based Education [Hardcover]

Rebeca Wild (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2000

How can we create schools that reinforce each child's joy of life, curiosity, individuality, the natural conviction of his or her own self-worth and the worth of others—and that meet the highest academic standards as well? Rebeca Wild, a principal in a Pestalozzi school in Ecuador—the model for a grassroots educational movement in several European countries—reveals how the children in her Pesta classroom experience reading, writing, and mathematics, as well as art, music, geography, the natural sciences, social issues, even matters of life and death. Rebeca Wild shares the organic process by which the Pesta method evolved and explains how the Pesta experience transforms not only the children—including many diagnosed with various psychological problems and learning disabilities—but the parents and teachers as well.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rebecca Wild was born in Germany in 1939 and studied Montessori and music education in Munich, New York, and Puerto Rico before moving to Ecuador in 1961. In 1977, she and her husband, Mauricio, founded in the Pestalozzi kindergarten, which eventually expanded to a primary school, then a high school. Her work inspired the founding of several schools based on the Pesta model in Austria, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, and the author's native Germany.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; 1st Shambhala Ed edition (October 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570624550
• ISBN-13: 978-1570624551
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #850,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An inspiration for protecting the integrity of children, December 2, 2000

By 

Ruth R. Money (Hermosa Beach, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Raising Curious, Creative, Confident Kids: The Pestalozzi Experiment in Child-Based Education (Hardcover)

This is Rebeca Wild's inspiring account of her educational program in
Ecuador created to cherish the dignity, self worth, and creativity of
for both native and European children. Starting with a kindergarten
in the 1960's, she and her husband Maurico have gradually expanded
their school through elementary and high school. It is also the story
of Rebeca Wild's committment to an authentic life, and her steps along
the way. A philology major in college who meets her future husband in
a summertime job driving a tourist bus, she shares with us the ideas
of the authors whom she has found most meaningful and helpful to her
as she creates an educational model that has been replicated in
various parts of the world. Her stories of the struggles to build
each school, her interactions with the students, her thoughts, make
this book come alive. Equally interesting was their experience with
their own children. The brief account of how Maurico allowed his son
to re-experience a traumatic event from the past compels me to agree
with the author on the value of a "reality therapy" that
each of us can apply in our day-to-day life. I felt renewed in my work
with parents and infants as I read it.