School often treats love, belonging, and safety as “nice extras.” This piece argues they’re the starting point. Using early childhood learning as a mirror, it invites readers to imagine an education system built around connection, dignity, and human growth—where curriculum and assessment serve relationship, meaning, and becoming.
Imagine a classroom where every lesson is infused with the same joyful efficiency a toddler experiences when learning to speak. Their language development, a marvel of human potential is nourished by modeling and an abundance of playful love.
Result: a profound sense of agency, the thrill of emerging power. Why can’t we replicate this for every subject, every skill, throughout the educational journey?
If love and a sense of belonging are the engines of early language acquisition, what would it mean to intentionally integrate them into curriculum design and assessment for all subjects?
What is love in the context of learning? It's a question that demands deep introspection and moment to moment action. Surely it means fostering a genuine curiosity that feels less like a task and more like a shared, purposeful exploration. For history, it might be about connecting people’s drives and experiences to our present political issues with empathy, rather than rote memorization of dates and judgment. In science, it could be about igniting a sense of wonder and encouraging hands-on discovery, making the abstract tangible, the unimaginably complex beautiful.
How would we transform our curriculum and assessment processes? Imagine a curriculum designed with the explicit goal of cultivating more love in each student – a deeper feeling of belonging, a desire to help others belong, and a clearer sense of purpose rooted in service to the collective family, community and ecological levels. Assessment could measure knowledge in the context of developing vital human qualities.
My first children's book, written 60 years ago, was originally titled "When you Build with Love." It explored an alienated youngster’s "pursuit" of a meaningful education when he follows an eccentric old artist. The publisher, Little Brown, changed the title to "Beautiful Junk," however, the core message remained: the essence of education lies beyond conventions, in acts of love.
For me, "Love" in education means:
· Learning to balance truth with pain: Acknowledging difficult realities while fostering resilience and hope.
· Finding words that are as kind as possible: Cultivating respectful and empathetic communication.
· Nonjudgmental but discriminative: Encouraging critical thinking and discernment without shaming or invalidating.
· Touching the beauty that is the seed of our awareness and seeing that beauty in everyone: Recognizing and nurturing the inherent worth and potential within each person.
Currently education leaves many students feeling disconnected. By shifting our focus to love, agency, and belonging, we can create a more joyful, efficient, and ultimately more human way of learning. Let's build schools where love for each other and learning is our foundational principle.