Millennial Child

Millennial Child: Transforming Education in the Twenty-First Century

In assuming that children can assimilate a conceptual framework that was once considered fit only for adults, we have indeed turned children into “little adults” who (it would appear) can think logically, make decisions for themselves, and express precocious sexual desires. Deprived of the boundaries that once separated the “world of childhood” from the world of adulthood, these children of the 90s are also capable of promiscuous sexual behavior and violence toward themselves and others on a scale never seen before. Is there any way for childhood to be regained? How may the Millennial Child have a childhood? –Eugene Schwartz

Today’s children are an endangered species. As a result of the reductionism spawned by Freud and the homogenization of the stages of human life that followed, many children seem to have lost their childhood and been thrust into the confusing and chaotic world of adults.

Eugene Schwartz presents an incisive analysis of the ways in which the errors of the first third of our century have come back to haunt us at the century’s end. After carefully examining Sigmund Freud’s tragic misunderstanding of childhood and tracing its consequences for today’s parents and educators, the author points to the radically new paradigm of childhood development offered by Rudolf Steiner and embodied in Waldorf education.

Parents, teachers, and child psychologists will find a wealth of insight concerning such diverse subjects as the nature of play, the causes of ADHD, computers as teachers, and the power that love and imagination will have in the education of the Millennial Child.

About the Author

Eugene Schwartz has had over thirty years of teaching experience with children and adults and has served as a consultant to over a hundred Waldorf schools.