Our Educational Approach

I recalled one dawn when I had chanced upon a butterfly’s cocoon in a pine tree at the very moment when the husk was breaking and the inner soul was preparing to emerge. I kept waiting and waiting; it was slow and I was in a hurry. Leaning over it, I began to warm it with my breath. I kept warming it impatiently until the miracle commenced to unfold before my eyes at an unnatural speed. The husk opened completely; the butterfly came out. But never shall I forget my horror: its wings remained curled inward, not unfolded. The whole of its minuscule body shook as it struggled to spread the wings outward. But it could not. As for me, I struggled to aid it with my breath. In vain. What it needed was to ripen and unfold patiently in sunlight. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to emerge ahead of time, crumpled and premature. It came out undeveloped, shook desperately, and soon died in my palm.

This butterfly’s fluffy corpse is, I believe, the greatest weight I carry on my conscience. What I understood deeply on that day was this: to hasten eternal rules is a mortal sin. One’s duty is confidently to follow nature’s everlasting rhythm.

(Excerpt from “Zorba the Greek” by Nikos Kazantzakis)

It is our belief that pedagogical approaches must take account of the way in which children learn and develop as social beings. They must respond to the social, emotional, and individual needs of children, and must be flexible enough to allow children to move at a pace and in a way that preserves their innate curiosity and sense of wonder, which are the basis for lifelong learning.

As educators, our aim is to give students the opportunity to learn in a purposeful way, and to encourage enquiry learning in organic or meaningful contexts. Care and education form a unity in our approach, as education is built on caring interactions with other children and adults. At Kaleide International School, this caring bond will ultimately encompass the world of ideas, the human-made world and the natural world.

We want to encourage children to explore ideas about themselves and the world in which they live; to ask questions and to realise that often we need to seek answers for ourselves; to embrace diversity and ambiguity; to acquire a sense of responsibility towards themselves and others; to create meaning in their lives and, in the words of Maxine Greene, ‟to look upon the ordinary with new eyes”.

Either education is a situation of research and this research produces new pedagogy, or it is the provision of a service that is delivered to young children, subjecting them in a message which is already completely prefabricated and codified in some way.

Loris Malaguzzi