Educating Children for Life

Annemarie Roeper was an icon in the field of gifted education, and for good reason. She saw gifted children in a way that was fundamentally unique among educators. Children are not simply small vessels to fill with information and send out into the world. There is so much more to it than that.

The problem with education today is that the system was set up hundreds of years ago, and we have not changed it substantially since that time. And yet the world has changed radically. We are now more connected than ever with people all over the globe. We no longer live in small communities; we live in a vast global community filled with all kinds of people. How, Annemarie asked, can we possibly prepare children for the world as it is now if we teach them using the old methods?

If you could create a school for children in any way that you wanted, what would you do? Annemarie and her husband George not only asked that question of themselves but also answered it and then revised the answer until they were satisfied with their Roeper School for gifted children. Gone was the traditional model of educating children for the next step in their lives: high school, college, career. Yes, those things are important, but what about the children themselves? What about their individual Selves? How can we honor each person’s unique Self within that system so that the students leave school prepared to live in the interconnected, interdependent world as self-actualized human beings? And so was born the Self-Actualization and Interdependence Model.

In this book, Annemarie explores her philosophies of life, of children, of what education can and should be. She explains the inner workings of The Roeper School so that others can emulate it, in whole or even in part. The model is based on equal human rights for all that are the foundation of an interdependent global community in which everyone’s full Selves are realized and everyone’s unique Selves are respected and honored.