Where learning is anything but by the book
Fairview: Tests have no place at school that stresses global lessons
LINDA STEWART BALL Staff Writer  
Published: October 27, 2005



FAIRVIEW - The Robert Muller Center for Living Ethics isn't the kind of school you would expect to find tucked away in conservative Collin County.

While others put considerable emphasis on the standardized test, the center follows a different educational muse.

Emphasizing ecology, peace, love and working together to build a better world, this school is a throwback to the '60s.

Perhaps that's why it makes some traditionalists nervous. Or maybe it's the ornery goats, Bert and Ernie, chomping on the center's seven wooded acres and fields.

Either way, something unusual is happening at the small alternative school for pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade students.

Soft-spoken teachers and confident students plopped comfortably on floor rugs in their stocking feet discuss lessons. Grades and tests are considered taboo.

"We just treasure what they [the students] do," said Vicki Johnston, the school's founder, a Montessori-trained educator who taught six years in Dallas public schools.

Here, the teachers review a student's body of work to identify strengths and use them to improve weak areas.

Ms. Johnston believes traditional schools have become too test-obsessed and punitive - focusing on memorizing facts that often are quickly forgotten instead of creating an in-depth understanding.

She says standardized tests measure only a "sliver of intelligence." Perhaps, but advocates of accountability say such tests are a necessary evil.

"The fact is the only way of knowing if a school is doing a good job is to somewhat measure what the kids learn," said John Katzman, founder and CEO of the Princeton Review, a test preparation firm.

"For people to say, 'These tests aren't very good, therefore we're not going to measure schools or kids ...' with all due respect," Mr. Katzman said, "I think that's nuts."

But Ms. Johnston said there's nothing crazy about trying to create a nurturing program "that stimulates brilliance through joy."

Praise from parents

Parents say their children wake each morning eager to go to school.

"I like how they talk to kids," said Michael Poklikuha, a systems analyst in Plano, who has an 8-year-old and 10-year-old at the center. "The teachers treat them in a respectful way. It's not like in public school where you're shamed if you do something the teacher doesn't like."

He's pleased with his daughters' academic progress and has no qualms about how they'll do later in life. After all, Mr. Poklikuha's 20-year-old stepson, a pre-med student at the University of Notre Dame with a 3.6 grade-point average, attended the center until the fourth grade.

Families have commuted from as far as Cedar Hill and Hurst.

They hear about the school through home-schooling groups and natural parenting organizations. They come because it fits with their lifestyles or philosophies.

"I suppose that Muller School appeals to a very liberal set of parents," said Bill Ames, a Dallas-based education watchdog. "And so I guess it wouldn't have too broad an appeal, especially in a state like Texas, which fortunately is becoming more and more conservative in its political views."

Global perspective

The school began as the Haven Learning Center in 1986.

It subscribes to the "world-core curriculum," which was created by Robert Muller, a former assistant secretary-general of the United Nations .

The curriculum strives to ensure world peace by playing down nationalism and stressing each child's responsibility to the earth and mankind.

That global perspective, and a model U.N. role-playing event that the center's students participate in each spring, riles critics who believe Mr. Muller's "one-world" perspective smacks of socialism.

"It's just one more piece of indoctrinating our kids with an anti-American worldview as opposed to the patriotic love of country," said Mr. Ames, who discourages student participation in the model U.N. program.

Ms. Johnston said opponents simply misunderstand.

The Robert Muller Center in Fairview is one of about 250 institutions accredited by the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools in Ann Arbor, Mich.

"At a time when we're sort of standardizing the public schools, alternatives seem to be cropping up," said Dr. Bruce Uhrmacher, a University of Denver education professor who has written extensively about such schools.

Thirty-seven students attend the Robert Muller Center. They learn in multi-age settings. Preschoolers are in one room, singing and eating snacks from the school's organic produce cooperative. Next door, 5- to 7-year-olds sit on the floor playing a letter game with their teacher. Upper-elementary students are quietly working on self-directed projects nearby.

"It's great," said Samantha Knoll, an 8-year-old from Allen, who has attended the school for two years. "I can do whatever I want when I want. ... It's better for me to learn here. It's easier."

Unique approach

The school teaches the basics but in innovative ways. In lieu of textbooks, most subjects are infused in fact-based, age-appropriate "teaching stories" and plays that Ms. Johnston has spent years researching and writing.

"Children want to hear stories," she said, "and the information rides effortlessly into their brain."

Teachers say children who transfer to traditional schools after attending Robert Muller usually excel - once they learn how to take tests.

"Intelligent children need exposure to nature, they need freedom of choice and they need forms of curriculum that ignite their enthusiasm and speak to their soul," said Ms. Johnston, who has a master's degree in education from Texas Wesleyan University.

The Robert Muller Center sits on Ms. Johnston's family estate, land she recently deeded to the school.

The center's main source of funds comes from annual tuition, which ranges from $2,700 for part-time preschoolers to $5,450 for middle-schoolers.

"A lot of schools are strictly Montessori or strictly a classical curriculum," said Dr. Lara Ashmore, an education technology consultant in Plano. "She's taken the best of the best educational thinkers over the past 100 years and synthesized them into her own philosophy. ... She's truly a pioneer."

Because the school seeks to educate the whole child - mentally, spiritually, emotionally and physically - students work at their own pace.

While that sounds good in theory, some parents feared how that played out in practice.

"I'm a bigger fan of a little more structure, especially for my older daughter," said Beth Hansen, a Fairview parent who enrolled her two daughters in the center for three years - in preschool only. Her oldest daughter, a seventh-grader gifted in writing, is average in math. "I was very nervous that we would not end up with a well-rounded child if I had kept her in that environment," said Ms. Hansen, who transferred her children to exemplary Lovejoy public schools.

Trouble in past

Similar parental concerns nearly caused the school to implode two years ago.

Enrollment peaked with 64 students. Classrooms were packed. Ms. Johnston stepped back and encouraged parents to take on more of a leadership role so she could focus on writing books to share her education philosophy.

Her hands-off experiment failed. Disagreements arose over the school's direction. Nearly half the students and their parents left. Now, the oldest children at the school are in sixth grade.

But the preschool continues to thrive.

Ms. Johnston called the school a work in progress, one that she's constantly striving to improve.

"What keeps me going is this vision of humane education and a system where children love to learn, millions of children. ...That is my driving life goal."

Then she paused to reflect and sighed, "I weep because I'm so short of it."

E-mail lsball@dallasnews.com

Copyright 2005 The Dallas Morning News