Catherine l’Ecuyer

About Catherine l’Ecuyer

The Wonder Approach is a new learning theory that she recently published in the prestigious academic journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Her book, The Wonder Approach, has been published in Italy, Corea and Spain (2012), where it is considered as a bestseller (10th edition). Her blog ( http://apegoasombro.blogspot.com.es) receives more than 150,000 visits a year.

For the last 20 years, our children have lived in an environment that is more and more frenetic, competitive and demanding. During these years, parents have met with a new challenge in education. They have come to believe that ‘more and earlier is better’. As a result, children are encouraged to play with educational toys, are pressured to excel in one activity after another and are exposed to hours of fast paced screen viewing. Do children need so much input? It is time to unveil a series of educational myths.

Updates in neuroscience tell us that more and earlier is not the better. On the contrary, constant noise and stimulus consume our childrens attention, and interrupt their natural learning process, making it increasingly difficult for them to observe, to question and to wonder. According to Aristotle, all men by nature desire to learn, or ‘wonder’. The wonder approach consists in creating a favorable environment, so that the natural desire to learn can flourish in our children and later teenagers. The wonder approach is about respecting our childrens own pace, their need for silence, nature and mystery, giving them opportunities for beauty and giving them back the love of learning they were born with.