“Love Each Child into Being” with Phil Moore

Phil Moore spent forty-three years as director of Upland Hills School in Michigan, one of the enduring schools to emerge from the Free School Movement of the early 1970s. He's the author of The Future of Children. While many approaches to education operate on fear-based incentives like grades, compliance, and ranking, Phil built a model based on trust, cooperation, and the conviction that every child is already a genius, waiting to be seen rather than shaped. In this conversation with Chandra Edwards he traces that philosophy from Upland Hills' earliest, chaotic years through a remarkable, decades-spanning story of how it found its way to a new school on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Their conversation explores what education for children can be like when each child is treasured for their innermost being, and how one school can become an inspiration for another, stitching magical connections together across time.