Green School featured in The New York Times

Hot off the press! November 13, 2017. Incredible coverage by Tom Vanderbilt for the New York Times ! We are looking to build more green schools and this will help!

Read the whole Green School profile here. Words by Tom Vanderbilt and photos by Jeremy Piper.

“When I asked Druhan if she could sum up Green School in one moment, she paused. One of her strongest memories was when her young son was doing the “rice thematic”— rice being of central economic and cultural import in Bali. His class had gone out in the fields to learn how to grow rice. He raved about the farmer. “He said, ‘Mum, he’s like a scientist! He has so much knowledge, and he doesn’t have even any instruments.”’ The students went on not only to harvest the rice, but cook an elaborate dinner in an underground fire pit, which they served to the farmers, parents and teachers. “That was everything that’s good about Green School in one moment: The hands-on learning, the respect for school values, the connection to the community.”

 

“But the element that truly distinguishes Green School is its very premise. Begun a decade ago by John and Cynthia Hardy, jewelry designers and longtime Bali residents, it was intended to do nothing less than create a future generation of “green leaders,” even as it would defy — in form and function — what we know as school itself. In a much-viewed 2010 TED Talk, John Hardy, clad in sarong and sandals, speaks passionately about his own early troubles as a student (owing, in part, to his undiagnosed dyslexia) and how his school differs from a traditional educational institute. That talk, and, more importantly, word of mouth, has lured more than one parent to Bali from as far afield as Malibu, Budapest and São Paulo.”