Green School Bali is an inspiring example of what education can look like when children are surrounded by nature, creativity, real-world learning and a strong sense of purpose.
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Built from bamboo in the forest of Bali, this remarkable school challenges traditional thinking about education and invites us to ask an important question: are our schools truly preparing children for the modern world?
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Editor’s note: This article was originally written during our early Enterprise for Kids journey and has been refreshed with updated formatting, links and reflections to make it more useful for families today.
Green School Bali: A Different Vision for Education
Imagine a school with a natural, holistic, student-centred learning environment that empowers and inspires young people to be creative, innovative, environmentally aware and connected to the real world.
Many schools aspire to this kind of vision, but very few capture the imagination of parents and educators around the world in quite the same way.
Green School Bali is located in a forest on the island of Bali in Indonesia, and it is constructed largely from bamboo. You can learn more through the official Green School Bali website.
The school is different in its construction, its philosophy, its curriculum, its connection to nature and the way it encourages children to think, question, create and engage with the world around them.
A Presentation That Challenged Our Thinking
Cathy, myself and our kids had the opportunity to attend an excellent presentation in Perth on Green School Bali. The principal, Mr Alan Wagstaff, showcased the school and shared its philosophy on education. He spoke with passion and with tremendous pride.
Rightly so. Green School Bali was turning many heads.
The founders of the school were thinking outside the box. They had created a harmonious learning environment designed to help children become more engaged, creative and connected. For families and educators interested in innovation, sustainability and real-world learning, the school offered a powerful glimpse of what education could become.
It also challenged us to think more deeply about the purpose of schooling. Is education mainly about compliance, testing and content delivery, or should it also help children develop initiative, creativity, confidence, problem-solving and a sense of purpose?
Why Green School Bali Matters for Entrepreneurial Kids
At Enterprise for Kids, we have always been interested in the kind of education that helps children become capable, confident and enterprising. We value literacy and numeracy, but we also believe children need opportunities to create, lead, solve problems, manage money, work with others and connect their learning to real life.
That is why Green School Bali stood out to us.
Many schools do valuable work, but traditional systems can sometimes place more emphasis on obedience, standardisation and testing than on creativity, enterprise and real-world problem-solving. This becomes especially important when a child wants to become an entrepreneur, innovator, creator or change-maker.
Children also need practical life skills, including financial education for kids, confidence, communication, responsibility and initiative.
This connects closely with why we care about raising entrepreneurial kids. Children need space to think, question, experiment, fail safely, solve problems and connect their learning to real life.
Alan Wagstaff was very direct about the challenges he saw in traditional education systems. He spoke about student engagement, relevance, creativity and the need to rethink how schools prepare children for life beyond the classroom.
He also cited the work of respected thinkers and authors such as Alfie Kohn and Stephen Covey.
What Makes Green School Bali So Special?
One of the most powerful ideas behind Green School Bali is that children are not treated as numbers sitting at desks, simply waiting to be told what to do next.
The school’s philosophy encourages ideas to be noticed, explored and developed. Creativity is not treated as something extra. It is part of the learning environment.
That kind of educational philosophy speaks strongly to families who want children to grow as confident, creative and capable young people.
Student Engagement and Real-World Learning
Alan Wagstaff shared his concern that many older students in regular schools are not fully engaged in their learning and do not really like school.
Many students feel they are learning things that will not be useful when they leave school. We have heard similar comments from our own teenage children at times. I can also think back to parts of my own schooling and teacher training where the content felt disconnected from the work and life skills I actually needed later.
Alan said we need to rethink the structure of timetabling. Instead of organising every part of the day around separate subjects, he spoke about more student-centred learning.
In many schools, the timetable revolves heavily around literacy and numeracy, with subjects such as the arts pushed into whatever space remains. Literacy and numeracy matter, but they are not the whole picture of a child’s development.
Children also need creativity, enterprise, emotional intelligence, communication, physical development, curiosity and a strong connection between learning and life.
What Creates Life Success?
What is it about schooling that creates life success? A powerful starting point is this: children need to turn up engaged.
When children are satisfied, curious and engaged, learning becomes more meaningful. Their learning needs to be realistic and relevant to them as individuals.
Every day, we should be helping children grow academically, socially, emotionally and practically. That does not mean simply comparing them with other children.
Parents can ask not only how their child compares with others, but what their child is actually learning, becoming and developing.
How Green School Bali Teaches Children
Alan explained how children were educated at Green School Bali.
The programs were structured around themes, collaboratively planned by teacher team leaders. Teachers then ran proficiency lessons within those short-term themes.
Each student was shown the continuum of what they needed to learn in different areas of the curriculum. From there, they worked towards learning what they needed at their own level. Over time, this helped children take more responsibility for their own learning.
Within the broader themes, students followed their own interests. They developed ideas, identified what they needed to learn and took part in investigations and study groups to understand and practise skills.
Every day, the children were engaged in practical lessons that challenged the Big Four: physical, emotional, intellectual and interpersonal learning.
For example, if the general theme was “Waves”, the Big Four might look like this:
- Physical: Go and experience waves by surfing.
- Emotional: Paint a wave or sing a wave melody.
- Intellectual: Study wave formations.
- Interpersonal: Sit by the waves and meditate.
At Green School Bali, learning was designed to be more flexible and responsive than a rigid subject-by-subject timetable. This allowed themes to develop through what Alan described as dynamic chaos. Specialist teachers, classroom teachers and students worked together to explore the theme from different angles.
Authentic Learning Beyond the Classroom
Alan said that in order for students to learn something deeply, they must “hit it three times in three different ways during the week”. Mini themes developed within the bigger themes, and teachers helped children self-manage their way through learning.
This kind of approach encourages engagement and lifelong learning.
Opportunities were seized as they arose to provide practical real-life lessons in areas such as:
- connecting to the real world
- environmental education
- health and wellbeing
- performing arts
- enterprise education
- visual arts
These lessons were timed, sustainable, flexible and authentic. They happened by venturing beyond the school and accessing adults and resources in the enterprising world.
This connects strongly with the kind of family adventure and real-world learning that we value at Enterprise for Kids.
A School Designed for Engagement
Green School Bali’s aim was for children to want to go to school and to be fully engaged. The emphasis was on relevance, purpose and valuing students, rather than only testing and comparing them.
Comparison can put unnecessary pressure on children. A more meaningful goal is to help children discover what they are capable of and how their learning connects to life.
Green School Bali’s Bamboo Campus
Green School Bali is known for its extraordinary bamboo architecture and natural campus. The school was designed with sustainability in mind, using natural materials and creating a learning environment that feels deeply connected to the land around it.
Students were also involved in practical learning experiences connected to sustainability, food, animals and environmental responsibility.
Surrounding the school were bamboo homes built by local and international families who chose to live in Bali so their children could attend the school.
At the time of this original article, there were also studios under construction to be leased cheaply to entrepreneurs, with the idea that students could be involved with these businesses. This would allow students to develop enterprise skills and learn how entrepreneurship works in the real world.
Green School Bali as an Example for the Future
Green School Bali is a real-life example of a school trying to do things differently. It encourages us to think about what children need if they are going to thrive in a changing world.
Although the school had only been running for a relatively short time when this original post was written, it had already attracted global interest from families, educators and people passionate about sustainability and alternative education.
Alan Wagstaff and the founders of the school had a vision to create change in how schools educate. Rather than waiting for change to come from the top of the education system, Green School Bali was working to model a different way from the ground up.
For us, that was the most powerful part of the story. It showed that education can be more creative, practical, sustainable and connected to real life.
Green SuperCamp and Our Family’s Experience
Another way our children experienced the Green School Bali philosophy was through Green SuperCamp.
Kaitlin, Jai and Flynn attended Green SuperCamp, and they came back transformed. At the time of this original post, we were working towards them attending again, along with our eleven-year-old daughter Amber.
You may like to read our earlier posts about Green SuperCamp and our kids’ experiences there.
Flynn’s Green SuperCamp Reflection
Check out what Flynn had to say about Green SuperCamp:
John Hardy, Founder of Green School Bali
John Hardy, founder of Green School Bali, also spoke about the school at TED:
What Parents Can Take from Green School Bali
Most families will not move to Bali or send their children to Green School Bali. But we can still learn from the philosophy behind it.
Children need more than content. They need connection, challenge, creativity, responsibility, practical skills and opportunities to discover who they are becoming.
At home, this might look like:
- giving children real responsibilities
- encouraging them to start small projects
- letting them solve real problems
- helping them manage money and resources
- valuing creativity, nature, movement and reflection
- connecting learning to real life instead of only school results
These are also the kinds of experiences that sit at the heart of our family enterprise stories and the journey of our enterprising kids today.
Key takeaway: Green School Bali shows what can happen when education becomes connected to nature, creativity, enterprise, sustainability and real-world learning. It challenges us to think more deeply about what children truly need in order to thrive.
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Wow – what a school! Your article takes off where last year’s article left. Congratulations to the Green School at achieving what others can only dream of. Glad you mentione Alfie Kohn – his views on education are inspiring.
Alfie Kohn presents an excellent argument against giving kids extrinsic rewards. Our schools today are full of reward systems from prizes and group points in the classroom to merit certificates and end of year award prizes. Rewards are designed to control kids and in a way punish them or their peers who don’t receive the reward. In the home I think parents should encourage their kids to develop enterprises to earn their own pocket money rather than an allowance (reward) for chores done. Rewards create competition, not team work; they develop mindsets where kids become dependent on praise and getting something for their efforts, rather than striving to achieve from an inner drive; rewards also put a cap on learning and development, that is kids will work to the reward and once received they will not work beyond that point. Lots more could be said. Thanks for your comment Linda. Hope all is going well for you guys since MM.
Amazing! It’s great to hear that there are schools out there taking a different approach and encouraging kids to develop creative thinking. Great stuff!
Thanks Helen. Yes Green School has a terrific philosophy and concept! There are other schools out there somewhere that are probably doing the same, but not many who have the freedom and flexibility to venture from a very ridged and inflexible state education system. When will the house warming party be??
“It was the founding parents and the pioneer spirit that sustained the personal energy and commitment we needed to start the school… and the Marimba! Sure, we’ve had failures along the way, but we’ve always fallen forward.” -Chris Gentry, founding parent.