“I was introduced to Marilyn Wilhelm forty years ago in my capacity as an Award-winning Producer of world-wide issues and news.  I was the first female Executive Producer in network television, The National Broadcasting Company ( NBC ).  While my mission was to bring about better understanding among world citizenry through the use of television and pictorial examples, Marilyn Wilhelm is dedicated to bringing about peace and global understanding through the use of education and thus enlightening the youth of the world.  I had the great opportunity over the years to observe her at Wilhelm Scholê and was extraordinarily impressed with the scope of her Curriculum.  I listened with amazement to children in the lower grades speaking in four languages which they learned at the school.  I watched and listened to students in the higher grades studying world-maps and discussing the cultural and scientific projections of various nations.  To this day, I wish that the educational organization of the United States would emulate her format.  The success of the Wilhelm interfaith Unified Global Curriculum is obvious in its results --- the accomplishments of graduates and associates in their many international fields of endeavor.”

Lucy Jarvis

“Marilyn Wilhelm was a valuable delegate at the founding Conference of the United Religions Initiative held at Stanford University in 1999.” 

“Marilyn Wilhelm’s pioneering leadership in creating, developing, and implementing an interdisciplinary, intercultural, interlingual interfaith Unified Global Curriculum has won international acclaim.  The inspiring Wilhelm Curriculum imbues pupils with the fact that life is not just about material things.  Life is a spiritual/physical journey in which one has the opportunity and responsibility to participate in the on-going process of becoming what we already are: an evolving global civilization.”

“Creative collaboration with Marilyn Wilhelm in bringing conscious awareness of Universal shared principles began in 2005 with the performance of her Dances of Enlightenment at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.  The Dances of Enlightenment were an opening event for the Celebration of the 60^th Anniversary of the Signing of the Papers to Establish the United Nations as well as the inauguration of the United Nations World Environment Day.”

“United Religions Initiative continues its collaboration with Marilyn Wilhelm in the noble effort for peace and harmony through the worldwide distribution of  The Golden Rule, ‘Wisdom we all hold in Common’.”
 

Bishop William E. Swing

Episcopal Bishop of California

Founder United Religions Initiative

"The all embracing vision of Marilyn Wilhelm is reflected in the Greek word Scholê, the root word for school in Western languages, meaning “life-long learning,” coupled with the Chinese character  meaning “All under Heaven one family.”  The Wilhelm Approach to cultural knowledge, understanding, and respect begins with Language.  For Language transmits the values, ideas, and ideals of a people.  The Wilhelm Curriculum mobilizes Language to be the great unifier by revealing that beneath the diversity of 6,000 languages lays a core of shared beliefs that spread across the globe and make it possible to discuss geographical variations of the same values, ideas, and ideals.  Thus Language and Culture are always studied side by side.  In the process different languages come to be seen as different dialects of one intellectual and spiritual Language.  This concept is confirmed and strengthened when one becomes aware that all translations, from ancient hieroglyphs to modern day languages, are built on this fact.  As students perceive this irrefutable unity in our diverse global community, they acquire a deeper understanding of themselves and humankind as a whole, “the first step to peace and harmony.”

  The Honorable Qiao Hong

Chinese Embassy, Finland

Former Consul General of the People’s Republic of China,

“Marilyn Wilhelm is a living example of a true human being.  Our world is experiencing a fundamental global crisis: a crisis in global economy, global climate change, global degradation of values, and respect for all human rights and life forms.  Most of these problems result from an absence of a Global Ethic.” 

“Marilyn Wilhelm’s creativity and unswerving commitment to global peace and Harmony shine through the Wilhelm interfaith Unified Global Curriculum.  The core value of the Wilhelm Curriculum is the universal Rule bequeathed to us by our ancestors, The Golden Rule, which forms the basis and the bond of our common identity and represents the common ground upon which the spiritual dignity of humankind stands.”

“Wilhelm Scholê in Houston, Texas, is one of the most extraordinary I have ever known.  Its general philosophy is that traditional education has undereducated and underestimated children and that the aesthetic experience is a part of the foundation of a creative adult existence.

From its inception the thrust of Wilhelm Scholê has been to educate children through the arts, which illuminate all societies, and to tie the arts into the sciences, mathematics, religion, and the story of civilization from its beginnings; starting in Africa and Asia as our oldest cultures, moving from there into the Greek and Roman eras which made way for our modern world.

Wilhelm Scholê has two fine accomplishments.  Their two and three year olds are learning more than I did at the age of six, when I was permitted to enter primary school.  The second achievement is that the children are not taking courses that run parallel to each other but never touch.  All of their subjects are integrated, so that they are learning about life as a whole and not as a series of fragmented disciplines.  What better way to learn about botany than to become skilled in Japanese floral arrangements?  What better way to study ancient history than to fly to New Orleans and spend a full day at the King Tut exhibition, and then to write an essay on the meaning and emotional impact of the experience?

It has long been my contention that in order to teach students how to read, it is first necessary to teach them how to write.  At Wilhelm Scholê all the children write every day, the older ones teaching the two and three year olds not only how to write, but how to express themselves.  With every day writing being the norm, the students naturally read every day.  On music, which they play, on architecture, which they observe, on mathematics, technology, medicine, and geography, which even the three and four year olds are able to grasp and fit into their picture of themselves as members of the human race, in all of its nationalities, religions, cultures, so that they learn to see life entire, and to understand that all history is contemporary.

One further word has to be added: I have never seen young children so happy, so stimulated and excited, so content to be in school.  Wilhelm Scholê challenges, feeds, trains, their minds to their outermost capacity.  No discipline is needed here; joy is the greatest of all disciplines.  The joy of learning, understanding, of identifying with all peoples and places in history is the bedrock on which Wilhelm Scholê is founded.

It is my earnest hope that its methods will spread through our land.  Then no longer will we be harassed by the question, “Why can’t Johnny read?”  Johnny will read because Johnny will write, every day, on some fascinating aspect of his fellow man’s accomplishments, each part organically linked to the whole.  That is what Wilhelm Scholê is about.”

Irving Stone

Author

“Marilyn Wilhelm presides with grace and distinction over several worlds  ---  the education of the young  ---  the re-education of the not-so-young  ---  and the preparation of a better future for all.”

Norman Cousins

American political journalist, author, world peace advocate

“Marilyn Wilhelm’s contributions to the art of education should be recognized all over the world --- and practiced.”

Dr. David Gustav Ottoson

“To me as an educator, knowledge in itself, as important as it may be, is less of measure than the use one makes of it.  The children know a great deal about practical things: numbers, words, physics, geography; about esoteric things: ancient Egypt, Great Masters of the Renaissance, Japan, world religions…the most important thing is that they synthesize these things in such a way that each child seems to be able to relate himself or herself to all things past and present.”

Dr. Grant Beglarian

“Marilyn Wilhelm keeps performing miracles in her famous school in Houston, Texas.  She reaches out to very young children and they grasp the concept of the school’s central theme --- the unity of the cosmos, all life and all peoples.  The poetry and art of the children reflect their penetrating understanding and the sheer excitement of living and learning in an enlightened atmosphere.”

Dr. Roger J. Williams

Renowned American Biochemist

Founder/Director, Clayton Foundation Biochemical Institute

University of Texas

President, American Chemical Society

“Wilhelm Scholê International has developed and put into practice a superb educational philosophy.  No matter which subject or discipline is addressed, students find within it an integration of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.  Knowledge is inspiration.  The arts, humanities, and sciences are taught so that their interconnections, and their relationship to the highest potentialities of the human spirit, are brought to the fore.  Students are treated with respect; like young scholars rather than like children.  They are challenged within a totally safe and caring environment.  They are introduced to subjects and intellectual traditions that have for some reason been reserved for a college education within the general American education system.  This school is solving some of society’s gravest problems.  Children receive a moral education without any reliance on dogma.  Morality and the highest values are conveyed to children through their internal connections to scientific truths and aesthetic beauty.  Every child at Wilhelm Scholê International is treated like a gift.  I would recommend this school for anyone and everyone.”

Dr. Phil Francis Carspecken

Professor of Cultural Studies

University of Houston