big leap forward

my daughter is on her last days of primary school. after the summer she will be going to secondary school. i am thrilled to know that it will also be an anthroposophically based one. not that i'm so incredibly mad about everything that Rudolf Steiner ever said or wrote {not entirely sure about his insistence on Christianity in his teachings to be honest...} but i have thus far been very happy with the way the pedagogics of the education meets a kind of pagan nature awareness, something so sorely missing in regular education, at least in Holland.

when i went to have a look at the school in 1999, knowing we'd be making the massive leap from England to the Netherlands, i was immediately put at ease by the chat i had with what turned out to be the infants teacher, a funny looking lady with orange hair and the demeanour of the kind of person i was hoping to get to know in Holland {knowing they were few and far between...}. she told me about the philosophy behind the school, the importance of the seasons, the awareness of nature and that kids were allowed to develope at the pace that was natural for their age. no reading and writing before the age of 7, preferably, and infants were allowed and encouraged to play with wooden blocks and woollen dolls. our oldest son would be joining her group, and he was already being taught how to read and write, had been from the age of 5... what would he make of all this playing malarkey?!

he wasn't impressed at first, but then he didn't speak the language yet, felt a little bamboozled by these dutch kids, but to my amazement he picked it up incredibly fast, feeling welcome and okay in the warm, inviting world that was the school. we never looked back...

i'd like to think that i've learnt to understand the Steiner School World by now. sixteen years is a long time, and i think i get it quite a bit. i get the philosophy, i get the visions on art and culture and why it makes me feel so happy to be a part of this world, this strange, slightly Ye Olde Worlde and unexplainable, yet so totally of this world at the same time... i keep coming across parts that puzzle me, but it's fine to question, to meet like-minded doubters and discuss. the teacher i met on that first day is still a friend, and others i met along the way still help me with wonderings. they're a funny bunch, but i enjoy their company on such a different level...

tonight we'll celebrate St. Jan's feast, a kind of mid-summer celebration, where everyone brings food, and shares and talks and drinks, and the kids jump over the fire that's made in the middle of a field. it's a symbolic show of strength, of courage, of wanting to be disposed of bad spirits, to enter the new year cleansed... i could use that - we all could... the last time of many, the first of many more...