when we moved to Holland in 1999, one of the many things on our to do list was finding a school for the boys. Oldest had been going to the one that we could walk to in St. Leonards, a sweet, very British primary school with kind teachers and classrooms that were filled to the brim with learning equipment. no way was this school going to produce illiterate children who would have trouble reading books {UK had a bit of a reputation for not delivering enough academics to secondary schools, and was trailing in the European statistics...} and Oldest was lapping up the stuff he was offered to learn about. which at 5-and-a-bit was fairly promising, if you've been raised to be impressed by academia. which we were...
the list of schools that we obtained from the council of the town we were aiming to move to had a lot of similar seeming schools - normal schools where the kids were going to learn normal stuff and probably become normal teens who would be having normal lives. so far, so normal... until my eyes saw a few anomalies - a Montessori school, and a Waldorf Steiner school... the first one i was familiar with {had read a lot about Maria Montessori's ideals about education, which seemed to me very impressive, and if Oldest had not been in the little friend group that he had been since babyhood - comprising of a bunch kids with aspiring middle class parents who had become my friends over the years - i would have seriously considered the Montessori playgroup that was a short drive away... but all his little buddies were going to the school down the road, and no way was i going to deny him his social life...
but since we were moving to another country, and he was going to start afresh anyway, his education, and that of his little brother, was a blank slate. one of the reasons why we moved to Holland was the fact that education was so much better organised, and due to other factors, kids were going to have such a better chance at becoming happy, balanced people than they would be in England. only, the dutch system was never known for its love for the creative, nature-based, spiritual or intuitive...
in the months before moving, i had gotten to know someone who was a teacher at a Waldorf Steiner school in the south of England. the way he talked about the things he was teaching sparked something in me. someone else in our friends group had been to a similar type [boarding] school, and the more i was reading about this - finding the odd book in the library, applying for info at the schools themselves - the more i was convinced that i wanted this for my kids...
ever since leaving school, i vowed to not let my kids [if i ever had any] become disheartened by their peers, to feel like they were weird, or wrong, for being who they were. and the Waldorf Steiner Schools [Vrije School in dutch] seemed to offer all the things i felt were lacking in the school i went to, and the regular schools that were on the list. so we went over to have a chat with someone, had a look around, let Oldest have a look around, and put his name down for when we moved.
Oldest was less than impressed when he got over the initial shock of being plonked into a classroom full of people whose language he wasn't fluid in, playing with blocks and wooden things, he had been used to learning to read and write, to have homework, to hold a pen, and to be challenged - here he was back in playgroup?! he'd done all that - where was the meaty stuff he could get his teeth stuck into?? it took him a while to let go of this notion, and he settled into his new routine, made new friends, learnt to speak dutch within weeks, found his place in the school and did well. his little brother did too, although he was a totally different temperament, and [unlike his older brother] rubbed teachers up the wrong way, but had heaps of friends, flourished in his own way and found his own voice and feet in his own time.
the school has been as much a place of education for me as the kids...
i learnt so much there - things about myself that i never knew existed... i learnt physical skills {felting, painting techniques}, reacquainted myself with ones i had learnt ages ago, learnt about the Edda, drawing certain shapes [vormtekenen] and the reasons behind them, i learnt about nature and minerals, i learnt about the connections between so much more, i learnt to find my inner Self, about what makes me Me, the Astral body as well as the Ether body, the importance of natural materials and my Soul Purpose, about Organic food and Biodynamic farming, about the phases of the moon, about Eurythmy, and the fact i can Sing... to name but a few...
my daughter has just finished her 12 years of Waldorf Steiner education, although she also did 3 years of the infants school, and 1 year as a toddler, which makes it 16 years of being steeped in it. and she probably got a bit of it when she was dragged along to school with her three brothers as well, as a baby, so basically all her life has been that weird school, as her oma once called it. she did her End Of School Presentation, leaving me feeling so incredibly proud of the accomplished, mature young woman that she has become over the years. the boys never went to the secondary school, for reasons that made sense to them, but i had wanted them to have had this as well, the connectedness to the others in their year, to the others in the school, to nature, to Life, to their Soul Purpose...
i'm glad i found the school on the list, back in 1999, twenty two years ago now, cos it changed our lives, and it helped us to find a ground under our feet, and a long list of beautiful people who became guides, and helpers, and friends...
more can be read here:
[in dutch]
* de vrije juf
* vrije school breda
* antroposofie.nl
[in english]
* wiki about anthroposophy
