Steiner
When I think of my childhood, my mind fills with faded rainbow muslin cloths, wood and woollen toys, the smell of bees wax and feel of felt slippers.
Mary McCormick
I spent my kindergarten and primary school days at the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School, where things where a little different from most conventional schools, a difference I was well aware of from a young age. For one thing I didn’t start school till the year I turned seven, a fact usually met with great surprise by my peers who kindly ask me whether I was slow or had learning difficulties. Neither is true, thankfully. Everyone at a Steiner school starts at this age according to the Rudolf Steiner philosophy. The concept is to attune the curriculum to the developmental stages of the child, so that certain stimulus is given at the right stage of development. I later learned that my father, accustomed to his conventional education in 1950’s Porirua, was somewhat sceptical of this hippie school and every time he called would anxiously ask my mother if we could read yet.
This alternative education has often been perceived as weird with a faint air of witchcraft; I was once asked, “Isn’t that the place where they round off their pages because they believe the devil hides behind corners?” Yes, the corners of the pages were rounded; no, it was not in any connection to the devil. In fact, there was never any mention of the devil as far as I’m aware. It was about creating a more harmonious shape which was mirrored in the school’s architecture.
My mother being a Steiner kindergarten teacher; my sister and I had the full Steiner experience at home as well as school, meaning no TV, Barbies or electronic toys. Even now we don’t have a microwave and the pantry is stocked with organic produce. It’s not unusual to come home to find the bath full of pohutakawa branches and know it must be advent time again, or be forced to help mum with her flower stealing excursions under cover of darkness, secateurs at the ready, to fill the kindy vases. The school was full of parents like my mother who were perhaps a little over zealous in their endeavour to provide their children with only the best and healthiest of sustenance. I vividly remember one day at school they gave us all ice-cream, which I waited in a seemingly endless line for in great excitement, only to discover it was, in fact, soy ice cream - which, for those of you fortunate enough not to know, does not taste like ice cream at all. Nor does carob taste like chocolate, no matter how many times your mother tries to fool you into thinking it does.
A large part of the curriculum consisted of play. However, the toys were far from the hard, bright plastic blocks, Barbie dolls, and play dough found in most kindergartens or primary schools. There was no plastic to be found at all. All the toys were made from natural materials, or simply were natural materials like the baskets of logs, stones and acorns which featured in our games in an infinite number of imaginative roles. Our dolls were rounded wool and felt creations, which, by comparison, make Barbie look like a prostitute. Our paintings were done on huge wet pages (with rounded corners of course) using watery red, yellow and blue paint which spread rapidly and mixed to form new colours. There was no way to colour in the lines - if you wanted to paint something specific, with definite edges, it was virtually impossible. Whatever you tried to paint ended up looking like a rainbow melted onto your page. Our playground, rather than monkey bars, slides or swings, consisted of a huge hillside of gorse bushes and trees, in which we made huts (the only drawback being you had to avoid contact with the walls and ceilings) and explored far beyond the ‘bounds’ into dense bush and streams, eventually leading to the sea. My sister and her friends were infamous for this. Intrepid explorers, they would go for a walk in the bush in the mornings and not return until near the end of school, covered in scratches and usually crying so as to avoid getting in trouble. Though that was never likely.
The school had a fairly relaxed attitude towards rules and enforcing them. OSH would probably have fainted. One of our favourite pastimes in kindy was to sit in the bottom of a large cupboard with the doors closed and drip wax from candles onto paper. We made our own games. Once, we had a whole school tug-of-war with a giant rope, which ended in several injuries. This was not an organised tug of war, but our own initiative, perhaps born of a desire for some form of competition, which we didn’t have. No sports teams, sports days or swimming sports; no competition of any form. We didn’t sit exams or get grades, and definitely no prize giving. There was no ‘top in class’, or the best sports player, or most talented performer. Hierarchy had no place at Steiner.
One of the things I loved most about going to a Steiner school was the element of magic. At Christmas, St. Nicholas (aka Santa) would visit the school and give us gifts, while during advent, small figures of Mary and Joseph on the donkey would make their journey around the Kindergarten, miraculously a little further on every morning when we arrived, until they reached their manger. The seasons were celebrated with festivals for each, maypole dancing in spring, the lantern festival for autumn, the summer fair and the midwinter star-candle spiral. Everything had a story (even the letters of the alphabet) in which gnomes, goblins, knights and princesses featured heavily. I remember making fairy gardens in the flower patches about the school, leaving them over night, and returning early in the morning to discover small crystals hidden in them by the fairies. This, as I learnt much later on, was the work of the oldest students. And in turn, we would come to do the same for the next generation. It seems amazing to me now that no one was tempted to break this illusion for us. Steiner created an environment where make-believe was reality.
My childhood was full of fantasy and play. In a world where children are forced to grow up so fast and reality is so harsh, the Steiner school was an oasis for imagination and innocence. And for those short years, I will always be grateful.