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In this issue we have a report on the field Day at Linuwell School.
Talk by our guest speaker, Greig Scott, of Linuwel Steiner School at Raworth, East Maitland 2323
In his interpretation by George Adams of the “Agricultural Course”, Henri Pfieffer did the forward and spoke about Rudolph Steiner. He said, “It is incredibly important to nourish the body and the soul to take in and develop oneself to understand the universe”.
In this talk, we are making the link between the Hunter Biodynamic group and Linuwel School (Steiner education).The school does not have a principal but has a college of senior teachers and Greig is the nominated leader of the college. It is interesting that the Greeks, way, way back made the connection that a healthy soul brings a healthy body. With this introduction, Mark Brown welcomed Greig Scott to the floor. Greig thanked everyone for the introduction and went on to speak;
Obviously there is a strong link between the various aspects that Steiner talked about in his lifetime. Aspects such as; Biodynamics, Anthroposophical medicine, the Anthroposophical Society and others. These are the aspects we see the most of here at Linuwel.
About Linuwel’s history
Margie Bruvel was involved from the beginning of Linuwel through the Anthroposophical Society and the school eventually split into two groups, the Newcastle Waldorf School and Linuwel under the guidance of Ron and Margaret Caislsey. My wife, Diana and I followed the growth of the school with interest and in 1978 we came up and started working with the school. Diana took a primary school class and I started the high school aspect.
Steiner and how does it fit?
Biodynamics is based on an understanding of the spiritual world. In brief, what we are trying to do in Steiner education (because it is a huge field) is a few core things:
We recognise that the children are part of this world, have a destiny in this world and also, according to Steiner have repeated lives on earth. The children come to each life with a mixture of things, a kernel of all their previous lives together with what their biological parents give to them and the environment into which they are born. The idea is to look at each child and determine where that child has come from in a general sense, where they are now and facilitate them to have a meaningful life and develop their understanding of the world around them. Teachers strive to develop their awareness of the spiritual world and how, what we all do in this life will play out in future lives. Some parents don’t want to know but others do. We want to give the children what they need to make the most of their lives.
The four bodies - physical, etheric, ego and astral
A core thing with Steiner is providing the right thing for the children at the right age and through the various stages of development.
From 0-7 years the physical body is developing, under the umbrella of the mother’s etheric body. Their astral body is relatively undeveloped at that stage.
Kindy, is about developing and educating their physical body while they are still shaping their organs, and preparing for the birth of their etheric body as they leave to go to primary school. Kindy is the “top” of the school and has the most effect. A big part is baking and eating for the kindies. They do a lot of baking and as much as possible the kindy use Biodynamic ingredients because we know the food that they eat has a major effect on the development of their organs. Their interactions, the music, the movement, the environment play into their development. We share a huge responsibility with the parents.
Primary is about setting up an understanding of the world and people. The greater the variety of children there are in the class, the greater the understanding that can be developed by the children – educating the etheric body.
Stages within the seven years.
In history we read about the various epochs in ancient civilizations and the current period. We watch the children develop and we actually see a reflection of each epoch in the children as they go through. We do a lot of art and craft and stories to bring life and imagination to the teaching and learning. The 3R’s learning is important and continues throughout. We concentrate on Thinking more in the morning, Feeling activities in the middle of the day and Willing/Physical in the afternoon. Developing the children’s imagination in the primary school is a very important thing. The teacher has to have a good imagination to convey things to the children through art, music, story, drama, cooking etc. All of what can be “dry” subjects when introduced through stories, art, etc., become a living thing for the children. We are bringing life to the children in a round-a-bout way. Most of the children are enthusiastic to come to school. The children like learning and they are generally happy to come to Linuwel. Childhood is too precious to be a drag, to spend most of their time doing what they don’t enjoy doing. They need to be introduced to the world of more complicated ideas towards the end of primary, preparing them for the high school.
After puberty the teaching focus moves from the etheric to the astral development. The main focus in the high school is to develop their thought processes to make judgments and help to develop the astral body.
In kindy the developing physical body is managed through the etheric body. The teacher works from the etheric.
In primary, the teacher’s astral body is informing the child and bringing things to the child, working on the child’s etheric body.
In High School the astral body is being developed and the teacher works from the ego, helping the students to manage their astrality.
Life forces in biodynamic food have a huge contribution to make to the development of the child. One of the things that runs through the school is being in touch with the natural world and nature, which is closely tied in with Biodynamics. Right from Kindy the students are out looking at the natural world and they go further afield as they grow older. This is an essential part of their education right through the school - as well as the preparation of food, growing the food and in the high school that continues on. The primary school is the time when they start to grow their food and they grow the plants in front of their class rooms (which was developed by Margie’s son, Michael). There have been gardens in all sorts of places around the school. The High School also has its own gardens. John Ellis worked with the children in growing food Biodynamically. He did a lot of work setting up the gardens with the high school and also with the primary. Without John, the large garden in the high school has become too difficult to manage and we would like to do something with that area in the future, perhaps with the Biodynamic group.
We are also trying to improve the site as a whole to have more fruit trees and just generally develop. Erhen (who is here at the meeting) is actually more than a groundsman, he has done most of his education through Linuwel and has lots of ideas to help move the BD gardening further ahead. Diana (my wife) is here as she is the curriculum development person. Agriculture is an important part of Linuwel’s curriculum. The Year 8’s have just been to Lightning Ridge and as they travelled they worked out the different uses of the plants they found and one of the children said that the canola crops are like the sunshine settling on the earth.
Questions:
What sort of challenges do you have fitting in the NSW education requirements and the wishes of the people?
We can’t do everything in our ideal way. There has been more and more pressure to follow the state syllabus. Our courses have to relate to the outcomes that the NSW board of studies puts out there. It depends upon who is looking at us at the time. We have to be reassessed and licensed every five years. So long as we are heading in their overall direction, everything is fine. We start the computing a lot later than in the state syllabus; we don’t want computing until late primary or high school. Most children use them at home. When we start teaching writing and math differs from what is generally done – we start later. Finland is renowned as a leader in education where the students don’t start school until 7. The western world wants everything earlier. Research shows that starting things really early doesn’t help and so Finland starts later. More research has shown that teaching children to read earlier and earlier is having a long term detrimental effect. All of the external testing and the ongoing push to a federal syllabus raises many questions. Other countries have tried that and have left it behind. We are well behind those other countries. There is a national curriculum being developed right now so that we will be teaching roughly the same thing as every other state.
The Association of Steiner Schools applied to be able to have a Steiner education curriculum accepted federally. Other systems are doing similarly. There will be compromises that have to be made but there is a lot of well researched material and there are capable people who are writing the Steiner curriculum. So far it has been accepted in principle but just how far we have to compromise is not known yet. OH&S is another issue - such as climbing trees, etc. and on this we have to compromise. We believe children should be able to (and do) have minor falls, etc., and not be put in bubble wrap because that does not ultimately help them.
Your year 12 do not do the HSC do they?
For several years we did run an alternative 11 and 12 course. We were never funded for this and but whilst running the alternative course, it proved very valuable to the students. You don’t need the HSC to enter University, you can do a comprehension-based STAT test or open foundation, and there are lots of other ways. The students, who did our year twelve and wanted to go on to university, did those tests and entered University. It gave us a chance to prepare a non-constrained programme because it was not a recognized course. The groups died off naturally. The compulsory school leaving age has jumped up to 17 and our year 10’s are now looking at a post-year10 which gives them another year to take them through to 17. For many, another year will give them more confidence to do a TAFE course or go and do the STAT test at University. Years 11 and 12 might start again depending upon the demand and what our resources are because there is no government funding past year 10 unless you do the HSC. If it is meant to happen, it will. We listen to the world and the children and try not to be too constrained by budgets but be agents of the higher forces rather than have our own set ideas.
What do Steiner children end up doing and how many farmers come out of them?
That is a very good question. I only know some of what happens. How many have gone into farming, I don’t know. We are trying to build up a database of what Steiner children have done, for our own interest and for advocacy.
They have gone into extremely diverse areas, from the academics to the basics depending upon their interests. We have a lot of learning-difficulty children who come here, where they are treated like everyone else and come out with self confidence to move on. One of our ex “learning difficulty” students had trouble getting jobs, didn’t really like physical work but none the less took work with an environmental landscaping company and now has a job in a warehouse which is more what he wanted. I think that job will suit him down to the ground.
Is the public perception that Steiner is still more biased to the arts and not the sciences?
I think it varies with the years. Our records indicate or anecdotal chats show that interest in the sciences concentrates in particular birth years of students. We currently do have a number of students going into visual arts and design and one particular previous class was very science oriented - they finished year 12 this year and lots of them want to do vet science, medicine, etc. We do the same science as everywhere else up to year 10 which is not all that deep but in the 11 and 12 we had limited facilities and were not able to offer the advanced sciences. We don’t discourage science. We are going to the party of an ex-pupil tonight. Ex-pupils are often coming to visit. They are always coming back, we love to see them. In terms of curriculum development John Ellis was to the stage of gathering a lot of information about what time to introduce agriculture to the children and deciding at what age they should learn the various aspects of agriculture.
Why do you think children enjoy attending Linuwel?
The children have the perception that they are so free to be themselves. They talk about the plays and the camps and outings. Unfortunately, as the school has expanded to take up space, the wildlife has reduced. We used to have a dairy cow, a horse, guinea fowl but the school has grown and taken over more of the land. We have one surviving goose who has taken the father role for the surviving ducklings. We tried to bring in other new animals but it hasn’t worked because as we grow we haven’t had the time to put into the animals. We are trying to develop a wildlife area but the days of having bigger animals have gone. People have asked if they can leave their livestock here but it is too risky because we can’t watch them. We have a small coop of chooks. The kindy will be over near the pre-school next year and we will move the chickens over that side. In our curriculum there are moments where they spend 3 weeks on the relationship of man and animals. The children want alpacas. We would like to have bees but with John going, that has been put on hold. As we go to supper, we will be looking at the classrooms.
As a complete novice, costings, fundings rely very heavily on government funding. Is it more costly to run the school?
Any independent school will cost the parents. Yes, it does cost the parents about $1000 per term, though more than half our income is from federal and state governments. We really work to keep our overheads down and administration low. Most of the money goes into staff costs and materials we buy for the children.
We would like to be able to do it for nothing but for the parents to pay something, it helps them to value the school and what we do for them. A lot of parents make great sacrifices to send their children here and if we could make it cheaper, we would. As Diana and I have another commitment, I will close the presentation but if you want to know anything else, please see me over supper or contact me when school resumes.
Thank you for your interest.
PREP PRICE
Hi everyone, just a reminder that the preps are still the same price for members,
$1.00 per acre for 500
$1.00 per acre for 501
$10.00 for a full set of compost preps
Contact Margie on Ph. 02 49 385 435
Hunter Biodynamic Group PO Box 68 East Maitland 2323
www.hunterbiodynamic.org.au
Chair: Danny Woodland 49965500 Preps: Margaret Bruvel 4938 5435