Our Appointed Rounds
Dear Members of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,
When you take prospective parents on tours you see WSSB afresh. You see our school through their eyes. You see lambs (tended by the third graders) in the orchard; you see chickens (tended by the fourth/fifth grade) scratching in the coop; you see reverently arrayed tables in early childhood; old-fashioned chalkboards; violins and cellos; lab beakers; students walking on colorful stilts. Prospective parents almost always comment on the calmness of WSSB. They often notice the lack of gadgets. Many involuntarily confide: “I wish I could go here.”
And more and more prospective parents -- concerningly -- report how schools elsewhere are not calm: parents tell of bullying, de-personalized anonymity, of an over-reliance on tablets. They tell of children who refuse -- because of psychological overwhelm -- to leave the house in the morning. Needless to say, it is a relief to show them WSSB, which aims to be a haven from the fray of the broader culture; but it is also unnerving to hear many of these stories -- stories which point to crisis.
A piece in this week’s Independent acerbically and direly laments the plummeting test scores of public schools. By the article’s conclusion the writer implies the rectification of the situation is a matter of finding the right teaching method. Not once does the writer ask what it is like to be a kid right now. (What is it like to be a kid right now?) Not once does the writer question the assumption of the importance of these scores. (How are we collectively confined by unseen assumptions?) Not once does the writer wonder if the world is getting better with mainstream education at the helm, or worse. Not once does the writer ask: what is all this education for? (Perhaps that’s part of the problem: without a good why, the how loses its allure.) Not once does the writer ask if plummeting test scores signal not failing teachers, failing administrators, and the absence of efficacious teaching methods but a mainstream education that's lost its way.
“The great task of a life-sustaining culture,” writes renowned psychologist James Hillman, “is to keep the invisibles attached.” At WSSB we strive to keep the invisibles attached. And what are these “invisibles”? One could answer variously. One could say: “love”; “a reverential way of living”; “a heart attuned to the commonweal.” One could say: “holism”; “nobility of character”; “listening for one’s calling.” Or one could perhaps quote from the WSSB mission statement:
The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara is committed to providing a healthy, broad, reverent education that honors the head, heart, hands—the whole—of the child. Drawing on a rigorous, developmentally appropriate, and beauty-attuned curriculum, our Waldorf education cultivates the full flowering of the individual student and the community at large, understanding the profound interdependence of both.
During these at times confusing and trying days we at WSSB find great meaning and joy in continuing to provide a Waldorf education for your child. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night,” runs the motto of the U.S. postal service, “stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” We at WSSB similarly endeavor to fulfill (but not “swiftly”!) our appointed rounds.
In gratitude,
The WSSB Admin Team
PS The thought of the day is again from Mother Theresa:
"There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much."