Slow Education
Dear Members of the Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,
"There is a Zen story," Thich Nhat Hanh tells us, "about a man and a horse. The horse is galloping quickly, and it appears that the rider is urgently heading somewhere important. A bystander along the road calls out, ‘Where are you going?’ and the rider replies, ‘I don’t know? Ask the horse!’ This is also our life story. Many of us are riding a horse, but we don’t know where we are going, and we can’t stop. The horse is our ‘habit energy,’ the relentless force of habit that pulls us along, that we are often unaware of and feel powerless to change. We are always running. It has become a habit, the norm of our everyday living. We run all the time, even during sleep…"
How can we human beings interrupt this tendency to be always running, to be always moving blindly and so fast? How can we instead move slowly, wakefully, consciously, in order to show up for each other, our children, and the earth’s many other creatures?
One way to help humanity get off the galloping horse is to support WSSB’s "Slow Education," an education that makes time for each child. And you can support our Slow Education by donating money to this year’s Annual Fund Campaign. This year’s goal is $80,000 with 100% participation from every parent (as well as staff and board member) at our school. Know that this campaign is of primary importance as it helps us cover our operating cost.
And please do not see giving as some abstract duty you perhaps ought to fulfill. Instead see it as an opportunity to concretely support the well being of your child and her/his classmates. Please also see it as a way to support WSSB’s faculty and staff who work in service of your child and her/his classmates. Amid unprecedented inflation and a soaring cost of living, help us keep (and hire) the faculty and staff who make our great school what it is. We owe it to the children (and the world they inhabit) to expend every resource available to support WSSB's Slow Education.