The Perennial Joys Remain

Dear Members of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,

To give a sense of the joy of yesterday's Michaelmas festival, we share a list of the day's happenings:

* the Michaelmas Play, performed by the Grades children, with Early Childhood students in gleeful attendance;

* the eating of the "dragon bread," a large dragon of bread composed of many loaves (bread which the students had together made);

* the impassioned construction of clay dragons (constructed in mixed-age groups of Grades students): whimsical, elaborately filigreed, touching creations currently on display in front of our school;

* various "challenges" on the field: water relay, obstacle course, hula hoop game, burlap-sack race, et cetera, for the Grades students;

* an all-Grades tug-of-war;

* and the singing of "Golden Meadows," our school song, led by WSSB Hall-of-Famer, Mr. Jason Gebeau.

In other words, the perennial joys remain. And blessedly.

In gratitude,

The WSSB Admin Team

PS The first thought of the day is from Henry David Thoreau:

"To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts."

PPS The second thought of the day is from Rudolf Steiner (and while this quotation is indeed meaty, it is very much worth our slow, careful pondering):

"Waldorf School education must be listened to with other ears than those with which one hears about other kinds of education or educational reform. For the Waldorf School gives no answer to the questions people want to have answered today and which are ostensibly answered by other systems of education. What is the aim of such questions? Their usual aim is intelligence, much intelligence and of intelligence the present time has an incalculable amount. Intelligence, intellect, cleverness -- these are widespread commodities at the present time. One can give terribly intelligent answers to questions like: What should we make out of the child? How should we inculcate this or that into her? The ultimate result is that people answer for themselves the question: What pleases me in the child, and how can I get the child to be what I like? But such questions have no significance in the deeper evolutionary course of humanity. And to such questions Waldorf pedagogy gives no reply at all. To give a picture of what Waldorf education is, we must say that it speaks quite differently from the way in which people speak elsewhere in the sphere of education: Waldorf School Education is not a pedagogical system but an Art -- the Art of awakening what is actually there within the human being. Fundamentally, the Waldorf School does not want to educate, but to awaken. For an awakening is needed today. First of all, the teachers must be awakened, and then the teachers must awaken the children and the young people."