"It is as if they are learning alongside their grandfather..."
This statement began an unforgettable day in a Waldorf Steiner Kindergarten in Germany. Observing at first hand the calm, unhurried day for the three- to seven-year-olds in rooms filled with exciting materials and objects.
Beautiful pieces of wood weathered in nearby Lake Constance, silks arranged in rainbow colours and snuggly sheepskin in hand-made baskets big enough to accommodate four children at a time.
The adults went about their everyday occupations; woodworking, sewing and ironing. The children became inquisitive, modelled the behaviours of the grown ups, asked questions and became involved through choice. Rain restricted access to the outdoors, but we found time to remove shoes and socks, and paddle through the puddles. The kindergarten children observed the students making music, performing and studying. Parents and the community played a full part, coming in and out of the school and its grounds, and joining in with activities. Truly an extended school in action.
How different to the UK. Our views of learning are stifled into compartments about Key Stages, ages and attainment.
It was not always this way. In 1925, Henry Morris, CEO of Cambridgeshire Education Authority recognised that the role of schools could create conditions 'under which education would not be an escape from reality, but an enrichment and transformation of it'. His Village College, as the community centre of the neighbourhood, 'would provide for the whole man, and abolish the duality of education and ordinary life... The dismal dispute of vocational and non-vocational education would not arise... There would be no 'leaving school'!... The child would enter at three and leave the college only in extreme old age.' (Extracts from Henry Morris (1925) The Village College.) Accounts of Morris's work include the difficulties he faced. Just as today, politicians provided inadequate funding, so he persuaded benefactors and charitable trusts to make donations. He insisted on using the best architects and providing art from Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth to name but two. Morris wrote that vitality 'comes about when teacher and student, student and student, young and old meet face to face in lecture and debate, in song and dance or in orchestras, choirs and plays.'
Will today's extended schools agenda put learning back into the heart of our communities for children and grandparents?
