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I recall the historical sites that my father, a principal and a history teacher, insisted we visit and the fascinating people he invited to our dinner table.
Wasted Time
This was my true education, I tell my parents. In hindsight, I regard most of the hours I spent behind a desk from kindergarten through high school as a waste of time.
What a horrible thing to say to my parents, to my husband’s parents, who are also schoolteachers, and to the millions of other people who accept the under-appreciated, under-paid task of teaching!
How dare 1 say it in one breath, then in the next breath talk about how much I admire most of the teachers I’ve met. I know teachers dip into their own pockets to feed and clothe needy students and to buy school supplies; I know they work far into the night, correcting papers and preparing lessons for the next day.
I dare to say it, because I don’t think the teachers are responsible for the situation. I think many of them also feel trapped by the four classroom walls and by the constraints of the system under which they labor. They do the best they can, sometimes working miracles under difficult conditions — such as identifying a neglected child, mentoring him and seeing that he makes it to college.
Missing: Heart and Soul
Nevertheless, this must be said: I felt something was missing in most of the schools I visited. I felt the children’s brains were engaged, but their hearts and their souls weren’t.
I’m not sure I would have recognized this absence if I had not observed two Waldorf schools, which put priority on the child’s “inner spirit.”
For a year, my son was enrolled in Spring Mountain, a fledgling Waldorf school in Washington and one of only two Waldorf schools in Virginia.
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