As I came home this afternoon, I spied a boy of about 13 out in the neighboring backyard, obviously having been assigned the task of taking all the smaller branches farther into the backyard out of sight from a maple tree that was cut down. I love watching teenagers try to figure things out. His preferred method seemed to be standing the limbs up, and then letting them drop onto his shoulder so he could carry them as you would a sack of potatoes. It was completely ungainly and hilarious to watch, a situation-comedy scene from real life. He was lucky he didn’t poke an eye out! But I was happy to be witness to one of the real-life lessons that children should be exposed to. How wonderful to learn and appreciate the strengths and limitations of one’s own body! You can’t teach this kind of thing in a science class.
It’s one of the reasons that I’m quite comfortable paying tuition to a Waldorf school. The students in one of the grades built a shed, and the children in the pre-K program don’t stay in for recess EVER (the temperature rarely gets above freezing for about 3 months around here). At public schools, it’s often the paraprofessionals who decide whether the weather is good enough for recess. No disrespect meant to them, I’m sure I would have a hard time staying out on the coldest days for the amount they get paid, but the point is they aren’t the ones who should be making the decisions. And often times they make decisions in their own interest rather than the children’s. Just one example of how our public educational system ignores nurturing a child in favor of training a worker.
It’s no joke, we are training some excellent desk-workers in the public school. For my children, I want to make sure they play and work with their bodies, so that they can enjoy a life outside their minds.
