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Education -
Real life - Defining Moments
Steiner
teacher SEAN BURKE has degrees in politics and law but his career path
swerved dramatically after the birth of his children. He spoke to Kate
Malkovic.
"I
went from school to university and did a BA with honours in politics. And like a lot of people who go that way, I didn't know what I was doing or
what I wanted to do, so I started to study law. There were parts of the
law degree, like criminology, jurisprudence and public international law,
that I really enjoyed but on the whole I didn't enjoy it. "I was with
a good firm and doing interesting work so I had nothing to complain about
except that I was in the wrong place, so I pulled the plug on law at the
end of 1996 when I was 29. I still intended to stay in law but I was
really looking to find some other avenue than private practice.
"Before
that, my wife Andrea had Thomas, who's now six and a half, and Genevieve,
who's five, and that was, I guess, THE defining moment. When we had
Thomas, it was as if every decision we made was based on him. All our
decisions were Thomas-centred. When Thomas was about two, we started
looking for a school for him and we were a bit hard to please, I guess.
"I
went to Catholic schools and always enjoyed school but I felt that my
schooling had been too narrow. I came out of school academically
well-catered for but without being able to do anything artistic
whatsoever. "We were looking for a school and couldn't find one . . .
it got to the stage where Andrea, who is a qualified teacher, said we
could home-school Thomas and we felt confident we could do it." I started looking at the legislation governing home-schooling and it seems
that as soon as you give up on something, it comes to you. We found out
about the Steiner School in Bibra Lake and they recommended a book. We
read it and booked the kids in - it was as simple as that. We went to open
days and school festivals and got involved and liked what we saw.
"There
was a hiatus after I left the law and I was considering what to do when
Andrea suggested I look at doing the orientation year for Steiner
teaching. That really appealed to me, it was as if I was just waiting for
that suggestion. We went to Melbourne for the two-year full-time course,
although there is a course here. "There are a lot of surface
differences between a Steiner education and the more mainstream education
available to most. We teach in main-lesson blocks, so I'll teach something
like poetry for three to four weeks in the main-lesson two-hour block each
morning. So it's the same topic every morning for two hours for four
weeks. They learn it orally, they write it, live it, feel it and act it,
and then illustrate it as well. The same happens with mathematics.
"A
lot of students are able to tackle a subject the usual way but some
students aren't like that, they like to warm up to a subject, sit in it
and saturate themselves in the subject for a long time. So it's very much
about really experiencing something and getting right into it, and then
letting it go to sleep, if you like. And then when it comes back, it
actually comes back differently, it's gone deep. "Another difference
is that Steiner schools don't allow the arts to get lost. They try to
develop all facets of a student's abilities.
There
are other techniques and rhythms used as well. We warm up in the morning
before we start lessons and try as much as possible to have the more heady
subjects early and then have the afternoons for craft and games. "All
these are just methods though, and if you copied them you still wouldn't
have a Steiner school. The Steiner philosophy is a spiritual one and each
teacher starts from the position that each child, or every person, is a
spiritual person incarnating into a physical body. The idea is that you
are not complete when you are born, you are still developing and coming
into your body, and that goes on, not just for the 21 years of childhood.
"So
the Steiner teacher's role is to recognise that firstly and honour it. I
think then each Steiner teacher is challenged to look for the spiritual in
each child, and in the subject matter like grammar, music and maths. If
I'm not considering the subject philosophically while I'm teaching the
students, then I'm not teaching them anything. I'm teaching them something
that's dead, rather than something that's alive.
"Another
thing Steiner schools are known for is their negative attitude to
television. Here we ask the question, "What is the appropriate age
for a child to learn to read?' not "What's the earliest age?' or
"When can we fit it in?' "Generally, effort in the Steiner
school is geared towards developing the child's imagination, body and
powers of will in the primary school years in an active way, not by
sitting back watching the box. For children under 12 the recommendation
here is no television or movies at all, for the simple reason that there's
nothing they can benefit from by watching television.
"These
are the things that really appealed to me about the Steiner system. It's
more difficult to teach that way but it's also much more rewarding.
In the same way I suppose it's more difficult to be a parent at a Steiner
school, but then we don't attract an average cross-section of society.
"I
spend as much time working now as in my law days, but I am never averse to
it. Before there were probably times - notwithstanding that I worked with
great people; the work just didn't suit me - when I was fatigued and
unhappy. Now, as a Steiner teacher, I can only get fatigued but I stay
happy."
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