Why Choose a Steiner Education?

David Cameron wrote this short essay as a contribution to the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School's 30th Anniversary commemorative magazine, produced in late 2002 in conjunction with the School Open Day.

As the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, the Cameron family celebrates 67 years of collective attendance by Marcel, John, Virgil, Maria, Felix and Angelica, a saga spanning the last 23 years and expected to continue for another four years. During this time Lee has spent 4,560 hours, more than half a year of her life, driving 164,160 km to bring our children to the school in Warranwood.

Why has a large family of six children surviving on a single modest and rather insecure public service income chosen to make this enormous sacrifice over so many years simply to provide its children with a Steiner education? Wouldn’t the local state-run school have sufficed perfectly well for children who seem to be perfectly healthy, intelligent and well adjusted?

The answer lies in our confidence as parents in the appropriate matching of the educational philosophy and practice of the school with the specific choices which we had already made and continue to reinforce in our family life.

Although a Steiner education may not appeal to everyone, the harmony between school and home has, in our case, been profound. For example, we were firmly committed to a home life free from the influence of television from our first meeting, long before our first child arrived or the issue of education arose. We have been equally adamant that financial security or social status are of secondary importance after resourcefulness and adaptability in the face of life’s uncertainties in guaranteeing personal contentment and happiness and the ability to make a positive contribution to social and cultural life.

Paradoxically, we sought a school education which intentionally avoids “leaving its stamp” on the child, endeavouring instead to bring to the fore the innate abilities and personalities of its precious charges.

And now that a majority of our children have emerged into adulthood from the cocoon of school and family life our confidence in this matching of values has been vindicated. The measure of this for me as a parent is the diversity of directions which our children have been able to take despite the commonality of both family and school life experienced by each child. This healthy diversity reflects the willingness of the school to honour and respect the innate tendencies of each individual entrusted to its care.

This willingness is exemplified by a particularly challenging circumstance which arose when Angelica and two other students in Elsa Martin’s class chose, entirely of their own free will, to participate at the forefront of the protest against globalisation at the Melbourne Stock Exchange on 1 May 2001. The Prime Minister condemned the involvement of children in protest action, claiming they were pawns exploited by adults and that the participation of twelve-year-old school children in political activity was an inditement of their parents and teachers. The newspaper headline read “March straight into my office …” Far from being called to account and berated by the school principal, the school demonstrated maturity and wisdom in handling this confronting challenge.

I remain deeply grateful to the school for the trust and confidence which it has shown in the children themselves in this and other challenging circumstances.

The Nature versus Nurture debate

The nature versus nurture debate is one of the great intellectual, scientific and philosophical questions of our time. Whether we are aware of it or not, our standpoint with regard to this question underpins many of the decisions which we make, individually or collectively, regarding our lives and our society.

Consciously or unconsciously, our understanding of the relative significance of hereditary and environmental influences on our lives and fortunes can have a profound bearing on the decisions which we make, as parents, regarding our children’s education.

Those who subscribe to the view that our destiny is largely controlled by heredity are more likely to downplay the contribution of an education to the future happiness and fulfillment of our children. Such parents are more likely to make educational decisions based on convenience, economic considerations or the precedent of their own childhood experience.

Those who subscribe to the view that the environment plays the predominating role in shaping our personality and determining our fortunes in life are more likely to overplay the importance of an education in ensuring the prosperity and happiness of a child. Such parents may be tempted to “buy” an expensive education for their children in much the same way that one takes out an insurance policy.

Such expectations appeal to the ruling class because they facilitate the indoctrination of young people into accepting the prevailing ideology of the society into which they are born and encourage parents to abrogate their responsibility in favour of established educational institutions run by the church, state or other elites.

A more enlightened and holistic view recognises the potentially synergistic or inhibitory interaction between heredity and environment in determining our destiny. Like the two sides of a coin, neither influence can express itself without the other. Without social and cultural experience our biological inheritance remains dormant and liable to atrophy.

In appropriate circumstances our inherited abilities can be cultured and incubated into flourishing adulthood. Inappropriate circumstances can inhibit their full development.

The role of parents and teachers therefore is to match the educational experience to the needs of each individual child.


David Cameron

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