A thought piece from our Culture & Community Chair and high school teacher, Paddy Nash…..
Let’s play a game. Type anything you like into Wikipedia. Anything at all. Now keep clicking the first link you see in the first sentence .or two of the description. Keep clicking and I bet you’ll eventually end up on the Philosophy Wikipedia page. Magic? No. But it does tell us something about the foundations of the way we think.
We offer Philosophy to our senior students because we know that having these foundations makes way for intellectual development and ultimately, freedom of thought. That’s what freedom means to us at Cape Byron Steiner School. Not freedom to do whatever you want, but an inner freedom that comes from being able to think creatively, critically and independently. Freedom that can reach new conclusions and imaginatively question old ideas and the status quo. Not because someone pointed you towards the answer. Or that an A.I. told you so. This is the freedom our young people will need in an increasingly uncertain and unpredictable future.
Freedom like this can’t exist on its own. Freedom without community is just isolation. A mind reasoning with itself, on its own, with no one to test its thinking against and nowhere to take the idea. Freedom and creativity held within a thriving and supportive community is something else entirely and it is foundational to creating meaningful change in the world.
As a history teacher, I’ve always loved the Silk Road. Its mystery and diversity is something undoubtedly alluring. I’ve been reading about the Silk Road’s more recent history as an expression of freedom in the 60s as the Hippie Trail. The 60s were a time that freedom became the priority of the cultural zeitgeist for much of the Western world. Books like ‘On The Hippy Trail’ By Rick Steves and ‘Magic Bus’ By Rory Maclean provide a romantic and idealistic vision of the freedom of that time on the hippie trail. But having travelled to some of those destinations, and looking at many of those places now, I’m left wondering what was the cost of that freedom? Did the 60s deliver on the promise of the freedom many of those traveling on the Hippy Trail sought to deliver? It’s fair to say that the ideals of the 60s were never really fully realised.
Perhaps because of politics, perhaps also because the freedom held within the ideals of the 60s was never quite matched with the responsibilities of making that freedom a lasting reality for all. When Janis Joplin sang ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose’ she perhaps missed the notion that freedom is mostly the result of someone’s deep commitment to the hard work of change (but that doesn’t sound anywhere near as good now does it?!)
That’s where community events like our festivals come in. Spring Fair is a joyful celebration of our community in action and offers students an opportunity to see the value of their creativity as central to the wholeness of our community. But it takes the work and commitment of the community to see it through. It’s in making the choice to work together in solidarity that true freedom can be realised.
Community is central to every Steiner school. Being part of a community enables students to feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves. Seeing us all come together at festivals, like our Spring Fair, enables us to see ourselves at our best and it enables the children to see how the will of a community can result in something truly magical.
I believe the ideals of the 60s are still worth fighting for and in teaching the last few years of class 12 students we might just have a reason to believe that this generation, with a bit of support from their community, can extend the ideals into a reality that supports and inspires a freer future for all.
