A living education

I first heard about Steiner education in India when my niece attended a Mumbai Steiner school, Tridha, and I was captivated by what I heard. Children engaged in knitting, crochet, watercolour painting, beautiful crafts, colourful pencils and crayons, and woodwork, using materials from nature. These activities touched something within me. They felt full of heart while engaging the hands in meaningful creation.

Though I didn’t yet have the language for it, I was experiencing what I would later recognise as the ‘head, heart, and hands’ philosophy that forms the foundation of Steiner education. This holistic approach, which honours thinking, feeling, and willing as integrated aspects of human development, resonated with me intuitively, even before I understood the pedagogy intellectually. When our eldest daughter was a baby, we visited a Steiner school, but the distance from our home made it impractical at the time, so reluctantly set the idea aside.

The weight of premature academics

In India, formal schooling begins very early. We enrolled my eldest daughter in our local neighbourhood school, but what I witnessed there troubled me. At three years old, she was to master the alphabet, spelling, holding the pencil a certain way, writing on lines and counting, complete with homework assignments. Watching my small child face this felt harsh and mechanical, and painful for me as if I were stealing her childhood from her.

This experience crystallised something I had been sensing intuitively. There was a mismatch between what children of this age naturally needed and what conventional education demanded. Later, I would learn that Steiner education’s respect for developmental stages aligned with these instincts. Steiner schools honour the understanding that young children exist in a dreamy, imaginative consciousness and should not be burdened prematurely with abstract intellectual demands. We wanted our children to be free from a competitive space where they would have to perform and to achieve before they were ready. We wanted their education to honour the whole person, not just their intellect.

At that time, my understanding was purely instinctive, not yet informed by the deeper study of philosophy and scripture that would come later. But looking back, I can see how these early feelings were guiding me toward something I’m glad I trusted.

The decision to change course

We made the decision to withdraw our daughter from that school, and she began attending a Steiner preschool in India. While no educational experience, including Steiner schools, is perfect or utopian, and we have certainly had ups and downs along the way, but this too has been part of our journey as shared stewards in the school spaces, where families, teachers and community hold responsibility to build the village that supports all of our children.

What we have witnessed in our eldest daughter is wondrous. She approaches everything she does with beauty, care, and compassion. The education has established a strong foundation within her. She knows herself well, a rare gift in any person, let alone a young one. She moves with equal ease among younger and older children, knowing how to be with all kinds of people, holding herself with confidence and grace. She gravitates naturally toward compassionate, open-hearted people, reflecting the openness that has been nurtured in her.

This is what we were seeking: whole-person, whole-body education. Steiner’s approach recognises that there is something deeper than what we perceive with our material eyes alone, a spiritual dimension to the human being and to learning itself. This education helps children see beyond the material world.

Deepening my understanding

To understand this more, I completed a one-year Steiner teacher training in India. Through this study, I learned how the pedagogy works, how mathematics is taught through the rhythms of seasons, the patterns in nature, the cycles of the moon. Learning these methodologies made my understanding resonate with my earlier encounters and sing to me. I discovered how nature is woven throughout the curriculum, how academic concepts are introduced through living connection with the natural world. Arithmetic operations are connected to feelings, allowing children to live into concepts, to embody them in their being. Letters and numbers are connected to the sun and the seasons. This reflects Rudolf Steiner’s aim of providing an ‘education toward freedom,’ as it leaves an impression on the child that draws from life itself, from Mother Earth, rather than presenting abstract concepts disconnected from meaning.

This kind of conscious, living education creates an experience that feels alive and aware. It aligned perfectly with our values and felt like giving our children their childhood, plus offering them an embodiment of living concepts that they could carry into the world with them throughout their lives.

I remember visiting Steiner schools in those early days and being struck by the colors, the beauty of the art and crafts, the freedom children had to use whatever colours they wished. This contrasted to my own schooling, where we all received identical printouts and were expected to color within predetermined lines and write on lined paper. In Steiner classrooms the pages are blank. Even when all the children paint the same tree, each tree expresses something unique. The child sees themselves through that colour and space.

Finding community at Sophia Mundi

When we moved to Melbourne, we found our place at Sophia Mundi Steiner School, and the diversity is what resonated with us immediately. The school already embraced Indian culture, celebrating our festivals, including Diwali, our New Year festival of lights, which had been honoured there before our arrival. 

I wanted to contribute whatever I could in whatever small ways were possible. This aligns with the Indian concept of seva, selfless service. In our tradition, when we offer service without expectation of reward or recognition, it helps clear the vasanas (ego attachments), creating a sense of lightness and freedom.

When we first arrived, our youngest daughter started at Little Sophia and naturally moved to Sophia Mundi. Despite our varied backgrounds, we found unity around many aspects of Steiner education. For example, the school’s approach to technology resonated with us. This doesn’t mean we have rigid rules about it, but rather that there is a discipline or consciousness and awareness about how technology is used and when. The Steiner approach to technology has been a big blessing for me. It has a place as a useful tool but keeping it out of education in the early years felt like the right thing to do when we are all surrounded by devices all the time.

When I reflect on my children and what I have witnessed through their Steiner education, I feel deeply content and happy that we chose this path. They have the freedom to be themselves and the school has provided the space to unfold naturally, to develop as whole human beings, and to carry forward into the world the capacity for beauty, compassion, and authentic self-knowledge.​​

- Divya

Class five parent