Sustainable Education

Five valleys meet in Stroud at the heart of the Cotswolds, in South Gloucestershire. The rivers, punctuated by watermills known as the “string of pearls” share a heritage of cloth-making which has helped to produce an extended community of independence and non-conformity. Where the valleys meet, a new educational initiative for post 16 year olds has developed, arising from a pluralistic vision together with unease at the current options being offered, and driven by the concept of an educational network.

Initial meetings between founding parents and young people concluded that education should involve more contact with the world outside, give greater emphasis to individuality and independence, and allow young people to share in aspects of education usually thought of as “adult” concerns - whether hiring tutors, deciding on behaviour guidelines, or even fixing broken taps. Young people expressed their unease – “I was feeling trapped and uninspired, and you could see it in my work and in my behaviour . . . I was hungry for things that were not being offered.” A parent suggested that mainstream education often lacked “the raw taste of wind and fire, of wood and clay.” What has emerged is a two-year programme, with a number of clear and distinctive characteristics, and potentially far-reaching benefits.

Although small in scale, the college has become well known, with a global catchment - a practical and invaluable consequence of its roots in the Waldorf education movement, inspired by Rudolf Steiner. Starting up in September 2000, as The Waldorf College Project, the college currently includes young people from America, mainland Europe and the UK as well as from Sweden, Hawaii and Canada in previous years. This global context is complemented by an equally significant element of local involvement. The tutors – craftspeople, artists, scientists and entrepreneurs – bring to their teaching the authority of their primary activity in the world beyond education. The students’ learning programmes, likewise, involve much time spent out of college. This demonstrates an exciting example of a contemporary and sustainable model of education. Both globally and locally, the college is sustained by responsive networks, rather than being determined and controlled by the inflexible hierarchies of large, centralised administrations. Significantly, it places education for individuality and sustainability at the heart of its curriculum.

The college’s programme springs from the belief that, at this age, a key requirement is freedom with responsibility - the freedom to learn about what you love, what is most important to you, allied to the responsibility of participating in the organisation and management of your own educational programme. This naturally extends out into the development and management of the college - in which the students participate at all levels - and beyond that, into the local community of which the college is a part. The students prepare a ‘learning quest’, setting out what they aim to achieve and how they will go about achieving it. A significant part of the second year consists of an independent year project devised by the student.

There is a weekly review of how the programme is running, involving staff and students. This forum looks carefully at a wide range of matters - students’ decisions about their future, difficulties in relationships, daily tasks - and can be a place of laughter and tears, heartfelt pleas and inner wisdom, as the teenagers are given their voice, often resulting in movement from grievance to initiative. Freedom and responsibility are not wishful thinking here, the principles are enshrined in the practical business of shared management, in turn providing a sense of ownership that builds the confidence and fires the will of the young person. Skills in communication and human relationships are greatly enhanced through this process and it prepares the student for taking up the freedom with responsibility involved in being a global citizen.

The fundamental approach throughout the programme is holistic. In particular there is a conscious fusion of science and art. Conventional “core” subjects are studied through a series of thematic projects - each of which is multi-disciplinary and cross-curricular. Topics such as Environmental Science and Sustainable Woodland Management integrate a deepening experience of the seasons and the cycles of nature. Computer Technology combined with Drama, or Human Physiology with Life Drawing. A Chemistry project works with the connections between chemistry and music - the number relationships between atomic weights and musical intervals. An English project works on a given stimulus which develops into a complex web of ideas which are suspended and examined by the group and then woven into a creative whole, rather like weaving a hedgerow basket that integrates found and given material with strands of “self.”

The holistic approach means that each project is experiential and practical. Students bring enormous, constructive and creative enthusiasm to activities where art and science are combined with academic work. This is not simply because it is practical, in the sense of “useful” but because it engages the whole of the person; the hand is part of the educational process too, as is the body – so art and science is a primary theme of the programme, integrating the work of the mind, the will and, indeed, with the work of the spirit.

The idea of the journey is central to the ethos of this place. Education is a journey – part of the journey of personal development – and for the 16 + age group the journey can sometimes be treacherous; from adolescence into adulthood, from school into community, from dependence into independence. Before this stage, individuality and personal growth are nourished and safeguarded by the family. After it, the young people should be better able to nourish themselves. This college seeks to ensure that the bridge between the two phases is one that sustains individual development, whilst helping the young person to find their place in the wider world.

The programme encourages students to consider and reflect upon both their inner and their outer journey. This takes many forms but is powerfully demonstrated, practically and symbolically, by a Journey through the Sinai desert. The journey involves travelling and working with the Bedouin on sustainable water projects as well as sleeping on Mt. Sinai prior to attending the early service in St Catherine’s Monastery. This is preceded by studies on the threatened Bedouin culture, comparative religions, history, politics and survival skills. “When I came back from the desert,” said one student, “I looked around my room and said to myself ‘why the hell do I need all this stuff?”

This educational initiative emerges from the needs of the individual rather than the need to meet targets. Standards, by definition, ‘standardise’, leading to pressures to conform, to meet the expectations of others. This can be counter-productive to personal growth and development, not only constraining choices in terms of subject, pace and outcome, but also constraining who we are allowed to be. Mainstream education itself is concerned that the system is driven by the need to generate the appropriate statistics, whether A-level points or league tables, and that measuring only the quantifiable often overlooks the very qualities that are of greater significance. Employers don’t just look for A-level points or credit accumulation scores; they look for creative thinking, team-working, initiative, innovation, social skills and self-confidence. It is these qualities that drive this college. Here students produce a portfolio of project work, which is accredited by the Open College Network providing a recognised route to higher education.

This college, arising where five valleys meet, is energised by realistic and practical principles; it flows from the response to vital needs. The enterprise reaches out from the wellsprings of its Waldorf origins, out into the local community and out towards the educational mainstream, to others who will recognise in this initiative an exciting and positive contribution to the development of sustainability in education.

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part 2.

part 3.

part 4.

part 5.

part 6.

part 7.

part 8.

part 9.

part 10.