To shed the iron shirt of habit, Mateja de Laat started researching alternatives to public school in Slovenia back in 2009, when the first child in the family was about to enter compulsory education. "At that time, the only really different school in our country was Waldorf school," she recalls. But on this journey of exploration, she had already come across home education. She was immediately keen on it because of its difference and, as she puts it, the "educational freedom" it gives to both children and parents. She has now been home educating two of her three children for 13 years, together with her husband. The eldest daughter finished primary school a few years ago.
In her book Where do you go to school?, Mateja de Laat describes a conversation with her four-year-old daughter that led to the final decision to home educate her. "Rosana, which things are alive?" My daughter answers, "Kittens, flowers and birds are alive." "Anything else?" "Pebbles!" "Really, are pebbles alive?", I asked in amazement. "OK," I thought, "she doesn't understand very well." My daughter replied, "Yes, of course, if you bring them to life!" I opened my mouth in surprise and slowly said, "Yes." After a minute of silence, I asked her again, "Okay, what more is alive?" She quickly replied, "Love!" Well, this time I was speechless. After a few moments of silence, I asked her anyway, "But love is alive?" A little impatiently, my daughter replies, "Yes, Mom, but don't you understand anything? Without love there is nothing!" "This conversation," smiles Mateja, "has shown me that a child's mind is still free. And we have to nurture that freedom. Sooner or later, reality will touch it and limit it. If we don't nurture freedom of thought, we become mentally rigid, uncreative, limited."
LEARN, LEARN AND LEARN AGAIN ... OR – NO?
The phrase, which in the socialist past was attributed to Tito, is said to have its roots in Lenin. Who still knows ... What does it evoke in you? A nostalgic memory, if you are old enough to have experienced socialism? Resistance? A raised eyebrow? A cramp in the stomach? A nervous thought of exams or of the new school year and the heap of worries that go along with young people's schooling? Anger at how they have fed you with information? Sadness at what a wheel your grown children have fallen into after they have finished their schooling? The indifferent smile? Pity that we didn't know any better? Or - oh, wonder - the primal feeling that learning is actually a pleasure and we are just looking for an opportunity to make it flow as naturally as possible?
Mateja de Laat has not resorted to home education in the corona crisis or because of anxiety since that March 2020. This was a conscious decision she made in 2011 and has since followed through on. Was she ahead of her time? Only she knows what great mountains she was moving, has moved and is still moving. Listening to and reading her testimonies now, they sound mostly light-hearted, but above all powerful: she has dedicated her creativity to expressing the freedom of human beings. In the name of love, as her daughter reminded her at the age of four. Now, with a team of three colleagues, they work together in the field of children's education.
How did she get here? Together with a clear articulation of the challenges and the solutions offered that work, as lived by Mateja de Laat and a growing number of children and parents, we dream of educational pathways that support children and adults in a systematic and holistic way. There are already more than 800 such children in Slovenia, but their parents are not yet connected in their efforts. Perhaps the new legislation, which calls for a constitutional review, will unite them, as it imposes even more obligations on the modern pioneers of better education. New initiatives for holistic education grow from the original foundation that we are all one, from that unmistakable sense of holiness and grace when we experience and internalise it, grasp it. When school becomes natural learning, to equip ourselves with the skills for a healthy, connected, collaborative and co-creative, inventive life. And it is possible. The germs for this new era of education are sprouting healthily, lining up, opening into blossom, and this in the face of ever-challenging circumstances and institutional and more and more stiflingly legitimised resistance from the state.
You have committed yourself to planning and implementing home education out of love for children. But where did you find the strength to persevere?
Even before I started home educating my daughter, I threw myself into studying different pedagogical approaches, developmental psychology and other topics related to learning and teaching; I soon realised how the way schools work is almost completely at odds with a child's development. Once you take a rational look at the way learning and teaching is done in schools, you soon realise that this practice should be stopped or fundamentally changed immediately. We have more than enough knowledge about human development to easily create an education system that would actually support children's development. This awareness of the unconstructiveness of today's schools gives me the impetus to educate my children at home again and again.
In fact, I always prefer to replace the word " persistence" with " trust". Trust beyond reason. Has it ever been shaken?
My trust in myself and in my children has never been shaken. Once you feel your true nature and the nature of your children, you know that you cannot "miss". Because in some deep dimension, everything is exactly as it should be. Even the mistakes. And when you live from your true nature, your mistakes are just a step on your path. There is no perfection. There is only learning and creating - and mistakes are an inherent part of that. Mistakes are the source of wisdom. The problem is more that most people are out of touch with their deeper nature. Let alone being in touch with the inner nature and potentials of their children. This is where we are "' being tossed around" and therefore have no confidence. What school is today is a school example of mistrust. In the child, first and foremost.
Have you started to build a team or are you still mostly on your own?
Yes, over the years a "team" of colleagues and supporters has slowly started to build up. In the beginning it was just me and my sister. She taught my daughter science and together we organised parents' meetings and other activities. Together we also founded the ŠND Institute, which we recently renamed the MagicTree Centre, a centre for holistic learning and child development. Today, the team is two people bigger. At the same time, I feel that a broad, unorganised community of parents who are home educating or interested in home educating their children has started to emerge. A common consciousness, a common awareness of the importance of education.
When and how did knowledge transfer become a method?
The method itself emerged spontaneously, without rational thought and structuring. But when one of the fathers, who also home-educated his children and who is now part of our team, offered to help me set up the institute and its activities, the MagicTree method clearly crystallised in my mind through our conversations.
Were you able to build on something structured that already existed?
The basis of the method is the scientific theory of attachment put forward by Sir John Bowlby, so fantastically built upon by the Canadian developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld, and the work of C.G. Jung, who put forward the theory of the individualisation of man. I have also been greatly inspired by the work of the Slovenian psychologist Janez Svetina, entitled The Slovenian School for the New Millennium. All this, together with my own insights and experiences, forms the heart of the theoretical part of the method, while the practical part of the method draws inspiration from Montessori and Waldorf teaching aids and the "unschooling" method. Then there is neurological research and other scientific fields related to psychological development, learning and teaching.
How do you fit this responsible task into your working schedule?
I never had a job, so I didn't have this challenge. My husband takes care for financial welbeing.
Did you ever feel that you were sacrificing your privacy for your children more than is already involved in the "profession" of parenthood?
Actually, no. Once you feel the depths of a child, you realise that you are responsible for the well-being of a living being who is sacred. Here my experience touches on a spiritual dimension and it is difficult to describe it without using spiritual terminology. In short, when you feel sacredness, you experience Oneness. You and your child are One, so his well-being is as important as my privacy. Then you cannot talk about feeling separate at all and you do not feel that you are giving up something to care for your child. That is how I experience it.
How did the experience differ when working with each of your children?
My eldest daughter (now 19) is a typical example of self-directed learning. This means that she has an inexhaustible source of curiosity and is always learning. As a home-schooler, she whizzed through primary school. If she had gone to school, it would probably have been similar, except that she would not have been able to pursue her interests because of lack of time. But the boys (aged 9 and 12) need more direction and guidance. Boys in general generally need a more dynamic learning process with more movement and concrete work and creativity.
What helped you the most to get through the "school" day?
It is difficult for me to answer this question because our days are not school days at all. We do learn, but it's not like school. Learning is really integrated into our daily life and is also a big part of our relationships (talking, doing chores together, reading together, etc.).
What was the most reassuring thing that encouraged you to keep going?
The fact that my children are developing so well and that their learning is a positive experience.
The school year is a kind of marathon. Has it happened that the children have hit a kind of wall typical of long runs?
I can't exactly speak of a wall. Examinations are a denitively terrible obstacle to learning, because they make sure that the child has to memorise one thing after another and, of course, there is a huge amount of stress. But we have always successfully 'passed them'. I think I have hit a bigger wall than they have. I found it immensely frustrating to have to meet prescribed learning targets and standards. I saw how freedom was the fuel for effective learning, but we had no freedom because of the state-approved curriculum that we had to follow. It was like having to drive a Ferrari on a macadam.
How does such a wall manifest itself and how do you move on after such an experience to minimise trauma and blockages?
I presented the children with learning material that they were not interested in in a way that made it interesting for them. If the child is securely attached to the parents, then this is not difficult at all. The point is that the child learns most easily and effectively within the relationship. The parent is the child's shelter, but also the role model and inspiration, which is crucial for learning. If I am passionate about something, my child will be passionate about it. But if they were not developmentally ready for a particular subject, I tried to explain and illustrate it in a way that gave them the best chance of learning it.
School should complement family life. But today, it seems that all family life revolves around working for school.
Does it happen that the children or the parents simply can't cope any more, or does the child long to be back among his or her classmates?
Oh, surely that happens too.
What about the experience of "walls" of other parents or children?
One other such wall that many people face is the belief that they could not cope because they have no pedagogical training. Or because of a financial situation. The fact is that teaching your children takes time and energy. That's why one parent stays at home and, as a result, there is less money at home. These 'walls' are, however, of a very individual nature.
With the corona, the practice of HE has become more recognised, almost a necessity for parents who have been able to make this leap. How many of you are there now, do you have an estimate?
This year, if I am not mistaken, 869 children are being home educated.
Are you connected across the country?
Yes and no. There are several individual initiatives that bring parents together, but there is no umbrella organisation.
Please outline the process of the HE, especially for those of us who do not have ((any more)) school-age children, and for young parents.
I can describe the home education process in broad strokes as follows: Parents are fully responsible for our children's learning and also for their academic success. Before the start of the school year, we must inform the school in which our child is enrolled that we will home-school him/her. The organisation of learning and teaching is entirely up to us. We can choose the textbooks, although it is a good idea to use those used by the school, and the teaching aids, but we must follow the learning objectives and standards set by the school curriculum. At the end of the school year, the child takes examinations. From the start of the next school year, home-schoolers will be required to sit examinations in all subjects. This will be very stressful.
Eventually you started to create your own textbooks?
Actually, we are creating teaching aids with Mihela Kmetič. I find that textbooks are often more of a hindrance to learning than a help.
How do children do in a traditional secondary school or at university?
We don't have much experience of this in Slovenia, but experience from abroad shows that home-schoolers integrate well into further education. Some universities in the USA even invite home-schooled students to join their ranks because of their independence and initiative in learning.
I remember the prejudice that existed in the early days of Waldorf and Montessori schools - that children from Waldorf and Montessori schools would experience a shock when they moved to a traditional secondary school. What do you know about this?
I know these stories; whether they are a reflection of reality, I do not know. I have the feeling that this prejudice has been created more in order to elevate the classical secondary school above the Waldorf school. But it is the case that we cannot completely protect children from the challenges of life. If the child's development is going as it should, by the time he or she enters secondary school he or she is psychologically mature enough not to be crushed by the challenge.
I too have learnt the easy ways of transition for children educated in more conscious schools. Do Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner set any examples for you?
They are definitely an inspiration to me. They are both giants in the field of education.
What other post-school initiatives do you know of in Slovenia and around the world?
The closest thing to my heart is the work of John Holt, an American teacher who retired from the teaching profession and who founded the so-called unschooling method. And the giant of world literature, the Russian Leo Tolstoy, also created his own pedagogical method. Then there is Ranko Rajović and Glenn Domain.
Father Karel Gržan speaks of experiential pedagogy, and the term integrative pedagogy is already gaining ground. What is your view on this topic?
I believe that a pedagogy that is appropriate for today's time and place places the child at the centre of learning. This means that the content of learning is of secondary importance and is determined by the child's interests, potentials and developmental pace. The same applies to the way in which we teach. It is determined by the child's nature. Thus, learning is holistic, involving the body and emotions as well as the mind. The child is the main actor, learning is effective and enjoyable.
I am a teacher's child; one of the plush toys my parents gave me, a tiger (I still have it), I named Makarenko. (smile) Anton Semyonovich Makarenko (1888-1939) was the founder of scientific pedagogy and, among other things, the author of the book Pedagogicheskaya poema, Pedagogical Poem, which I have been staring at on the bookshelf of our book-crowded living room since I was a child. The pedagogical eros was overflowing in our house, my parents were dedicated teachers of the "old school", as they say; my father was a Slavist, a librarian and a headmaster and gallery owner, my mother a top motivator, an extraordinary expert in Slovenian, otherwise a multipractitioner as a class and subject teacher and a mentor of a very special journalism club - today (31 May) she and her team are celebrating 61 years of teaching. She was a motivator when the word was not even known in the late 1950s and is still a mentor now, at 85 years old. In addition to them, I have had some excellent and encouraging teachers or mentors, I started teaching music myself before the end of my studies, and I hear that my sister is an inspiring teacher at the Conservatoire of Music and Ballet. What was your schooling like?
My grandmother was a teacher. I remember her even telling me a couple of times that I had something of a teacher in me and that it was quite possible that one day I would become a teacher. Well, I did. But in a completely different context. Anyway, my schooling was quite unexciting in terms of learning. I was a good student. School happened to me because school happens to every child in our society. What stuck with me was the realisation that you had to be a ' normal' kid if you wanted to be involved in school and peer life. I am not like that and I was more often than not a loner, but a loner with two good friends; and they made my childhood really enjoyable. But I was annoyed by peer bullying and got into a few fights with the bullies. Sometimes for my own sake, sometimes for the sake of another child who was "receiving" the abuse. Otherwise, I had a kind of resistance to being " teased" by my classmates, for which I am eternally grateful. What touched me, however, were the reactions of adults to peer harassment or "non-reactions".
When you put it like that, we can instantly become aware of a whole range of actually traumatic formative experiences that our children have endured much more difficult than my generation, which was still conditioned to "endure". Quite astonishing, to put it mildly. Thank you. Do you meet any more enthusiastic and committed educators in the classical school system?
There are certainly many. But since I do not move in those circles, I do not know them personally.
What is the main Achilles heel of the classical system that you wanted to overcome with your approach?
That it ignores the child. To use a metaphor: a child is like a grain of wheat that is ground into flour in a bakery, along with countless other grains, and made into whatever they want. But in the long run, this is bound to lead to ruin.
How is the country dealing with the civil society phenomenon that you have initiated?
With more repression. The proof of this is the amendment to the Primary School Act, which now stipulates that home-schoolers will have to sit examinations in all subjects at the end of the next school year. This will be a huge stress for everyone: the children, the parents and also the teachers who will have to conduct these examinations.
Do you have a counterpart at national level?
Not yet.
The new legislation - it is as if a knife has been plunged into the heart, not just into the back of the human efforts of committed parents. Please tell us more about this: are there efforts underway for a constitutional review?
Yes, it is true. There are efforts under way for a constitutional review, but I do not have any more information. But it is important to remember that these are lengthy processes.
Do you have confidence that the wheels may be turning in your favour at systemic level?
People are not yet sufficiently aware of how much the educational process affects a child's overall development. The fact is that systems only change under pressure from people. And there must be a lot of them.
Do you see any other opportunities to get interlocutors at the level of legislation?
I think there are always ways, even if we don't see them. You have to be alert to see if any doors open.
VISION
Is there any desire for non-institutional home education to grow into a new school, in a building, on new foundations, but in the company of peers, not to say institutionally, to simplify it so to speak?
I have a slightly different vision of education and learning. Learning is intertwined with life and is not confined to one place, to one group of people. Peers are an important part of a child's life, but not the most important part, as we subconsciously think today. This is, in my opinion, one of the delusions of modern society, which began to dominate social life at an accelerated pace after the Second World War. The most important thing for a child's development, generally speaking, is the family. School should complement family life. Today, however, all family life seems to revolve around work for school. So, first of all, parents must become aware of their invaluable and supremely important role and task, and only then will school, in whatever form, take its rightful place. But in Slovenia it is very difficult to do so. The state imposes almost impossible requirements for the establishment of schools.
What is more, what are the chances of non-institutional schooling becoming optional, but nonetheless compulsory, education?
That is my dream. Non-compulsory schooling, but compulsory education, as is in fact already the case under the Constitution and international human rights documents.
In his books 95 Theses for Breaking the Dead End of Education and Peace, Pater Karel Gržan talks about the acceptance of difference, oddness, originality. In your experience, what are the best steps to identify talents?
First of all, it is necessary to free oneself from subconscious and conscious assumptions, prejudices, beliefs, ideas, emotional patterns and so on about who the child is, what he or she should become, what he or she should learn. Then develop empathy, so that you can actually perceive who the child is, what his strengths and weaknesses are, where his talents and potentials are expressed. If you have well-developed empathy, you can even perceive the child's life path.
And how to support a weakness so that it shines through?
Any child who has a relationship in which he or she can trust the adult, and the adult feels and senses the child's inner nature and potential, will develop in such a way that he or she will shine. But the hardest part is letting go of ideas and beliefs about "how it is" and "how it should be".
How to support different kinds of intelligence and trust that it is also (only) creativity, not classical knowledge crowned with diplomas, that will equip a child for a good life?
It is the freedom to learn and teach that makes holistic learning possible. And when learning is holistic, it develops all intelligences. It strengthens those that are not well expressed, and refines those in which the child's personal potential lies.
Apolonija Klančar is the author of four books on the difficulties of imparting knowledge, and has spent the last ten years therapeutically helping the most fragile in the learning process and their parents with her extensive multidisciplinary knowledge. Already in her first book six years ago (All My Children and Their Mothers), she wrote that the number of autistic and similarly abled children with learning difficulties would only increase in the next few years. Do you know about this phenomenon and how to prepare for it?
I am aware of this phenomenon. I think there are several causes for the different developmental disabilities, so to speak. I think it is a very complex phenomenon. But the key, I think, is for parents to really start responding to the child's natural need to attach. Because that is the only way to enable the child to optimally develop his or her emotional and mental nature, and that will certainly reduce the number of children who are labelled. I cannot emphasise this secure attachment, which actually means genuine contact between children and parents, strongly enough. Something that I have already spoken about a little earlier. This sacred energy that flows between us. That, for me, is the essence of attachment and the solution to many problems.
What is the genesis of these increasingly common obstacles in children? Pesticides, genetic disruptors in food, radiation, neuroses and parents' high expectations - are these clichés or diagnoses?
A combination of all these. But the basic, most fundamental diagnosis, in my opinion, is the lack of secure attachment between children and parents. Here I must mention the work of Gordon Neufeld. All adults should be familiar with the six stages of child attachment that he talks about. When you know them, it is easier to understand the child. His behaviour and his needs. And then you become more sensitive - to the child and to yourself. Because getting to know your child often also means healing your inner child. It's not rocket science. We all know and experience this, because it is about relationship. We are all in relationships - some unconstructive, some healthy. That is why this knowledge can be understood by all. But we prefer to focus our attention on external events, work, school ... And like a hamster on that wheel in the cage. But it is necessary to get off the wheel, and then out of the cage.
I remember the many hardships and culture shocks at the beginning of the millennium, when my sons were at school; I could write about that now for a few lengths of our conversation. I am still aware and still in the process of forgiveness and acceptance ... Let us say, for example, about the many forms of humiliation that children suffer if they have expressed their sensitivity or inventive creativity. How much misunderstanding of whole generations and their abilities and talents! In the 1970s, we, as pupils, were supported every morning before school and every last lesson by so-called supplementary or additional teaching. It was a very simple structure that worked both ways - the inventive nature of these programmes meant that we went to see one or the other, and it was much more imaginative than a normal class. As I have observed with my own children over the last 20 years, this support system has been minimal or absent. How do you yourself see a child shine when they are supported where they are weak and allowed to flourish where they already shine?
The MagicTree teaching method I developed puts the child at the centre of it's learning. Each and every child. Each child or human being carries his or her own potential. For some people, their potential is more pronounced, say in music or sport, but for the vast majority of people it is not. But that does not mean that they do not have potential. Every person carries their own personal potential. His or her own. If you follow a child through the MTM method, this soon becomes clear. And then it is not difficult to follow the child. Each child begins to shine in his or her own light. In the colour that reflects his or her inner nature, to put it poetically. Even the labels "gifted" and "learning disabled" fall off. Every child is special, and when you feel it, it is infinitely precious. It is just that our society values according to certain guidelines, creating trauma and negative patterns of emotion, thought and behaviour.
When did this absurd leap to an unbearable amount of data taught in schools, which does not create new brain connections in students, but instead rewards mechanical memorisation without a broader context, happen?
There is no exact point in time, in my opinion, but the process started as far back as the 17th century and accelerated dramatically after the Second World War.
Where is the root of this weed? How is it that the teachers do not have the strength to resist such bureaucratisation and the mutilation of children?
This is a complex and very interesting question. It concerns the eternal individual-community dynamic. If there are not enough people in a given society who have developed into individuals and who are capable of bringing fresh wind into society, there will be no change and rigid habits and patterns of behaviour will prevail, which sooner or later become destructive, as is very clear at the moment in the area of schools. Because too few teachers are aware of the seriousness of the problem, and even fewer have the courage to say out loud what is wrong in schools, let alone to start changing the way they work with children.
How can we restore to the teaching profession the lustre that this treasure needs for the child?
It is quite a myth that teachers used to be valued. Before the two world wars, people dreaded the teaching profession because it was difficult and paid little. Today, however, the teaching profession has no respect because it is part of a system that does not support children's development and, therefore, the development of society. I know it sounds harsh, but our views on learning, on teaching and on the child should be radically changed. We are no longer in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the public school system was consolidated, and man has changed a great deal since then. The school has not. How, then, is it to have a respect?
What complementary training would the teaching profession need to become respected again and for teachers to exercise their competences in a sovereign and humane way?
Anyone who works with people should have a thorough knowledge of the basics of developmental psychology and psychology. And a sense of fellow human beings is essential. You cannot learn it, but you can develop it by following a path of self-discovery. Sincerity, authenticity and humility (in the positive sense of the word, not in the sense of servility) paradoxically give a person sovereignty and integrity. Then you can move mountains, figuratively speaking. But it is not easy to reach such a state of mind.
How do you see your way forward, what do you dream of, what do you want to achieve?
My vision is to create a place in Slovenia where children can learn in freedom, at their own pace, in their own way. Without external pressure.
Source: Sensa magazine
Translation: Mateja de Laat