Te Ra Waldorf School has mastered the art of first impressions. “Oh my God, you hear this all the time,” says former staff member Sophie Perkins. “You feel like you’re coming home. It has this very peaceful feeling about it. It is church-like, almost. They do it so well.”
If you visit in the morning, you’ll smell fresh bread being baked. The school bell really is a bell – not an alarm tone piped through speakers. You won’t see kids scoffing chippies or plugged into iPods, or wearing branded clothing. No: Te Ra is a place of greenery, of airy wooden buildings, a place for kids to be kids.
But two years ago, parents at this Steiner school discovered a darker side to the writings of Rudolf Steiner. They found what Perkins now considers to be “evil, evil white racism”.
Over an extraordinary few months, parents and staff left the school in droves. The school has no clear record of numbers. But those we talked to say the racism – and the way the school “vilified” those who spoke out against it – drove out six of Te Ra’s 35 staff members and more than 29 families. It was a huge hit for the roll, which is now 140.
Perkins spent more than five years working at Te Ra and sent her children there. “We’ve managed to get ourselves out of something,” she says. “It’s like being woken up – I felt like Snow White, I really did – I felt like the poisoned apple came out of my mouth and I woke up.”
Last month an official investigation commissioned by the Ministry of Education...
Read the read of the article here: Fairy-tale fallout - Education - The Listener
(Thanks to @lecanardnoir for the heads-up)
