NEW & SMALL SCHOOLS​

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A school or pre-school in the pioneer phase is relatively undifferentiated and may be made up of a quite small staff. This means that the teachers, apart from their teaching work, may carry out many different functions, including administration, parent and government liaison, planning and key decision-making.

 

A school in this phase does not have three distinct spheres of activity but can nevertheless work in a definite threefolding way. This happens when the teachers identify the three aspects of the school life and work with each consciously. 

 

For example, in a College meeting, different topics of discussion may pertain to one or more spheres of the threefold social order. Spiritual-cultural questions can be seen primarily in the light of freedom. A vital task in such a meeting is to identify whether the issue is primarily a "freedom conversation", an "equality conversation" or a "brotherhood conversation". For an exploration of this task see the video with Lynn Kern here. 

 

The relationship of the teachers to the group of trustees or board can be experienced in a definite way in terms of the threefold picture. In this case the teacher group represents and is responsible for the cultural-spiritual of the school and the trustees or board the economic life. The question then is how these aspects of school life meet each other. In the threefold social organism one sphere is not "higher" than the others. All dimensions of school activity can share in anthroposophical study and all can together strive within the social impulse of the school.