A NEW CLASS OF THINKERS
I took a walk through the grounds of the Green School in Bali, with Ben Freud, head of the senior school.
No words would need to be shared for you to understand the ethos. It is built in bamboo, encouraging the children to be flexible and grounded, preparing them to bend in the winds of the life and to find their way back home. There are no walls, doors, or syllabus. It is a space and a gathering designed for openness and exploration.
This is a system which ensures childhood’s are not lost to rigid chairs and rigorous examinations. A one size that fits few. The invitation in Bali is not to stare out the window – there are none of course – but to wander towards that wonder.
A movement towards themselves, learning what truly brings them vitality. Towards each other – each grade has a garden they tend together. And, crucially, towards the land – the children are leading on the co-creation of a new ‘making’ hub, and in the process had to consider, ‘what would the river, and soil, and plants, and trees, think of this development?’ That imaginary gap between ‘us’ and ‘it’ – the natural world – dissolved.
There are children sat on the school board, the gymnasium floor is made of old aeroplane tyres (excellent spring for the gymnasts), there are no bins on the site (nothing should need recycling or removing), and there is a restaurant run by the children (sourcing, cleaning, financing, marketing, and making). Dissolving too then the leap from adolescence to adulthood.
A shade over 500 children, aged 5 to 18, come together from 51 countries. It is a space for all, human and other-than-human alike. There is a co-working cafe for the parents, while the teachers – known by first names – are in shorts and sliders. I hear musical instruments in harmony, kilns being fired, pots being planted, classes being taught, computers being tapped, lunch being prepared, rest being taken, and games being played. It is a community in flow.
When I think of my education – through a more traditional model – it was an exercise in resistance, with pockets of fluidity. When I was in the art block, the dark room, a buddhism book, a writing class, or on a cricket field, I came alive. In those spaces I glimpsed my potential, and knew – without knowing – my path. In between however, I was wading upstream, and I was not alone. All those hours of treacle – of maths, science, and shame – serve little purpose now. While those hours of animation still guide me today.
The Green School – franchised in South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico, and with talks ongoing in the UK – is a home for all intuition. Like the buildings, the box here is open so that everyone – and no one – fits in it.
My sense is that what served us yesterday is ill equipped for the redirection required tomorrow. This needs a new way of thinking, and a new class of thinkers. In the Balinese hills I glimpsed a group of them and felt more hopeful for it.
