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great intuitive thrust out of the deep heart of nature which has us in its keeping and knows that both we and it are in mortal peril."� (Sir Laurens van der Post) Whenever friends visit Phyllis and me, one
of our favorite places to take them is the nearby Camphill Village in Copake,
New York.� The village is part of a
thriving, worldwide movement for the care of people with special needs.� You will find here villagers with Down
Syndrome and a great variety of other mental handicaps -- all pursuing their
lives in a beautiful, restful, productive, socially supportive, and artistically
rich setting.� If there is a place that
can bring healing to a high-tech society, surely this is it. Dignity and Laughter One of the first things likely to strike
you about most any Camphill community (there are more than ninety of them
worldwide, from Ireland to Botswana to India) is the beauty and craftsmanship
evident in the buildings and their furnishings.� Much of the craft work issues from shops where the villagers are
employed -- there are facilities for weaving, pottery-making, woodworking,
candle-dripping, bookbinding, and jewelry-making, as well as dairies, bakeries,
and gardens.� At Camphill Copake a
seed-saving venture has recently gotten under way, together with an herb garden
and a laboratory for the preparation of herbal remedies and salves. There is
plenty of healthy and fulfilling work to satisfy the villagers' strong need to
contribute something worthwhile to society. Camphill villages spring from the same
roots as Waldorf education, and they share the Waldorf emphasis upon an
artistically shaped life.� This emphasis
extends from the long, beautifully carved, wooden tables in many of the living
units (where the resident villagers eat regular meals with their house parents
and any children who live there), to the celebration of seasonal festivals, to
the frequent gathering for artistic performances in an auditorium that is typically the
architectural crown of the village. (In Copake, pianists Isaac Watts and Peter
Serkin are among those who donate their time to perform for the villagers and
staff.)� Drama, dance, dramatic speech,
music -- there is always something to bring the community together in
consciousness of the spiritual background of life in which we all are
united.� As a Camphill worker in Great
Britain, Sybille Alexander, has put it: The atmosphere in the villages is determined by the recognition of the dignity of each human being, the inner, spiritual work done by theleaders -- and, of course, humor, without which the community life would be unbearable. I can vouch for the place of humor.� A few years ago, on a slushy winter day, we
took a visiting friend for a walk through the wooded village in Copake.� Loafing along a muddy path, we were
overtaken by two of the villagers, women of older middle age securely bundled
up against the weather and walking to their jobs in the bakery.� As they passed us, they caught sight of our
sneakered feet and broke into a fit of hilarity.� "You forgot to put your boots on!" they exclaimed,
pointing and laughing.� We acknowledged
our folly and joined in the merriment.�
After a brief exchange they passed on ahead, still laughing and
chattering gaily.� We cracked up, too,
as we reconstructed their conversation for ourselves: ��
"Imagine letting people like that in here!" ��
"Yeah, don't have sense enough to wear boots in the mud.� I bet they wouldn't evencome in
out of the rain!" ��
"If you ask me, they're an ace or two short of a full deck." Trying to Communicate More recently, I had a rather different
encounter in the village.� The staff had
invited me to come speak on technology as part of a lecture series they were
putting together.� Knowing how deeply
Camphill workers were in the habit of thinking about social issues and the
human being, I put together an ambitious and fairly abstract talk.� But when I arrived at the appointed hour in
Fountain Hall, with its high-arching wooden beams and stained glass windows, I was disturbed
to find the auditorium seats full of villagers. I expressed my concern to the organizer,
explaining that I had expected to speak only with staff and had not prepared
anything appropriate for the villagers. (Not that I would have known how to prepare even if I had been
forewarned.) She quietly replied: " Just speak your real concerns out of
heart-felt conviction.� That is what
they need.� They will hear what is
important". "What is important?" I
wondered as I sat down to await my introduction. Then, at the podium, gripped
by self-doubt, I proceeded to deliver the hour-long talk I had prepared.� "At least", I thought, "only
the staff will be in any position to ask questions afterward".� But when the time came, it was the villagers
who thrust their hands eagerly skyward. I called first on a lean, intense-looking
gentleman in a suit and tie. Upon being Recognized, Robert (whose name I learned
later) stood up and began to speak earnestly while vigorously gesturing with
arms, face, and body. But nothing came
out of his mouth. There was only the
sound of muffled struggle as inchoate words, trapped somewhere in the man's
throat, tumbled over each other on their way into some deep, internal void. Yet
he spoke with all the vivid force of a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, and he
began to move from his place as if carried along by the momentum of his own
gestures. He traversed his row to the
aisle and, still gesticulating with a message urgently demanding expression,
began to approach the podium. Alarmed
by the man's almost violent and growing intensity, I began to wonder whether I
might be in some physical danger -- a puzzling sort of question to ask while
you're looking out over an audience that seems as serene and
undisturbed as ever. In the actual event, someone rose easily
to meet Robert's advance and gently ushered him back to his seat -- a guidance
he did not resist. Apparently, it seemed natural to everyone that he should
have had his say.
Of course, I owed Robert a reply.� So I told him that I envied his ability to
speak with such force and passion, since my own great limitation lay in my
inability to do so.� And it was
true.� Robert's force of conviction was
fully on display, while his words remained bottled up inside him.� My own intellectual work is in fact driven
by great passion and conviction, but I learned long ago to choke off any outward
expression of feeling.� My words flow
freely enough, but their passage into the outer world is cut off from the
furnace of their forging. Other questions and comments came.� One villager told of enjoying a game of
computer solitaire when she visited a relative's home.� Another confided to me afterward that the
questions I raised were so gravely important that he would carry them into his
nightly bedtime meditation. Some other comments I could scarcely understand --
perhaps because I was not as attuned to what is important as my audience had been. Gift-Bearers Karl Koenig, founder of the Camphill
movement, once wrote that� I can help my
brother only if I see the helper in him, [and] the receiver of help in me.
You will find throughout the Camphill
movement a strong sense that people with special needs bring special gifts to
the planet -- perhaps exactly the needful gifts in our time.� These folks can teach us the virtues our
culture has largely disregarded -- for example, the virtue of attending fully
to the person immediately in front of us.�
Rose Edwards, a former Camphill worker, once told me: I worked for
eighteen years with extremely disabled children, and to this day I can
recommend it as a tremendous background for life. Everything had to be exaggerated:� you have to speak more slowly, be more
patient, plan more carefully, be more present in the moment. Her own manner of deliberate, thoughtful
speech gave uncommon emphasis to her testimony.� Hearing her words, I couldn't help thinking of the contemporary
habit (often proclaimed a virtue) of divided attention.� I also thought of the fabled ethic of
Silicon Valley, with its pride in raw efficiency, in supreme technical ability,
and in "don't get in my way or I'll run you down" aggressiveness.� At Camphill the whole point is to allow the
other person to get in our way.� That's
how we begin to see him for who he is, and thereby discover something about who
we are -- something other than what our preferred mirrors tell us. When you create an environment like that,
remarkable things begin to happen.� What
often catches people's attention about Camphill is the extraordinary and
unanticipated development their loved ones undergo there.� Part of this is owing to the special gifts
the villagers bring with them.� Koenig
has remarked that, while we can often gain efficiency and speed by ignoring
those with special needs, in some matters they may possess a speed and ability far surpassing
our own.� As a writer at the Camphill in
Botton Village, U.K., has put it: Serving the Other A great deal depends on an environment
that supports, believes in, and encourages individual gifts and individual
development.� Koenig describes the
"College Meetings" at Camphills for children, where every week the
staff of a house or entire facility come together to discuss a particular
child: The child's case history is read, and then the teachers, helpers and nurses give their reports and impressions of the child in question. Many symptoms, signs and features are collected until -- usually under the guidance of one of the doctors -- the image of the child arises. His habits, achievements, faults and failures are laid out in such a way that gradually a complete picture of his individuality appears. In this picture the staff find guidance
that enables them to clear a path All this echoes the way children are assessed
in Waldorf schools, where the College of Teachers will often hold meetings to
discuss the problems and opportunities facing a particular student.� The contrast with the mentality behind
standardized testing could hardly be greater.�
Certainly teachers must assess student performance -- and in the most
profound and intimate way possible.� The
problem with standardized testing is that it avoids any such rigorous
assessment.� It is a hopelessly crude
tool, a means of studied ignorance rather than deep understanding. And, as a
side effect, it removes all flexibility, the living qualities, from classroom
engagement.� When you know in advance
exactly what knowledge the student-container is supposed to hold, there's not
much incentive to attend to the particular gifts and developmental needs, or
the consuming interests, of the individual learner.� Standardized testing is not student assessment; it is the refusal
to assess. No student's needs and timing and
achievement and potential can be assessed in exactly the same terms as another
student's.� I suspect that, where
teachers willingly acquiesce in the demand for standardized testing, two
factors at work are laziness and fear.�
It can be both difficult and disturbing to confront what lives deeply in
another human being.� This, of course,
is exactly the burden that Camphill workers take upon themselves. But the
principle of the distinctive character of the individual is hardly less
important in mainline schools. Of Accident and Destiny Whether it accords with our philosophical
disposition or not, most of us have had some sort of an experience of destiny
-- for example, we have (perhaps unwillingly) felt that a horrific accident or
dramatic change in fortune or a significant personal encounter was somehow
"prepared" for us. What we met on these occasions was ourselves, or
something that belonged to us.� The
events were "fated", answering as if by some hidden intention to a
need or potential of ours. In other words, the accidents were not
really accidents; they were integral to our lives.� But, at the same time, we could not feel ourselves reduced
to these strokes of destiny, for we also stood apart from them; it was we who
chose how to make them into material for further development.� If they were part of us, it was because they
presented us with the opportunity to exercise exactly the capacities that
needed strengthening.� All such events
shape us, but they do so most crucially by giving us the opportunity to
transcend them. Of course, the prevailing, scientifically
informed culture leaves little room for any very significant reading of these
unusually freighted experiences.�
Nevertheless, given that the purpose of sound science is to elucidate
experience and not merely to dismiss it, our inattention to these inklings of
destiny is much more problematic than the effort to bring them into greater clarity. But my purpose now is not to argue such
matters either way.� Rather, it is
merely to point out that, without a strong sense of human destinies, Camphills
would not exist.� What is true of the
"external" events of our lives, Camphill workers will tell you, is
also true of your and my bodies as physical instruments for the expression of
our selves:� the instrument of my
earthly existence is not an accident; it belongs to me.� But at the same time, I am not just the
instrument.� There are many ways I can
use it, and in the using I can to one degree or another grow beyond its
limitations -- grow by means of its limitations. It is not hard for us to realize that the
crushing, outward circumstances of life may have kept hidden from us some of
the most powerful, ingenious, and significant personalities ever to inhabit the
earth -- a Mozart, perhaps, who never laid hands on a piano, a Gandhi whose
crippling accident and unenlightened society left him in institutional
darkness. What you will find among many Camphill
workers is a sense that this same truth applies to those individuals coping
with the severe constraints of a defective physical organism. The self whose destiny it is to wrestle with
such daunting limitations may be a self whose hidden resources and powers of
development far exceed those of its helpers.�
The close connection between genius and the breakdown of normal function
is well known.� We are not just our
handicaps.� We are not just our
symptoms. A Parent's Disconcerting Revelation Carlo Pietzner, who helped found the
Camphill movement in America, has spoken of the experience, both striking and
shattering, when parents realize their child is more than his symptoms: They suddenly find
themselves utterly alone in a society unable to appreciate their
revelation.� No one is prepared to help
them understand why there is more in the child than the symptoms of stammering,
stuttering, not being able to learn to read, not being able to walk, not being
able to feed themselves, to complete toilet training. Surely, yes, these are
the describable symptoms, the incapacity of the instrument.� And yet they can see and feel that there is
more to it; there is the player to it.�
And if there is a player to it, it cannot be only an accident.� This player must have the��� possibility of finding a way to play his
sonata, however hollow the instrument may sound, or however many notes may be
missing.� (From Questions of Destiny.� Slightly paraphrased.) Whose life is not a broken song?� Camphills are a testimony to the conviction
that even the most troubled songs need singing -- and more, that these may be,
in their own way, songs of genius, giving voice to some of the most critical
melodies and counterpoints in the sung destiny of earth itself. As I say, I am attempting no explicit
justification of such a view, remote as it is from conventional
understanding.� But Camphills are real
places of practical effectiveness -- remarkable sites of healing and
inspiration exactly where the surrounding society would be least inclined to
look for anything of much importance.�
My own inclination, in trying to glimpse a tolerable social future,
would be to look at least as hard at what is going on in a Camphill village as
to look at the excitements of Silicon Valley. For further information about the Camphill
movement, see http://www.camphill.org. Copyright 2001 by The Nature Institute. |