JOHN MARSDEN TEACHES COURAGE
SUBJECT
John Marsden
OCCUPATION
School principal
INTERVIEWER
Daniel Teitelbaum
PHOTOGRAPHER
Gregory Lorenzutti
LOCATION
Melbourne, Australia
DATE
June 2018
ANTIDOTE TO
One-dimensional learning
UNEXPECTED
“Ogre of the place”
John Marsden runs schools that are both credible and incredible. Credible because they meet the same educational requirements as any other school in Australia. Incredible because with just a few small differences they feel unlike any other school I’ve been to. The focus at Candlebark and Alice Miller schools, both situated in the outskirts of Melbourne, is on providing real-life experiences. There is no unnecessary administration, no uniforms; there’s plenty of space and nature for kids to play in. And discipline is about conversation.
“The kids are active, they’re energised, their eyes are alert, they’re cheerful. There’s a tremendous degree of inclusiveness here.”
Starting as a teacher at 28 years old, and having travelled to thousands of schools over his years as an author, John took note of what worked and what didn’t in K-12 education. What he’s created are schools where teachers love to teach, students love to learn, and education is directed towards the acquirement of both knowledge and wisdom. In a world where anxiety and depression among young people are on an alarming upward trend, the work couldn’t be more potent. At Alice Miller and Candlebark schools, students are encouraged to go on adventures and explore their own inner wilderness—or as their motto goes, to take care and take risks. They learn to build their internal resources to deal with the challenges of a real and complex world.
John and I started our conversation as recess began. His office shares a wall with part of the playground—providing plenty of amusing, podcast-worthy background sounds of children playing, yelling and punctuating John’s words with the thud of balls slamming into the door. We were interrupted a couple of times for John to deal with urgent and practical matters—a dead kangaroo which had found its way into an equipment shed and a bus that needed a part replaced. It was at this point John informed me that running a school often happens in the pedantic details. I was curious to know why he went to all the trouble.
DANIEL TEITELBAUM: Tell me about why you started a school.
JOHN MARSDEN: I think I was just so angry at the way I’d been treated in school myself. Not just the obvious things like corporal punishment and the power wielded so arrogantly and wilfully and recklessly by people who clearly weren’t capable of exercising power. But also the more subtle things, like the fact that the teaching was incredibly dull and lifeless and the teachers were dull and lifeless. I just knew there had to be a better way to communicate information. I left school discontented. There was a positive aspect to it because I used to sit in class thinking, . And I had very clear ideas of what needed to be changed. I went to between two and three thousand schools as a writer to do workshops and talks and residencies, over a long period of 20 years or something. It was like getting an inside pass because they didn’t roll out the red carpet in the way they might if there was an open day for parents. So I’d be sitting in the staff room at lunchtime and the teachers would be chatting. It was wanting to prove that there was a different way of doing things. I spent a couple of years at Fitzroy Community School in Melbourne. It’s the closest I’ve seen to what I think a school can achieve. Including just the fact that they had this amazing balance in the way the teachers interacted with the students. It’s not a democracy. And the best analogy is a tired one—that of a village raising the child. But that’s what it is.
