Freedom, Order and the
Golden Bead Material

All Frances had ever wanted was for her son to be happy. Happy, successful and safe. Was that too much to ask?

She and Mattie had arrived in San Diego to be reunited with her husband, Tony, then on a year’s secondment to one of the city’s big research hospitals. Four weeks earlier Tony had flown out of Sydney alone so that he might settle into the job without distraction and have time to look for a house to rent. Frances had been lucky enough to line up a part-time job in a dialysis unit; now all they needed was to locate a good preschool, somewhere safe and nurturing where they could leave four-year-old Mattie for a few hours each day. But already it was causing her sleepless nights. It would have been a big enough issue back home in Sydney, where she knew how to read the signs, but here she was a stranger. They said America would be pretty much like Australia but they were wrong.

The city was expensive and all they could afford to rent was a small box-like house on the edge of an infamous drug-dealing area. Their nights were broken by the wail of sirens and frantic shouts emanating from a block of derelict apartments at the end of their street. In daylight she had to endure the beggars. A three-block walk to the dingy supermarket was an encounter with panhandlers on the sidewalks, some black, some white. She found it easy to ignore the sullen professional who sat cross-legged in her regular spot outside a shop, her shabby hat set down on the pavement, but it was the random and the crazy ones that she found disturbing, the look of desperation in their eyes, their agitation, their twitching bodies and trembling hands. One day she arrived at the supermarket just after a shooting and there was shattered glass and blood spattered across the doors. Once inside she rushed through her shopping in a cold sweat. She resisted this market; the lighting was bad, the paint on the walls was peeling, the assistants were surly and the rows and rows of processed food looked time-worn and lifeless.

Only a few days after this, a young woman with matted red hair attacked her outside a DVD store, landing a wild haymaker punch on her shoulder. The woman’s clothes were dirty and her eyes glazed with a black film. Frances could see she was on something and that the effect of the drug rendered her body flaccid; her muscles were slack and her punch lacked force. ‘So you don’t like Madonna, eh?’ the woman screamed and Frances could see that in her assailant’s waking nightmare she, Frances, was someone else.

An elderly black man stopped and asked: ‘Are you alright?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, but she was shaken. When she told Tony that night he was surprisingly detached. ‘There’s a lot of stuff here we have to get used to,’ he said. She could see he was worried that she might not cope, that she might pack up and return home.

Every Thursday she would go to the city library to borrow books and quite often there was a figure in the women’s lavatory, huddled on the floor in the corner and completely covered by a ragged brown blanket. The figure, she assumed it was a woman, would sit for hours, keening in the most miserable wail. The first time she encountered her there she went to the librarian on the information desk, a neat little woman who sighed and said: ‘Is she there again?’ After a while, like everyone else, Frances ignored the sobbing figure huddled in the corner. She washed her hands quickly and returned to the shelves.

One afternoon, on the walk home, a tall, slender black woman of around thirty stepped into her path, put out a hand and demanded money. She had a dissipated beauty, a kind of worn elegance in the way she carried herself, but her aura was seething and dark. Unlike many of the street beggars, she stared directly into Frances’s eyes, holding her gaze with a look of unalloyed hatred.

Frances froze. She had never been looked at in this way before. Even though she had lived in some tough neighbourhoods back home this was a kind of abjection that was new to her. Hideous and shameful.

‘You have to stare ahead into the distance and keep walking,’ Tony told her. ‘You can’t let it get to you.’

In the third week after she and Mattie arrived, Tony took a morning off and they drove to one of the two preschools that had been recommended to them by one of Tony’s colleagues. The first of these was The Free School, not far from where they lived. This, they had been told, was a cultural icon. One of the old flagships of ’68 and the counterculture, it had been set up to ‘shine a new light’ (this from the brochure) and to ‘enable children to bloom like flowers under a free sun’. Flowers? A free sun? This was hippie talk. Still, the supervisor of Tony’s lab had sent her own daughter there so they were obliged at least to go and look it over.

The main building was a rambling two-storey timber house surrounded by a large garden that was mostly sand and trees. The swings were tall, dangerously so it seemed to Frances, and the adventure play towers were also very high and with low rails. They looked perilous. The place was a mess: sand and toys strewn everywhere, clothes spilling out of lockers or lying on the ground. Some children had stripped down in the warm weather to their underpants and ran gleefully about in pursuit of one another. A small girl tottered around in high heels with a red satin skirt pulled up around her neck and a pink net tutu on her head like a fuzzy halo. Snot ran from her nostrils to her top lip. She looked up at Tony and said: ‘I’m a rose.’

On the walls of the main building there were life-size cut-outs of each child pasted on the walls and stuck at crazy angles to one another, with names scrawled across each one. Rhiannon. Skye. Jacob. Jordan. Saba. Lindsay. Out in the playground a cluster of children were at the water trough, drenching themselves and one another.

‘Okay, you guys,’ shouted one of the teachers, ‘I told you to put those aprons on. Now it’s time to dry out.’

Frances looked up. A boy was hanging by his ankles from a twenty-foot pole, his blond hair floating down into the air. Her heart bounded with anxiety for him.

‘You be careful up there, Max,’ bellowed a tall, bearded teacher who introduced himself as Dean. Dean was around forty, a kind of ageing hippie. He wore a bright-red gypsy scarf tied around long hair that drifted in fronds to his waist.

The school administrator, Sadie, was a petite woman with a friendly, no-nonsense manner and a black Afro perm. She wore black stiletto heels, tight black pants and a black leather jacket.

‘Our kids have confidence, they’re outgoing. They come here; they’re fearful, they’re timid. Six months later they’re climbing the highest scaffolding. They get a lot of colds, it’s true, but when they leave, they’re tough.’ She led them through to the kitchen, where flour lay everywhere. ‘Lucy here is making soy pancakes for afternoon tea. We only use wholefoods for snacks. We explain to the children about holistic energies. No sugar, no biscuits or cake in lunches. That’s a rule.’

‘They have rules here?’ hissed Tony. ‘Could have fooled me.’

The rooms were in need of painting. There were shelves stuffed with old boxes and the husks of toilet rolls, rags and paint-encrusted yoghurt containers. There were guitars with broken strings hanging from nails above a battered and dusty piano. In the book corner the mat was fraying, the shelves scratched, the books old and tattered (though there were plenty of them). The sofas were battered and stained. The mattresses in the jumping room were piled on one another and scattered with sand. ‘Oh, dear,’ said Sadie, scarcely missing a beat on the tour, ‘they’re not supposed to bring sand inside. We’ll sweep it up later. Well, listen, you guys just wander around here and look at whatever you want to look at. Talk to the kids. Feel free if you see someone on their own to be that person’s best friend for a while. Feel free to make a connection.’

Out in the yard, in the far corner, was a large wooden cage on slats, with a black rabbit inside. In a small fenced-off plot the remains of a carrot patch were in seed, and two white ducks pecked at an empty water trough.

‘The children study the animals?’ Frances directed this question to Dean, who at that moment was mounting a chipboard and glue project on a trellis table.

‘Nah, the novelty wore off on the first day. I don’t know why we keep ’em.’ He brushed his sticky hands against his jeans. ‘Mostly these guys just like to fool around.’

‘Do you have any classes?’ she asked.

‘Sure we do. We have, like, a music class for the little ones and a dance class for anyone who wants to come. Boy, are those dance classes wild! Then there’s a yoga class, and sometimes they cook. We’ve got serrated plastic knives and stuff. No-one’s been stabbed yet, eh, guys?’ he glanced around at his charges. ‘Depends on what the staff feels like doin’ that day, y’know. We keep it spontaneous. But the classes are optional. Basically these guys can move from inside space to outside space and back again as they want. Face it, these guys are up for twelve years tied to their desks in school. This is their last chance to be free, right?’

A tousled girl held up her gluey chipboard assemblage, so covered in white paste as to resemble a geometric suet pudding. Dean patted her on the head.

‘Wow, Elisha, that’s far out!’

In the cramped corner that was the principal’s office, Sadie asked if they had looked at any other schools.

‘Well,’ said Tony, ‘we were planning to check out the Montessori school in North Avenue.’

‘Oh dear,’ Sadie shook her frizzy curls. ‘Oh dear. We have all sorts of problems with that. We all believe in early learning but, you know, there is such a thing as too many rules. Too much structure, too soon. We’ve had kids come here from Montessori schools and they’re all tense, they’re having nightmares at night. They have a fear of doing the wrong thing. They worry about making a mistake. A few weeks with us and, hey, they’re kids again. You have to be careful, you know. There’s such a thing as too much order.’

That night Frances was unable to sleep. She lay in bed and thought back to an abandoned Diploma of Education she had begun some years before, and her rudimentary study of child development. She knew of the German visionary Friedrich Froebel who had developed the idea of the Kindergarten. As part of his philosophy of Universal Harmony he had repudiated the idea of children as miniature adults who could usefully be put to work. Instead, he thought they should begin by spending their time in a children’s garden, a haven of creative play where children could grow like flowers unfolding. Froebel set up a network of these kindergartens, some of which were closed down for a time by the Prussian government as too revolutionary. She thought of Froebel now as one of Sadie’s forebears.

Tomorrow she and Tony were booked to look at the Montessori school, the San Diego Montessaurus, and she also knew something of Dr. Maria Montessori’s pioneering work in the slums of Rome. Here the great innovator had worked with so-called backward children to develop a highly structured method that demonstrated how any child in the right environment could learn. Montessori believed firmly that freedom was not to be confused with anarchy; on the contrary, inner order was necessary to enable the child to see meaning in his or her existence. Chaos was not stimulating but oppressive. But this did not mean that inner order could be achieved through rigid external discipline of the old-fashioned kind. And so on. All Frances could recall were a few general principles but almost nothing of the detail of Montessori’s method. What she did recall was how Montessori had an illegitimate son who was sent to the country to be looked after by a family there, and how she would visit occasionally to bring a toy and to observe him at play.

The following morning, they drove uptown to the Montessori school. It was a large property that took up a whole block, with a high fence all around that might well have belonged to a fort. They parked the car and walked to the tall wooden gates, which were unlocked. When, tentatively, they pushed one half of the gates open they found themselves in a peaceful yard. Here was a picture of perfect calm, of manicured order and low-key Californian charm. Several rustic, cedar-framed classrooms stood within a high-walled compound, almost obscured by trees and ranged in a semi-circle around a bitumen courtyard with a large oak at its centre. A number of red flowering bushes, planted at random intervals, softened the contours of the swings, the climbing tower and the slide. The only discordant note was a scruffy old tyre that hung by a thick rope from the oak tree.

The courtyard was empty. School was already in session.

They found their way to the office of the school administrator with whom they had made an appointment. Nancy was a tall, middle-aged woman with short, stylish grey hair. In her silk print dress and high heels she looked every inch the competent executive. She was also welcoming and cheerful, and she led them without much preamble to the first of the cedar huts. Inside, the hut was one large open space, warm and filled with natural light.

‘We often have observers,’ Nancy smiled, ‘and the children are accustomed to it.’ She gestured to a line of chairs at the back of the room and handed them a portfolio of printed sheets. Dutifully they sat on the small chairs and Frances was reminded that Montessori was the first to introduce child-size furniture. She opened the cardboard file that Nancy had given her and began to read her way through the notes. ‘The goal of Maria Montessori’s educational method was world peace’ (yeah, right) ‘and we agree with Dr. Montessori that each generation of children has the opportunity to remake the world it inherits.’ Suddenly Frances was irritated by this high-minded sentiment, almost as sceptical as she was of children blooming like flowers under a free sun, and she began to skim until she came to a page headed ‘Observations’:

The presence of visitors always has an effect on the children and the classroom atmosphere. In order that you may observe as natural and typical a classroom as possible, we ask that you please follow these suggestions:

1. Do not smoke.

2. Please remain seated.

3. Do not initiate any conversations during the work period.

4. If a child approaches you and asks a question, please answer briefly.

5. Do not talk to other adults who may also be observing.

Well, that was clear; they had their riding instructions. They were not being invited to wander about and become anyone’s best friend, not even for a moment.

Every class has two teachers, Nancy had explained to them as they walked the path between her office and the first cedar hut.

‘We’re very proud of our staff, and they’ve been with us a long time, probably because they’re not interfered with in their rooms. It’s their own space. Joan specialises in art, she’s doing an MA on children’s painting. Clara is currently doing her Master of Education on children’s music and plays several instruments herself. Sophie has a doctorate in children’s language difficulties. All the teachers bring a range of their own interests and skills to their work.’

Tony had looked at her sideways and she knew what he was thinking. His irreverent streak was already roused. A doctorate? To teach preschool?

They settled on their low wooden chairs at the back of the classroom. Feeling vaguely foolish on the child-size furniture and with their knees almost up to their chins they prepared to ‘observe’. Nancy leaned over to whisper that she would leave them to it and they were welcome to return to her office, when they were ready, to discuss what they had observed. At the door, she turned and waved at them encouragingly.

As she waved, Tony leaned across and whispered in Frances’s ear. ‘This place is so clean and tidy, so organised. It gives me the creeps.’

‘For heaven’s sake, you work in a lab.’

‘That’s different.’

‘It is only the beginning of the day,’ she murmured. What did he expect? Chip packets all over the floor?

They counted sixteen children who ranged, according to the notes, from two-and-a-half to six years old, and who sat in a circle on a large mat, quiet and composed. This, it appeared, was Circle Time, the first session of the day. There were two teachers in the room, both women. The first teacher sat at the top of the circle, cross-legged, a young woman in her late twenties, slim with shoulder-length black hair and dressed in baggy black cotton pants, leather sandals and a long, faded aqua shirt in Indian cotton. She looked very serious, and the first thing Frances observed was that she chewed her nails. It seemed out of place, an unsightly flaw; an unexpected symptom of anxiety on the sunlit surface of calm and order. The teacher’s name was Clara, and she began by asking the children, one at a time and working clockwise, to stand up, walk into the centre of the circle and take a card from the neat stack resting on the carpet. When each child had performed this task (in complete silence) Clara spoke in a low sing-song chant. ‘If you have the number five, please stand up.’ A child rose, holding a cardboard square. ‘Thank you, Jesse. If you have the number two, please stand up.’

And so it went on, until all the children had stood for their numbers. Then they were directed to sit again in their circle.

‘Tim, will you go over to the Geometric Solids shelf and bring us back the rectangular prism, please.’

The boy, about four, tip-toed over to where a group of polished wooden shapes were arrayed on a ledge. He lifted the five-inch prism and began his return walk, stepping with exaggerated – almost ritualistic – slowness. Perhaps it was the sing-song tone of Clara’s instructions but the children all seemed to be operating in a kind of trance.

‘It’s good how carefully Jesse is carrying that over to us,’ Clara intoned.

The children did not move, fidget, or sigh. Their faces were solemn, or blank. Were they usually this subdued, Frances wondered, or was it because they were under observation?

Tony leaned in his wife’s direction and grimaced. ‘It’s as quiet as a cathedral in here.’

She ignored him.

‘Good little guinea-pigs, aren’t they?’ he persisted.

She felt in her husband his characteristic resistance to authority.

‘Maybe it’s just a quiet poise that we’re not used to seeing in children.’

She sounded sanctimonious. Clara’s tone was catching.

After all the shapes were assembled on the mat, Clara placed a white cheesecloth over them and the children were invited to the front, one at a time, to kneel and shut their eyes while they felt under the cloth for a particular shape. This they did in perfect quiet.

Frances glanced again at Nancy’s notes. ‘In order that your observation may be more meaningful we suggest noting the following. Order in the classroom: physical order; the order in the design of the materials; order in the sequence in which the exercises are accomplished; order in a child’s use of materials …’

Yea, verily, there was a love of order here.

‘This has a horrible fascination,’ muttered Tony.

‘Don’t be such a cynic.’

Clara stood and smoothed her long shirt over her thighs. Circle Time, it appeared, was over and after Circle Time it was off to ‘work’. Several projects and resources were laid out around the room, some already begun on previous days. The notes informed Frances that each child was required to work in his or her own clearly defined space and for this a small mat was used. No other child was permitted to trespass on the mat without permission from the mat’s ‘worker’. A child might leave his or her mat in any state he or she wished but must, on completion of the project, tidy both project and mat away. ‘Please note that completion of the project may take weeks, and for this period the mat must be left undisturbed and in the state the child wishes it to be.’

Frances was beginning to catch on. There was an ordered classroom and within this, each child could have a space of free play, her or his own little backyard in miniature; a balance of structure and routine with impulse and spontaneity. There could be apparent chaos on the mat, but order all around. Yet despite the mat being an area of ‘free’ activity, surely there must be a subtle pressure to do something ‘useful’ or ‘constructive’ on that mat?

She looked up. All was proceeding with uncanny decorum. She watched a small boy in a red jumpsuit who had begun to paint at an easel. He wielded his brush with unblinking concentration, painting for much longer than any other child of comparable age that she had observed in other schools. When he was satisfied, he laid down his brush, unclipped his painting and hung it on a wooden rack to dry. Then, without hesitation, he walked across the room to the sink and turned on the tap. With great ceremony he proceeded to carry a yellow bucket of water and a yellow sponge back to the paint corner, where he began to clean his easel.

‘Yellow is our cleaning colour,’ said a sign on the wall above the sink.

The second teacher, Joan, a fair, freckled woman in jeans and sandals, had sat to one side of the room for the duration of Circle Time. She began now to circulate among the children, commenting, in a low-key way, on their work. One four-year-old girl was doing a giant jigsaw on her grey felt ‘territory’ mat, and already she was advanced enough for it to be apparent that this was a map of the continents of the world in bright poster colours. Above her on the wall was a display of autumn leaves, pressed flat.

Another child was building a complex series of towers in blocks. ‘Some Montessori schools allow children only to use blocks and other project shapes to categorise, not for free play,’ said the notes, ‘but we’ve modified this practice in accordance with the philosophy of the staff. We find that free play in no way hinders learning. Familiarisation with the look, and more importantly, the feel of the Montessori wooden letters is the beginning of literacy. Most of our children, with no forced effort or strain, can read by the time they begin primary school.’

So this was a local version of Montessori. A little looser, a little more laid back. But not laid back enough for some.

Tony was restless and wriggling on his child-size chair. ‘This is unreal,’ he said. ‘These kids are like little lab technicians. The only things missing are the rats in mazes and the white coats.’

Frances ignored him. She was mesmerised.

At ten-thirty, the children sat at the small table in the kitchen alcove and ate their snack of raisins and carrot wedges. Then Frances and Tony rose to follow the children outside for their morning play. Out on the warm timber deck they leaned over the rail and observed that the children seemed to play like other children; careening around on tricycles, falling off onto the bitumen and scraping their knees, climbing rope ladders, swinging on the rubber tyre. No-one threw sand.

‘I’m just going inside,’ said Frances to Tony, who seemed more relaxed now, leaning back against the cedar wall and closing his eyes to the sun. ‘I want to look at the learning materials.’

He opened his eyes and fixed her with a stare. ‘I don’t like this place, Fran.’ She ignored him.

Inside she began to wander about the perimeter of the empty room. She wanted to look at the specially designed project materials, up close. These were the famous ‘manipulatives’, also known as the ‘didactic apparatus’, designed to be ‘self-correcting’. They were arrayed on a wide wooden shelf at child height and all were neatly labelled. These were the Sound Boxes. This was the Pink Tower. This was the Brown Stair, a set of ten prisms. These were the Red Rods and these were the Smelling Jars. These were the Bells and the Temperature Jugs and the Baric Tablets and the Golden Bead Material. And there was even one called the Time Line. And she was thinking: the names are wonderful. They sounded like words from a secret code or ritual, like something belonging to the Rosicrucians, or the Masons, something that might admit you to a better world, one where there were no beggars on the streets, where no-one moaned and wailed in the toilets or stared at you with hatred in their eyes. She picked up a soft felt container labelled the Object Bag and looked it up in her notes. This, the notes explained, was for ‘exploring the art of feeling’. She opened it, peered inside and was disappointed. There was just a cup, a lid, a pin, some string, a ball. So much promise, so mundane a reality.

More satisfying was the Golden Bead Material, an exquisitely constructed cube of a thousand glittering beads. Though you would never have guessed from looking at it, the Golden Bead was a mathematical toy, designed to teach the decimal system. The beads were made of translucent gold acrylic strung on copper wire. They sat in a cedar box on top of the shelf beside the open window and when the sunlight caught them they glinted. Each bead was perfect, and each sat in perfect relation to the others: perfect proportion, perfect balance, perfect harmony. They had a mystery to them, as if each bead was a magical object and belonged in that novel by Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game. She had read that book as a student (it had won Hesse the Nobel Prize) and had found it wholly absorbing. For several nights she had been transported to life in the twenty-fifth century, to the utopian province of Castalia where an elite priesthood studied to master an immensely complex game that sought to integrate the whole of human knowledge into a harmonious system. The Glass Bead Game was the game of life itself, and these ‘didactic’ toys on the shelf beside her (they would not, it occurred to her now, be out of place in a Harry Potter novel) seemed like stray fragments from the great game; alluring and enigmatic miniatures of the whole; apparently simple tools with which you could build a series of other, and better, worlds.

Outside, as they walked back to the car, she knew that she and Tony were at odds. ‘Well, how many out of ten?’ he asked.

‘Search me.’

‘The teacher in the black pants didn’t smile very much.’

‘I saw her smile.’

‘It’s all too organised.’

‘So you keep saying. That’s better than a shambles.’

‘The kids were too subdued.’

‘We’d have to observe them over a longer period to tell if that’s really the case.’

‘I take it this meets with Madame’s approval, then.’

‘No, there was something missing there, but I can’t put my finger on it.’

They left the school grounds by the same high wooden gates where, every morning, the teachers stood to welcome the pupils and, even more importantly, to farewell them in the afternoons. This way they could see who was entering, and who collected the children. Nothing was left to chance.

Out on the pavement Tony stopped and looked back at the high walls. ‘Did you check out the security devices? The alarmed walls. The cameras.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, wouldn’t you want your child to be safe?’

‘Castle Keep,’ he said, intent on having the last word.

Afterwards they had lunch at a café nearby. Tony ate a large, ropey pastry filled with custard and when he had finished he licked his fingers. He had icing sugar around his mouth. He looked silly. She found herself staring out into the street where a young man was begging. Though it was a warm day he wore an army greatcoat with the collar turned up and his eyes had a wild, desperate glaze. The café jukebox was playing old Rolling Stones hits and she was thinking: It wasn’t that the Montessaurus was too organised, or too quiet. It was that there was too much responsibility. Yes, that was it, too much of a burden of choice, day after day, to do something constructive, something sensible. She saw her son in invisible fetters.

For the next few days she debated with Tony the merits of the two schools. The Montessaurus was almost unnervingly calm. Some vital spark seemed to be missing. But at The Free School some of the kids were bored, or raced around on the edge of manic distraction. Frances returned to have another look and came home in two minds.

‘It was too dirty, too disorganised,’ she said over dinner. ‘The stuff they were making was junk.’

‘Yeah, but they’re only three years old,’ he said, ‘maybe four. Boys need their freedom.’ And she felt like a prig.

Another sleepless night followed in which she lay awake and ran the arguments through her head, over and over: the Montessori method was unduly mechanical, formal and restricting; there was not enough free play of the imagination, not enough ‘creative expression’; there was too much emphasis on individual rather than group work, on the development of individual skills and disciplines rather than social adjustment to the group. In the constant struggle to balance the needs of self and other – to find meaning for the self in the other – it veered too far into elitist individualism. In the dark of their cramped little bedroom she saw the unnaturally quiet classroom, she saw her son in a straightjacket. On the other hand, what was the point of undisciplined, unskilled ‘creative play’ that went nowhere? And there could be too much emphasis on the social, which only made children slaves to the peer group. Your best friend is away for the day and you’re at a loss. Eventually she fell asleep and into a vivid dream. She was in a yard somewhere and all of the Golden Bead Material had escaped its box and was strewn about her feet so that the ground was a carpet of golden beads. ‘Look,’ she said, to no-one who was present, ‘see how the beads lie freely on the ground and still they retain their beauty.’

In the morning, somewhat dejectedly, she and Tony agreed that – The Free School or Montessori – no one system was ever going to be just right.

That evening she made a snap decision, and surprised herself. In the end, she realised, we resist that which has shaped us for the worse, and as the product of stiflingly conservative education systems, she and Tony agreed to go with the spirit of ’68 and send their son to The Free School.

At first Mattie was happy enough, and made friends with another boy his age, Jordan. But Jordan only came on certain days and the rest of the time Mattie was restless and bored. He especially hated the compulsory rest period after lunch, and could never drop off to sleep. They knew this because the ageing hippie, Dean, who used to strum the guitar and sing folk songs to lull the fidgeting children into a nap, would sometimes let Mattie ‘play’ with one of the guitars when he wouldn’t settle. He even gave Mattie some strumming lessons and taught him a simple chord that he could get his chubby fingers across. ‘You should have him taught lessons,’ Dean said one day. ‘Mattie has a natural feel for the instrument.’ But when she came to collect Mattie, often he would be waiting for her and ready to scoot through the gate. He seemed bored, and she began to dwell on Maria Montessori’s dictum that there is often a fine line between freedom and chaos, and chaos is not stimulating but oppressive. Now she began to fret about his eager little face that was almost too happy to see her. While it might be gratifying for her, it was not in other ways a good sign. There were many nights of talking over her fears with Tony, and at last, despite the additional expense, they decided to take Mattie away from The Free School and enrol him at the Montessaurus.

Maria Montessori had designed her didactic toys to be self-correcting, and now they were about to become self-correcting parents.

From the first day Mattie settled in happily, and soon requested that he be allowed to stay on for aftercare activities with a sweet young woman named Missy. Whenever Frances arrived to collect him he would plead with her to stay with Missy for just a bit longer. There was always some exciting and well-organised game about to start, or some ingenious piece of craft being undertaken, and after that he would run to swing, just one more time, on the old tyre that hung from the great oak at the centre of the courtyard. Here they all were, safe within their idyllic high-walled space with its cedar chalets, its sunny decks and its courtyard of leafy Californian shade.

One afternoon, as she was walking Mattie home from his enlightened but fortified school, they paused beside a wide road and waited for the traffic to pass. She remembers looking both ways and seeing no car at all, but then, as they began to cross, a white jalopy appeared on the horizon, hurtling at speed straight towards them. With terror in her heart she yanked her son towards the median strip and stood fuming on the grass as the jeering teenage driver and his two accomplices gave her the finger on their way past.

‘You bastards!’ she screamed, as the car went racing, recklessly, on down the wide, tree-lined boulevard. It was broad daylight, at three in the afternoon, and they had just played chicken with a woman and a child.

All the way home she wanted to bellow her outrage, her impotent anger. How dare they! How dare they! But she could have screamed as much as she liked. They were outside the castle gates.

By the time they returned to Sydney they were sold on the Montessori method. Mattie had been happy there and, almost incidentally, had learned to read within six months, with no coaching at home. They sought out the nearest Montessori school and discovered that some things were not portable. They had been given a rare glimpse of the ideal and were unlikely to find it again. This local Montessori was intensely competitive. Information night seemed to be full of ambitious parents who wanted their children to get a jump on the rest; to get out of the blocks fast and get ahead in the game of life. Frances sat next to one handsome father in his late thirties, a solicitor, who explained his concern that his young son of seven was not showing much form in his studies. ‘All he seems interested in is Rugby League,’ he said, with genial intensity. ‘He won’t get into law or medicine that way.’ And he explained that to combat any early slide into mediocrity he had enrolled his son in a Saturday-afternoon coaching class in maths.

Reluctantly, they gave up on the Montessori idea.

Years later, she asked Mattie what he remembered about the San Diego Montessori school. Not much, he replied, except that he’d been happy there. Did he remember the didactic toys? No. Not even the Golden Bead Material? No. Did he remember Clara and Joan, or Missy? No. All he remembered, he said, was swinging in the sun on a big tyre that hung from the oak tree in the yard.