Getting There Is Half the Lesson
The lower primary class went to Manly Beach to spend a morning with Manly Surf School. They learned surf safety, the basics of surfing on the sand, and something about the marine life that lives off the local coast. There were beach relays and a long game of Capture the Flag.
The teachers’ write-up mentions all of that. But the first thing they mention is the bus.
We journeyed on the public bus, an excellent lesson in independence and navigating our local area.
The bus is not the boring part
A chartered coach delivers thirty children from a car park to a destination. Nothing is asked of them in between.
A public bus asks for quite a lot. You need to know which route. You need to know which stop, and to recognise it as it approaches. You need to behave in a shared space with strangers in it — offer a seat, keep your voice down, stand clear of the doors. You need to get off with everyone you arrived with.
None of that is difficult, and all of it is a skill. Most children acquire it in their teens by trial and error. There is no particular reason to wait.
For a school on the Northern Beaches, the local bus network is also a map of the child’s own world. A child who has travelled from their school to Manly on a public service has a different relationship with where they live than one who has only ever been driven.
What happened at the beach
The surf lesson itself was run by Manly Surf School, who have been teaching on these beaches for over two decades.
The children were taught the fundamentals of surf safety — how to read a beach, where it is safe to swim, what the flags mean — then the basics of surfing, practised on the sand. They learned about the marine life along this stretch of coast.
Then Capture the Flag and beach relays, which is what actually gets remembered.
The older students in the upper primary class had their own version: a full block of surfing lessons through the term, again with Manly Surf School. The newsletter warned parents to expect very tired children on Monday afternoons, particularly the first-timers.
Why this is not just a nice day out
Surf safety is not enrichment in this country. Australia drowns people every summer, and a disproportionate number of them are visitors and young people who misread a beach. A child on the Northern Beaches who can identify a rip and knows why the flags are where they are has been given something with a long half-life.
Learning it on the beach rather than from a worksheet is the difference between knowing the rule and recognising the water.
That principle runs through the whole program. Montessori’s instruction for children in the six-to-twelve years is that they cannot be confined to the four walls of the classroom — they need wide social contact and the open environment in order to become independent and responsible.
Our campus is a national park. Manly Beach is a bus ride away. It would be a strange kind of school that kept the children inside.
The pattern
Look at what the day contains, in order: plan the trip, navigate public transport, conduct yourself in public, learn a genuine safety skill in the environment where it applies, play hard with your classmates, and travel home under your own steam.
The surfing is the part the children will tell you about. The bus is the part they will still be using at thirty.