I had wanted to visit the St. Preix community for a long time. My friend Irene had talked about it often: her son Oliviero had been living there for more than ten years.
I first met Oliviero when he was six. He was a child consumed by anxiety—utterly without independence, unstable, prone to antisocial behavior, given to stereotyped gestures, and in constant need of supervision. After years of fruitless searching for a place in Rome that would accept him, his parents made the heartbreaking decision to entrust him to care elsewhere. I saw Oliviero regularly during those years—at his family's home during vacations and weekends, or at mine for an afternoon. I watched him become a calm, smiling young man capable of doing many things.
He can set and clear a table, help in the kitchen, ski, skate, and ride a bicycle. He lives better with others. All these changes astounded me—and they will astonish you too, especially those of you who know the difficulties I've described. Oliviero made me want to meet his educators: educators in the truest sense of the word, not merely a professional title. The educators with whom he has lived all these years, with whom he has grown and learned so much, who have helped him find his balance.
That September, I had the chance. I spent a day at the Perceval foundation.
The community village sits within a vast vineyard, overlooking Lake Geneva. My young friend and I walked up from the station, surrounded by beautiful landscape, and entered a property with no walls or barriers. Large chalets, houses of different styles, enormous trees, garden corners, a farm, a large vegetable garden. We arrived during morning break time; small groups moved about. Each resident left his classroom or workshop for a snack "with family." Each house hosts a real family—the permanent residents—along with four or five children whom the house has taken in.
Perceval is also a training center, so student educators share in the life of a family too.
We were invited immediately to lunch at one of these houses, around a large, welcoming round table. My small tablemate, a chatterbox, fell silent to form a hand-chain with the others before eating: gestures and words performed with great care. Everyone extended his right hand open to the neighbor on his right and placed his left hand on the hand offered to him. That moment of quiet gathering and union before lunch—it would remain my most beautiful memory of the day.
A community without walls or barriers; work chosen so as to draw out and honor each person's capacities to the fullest.
A community without walls or barriers; work chosen so as to draw out and honor each person's capacities to the fullest.Lunch was simple and plentiful. The youngest at the table, about five years old, seemed quite distressed, and required all the patience and attention of his educator, seated beside him, to help him through to the end of the meal. Yet everything unfolded calmly and naturally, without fuss or remark.
After lunch, everyone went to his own tasks: the younger children took a nap, while we used the free time to ask questions of our host, sitting with coffee and traditional Swiss chocolate bars in a warm room with natural wood furniture and soft, harmonious colors, flowers scattered throughout.
It is truly a real home, a real family—a particular sort of family, certainly, but both disciplined and remarkably free. That day, for example, two older boys wanted time away from the group and ate in the kitchen instead.
In the school building, set apart in the grounds, children are grouped by age regardless of their handicap. After lunch, everyone takes part in workshop activities.
Without dwelling on the particulars of their pedagogy, it is important to say that all forms of art—music, painting, singing especially, and gymnastics in a specific form they call eurythmy—hold the same importance as traditional academic subjects and are woven into the school and daily life. Nature receives great attention too: its rhythms, its beauty. Flowers everywhere, in the homes and in the gardens each family tends with special care; benches, sandboxes, bicycles everywhere convey a vivid impression of family life. The vegetable garden is part of this commitment to nature; it is an important workshop: the fruits and vegetables it produces nourish the community. There is a farm with animals, which the older children help care for. There is a stable and riding arena where we witness a moving lesson with a ten-year-old girl who is deaf and blind. She is about to ride; she approaches the horse with her small body while the educator adjusts the tack. She clearly knows that a beautiful moment of her day has arrived: we see her not only circle the arena like a true rider, but then stretch out on the animal's back, lying supine, abandoning herself with obvious trust and joy to the rhythm of the creature beneath her.
The craft workshops are empty this afternoon—the adult group has gone to a fair in a nearby village. My friend Oliviero is with them, and sadly I won't see him. The workshop products are sold in a small shop at the center of St. Preix. An educator lives above the shop with a few young people. The handicapped adults live in a nearby house, deliberately situated outside the main property. For adults, work is considered highly therapeutic, and it is chosen to draw out and honor each person's capacities to the fullest.
Festivals hold great importance for everyone here: family celebrations, religious feasts, seasonal festivals, a large summer gathering with families once a year.
Nicole Schulthes, 1989
Oliviero This Year...
To conclude, I include an evaluation from the director of the home where Oliviero lives, written at the end of his third year. This document gives a sense of the Center's pedagogy and educational approach.
During this year, Oliviero has opened up considerably. Slowly, month after month, he lost his dark, withdrawn look and began to trust those around him. Gradually, he would seek a caress, a word of praise from an adult. He often looked us in the eye with a radiant expression.
Despite this growing trust, Oliviero has had some relapses in certain habits. He began again to tear his clothes, to play with water at night, to bite his lower lip, and so on. Yet even in these habits, you can see that Oliviero has made real progress. When he tore a piece of clothing, he would hide it in a closet in another room, or put it in the kitchen trash, or even throw it in the toilet and flush it. This shows clearly that Oliviero understood: to avoid being scolded, the torn garment must disappear. By contrast, when he tore off a button, he would bring it to us with a big smile, asking us to sew it back on.
With daily tasks, Oliviero does almost nothing on his own. He tries each day to make his bed, to put on his comforter, to wash a sink, but he cannot manage any of it alone. He must always be watched and guided. The same is true when he dries dishes. He can hold the same cup in his hand for an hour if the educator does not redirect him moment by moment.
Oliviero has always had a strong tendency toward obesity. He would gain weight at the slightest excess of food and could not lose it. These past years we have had to monitor his meals carefully. Now the situation seems stable: Oliviero eats what he wants again and no longer gains weight. He has a lovely, balanced physique. He eats everything, and always with joy.
E.W. (House Mother)