Matilda and more
March 6, 2025
Dear LREI Community,
I hope this message finds you well as we move swiftly towards Spring Break, just over a week away. There is much planned for the coming six days – – many lower school and middle school shares and demonstrations, the sixth grade robotics team’s return to the next round of competition, high school final assessments, buddy activities, and, of course, our world famous Founders Day Celebration on Friday, March 14. Not to be missed!
Looking back a week, congratulations to all who participated in the production of the high school musical, Matilda. What a show! I am so impressed with the expertise of the cast, crew, and production staff and with the teamwork that led to this gift to the whole community.
I was predisposed to like the show as I am fond of Roald Dahl’s work, partly for his consistent theme of the cruelty of adults who are ultimately vanquished by spunky children. Dahl is a complicated figure, having expressed biases, prejudice, and antisemitism in words and writing, requiring that readers make a choice about engaging with his work.
His novels, in general, are rife with evil and dim teachers, among other adults and Matilda is no exception, adding in the idea that school is a prison, filled with punishment and unfathomable expectations. Grownups are unpredictable and often set out to trick children, as when a child is asked to spell a word made up by the evil school director, who adds, “And I should warn you; it has silent letters….” The ultimate trick. Why do they even exist! (I realize that not all of the action in the musical was written by Dahl himself, certainly not the songs, though the show is imbued with his spirit.) Children want to understand the “whys” in their lives.
I have been thinking a lot about the scene in which the schoolmaster, Agatha Trunchbull, sings about “staying within the circle” (she was a hammer thrower). She sings:
If you want to throw the hammer for your country
You have to stay inside the circle all the time
If you want to make the team
You don’t need happiness or self-esteem
You just need to keep your feet inside the line
How do you know, when you are a child, maybe even as an adult, when you should stay within the circle, not even touching the line, and when it is okay to cross the line, to step out of the circle even if others stay inside? When, as is often asked in the musical, do you have to be a little bit naughty and, just maybe, step out of line? When do you have to be a “revolting” child?
We are revolting children
Living in revolting times
We sing revolting songs
Using revolting rhymes
We’ll be revolting children
Til our revolting’s done
We struggle with this at LREI as we want children to learn to step out of the circle, to push the boundaries, to be “revolting”….sometimes. I trust that we are not as confusing to our students as Miss Trunchbull was to hers.
Finally, I was moved by the image of a child stretching to reach the branches of a tree, to be tall enough, old enough, grown enough to reach the branch and accomplish the task, or to fall just short, to not reach it quite yet and to stretch and grow until the branch is solidly within their grasp. So much of childhood, and schooling, is focused on this stretching and on strengthening, and often in growing away from the confines that adults set for us, finding inspiration to head out on our own, inspiration to keep growing, to keep reaching, to keep getting stronger, maybe within the circle but maybe what we need to succeed in that final stretch towards the next branch is to step outside of our boundaries, to be a little bit naughty.
When I grow up, when I grow up, (when I grow up)
I will be strong enough to carry all the heavy things you have to haul around
When you, when you’re a grown up
When I grow up
I will be tall enough to reach the branches
That I need to reach to climb the trees.
Peace,
