It was a moving story shared recently at a gathering of educators from the Rede Social, the social network comprising almost 40 public schools¹ in Brazil. These schools work with Rudolf Steiner’s educational impulse and maintain close dialogue with the state authorities.² They are open to all children and are attended by many whose families live in poverty, often facing precarious circumstances or, at the very least, severe financial and structural difficulties.

Vanda Elisa Raulino, a highly experienced kindergarten teacher visits a kindergarten within the Rede Social network. A little boy lets himself be rocked in her arms, as though he were in a gently rocking boat, while she sings. The child grows still, looks at her and says, quite unexpectedly: "My guardian angel doesn’t know my address." Deeply moved, she stands up, steps outside for a moment and begins to cry, for she knows how difficult things are for the child at home. When she returns, she takes the child in her arms once more. He looks at her and continues: "But my guardian angel knows the address of this school."³

There must be schools. Places devoted to caring for children; places where there is food, where protection and a sense of security, joy and loving care assure each child that they are welcome in this world. Places the angel knows. But where is the angel for this child when they are not at school?

Perhaps learning to pray and to turn towards a presence felt in the heart is a central form of learning, even—or perhaps especially—today. For this child, the question "Must I believe in angels?" may not be relevant. Perhaps the real question is: "May I believe that the angel will find me?" In a secular and, in some respects, atheistic society, it may seem strange to think that it could be a matter of existential importance to a child that their angel can find them. How fortunate that Vanda Elisa Raulino was able to embrace both the child and their relationship with the angel. What would have happened if she had said, "Your angel will find you neither here nor anywhere else, because angels do not exist"?

"Where there are schools, there is hope," wrote the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado in the foreword to his book of photographs of children in war zones.⁴ He visited these regions as a photographer, and each time, children would run up to him and ask him to photograph them. Faces filled with astonishment, seriousness and sadness, as well as smiling faces—children who had witnessed the worst and yet remained full of hope. The kindergarten child expressed what Salgado had written, simply and in a different way. The angel knows where the child is: at their school, a "consecrated place."⁵

Constanza Kaliks