«I learnt the important things in kindergarten!»

These are insights that I have gained over the years, often painfully. But the most important insight I gained in kindergarten was that it is good to help others. The person who taught me this was called Mrs Wolff. She maintained a strict but kind regime in our Rudolf Steiner kindergarten. Most of the time we had to fold cloths, tidy up the doll's corner, lay the table or untie cords.
As soon as you had finished an activity, you had to go to Mrs Wolff and ask: «How can I help?» Not «What should I do now?» - as if we were taking part in occupational therapy, and not «Would you like me to help you?» - as if she were a needy person, too confused to tie her own shoes. No, the question should be: «How can I help?».

«How can I help?» Not «What should I do now?»

Helping others is probably a deep human instinct. But how you help is at least as important as that you help. I'm not entirely sure whether Mrs Wolff was fully aware of the subtle semantic differences between «Should I help you?» and «How can I help you?», but her statement seems almost prophetic to me today.
«Shall I help you?» has something impatient and paternalistic about it, often like a helper's syndrome, and is usually more about you than about the person being helped. «How can I help?», on the other hand, shows that you recognise: It's not you, but the other person who knows their life best.

We helped each other without questioning it

The sentence wasn't so important to us at the time, but the action it triggered changed us. We helped each other and didn't see it as selfless, but as a normal process, as commonplace and unquestionable as brushing our teeth or carrying plates. Very few children like brushing their teeth, but very few (there are exceptions) make a big deal out of it, simply because they learnt early on that it is part of life. And the little socio-psychological experiment that Mrs Wolff was conducting was: what if solidarity was simply part of life?
As soon as I started school, I swapped my willingness to help for a social Darwinist attitude, which prepared me perfectly for the neoliberal reality, but also turned me into a bit of an arsehole. And yet I knew all the time that there was another way, that this little sentence still applies. I don't know what Mrs Wolff is doing today. Whether she is still alive, whether anyone is helping her, whether she even remembers the little experiment. All I know is that I learnt one of the most important lessons in kindergarten. And that I would like to thank her for it.

To the author:

Mikael Krogerus is an author and journalist. The Finn is the father of a daughter and a son, lives in Biel and writes regularly for the Swiss parents' magazine Fritz+Fränzi and other Swiss media.

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