What do you know about Steiner schools?

[hunkermunker]

Anyone been to one? Sending their children to one? Know children who go?

Ignore me, aitch. I am a crashing snob at heart who has had decidedly too much Burgundy.

FaZ please CAT me!! and I would be delighted to talk to you personally about the benefits of Steiner education!!

I wont bother on here because I think most people have their minds made up already!! on such little information in most cases!!!

whats wrong with my ! ?

I'm calm now thankyou x

thankyou, sorry, I'm bored and mischievious tonight. I don't know enough about Steiner to make judgements, and I think people have been having a bit of a larf on here tonight.

Don't be cross with us! Glad you're happy with your dc's education, that's all that counts.

thankyoupoppet - the reason I changed my name is because my regular name on here easily identifies me. I am not trying to hide from anyone on mumsnet but I appreciate that the people I know who have children at Steiner schools believe they are doing the right thing. As with a lot of families and good friends I wouldn't want to offend mine by telling them what I thought outright about their choice of education. We make different choices.

Everything I said in my original post is true. The fact that your DH and his family didn't experience some of the things I wrote does not mean I made them up or am taking the mickey. Perhaps the difference is between individual Steiner schools (as JimJams said 'each steiner school is different from the other steiner schools') or the time frame (your DH was there in the 80s), the children I know are there today.

you 'orrible lot!

troublemakers!

Poppet I do already have a high opinion of some Steiner methods, including the no TV thing, and not encouraging children to learn to read before age 7 (not allowing them to read before then I have some difficulty with)

I think this is an interesting thread and we have heard from people on all sides. I am glad you feel calmer now.

I've only read the odd feature about them in the Sunday Times magazine etc over the years but I do think it's a bit harder to get high A level grades. But no way is it child abuse - it's a parent's right in a democracy to choose the education they wish, something the national curriculum and over regulation and inspection helps prevent. Although I've sent our children to very academic private schools I was very glad when summerhill (the school they don't have to attend lessons at) won it's court case against closure after an inspection.

As for compromises some parents home school to get the ethos they want. Others form "small schools". I think there's a "small schools" movement. Some go to small private religious schools or those set up by their cult or group. Quite a lot of the boarding schools are not at all academic and have a wide variety of environments - benedictine monks etc teaching you how to live well as a person etc. If Blair/Cameron would just give every parent a voucher to spend where they like all these private options would suddenly open to a lot of people.

On the bullying thing, I doubt that being in Steiners makes a difference. I was bullied at a state school, as were a number of people I know and my cousin was bullied at a number of schools until he went to Steiners.

My brother went to a Steiners school for a while and managed to get expelled, but he is a juvenile delinquent! Still he quite liked it up to that point.

It is not for me personally, but they seem alright in my opinion. Not particularly weird, not particularly exclusive, just with a different way of going about things.

Someone mentioned them - in ways - being similar to some European systems and I think that is right. Learning to read and write later, for example, which has been suggested at times is better for children and is certainly no worse.

changer 99 maybe it may have been more sensitive to start by saying that you have very limited personal experience, it sounded a lot like a you were going under cover to let a big dark secret out when actually it was a very small peice of anecdotal evidence.
I do also know a children at Steiner School now.

If all Steiner schools are different, isn't it possible that, yes, all the loopy beliefs people are sharing are beliefs at some Steiner schools? Particularly as the schools have no headteacher, and little hierarchical structure between the teachers, maybe it only takes one loopy teacher at a Steiner school to get these views out (and to have them be true, in that one case).

While at the same time, maybe some Steiner schools are lovely places. Particularly for the children (and families) that suit their methods?

Although I have said some bad things about Steiner, I also have said some of the methods sound good.

that same thought had occurred to me, NQC, but i was too busy being offended by expat's drunken racist ranting to post it. Jacque, indeed. (must go and find out if that is true). Vive L'Alliance Ancienne!

Look up human scale education on google for more about small schools.

All I know about steiner schools is this.

My mum is a private tutor (previously primary school teacher and SENCO who works a lot with sn children).

She has taught (through hospital education service) a child (whose family she knows well) with sn. SO has 2 other siblings (though all different).

Their mum has worked hard to see if she can find schools that suit her childrens individual needs.

2 go to steiner school and flourish - the system works very well for them - more so than a standard system.

3rd child has gone to a school that is more mainstream/traditional - this child has flourished here.

Steiner school system will work for some and not others - like the traditional school system.

Like Montessori and other different systems.

At the end of the day - it horses for courses.

Put 'Michael Hall Forest Row' into Google. This is a Steiner Waldorf school with a website that'll tell you philosophy, curriculum, class structure, intake, fees etc.

And you don't knit their uniforms because they don't wear uniform. Just some hessian cloth and some braided bindweed...

Steiner is not my cup of tea but to be fair my brother's kids all attend one and love it. They're nice kids, too. My godson also attended one and got on there pretty well, but had real problems when he had to transfer to mainstream schooling.

I understand that parents are very involved with the running of the school, added to that the lack of national curriculum and I'm guessing there's big variation between different Steiner schools.

We lived next door to a steiner family and their children were everything you could wish - confident, articulate, funny, kind, motivated - name a childhood virtue, they ahd it. We went to looka t a stiener school, and there were many things thatd delighted us - the beauty of the surroundings, the calm atmosphere and the excellent pastoral care. However, aspirant Bodensista that I am, I could not go along with actively discouraging a child from learning to read until he was 7, steering the children all to produce practically identical artwork and a school (at that time - 7 years ago) with no computers at all. We came to the comclusion that our neihbour children would have been the delights they were whereever they went to school and it was a matter of parenting rather than the school. Since then, my experience of Steiner children - and we live quite near one so we often come across them at afterschool activities is that they are very personally confident - a good thing - but often take it to extremes (not thinking it necessary to learn the set routine for a gym competition, for example because"I'd rather do my own"). In conclusion, a good idea but IMHO too inward looking and self validating.

I think there are quite a few in Switzerland in particular. Good point below about parents also affecting the child. You can create these types of environments in your own home as well even if the schooling is different.

There is a girl at my hairdressers who goes to the Auckland Steiner school and she is the most mature, articulate, wonderful 15 year old I have EVER met! She is amazing. You wouldn't know she was 15.
I told her about this thread today and put some of the points to her and this is what she said:

Q: Do you have the same teacher all the way through?
Yes, in the junior part of the school (age 5 - 11) they do have the same teacher for 6 years but in the senior part of the school you have subject specialists like in any other school.
Q: Is it true you don't learn to read till age 7? Yes, but you do do lots of language based activities up to that age. She has just read the Homer's Odyssee so there can't be that much wrong with her reading at 15. Personally, as a person who didn't learn to read until 6 (I was living in Holland at the time) the fuss made about reading at 4 and 5 in the UK is a load of tosh.

Q: Is it true there are no computers until the age of 14. She phsl at that one ... frowned and said, "No, that would be ridiculous, of course we have computers!"

Q: Someone said that you dance to heal illnesses, is this true? "Um, what?" She said with a look on her face! "Whoever came up with that? That sounds nuts!"

Q: Do you knit your own uniforms? "Who ARE these people?" she said.

She is not 'inward thinking' at all .... she knows what she wants out of life and she is working now (at the age of 15) to achieve her goals. She has always wanted to be a hairdresser and instead of getting a Saturday job at a local salon she travels miles every weekend to train with one of the best in Auckland ... I can't think of any 15 year olds who are that focussed and self possessed .... I certainly wasn't at her age.
To be honest, I am so impressed with her that I am going to have a look at the Melbourne Steiner School when we go next week for a visit

I asked this young girl what happens if a child doesn't like his or her teacher and is stuck with her for 6 years. She said that the child usually leaves the school. When I asked why she said that it is usually the parents' choice to take their child out because it is usually the parents who don't like the teacher, not the child .... I thought that was quite interesting. I don't particularly like the teacher that DS has got this year but DS doesn't really have an opinion - she's his teacher and that's that really ....

I think that we all have to be caseful ascribing things to a wide system, based on the exceriences of one or two people.

Ghosty, I have seen some amazingly focused and driven children come out of the state system, I don't think it was the system that did it..it is more down to the individual personality of the kids.

It sounds as if the steiner schools vary widly in the degree they hold to the original precepts.

I can see that there could be problems moving older children from that system back into the state system.

ghosty, she sounds lovely but I certainly didn't mean to imply that children stayed with the same teacher in the upper school, obviously that would be completely unworkable, and the knitting uniforms was a joke by fio. As for not reading until 7, I don't think it's a problem for future ability, but it can be a real problem if the child is keen to read (one friend had a huge problem with this, even though she's a major supporter of Steiner and trained as a teacher there), and is definitely a real problem if the child has to swap to mainstream.

The computer thing will undoubtedly vary from school to school, and the dancing/illness stuff is part of the theory, but I doubt very much that it's practiced much nowadays.

The information about dancing curing illness is from me - I double-checked, and it came off this webpage, which is the webpage of our nearest Steiner school. Granted, they say there are special dances to help with learning problems or developmental difficulties, they're not claiming to fix colds or leukemia. And to be fair, I have heard of some v reputable movement-based therapies for autism, so who knows ...

Oh, and here's the homeopathy reference. If your kid is at this school, you are obliged to let them have homeopathy and eurythmy, and you have to pay extra for it.