Fillyjonk and anyone else who knows anything about Steiner Education - care to chat about a few points ?

[TheodoresMummy]

Very briefly :

I have a DS (3.5) who is currently at a wonderful nursery (not Steiner).

We have a Steiner Kindergarten fairly close and feel that this would prob be the best option (that I have found so far) for him.

However, I am not sure about a few things and wonder if anyone would care to offer an opinion ?

The approach in the early years seems very relaxed, child-led play. Then class 1 onwards seems to shift to totally teacher-led traditional, sit-down lessons. Is this the case or have I misunderstood ?

The curriculum is obviously very different from the NC, but it's also very rigid. Do you think it's relevant enough to the times we live in ?

Ok, DS is stirring, so I will just post this to be going on with....

DH had a Steiner secondary education and loved it.

Hi

I'm new here but just spotted this - DS1 went to a Steiner kindy and it was an unmitigated disaster - an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy's children

The usual view of Steiner education is that it's very child-centred and unpushy and arty and generally quite lovely and floaty ... when we told friends that we were sending ds1 there the universal reaction was "oh, how lovely!"

But actually it's completely dogmatic - there is a very fixed idea of childhood and if your child doesn't fit in in any way they are deemed to be aberrant or deviant. In ds1's kindy the children had to play in certain ways and got told off for typical 4 and 5 year old boys' behaviour - they had to paint in a certain way, wishy washy colours on wet paper so everything ended up looking the same and you couldn't tell your child's painting from anyone else's - and ds1 kept coming home with bumps and bruises and on one occasion with a burn because they weren't adequately supervised - I got told that ds1 needed to take responsibility for his own actions - he was 4 FFS .

We took him out when we were told he had a "reincarnation problem" - they'd decided that his soul wasn't ready to come back into his body ... actually he has Tourette's Syndrome, but they decided to ignore his diagnosis in favour of their own crackpot theories. He ended up going to the large, local state primary where they've treated him as an individual - given him loads of appropriate help and he's doing really well

Too late we did some research on Steiner and his theories and were quite appalled, frankly.

I have a Steiner DVD if you want it?

Mine didn't make it to Steiner in the end - couldn't get an assisted place - but from what I know I think that the NC curriculum - especially at secondary level is very restrictive and very irrelevant in places (what's that thread about learning the kings and queens). Not only that, the way state schools are structured and the demands placed on teachers, there is less and less room for flexibility and tailor made teaching.

It may be the case that Steiner has its own rigidity but I think the type of learning is far broader conceptually and equips childrwn with life skills that perhaps state schools overlook?

I don't want to be overly negative, and I must stress that I don't know anyone who's been through a Steiner school, but I checked out our local Steiner place as an option for dd.

The HMI report was quite poor (mainly because of what they saw as gaps in the curriculum). But the thing that worried me most was that the staff were deemed to have poor or non-existent knowledge of health and safety legislation and child protection issues. I'm also a bit uncomfortable about the spiritual side - AFAIK all the teachers have to subscribe to Steiner's slightly off-the-wall quasi-religious beliefs.

Someone who knows more - feel free to come and correct me!

Theo's mum: can you hang around the gates at drop-off/pick-up time and speak to parents with children in the KG? They do vary enormously. I've told you my views (I used to be Steinermum
on here!) so won't repeat them now. Wild horses wouldn't drag my sons from their school, they absolutely love it, but as Mimsmum has described, some Steiner places are bonkers. Check out the other parents at the one you're interested in and see if you can imagine being one of them - because as I've said before, you WILL have to be quite involved.

Yes, a couple of other concerns of mine have now been mentioned.

All the artwork looks the same (I went to an open day at one school and I actually felt uncomfortable looking at the stuff on display).

Also, if there was no intervention regarding bullying behaviour then my DS would def have a miserable time. And whilst i'm very open minded, spiritual and 'into' nature, I find the treatment of Mimsum's son appalling .

Will pop back later - have to go collect DS from nursery.

Thanks for your replies and please carry on posting if there's anything else.