STEINER WALDORF SCHOOLS AND INSTITUTIONS

[theantignome]

hi everyone, i wanted to start a new thread with a NEW topic heading here, as the active one at the moment with over 700 posts looks like it is all about the Cambridge school. This may confuse newcomers.

Let's continue the debate here !
All newcomers welcome !

I will shortly link our two previous threads on MN for any one new to have a look at.

Davy, could you also give a link to your new yahoo list here please ? Thanks.

How reading taught at Waldorf schools?

Waldorf education is deeply bound up with the oral tradition, typically beginning with the teacher telling the children fairy tales throughout kindergarten and first grade. The oral approach is used all through Waldorf education: mastery of oral communication is seen as being integral to all learning.

Reading instruction, as such, is deferred. Instead, writing is taught first. During the first grade year the children explore how our alphabet came about, discovering, as the ancients did, how each letter's form evolved out of a pictograph. Writing thus evolves out of the children's art, and their ability to read likewise evolves as a natural and, indeed, comparatively effortless stage of their mastery of language.

How about the arts at Waldorf schools?

Different arts, rhythm, movement, color, form, recitation, song, music, play a central role at waldorf schools, not primarily as a means of personal self expression, but as a means to learn to understand and relate to the world, building an understanding for different subjects out of what is beautiful in the world in the broadest sense of the word.

One of the arts is eurythmy, a movement art, done to in a simple way, through movement, express and explore the basic elements of speech or music. For a video introduction to eurythmy at Waldorf schools, see Eurythmy and Waldorf Education For a somewhat more detailed description, see the Wikipedia article on the subject.

Watercolor painting at Steiner schools is developed out of simple exercises using the basic natural colours at first, and then through the years developing an ever more differentiated understanding and use of the interaction between color and form. This is the reason that black and brown mostly is not used at first in the lower grades, but are used only after the primary colors have been investigated. For a short (cut) video intro, see Waldorf Watercolor Painting. For more, see the earlier mentioned and linked to videos.

How are the sciences developed at Waldorf schools?

In Waldorf education, the science subjects do not start with nor are built from theories and formulas. Rather they start with the phenomena and develop in an experiential way, by first presenting the phenomenon, having the students make detailed observations, then guiding the students to derive the concepts that arise from the phenomena, and finally deriving the scientific formulas and laws behind the phenomena.

This methodology reflects the way basic science actually has been developed by scientists and trains the pupils stepwise in basic scientific thinking and reflection on the basis of personal experience and observation of the phenomena of nature and the history of science.

In kindergarten and the lower grades, the experience of nature through the seasons is brought to the children through nature walks, nature tables and observation of nature around. In later grades, there are specific main lesson blocks dealing with Man and Animal, and other themes.

In grade 5, scientific ideas may be taught historically through the study of the Greeks, for example, Aristotle, Archimedes and Pythagoras. In grades 6-8 the science curriculum becomes more focused with blocks on physics (optics, acoustics, mechanics, magnetism and electricity), botany, chemistry (inorganic and organic), and anatomy.

In high school, science is taught by specialists who have received college level training in biology, chemistry and physics and these three subjects are taught in each of the 4 years of high school.

Discoveries in the 90s of deficiencies in present public education in the U.S., related to the scope, sequence, and coordination of the science programs has led to suggestions in "Science Curriculum Reform in the United States", to replace current science teaching methodology in public education with the basic science teaching methodology used in Waldorf education.

This report points to the fact that the path chosen for science teaching in Waldorf education preceded its development in U.S. public education by 80 years.

Thank you for all that detail on the Waldorf Steiner point of view Eva52.

Unfortunately, it has made Margaret's summary rather harder to find, so here's a link to it for those who have been following this thread over the last day or two:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/43/487528?fm=9881792#9881792

I'm not sure that link goes directly to the post (not for me anyway!). So the info you need is :

Powerofjoy2004 on Mon 03-Mar-08 22:40:20

Thanks aMum.
Most of the people here realise by now, that Eva Sune has his own agenda, to deflect from people telling their own, personal and real experiences of steiner school.

It also helps to read Steiner himself.

They anthroposophists are at great pains to emphasise the fact that they don't TEACH anthroposophy. This is how they get away with using it. Because anthroposophy informs every choice, decision and aspect of the curriculum.

Sune Eva- is that actually the name of a bootrack in Ikea?

Or possibly a range of bedlinen?

Well, I couldn't find Eva, but I did find Evert www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/10118184 and Sune www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/50122914.

Both are varieties of stool...

Wikepedia has a distorted description of Steiner Waldorf.
It has been monitored 24/7 by people like eva /sune.

They carefully ommit the occult, clairvoyant, racist and totally bonkers beliefs.

As do all his personal sites.

He also devotes pages of sites to denouncing reasoned, erudite academics, who have no axe to grind,but just study Steiner from an academic point of view, like Peter Staudenmaier.

Everyone who has come on mumsnet eva/sune, has been further distanced from Steiner education.
Your desperate attempts are getting boring.

And of course ave enus is the name backwards

Wow! A bar stool!

Does it like being perched on ?

Stool and enus

Oh dear....

Bye have to work....

we will all be caling him " bar stool " from now on then???

"I was only trying to point out that the details of your arguments were a little too esoteric for newcomers, and that if you hope to educate a wider public to the problems you've encountered then you may have to go over the basics quite often."

Helo AmumInScotland,
It is indeed quite tricky to read of Anthroposophy without having some knowledge of the terminology. Those disaffected by the movement often refer to this as "Anthrospeak".
Making no bones about the ownership of www.easeonline.org (it's mine) I have attempted, so far as possible to contain some very basic musings in plainspeak: A Greenhorn's introduction if you like. I'm about 40 miles south of Edinburgh, so should there be any particularly Scottish reference you'd like to kick around, I'll do my best to engage in that, but I can't give myself over to it all day, every day!
Glad to meet you.
Davy

Thanks Davy, it's helpful to have links where newcomers can get the gist of both sides of the argument without too much digging through the detail.

I'm definitely a disinterested observer in all this, as I am Home Educating and my son is more likely to go to college next rather than any variety of school, but I have a keen interest in all the Education topics on Mumsnet and am a keen advocate of ensuring that all parents have the necessary information, and resources to find more detail, to make informed choices for their children's education. What they then choose to do is up to them, but this debate has certainly raised the issue to a larger audience here.

Most of Steiner's comments and suggestions for Waldorf education at the beginning of the 1920s, almost 90 years ago, are accessible free online here for anyone interested to read.

This is also the case with much of what he wrote and said at different times through his life, 90-110 years ago, in terms of articles, books, and lectures on more esoteric subjects (in total encompassing some 90,000 pages), a large part of it accessible here, here and here to drop their jaws at, or repeatedly hit themselves on the forehead at when reading.

What probably stands out as a mystery to most is how everything he tried to penetrate from a spiritual perspective in terms of trying to understand the origin of us as humans, of the world, and of cosmos, can lead to - among other things - an educational practice, that 85 years after Steiner's death makes someone like Kenneth Chenault, former Waldorf student (Waldorf School of Garden City) and today Chairman and CEO of American Express write:

"My parents were looking for a school that would nurture the whole person. They also felt that the Waldorf school would be a far more open environment for African Americans, and that was focused on educating students with values, as well as the academic tools necessary to be constructive and contributing human beings. ... I think the end result of Waldorf education is to raise our consciousness.

"There is a heightened consciousness of what our senses bring us from the world around us, about our feelings, about the way we relate to other people. It taught me how to think for myself, to be responsible for my decisions.

"Second, it made me a good listener, sensitive to the needs of others.

"And third, it helped establish meaningful beliefs. In all the Main Block lessons in history, science, philosophy we really probed the importance of values and beliefs. In dealing with a lot of complex issues and a lot of stress, if that isn't balanced by a core of meaningful beliefs, you really will just be consumed and fail."

I very much doubt that the Chairman and CEO of American Express considers himself to be an "indoctrinated" closet anthroposophist, or what he would consider to be an anthroposophist in any sense, after having gone through a Waldorf education.

Or maybe he just has not told anyone?

Well, just some reflexions from ..., sorry, by a bar stool.

I looked to see if there is really any objective information about this stuff...there is actually a whole DFES study of Steiner education, 208 pages of it! www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR645.pdf

It's actually quite positive, and there's a really interesting comparison with state schools (pros and cons).

This BBC news article seems interesting, too: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4633601.stm

Or, for those of us who prefer the Independent!
www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/the-big-question-who-was-rudolf-steiner -and-what-were-his-revolutionary-teaching-ideas-433407.html

It seems like a really good idea to go to news reports, studies and that sort of thing.

Raconteur

That was evil.

northern that was shocking behaviour! get onto mn and they will delete, but let it be a lesson learnt! tut tut.

Raconteur, I'm so embarrassed i actually hardly dare show myself.
So I'm hiding here.
I've read the Woods report.

The problem with it, and the BBC article, is they don't go into detail about the anthroposophy.

The schools are extremely clever at hiding it. To journalists too. The BBC article said something like critics find many ideas strange. Well, that says nothing.
Why don't they say what the strange ideas are.

The Woods report actually mentions anthroposophy, and says it's about thinking willing feeling and head heart hands, and then doesn't e;laborate.

The schools get round this anthroposophical thing, by saying they don't teach it, which they don't. They use it. Which is quite a different matter.

We realised this when our kids had been at the schol for a whoile, and we began questioning certain decisions and choices about our kids- why my youngest was (made to in the case of knitting)_ encouraged to use her right hand, why they couldn't draw with lines, why they didn't intervene on bullying, and also some race issues later, which I'm not going into here,but it all stemmed from the curriculum being informed by occult spiritual science, anthroposophy.

Preggers, can I do that?

Won't they be cross?

I know. I am evil. It's because I'm not spritual enough. I don't believe in gnomes, or angels.