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.

Barking, Northern and any other parents who've left Steiner ....

Today was my 11 year old's last day. My 8 year old who we removed at the end of class 1 came too to the end of term festival and had great fun with his old classmates. Everyone made a huge fuss of me and my son who was leaving - flowers, food, the works.

I feel so conflicted today. There are some truly lovely parents and teachers there and the place does become much more than a school for its pupils. I invested six years of blood sweat and tears there. I have no doubt we've done the right thing to leave, no doubt at all.

A new beginning.

I do feel odd today though. Does anyone else understand that?

Pheonix, I have no idea. I (mistakenly, perhaps) thought your name was supposed to mean something, though I didn't know what.

ZZooey- very well put.

I'm an athe1st too, and have no problems with other's spirituality , apart from the deceptions around my kids....the racism... ahh well won't go on...

So. I don't get you Shytes.... did you not contribute to the darkness?
And does this darkness mean you are unable to tell us whether you talked to your kid's Steiner teachers about all this like you promised? Or was the answer ...too dark ?

Or is the darkness the ground you have buried your self in?

Or the shadow of doubt that hangs around you when you hear the truth?? Whooooo Whooooooo

The darkness the darkness my soul is being swamped ......

Oh Janni- yes i do absolutely. Will youm still keep in touch with some? We had this convers didn't we? how can they not see what they're in?

It takes a while, and yes I miss quite a lot. The feel of working together towards a common goal, cooking food in the school cafe ,the stirring singing, yes I miss all that.
And I don't think it's strange to miss that either.

Eva Sune tries to make out we are consumed with hate, but actually there's a great deal of sadness. And I still feel for many people there.
The sadness lies in the fact that they deceived us, and are being deceived themselves.

I felt grief at having left something that was a large part of our lives and our kid's history's-( this doesn' fit in with the "hate group" Sune has marked out for us does it Sune?)

Janni, I think you have a kind of grieving process after leaving, we did. It's common to feel like that. And very common after leaving a cult.

Good luck

Going to MIL this w/e.

Bye!

Janni- the huge fuss thing is common.
They really like to do this.
There's an anthroposophical reason, Diana or Margaret will know.

They always do this, sometimes write plays and poems for the kids.

Makes you feel ten times worse eh?
Guilty?
Are you doing the right thing?
Rubbing it in?

Classic Steiner anthro policy......

Fugee - throw me a bone here will you! I said earlier today and will say it again, I don't feel comfortable telling all on this thread.

Before I go - Let me assure you on two points that you think you have made and that is -
1, there is no shadow of doubt hanging around me.
2,I have not buried myself in the ground.

Remember assumption is the mother of all F* Ups!

I could reiterate why I chose Steiner for my children however its painfully obvious that it is falling on deaf ears.

In short - I give up! Have a great Easter!

Thank you, Northern - that does help
Have a good w/end x

zzoey - I think Phoenix's name is a play on the title of a TV series called Phoenix Nights. It probably hasn't reached Sweden yet!

Phoenix Nights - but that's not Pheonix! The e and o are reversed!

Still confused

Steiner people can't spell

"I do feel odd today though. Does anyone else understand that?"
Hi Janni,
Sure, nearly everyone goes through this Some of ways i have read this articulated as are:
The difficulty anyone has, in any setting, with admitting that we have been duped:
The lingering longing for the illusion of what they had thought they had found: A slight feeling that some others around, despite the outward appearances, deem you a failure (when compared with their own success on the quest. Any of that ring bells for you?
There are others too; mix and match to your own circumstances. Your return to the real world represents a huge step in reclaiming your life for yourself.
Bravo.
Davy

Janni - Lol at 'steiner people can't spell' - I think its a prerequisite

barking quoting Janni's comment on PheonixShytes:

"Janni - Lol at 'steiner people can't spell' - I think its a prerequisite"

PheonixShytes, maybe having written her nickname quickly, is a Waldorf parent, not a Waldorf pupil. This is (or was), also the case with the parents of Kenneth Chenault, Chairman and CEO of American Express, the parents of Diana and John Kerry, Waldorf pupils in Berlin in 1954 during their father's work there as diplomat at the American Consulate, Russell Schweickart, Apollo 9 astronaut, Eric Utne, founder of, publisher, and former editor-in-chief of Utne Reader, (described by The New York Times as "one of the most distinctive voices in magazine journalism") now a Waldorf teacher, Gilbert M. Grosvenor (1875-1966), President & Chairman, National Geographic Society, Ingmar Bergman, Helmut Kohl (former German chancellor, George Lucas, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (former German minister of foreign affairs), and many others.

Assuming most of them did not pass the test assumed by barking to exist for Waldorf parents, they presumably must have bribed the test executors.

Results of Waldorf education

Or maybe they did pass the test, then showing its validity as indicator of success in life.

Neither of my children's Steiner teachers have been able to spell. Or punctuate.

Interestingly, dyslexia may not only be a bad thing in grownups working with children if compensated for when necessary.

Eva - If compensated by the family trust fund you mean?

For *** sake, SUNE!!! Ingmar Bergman DID NOT choose waldorf school! He had nothing to do with the upbringing of most of his MANY kids with as MANY wives!

You're being stupid now. I've repeatedly told you that Ingmar Bergman CANNOT be used as a proof for the magnificence of waldorf. It's sick.

I have no idea what Chenault has to do with the CRAP education at waldorf schools. It's crap, Sune, despite Chenault having been in waldorf. It is, moreover, possible that parents who themselves can't spell will choose a school that doesn't emphasize academic subjects, because they don't see the importance of those things. Thus waldorf. The heaven for uneducated teachers who can't spell themselves, nor count, nor teach.

Now that you're here continuing to perpetrate the same old idiocy, do respond to Diana's and others wish to see where you got the references - to all those people purportedly loving waldorf - from!

We'd like the original sources for ALL the claims you make about those people's views and statements. That includes Bergman, of course.

Eva - a waldorf child and a waldorf parent are one and the same. Many parents choose the schools as a rather peverse opportunity to relive the childhood they never had, buy into a community and have lots of group therapy. steinerabulous!

Dyslexia in combination with the crappy uneducated teachers at waldorf schools is certainoly not a formula for success.

Waldorf teacher training courses - reading The Guru - will not prepare dyslexic teachers to be for the real world of teaching. People with dyslexia can very well become teachers - I don't see that as a problem - but they need, as do all teachers more or less, proper education and training! Anthroposophy/waldorf training does not provide that.

Oh, Barking, you've got it all wrong. Parent and child is not one and the same and parents don't choose school for their children.

Parents provide the material container for the soul-substance over which they don't have any influence and which doesn't reflect the parents. Then the cosmic forces brings the soul - in its bodily container - to the waldorf school and the waldorf teacher and the class.

You seem to bring the parents into the equation, but that's totally wrong Gotta see the Big Cosmic Picture

Don't mess with the Dyslectic Destiny and the Cosmic Operations Within Stupid Education.

Eva, you said:

"PheonixShytes, maybe having written her nickname quickly, is a Waldorf parent, not a Waldorf pupil. This is (or was), also the case with the parents of Kenneth Chenault the parents of Diana and John Kerry, Waldorf pupils in Berlin in 1954 during their father's work there as diplomat at the American Consulate, Russell Schweickart, Apollo 9 astronaut, Eric Utne, founder of, publisher, and former editor-in-chief of Utne Reader, (described by The New York Times as "one of the most distinctive voices in magazine journalism") now a Waldorf teacher, Gilbert M. Grosvenor (1875-1966), President & Chairman, National Geographic Society, Ingmar Bergman, Helmut Kohl (former German chancellor, George Lucas, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (former German minister of foreign affairs)".

So, are you saying these people may have written their nicknames quickly too?

Eva - have you 'been on the sauce'?

Hi zzooey
Bodily container - eeek! Yes I must remember this is all about the great Manu, but Eva tried to swerve the discussion away and bring it down to talk of chickenburgers and tv

Barking - you're right. There's no way on this earth that I would choose Steiner for our third child, but with the first I was DEFINITELY looking for something entirely different to my own experience of school and I suppose I wanted to quietly rebel against the expectations of my parents who'd spent their teaching career in state primary schools. I was also looking for a community. I now see that a child's school should not be an extension of the parent's social life - far too confusing.

There's always room for another mentioning of Kenneth Chenault...

Why would we be impressed?