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.

Thank you, ZZoey. Still waiting to hear from Phoenix!

And just shortly on the strange furious attacks yesterday, first by Zzoey on me and then by PheonixShytes on Janni: Clearly none of the puzzling attacks were very proportional in relation to what they targeted.

Just as a side reflection, they could have been released by some strange unusual full moon contellation yesterday, affecting both Zzoey and PheonixShytes ;-))

But then, I had yet another junk burger yesterday too (even if a veggie one this time), and as Zzoey so wisely has educated us all here on this thread: Where junk food goes in, junk talk comes out, so I assume she strongly would advice me as a fruit cake, even if as a holy one ... to rest my case on this point, as on all other points, until I like here, have learnt to live purely on ecologically grown fruits, without cakes, even if made from ecologically produced componebts, right Zzoey? ... ;;-(((

Eva - Thank you for acknowledging that PheonixShytes attack on me yesterday was strange, furious and disproportionate. I see now, in the cold light of day, that nobody on this thread supports her and I
await her reappearance with interest.

DianaW: "You see what he does, he knows after anti-Semitic anthroposophical rants have been exposed, he needs to post many links in a row to quickly distract from it. The point is to quickly move that material further up the thread to a less readable place."

Exactly.

This is why Eva's posting on here needs serious review. I would like to discuss the possibility of reporting him for doing the above and repeatedly promoting his own websites and clogging up vast swathes of this discussion with quotes repeated over and over again.

I also want to report Phoenix for what she said yesterday, this has become an incredibly personal attack on Janni.
If these people are banned from mumsnet - it will be interesting to find out just how many aliases he/they have used. Lush/Phoenix/Chubbics/Eva etc. Why all the name changes? Is this just the work of one 60 year old bloke?

You see Sune, I don't believe in "full moon constellations" interfering with humans on earth. And junk seem to come out of your mouth, or keyboard, whether you eat yoghurt or chicken burgers. Perhaps the problem is wider than diet.

In contrast to Janni, you do set yourself up for being "attacked," though I'm still completely in the dark when it comes to what you regard as "attacks," considering your own web sites which are vertically filled with (very real) attacks on a number of people.

Anthroposophists don't eat ecological food stuff, they eat biodynamic. That's actually a very different thing. I had assumed you, as an ardent defender of anthroposophy, ate nothing but biodynamics.

Barking - thank you for your support, but I would like to wait awhile to see if Phoenix returns and whether or not she will answer my simple question - does she know me in RL? Like you said yesterday, I think leaving her words as they stand gives readers and insight into the mindset of Steiner followers.

Lush007 and PhoenixShytes are the same person, by the way.

Another possibility is that she has contacts within anthroposophy who know who you are.

Either way, she could inform you about it.

(I suspect she won't return though, but who knows...)

Janni - no problem .

I just find some of their behaviour really really frustrating.

Yes ZZoey - I wondered that too.

Phoenix - you accused me of lacking courage. Are you courageous enough to return and answer my simple question?

I would also be prepared to accept an apology.

sorry - it's Zzooey

Speaking of leaving waldorf, I probably handed over a flower or something to my class teacher when I left. I think my mum sent that with me at the of summer vacation every year.

Though I think it was obvious we weren't content with the school, it's not like we made a big fuss about it, like not attending the "ceremony" or handing over a piece of cow manure to express our feelings.

What I thought of the school wasn't secret, and lots of what was wrong wasn't that teachers fault. (There were many wackier teachers...)

(And I feel that having been undignified by them for so many years - which is what I feel I was - it's pretty nice to leave with some dignity left. Which you can't do if you make a scene of it.)

Yes - for the child's sake, whatever can be salvaged, should be salvaged. If the teachers do a nice formal goodbye ceremony, it tells the child that it was not their fault if things went wrong, that they are not leaving because they are bad or nobody liked them. It helps the child to move on with self-esteem intact. The mother should make this happen not try to ruin it to make a point. Presumably she has already made her point with the teachers, or else feels that it's not possible to communicate with them or else they probably wouldn't be leaving. At that point a "scene" wouldn't serve any purpose and would only make an ugly memory for the child. Or rather - MORE ugly memories.

On the other hand, I have read that they make nasty good-by ceremonies, plays for and about the child for example (probably from the wc-list or PLANS' web page, I ton't remember) - and one should be aware of that, though I really can't think it's very common. But if that would happen, one ought to just walk out and leave. Or, if people have already shown hostility, it might be better not to go at all, in some cases.

Well, just a side note, to say that "nice" ceremonies aren't always "nice" - though that's not relevant in this case, but perhaps something that should be made known anyway.

In my case, a few people just stopped saying hello to us when we met them on the street. One of them happened to be my brother's kindergarten teacher - and I really am unsure how she behaved towards him when he was still there. (The info about us leaving - or me leaving, my brother was supposed to stay, but, needless to say, that idea was pretty soon abandoned... - came out prematurely, with some months left to go.) At least in my case, there wasn't any outright hostility or such attitude shown on the part of my class teacher (no nasty plays, or anything). Nothing that would merit not giving a flower and behaving sufficiently politely.

zzooey - what you say rings bells for me about a little boy I knew who was forced out of Steiner. His KG teacher, to whom he was very attached, was incredibly cold to him after he left. He was a vulnerable child whose mother had embraced Steiner as a substitute family and he and she were DEVASTATED when he was kicked out.

Zooey:
"Well, just a side note, to say that "nice" ceremonies aren't always "nice"

Well that's true, the parents have to just make it as "nice" as is possible in the circumstances.

Yes, I've heard of cases of the teacher writing a "curative story" or such for the goodbye; if a teacher proposes something like this the parent should ask to see it first, because these can do more harm than good.

Dear Pheonixshytes

Since you have declined to answer my question about whether you know me in RL, I have trawled through your past posts for clues and I now feel somewhat reassured that you do not. I also note that you do not tend to post on other MN threads so I am unlikely to run into you elswhere.

I have decided not to ask for your attacks on me to be deleted because they serve as a warning to prospective Steiner parents about what they are likely to encounter in the cult-like environment of a Steiner School.

I wish you well
Janni

Alicia AKA Zzooey on her leaving a Waldorf school at 12,5 years of age:

"Though I think it was obvious we weren't content with the school, it's not like we made a big fuss about it, ..."

Haven't you told that there were articles in the press about you leaving the school at the time?

Eva aka Sune, you wrote "Alicia AKA Zzooey" as if it had some relevance to the discussion. Since Zzooey is not pretending to be someone she isn't, it has no relevance. She hasn't pretended to be anything other than a young woman who is a former Waldorf student. When you (a 60-year-old male Anthroposophist who seems to make a career of monitoring the Internet for criticism of Steiner schools so that you can yell "hate group!" or more recently "hate-type group!") present yourself with a woman's name at a discussion board for mothers, your real identity is something that the other posters should be aware of.

After you were exposed, you made some claim about Eva being your anima or representing your feminine side or something like that. Whatever the excuse was, it's up to individual readers to decide whether they buy it or not. I think, however, that those of us who are here because we have been victims of deception and blatant lying by Anthroposophists have good reason to be skeptical.

Margaret

Incidentally, there are a few fathers who post on mumsnet, but I've yet to see one posting under a woman's name.

Is "Rosie" another name for your "anima," Sune?

Margaret, you write:

"When you (a 60-year-old male Anthroposophist who seems to make a career of monitoring the Internet for criticism of Steiner schools so that you can yell "hate group!" or more recently "hate-type group!") ..."

I'm not 60, but I have been following the group you refer to for some 10 years, since I discovered it and started participating on the mailing of the secretary and driving force of the group, to find out what it was about and to the best of my ability and understanding try to address the issues discussed on the list.

In general, some of the discontent that comes to expression at the site of PLANS and the two mailing lists related to it stands out as valid and understandable and can be seen as partly rooted in a too rapid growth of the Waldorf movement in the U.S., resulting in partly immature schools and (like at most schools) at times not fully competent teachers and administrators.

Another part is understandable as an expression of a clash between a purely rationalist view of the purpose of education and an effort in Waldorf education to do a more balanced justice to not only the intellectual, but also the emotional, social and action oriented needs of growing children, and integrate also earlier perspectives and stages of the cultural evolution of mankind than the present in the Waldorf curriculum, in building an understanding of the pupils for their background and place in the world, not primarily as members of any specific nation or race, but as members of humanity and world citizens.

The third main part of the argumentation uses the first two parts as a basis and implied support for demonizing defamation, smearing of and witch hunting against Waldorf education, anthroposophy, the anthroposophical movement and Rudolf Steiner as the main originator of both anthroposophy and Waldorf education, as part of the mainly secular humanist rhetoric of the originator of the site of PLANS.

Except for the myths mentioned here, the main tools used in this part of the argumentation are the cultivation respectively support by the secretary, president and vice president of PLANS of allegations on the WC-list, then republished as "archives" at the site of PLANS, that Rudolf Steiner was schizophrenic, megalomaniac and a drug addict, that he probably practiced sex magic, and that elements in Waldorf education extensively are used as ritual magic, like eurythmy, or used to make "magical talismans" (wet-on-wet water-color paintings), and with the secretary of PLANS regularly comparing Steiner to Hitler.

It is the addition of the third type of argumentation, described on 10+ points here using the arguments of the first and second type as basis for it, that puts the group in the hate-type category.

Sune/Eva:"Haven't you told that there were articles in the press about you leaving the school at the time?"

Eh? What? Why would there have been? Not that I'm aware of, no.

The only possible explanation for this strange idea of yours is yet another misunderstanding on your part. You did act as if my identity was a big thing and you did write "Why didn't you tell me you are XX?" And I, jokingly, suggested I must be well known within anthro circles, if that's the reaction from you. I believe it was well known within the school, but I hardly think the gossip was all over town, in the whole anthro community or in the national newspapers...

Powerofjoy wrote: "Eva aka Sune, you wrote "Alicia AKA Zzooey" as if it had some relevance to the discussion."

Sune has already been kind enough to post my entire name. Not that it is secret, but I wouldn't have posted it here, in a thread, like that. It could be found by anyone looking for it and wanting to contact me, through my initial first-post identification of myself as the author of my blog (where there's an email-adress through which I can be contacted, moreover). In the case of Sune, it's entirely different. But I suppose he thinks it's fair game to get back at me for identifying him with his 3 web sites. He also seems to have an obsession with my age and the age I was when I left waldorf. He thinks he has to point it out repeatedly without relevant context, though I have actually disclosed this myself numerous times, at least the fact that I left after 6th grade.

Aha! Sune aka Eva/Rosie/Sherlock etc has been following the "hate-type group" for ten years! This simply must indicate that he was about 50 years old, perhaps slightly less - let's say 49! - when he started! Impressive!

/The Relentless Detective who finds Interesting Facts

Ps. It also means he has wasted 1/6 of his life producing the electronic throw-ups exemplified in his post above.