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.

" some Anthroposophists try to get discussions away from the public eye. They e-mail people privately or encourage in-person meetings with people in the same area. This is sometimes done with an obvious attempt to be charming (I think this is similar to what is called "love-bombing" by cult experts)"

Two or three anthroposophists have contacted me, expressed their sadness that we had a diffficult experience and said - lets star a dialogue about anthroposophy.
So the dialogue began, but as soon as they realised how much I knew, they went quiet.

Often, anthros haven't read as much as they like to imply. They just go with all the spiritual stuff, and don't really read Steiner.
I found this with anthros I knew, much of their information was from endless meetings they have, so it's very easy for the main player anthros to control and pull the strings.
eva/sune is trying to do this on his sites, only give theinformation he wants to be seen, twisting the rest, trying to denounce reasoned, intelligent historians like Peter Staudenmaier.

yes jokes come direct from the devil that is why "666" is my favourite number

Aussie, if there are people like you around , I reckon we do still need a thread to put our personal experiences of Steiner, and warn people it isn't what they think it is.

Eva sune is so threatened by us, he follows us around.

If he didn't think it was worth it , he wouldn't bother.

I saw these threads linked to THREE discussion boards the other day, saying, "Steiner school isn't what you think it is, look at these mothers experiences on mumsnet."

There you are sune, see if you can find those three discussions.
How many more mums do you think we've convinced to look up Steiner and read about it for themselves?

www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/stories/2008/2120792.htm

this is yet another from australia, an interesting debate on abc radio.

i read this several weeks ago, but thought it was worth posting now: ray pereira is a sri lankan artist who send his children to one of the steiner schools in australia:

"Ray Pereira: ....But there were several issues. One that particular affected me was the question of reincarnation. Now what happened was we had a parent-teacher interview with my youngest son who was in the prep class, and he was five years old at the time, and the teacher told us that she thought it would be better for him to spend another year in prep and not move on to Class 1, because she didn't feel he was ready for it. And as evidence of this, she pulled out a drawing of his, and said, 'Look at this', and his drawing is depicting whatever the drawing was, a view from above the earth; he's looking down on the earth which indicates that 'his soul is not fully incarnated yet, and it's hovering over the earth'. Look I don't care what people believe in, but I would expect if I'm in a state school that decisions based on my child's education and future are based on concrete evidence, not on something like that which I find rather alarming really."

the same parent says that his children were not allowed to use brown or black crayons or paints. read the whole interview, fasinating how the same stories come out again and again from different parents in different parts of the world.

sorry my last post contains an extract from the same abc radio interview i have given a link to below.

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"she pulled out a drawing of his, and said, 'Look at this', and his drawing is depicting whatever the drawing was, a view from above the earth; he's looking down on the earth which indicates that 'his soul is not fully incarnated yet, and it's hovering over the earth'."

Oh, no

Maybe this is why they thought it was so wrong of me to draw cars from above. Well, they didn't like it. They even told my parents.

They didn't want me to start school either, despite me being ahead academically at that age. They wanted me to stay behind with the smaller kids while the kids of my age went to school (not learning anything, but anyway...)

My parents didn't accept that.

Personally I don't think I draw things from above because I hadn't reincarnated yet. A much more plausible explanation would be that I lived in an apartment some floors up on a street with many garages in the basements and ground floors of the buildings. One garage and car service facility had it's entrance/exit right under my windows.

"the same parent says that his children were not allowed to use brown or black crayons or paints."

We weren't either. Brown I don't know, there weren't brown crayons but you get brown by mixing the other colours so...

Black wasn't allowed. Parents had to take away the black crayon from the crayon box in 1st grade when we had our own set of crayons.

Wet paint came only in blue-red-yellow-orange, and nothing else.

The block crayons that we had in the beginning, don't remember exactly how old I was then, were only red-yellow-blue, too.

zooey:
"Maybe this is why they thought it was so wrong of me to draw cars from above. Well, they didn't like it. They even told my parents."

Yes, that is exactly why, Zooey. It's supposed to be a sign of "first grade readiness" when the child draws everything on the ground, from the perspective of the ground. That is when the child is said to be fully in his or her physical body, rather than hovering above.

"Personally I don't think I draw things from above because I hadn't reincarnated yet. A much more plausible explanation would be that I lived in an apartment some floors up on a street with many garages in the basements and ground floors of the buildings. One garage and car service facility had it's entrance/exit right under my windows."

Oh, that is hysterical, that is just so funny. That is such a perfect metaphor for Waldorf woo woo - it is more like they who don't have their feet on the ground, isn't it? Not dealing with, er, REALITY, the child lives in an apartment and draws cars as she sees them on the street below her own window!! I love it.

Feet on the ground, no, that they didn't have

The rest of us can just take the elevator down if we'd like to see cars from ground level, but the anthros have to wait for the right spiritual conditions to apply to be able to descend.

But I'm pretty sure that when they bring these things up with the parents, who aren't "in" on it so to speak, and say "Well, the child paints cars from above... not good... fluffyfluff... needs to mature," parents just think "eh?" and sort of assume that they didn't get it or they try to reinterpret it in 'normal' terms, trying to sort it out, thinking perhaps it's a sign of intellectual maturity to understand what is up and down and the sides of a car... Spirituality is probably not what parents think of, if they aren't anthros themselves.

zzooey, at least they allowed you to draw cars ! i got strange comments about the fact that my son loves cars, he is absolutely obsessed with them.

my hubbie was "told off" by another parent for drving to school ! too materilaistic you see, liking cars and using petrol, you have to go on a fecking horse instead !! then use the horse manure for bio-d farming, etc.

i love the bit about you living in an apartment stuff, absolutley brilliant ! i guess the fact you lived in a block flats was itself a problem because you were constantly hovering over the earth - not properly reincarnated until you took the lift all the way down to the ground floor !

morons !!

And I'm moving on to ever higher levels, or floors above ground, speaking materialistically. I'm practically up there with the angels. Reminds me I've got to reincarnate myself down to earth to buy groceries.

I'm not sure they allowed me to draw cars (and I'm not sure how they knew they were cars - cars seen from above must look like...? A box?), really, but they may have accepted it. That was probably the only thing I draw except houses, and they thought my houses were very poor. They looked like one-dimensional boxes to (I don't know how they saw the difference from the car, but...).

www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=495435&in_page_id=1770

this is great, just more evidence of lunacy !

a gnomes' grotto, i just knew it !

'Waldorf WooWoo' - Love it
I'm still reading both threads but I'm up to my neck in house selling and buying stress. These threads are keeping me sane, knowing there are other parents having gone through the same treatment.

I refuse to acknowledge sune as he is trying to destablise these threads and cut off any ongoing discussions. Sound familiar???

tilda swinton and steiner
Love the 'television makes you torpid' line - well that would mean all tv apart from the films Tilda stars in then. I wonder how much it must cost her 'spiritually' to dance with the devil?

I wonder what tales Tilda's children bring to school to share with their Waldorf classmates about the menage a trois at home with the husband and the toyboy lover! I heard that maybe there are now two toyboys but only one of them actually lives with the family.

"For info on the small, fringe anti-Waldorf hate-type of group in SF/CA,"

Maybe it is apt to post some more info on this group lest people think that the group in question (PLANS) was formed and exists solely to oppose Anthroposophy in general and Waldorf education in particular, maybe even to have the movement outlawed.
This is far from the case.
PLANS was formed by some people who saw the approach of Waldorf education (as Steiner ed is known pretty much everywhere but UK)
as being based on religious precepts.
I doubt that many people have any difficulty with this so long as it is clear from the outset.
The view of PLANS is that this not the case, and that being of a religious orientation, in terms of the First Amendment to The Constitution of The United States, (which guarantees separation of Church and State) Waldorf Education should not stand within the purview of public funding.
The legal challenge to public funding is the origin, and I think, sole purpose of PLANS.
It seems to me not in the least unreasonable that, in view of their courageous, and long running legal battle on this topic alone, PLANS are perfectly entitled to provide background to their case, and deserve much, much more credit
than the dismissive "hate group" or even "hate-type group" designation.
The PLANS group is indeed small. Their courage and tenacity is exemplary. Americans sticking their necks out in order to protect their Constitution. Don't seem like a "hate group" to me, more a grouping of people of integrity and conscience.
There again, perhaps the mere fact of their conscience not arriving at an anthro-approved level is sufficient to warrant the appellation. Maybe prospective applicants to any Anthro outreach should bear this in mind.
Davy

Maybe also some of the comments (1, 2) by the Secretary of the Bay Area Sceptics (BAS) on the driving force behind the "PLANS" group, Mr, Dugan, gives a perspective on his "courage and tenacity", "integrity and conscience" as the driving force behind the small anti-Waldorf fringe group and another of the members of PLANS board since its start, when they at the end of the 1980s' tried, but failed, to turn the Bay Area Sceptics into a missionary, crusading secular humanist group in the SF Bay area.

The pages tell how difficult the Secretary and the board of the Bay Area Skeptics found it to handle what he describes as the "throw-some-mud-and-see-what-sticks" tactic by Mr. Sabsay and the libel by Mr Dugan, that according to the Secretary of Bay Area Skeptics were used by them at the time to achieve their goals.

For another perspective on the "integrity and conscience" of the driving force since ten years behind PLANS' litigation against two public school districts in California for their support of the use of Waldorf methods at two public shools (there are now 19 such schools in California), see Stereophile: Audio McCarthyism.

"a gnomes' grotto, i just knew it !"

You have to give them credit for the openness. It's not every day you would see a waldorf school give people access to the teachers' staff-room.

"Americans sticking their necks out in order to protect their Constitution. Don't seem like a "hate group" to me, more a grouping of people of integrity and conscience."

well said.

I think it is time some of us Brits. also stuck our necks out. in fact i am wondering why we don't have a sort of PLANS here to also launch a legal challenge to these lunatics.

i see the hereford school will soon get public/lottery funding. that is an absolute disaster. it shows the depth of their deception.

yes, very open for ONCE zzooey, the problem is (and they know this very well) the minute they give us a glimpse of their world, we start think mad...mad...mad...

ok i know santa is a load of rubbish too, but why "trick" children out of santa and into your own loopy bonkers gnomes' cave ?