STEINER WALDORF SCHOOLS AND INSTITUTIONS #2

[zzooey]

The steiner waldorf thread ran to a halt because apparently a 1000 messages are a maximum. Let's continue here!!

Diana, you Zooey and Pete have been a marvellous addition to these threads.

Yes, you are absolutely here as my guests then, and are more than welcome to stay.
We would miss your presence hugely if you went!

I like the mumsnet sass and verve, the buzz and fast flow of discussion, and I get the idea it is becoming a bit bogged down, which is where the snarkies come in.
But who cares eh?

There's some great things on other threads, so it doesn't matter. Am on a modern art one right now which is speedy, so if Steiner weighs us down we don't have to be here.

"Northern this takes me right back there, because this would have been me in several similar situations at our school."

Yep... Me too. I had to stand in front of a classroom of parents and EXPLAIN HOW allowing children to HITCHHIKE on a public street and get into the cars of strangers (during a school camping trip) could have been avoided. You can't convince me that the frickin' angels are protecting my child when YOU HAVE USED EXTREMELY BAD JUDGMENT to put them IN HARM'S WAY. They asked me to leave the meeting.

Yes, Diana, I have a 3 year old now who won't be going anywhere near Steiner and I was smiling to myself today as we were singing the ABC song and looking at an alphabet book together as I made the dinner.

You're absolutely right that when you're in the Steiner world you have this idea that all other schools are harsh and uncaring, particularly if you've found Steiner because the first one you tried didn't work out.

Janni and diana, m,y 8 year old is a totally diferent child. She LOVES reading and writing.
At steiner, she used to do it in secret.
And do tiny little black line drawings too.
She has always loved miniature things,tiny books and crayons, just small things fscinate her.
Those chunks of wax used to frustrate her so much.

Pet, the race thing is high on my agenda too. I've been "discussing" it on mothering, heavy weather certainly...the site is down now, but it's been "interesting".

I've just re read Peter Staudenmaier's Race and Redemption, which is very very good.
So objective, clear and comprehensive.
Reading that, ther is NO doubt about steiner's race beliefs.

Pete, although "Pet" sounds quite sweet, I certainly didn't mean you to have that as your name!

"totally barking mad"

Wait now let's not drive Barking into this

I have learned the phrase "mad as a box of frogs" from you Northern, I don't know if it's a British thing but I'd never heard it before, I love it. I have found myself calling things "bollocks" in real life recently too, this is a word Americans don't know but I like it too!

I have been reading all of this...............

I'm not as smart as all of you, but I am a mom of three.

First of all my daughter and I are left handed, so to me that is all a buch a crap. She is in the exell program and writes left handed.

My mother is 78 years old and I still remember stories of her being hit on the hand with a ruler to get her to write with her right hand.

I am the director of a very new preschool, opens on Monday....I recently found out that there are schools like this in NJ near me. I have never in my life heard of it. I would never send a child, let alone talk to anyone that is associated with this school.

I don't have very much "smart information" to add, but as a mom, i'm shocked.

Hi Angel,
Is NJ New Jersey? There are several in New Jersey. (Or is this somewhere in England? I am in eastern US. Mumsnetters may be starting to get nervous about this invasion of Yanks ...)
Your school opens tomorrow?! Good luck!

Thank you Diana....
Yes, I did mean New Jersey. I forget sometimes on here that it could mean anywhere..

I recently heard that there are a few schools like this close to me. That makes me nervous. For the parents that don't know....

The "temperaments" explained with pictures of the typical physique of each temperament:

openwaldorf.com/temperaments.html

"Okay Pete, let's say for the sake of argument that your lack of imagination constituted intentional error on the part of your son's teachers."

I don't believe there was an "error" involved here. I believe it was done intentionally.

"Were/are there priviledges and/or responsibilities associated with this placement and, if so, what were/are they?"

I'm sooo glad you asked:

"This carrying down, this thorough impregnation of the flesh by the spirit,
this is the characteristic of the mission of white humanity, the whole
mission of white humankind. People have white skin color because the spirit
works within the skin when it wants to descend to the physical plane. [?]
but where the spirit is held back, where it takes on a demonic character and
does not fully penetrate the flesh, then white skin color does not appear,
because atavistic powers are present that do not allow the spirit to achieve
complete harmony with the flesh."
." (Rudolf
Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe des Ersten Weltkrieges, 37)

"Those who remained behind, who bound themselves up with their race, as they
say, they degenerated, while the advanced ones founded new civilizations.
The last stragglers on the way to the east, the Mongols, still retain
something of the culture of the Atlanteans. In the same way, the bodies of
those people who do not develop themselves in a progressive fashion will
continue into the next era and will constitute the Chinese of the future.
There will once again be decadent peoples. The souls that inhabit Chinese
bodies are those that will once again have to incarnate in such races,
because they had too strong an attraction to that race." (Rudolf Steiner,
Menschheitsentwickelung und Christus-Erkenntnis, 186)

"But if you contemplate the past from the perspective of spiritual science,
you will gain a very different view. You will find that our white civilized
humankind originated because certain elements segregated themselves from the
Atlanteans and developed themselves higher here, under different climatic
conditions. Certain elements of the Atlantean population remained behind, at
earlier levels; thus we can see that the peoples of Asia and America are
remnants of the various Atlantean races."Rudolf Steiner,
Menschheitsentwickelung und Christus-Erkenntnis, 186

"Those who remained behind, who bound themselves up with their race, as they
say, they degenerated, while the advanced ones founded new civilizations.
The last stragglers on the way to the east, the Mongols, still retain
something of the culture of the Atlanteans. In the same way, the bodies of
those people who do not develop themselves in a progressive fashion will
continue into the next era and will constitute the Chinese of the future.
There will once again be decadent peoples. The souls that inhabit Chinese
bodies are those that will once again have to incarnate in such races,
because they had too strong an attraction to that race." Rudolf Steiner, Die Welträtsel und die Anthroposophie, 145

How many do you want Val?

Here are a couple more...

"Those people, however, who had developed their ego being too little, and
who were too exposed to the influences of the sun, were like plants: they
deposited too many carbonic constituents beneath their skin and became
black. This is why the Negroes are black. Thus both east of Atlantis in the
black population and west of Atlantis in the red population we find
survivors of the kind of people who had not developed their ego-feeling in a
normal way. The human beings who had developed normally lent themselves best
to progress." (Rudolf Steiner, The Being of Man and His Future Evolution,
119)

"For peoples and races are but steps leading to pure humanity. A race or a
nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the
pure, ideal human type, the further they have worked their way from the
physical and perishable to the supersensible and imperishable. The evolution
of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is
thus a process of liberation. Man must finally appear in harmonious
perfection." (Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of Higher Worlds, 207)

Please NOTE: The second quote here comes from a book that has appeared on every TEACHER TRAINING booklist I've ever seen. The title has been changed to "How to Know Higher Worlds". When Steiner talks about the "ideal human type" - he is talking about white skin, blond hair and blue eyes.

"You see, when we really study science and history, we must conclude that if people become increasingly strong, they will also become increasingly stupid. If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will become increasingly dense if men do not arrive at a form of intelligence that is independent of blondness. Blond hair actually bestows intelligence. ... It is indeed true that the more the fair individuals die out the more will the instinctive wisdom of humans vanish."
[Rudolf Steiner, founder of Waldorf Schools. Health and Illness: Volume I, p86. (1922) Spring Valley: Anthroposophic Press, 1981]

Well, context... I thought the quotes from Steiner's Apocalypse of S:t John were horrifying. However, reading the whole book, it turns out the lasting impression is, if possible, even worse than a few quotes, be they long or short.

It's like the whole idea of it, in its entire nastiness, stands much clearer with the context. It's a lot worse, because you can't pretend the horrific quotes were odd exceptions in an otherwise benevolent oevre.

The truth is, I don't know if I want more context from Steiner. I think sticking with the quotes is nicer. Less disgusting.

You'd think they'd have learned by now not to shout "Out of context" because we'll just come back with the context, and Steiner usually looks worse and worse the more you know. Most often then, replies cease, the anthroposophist is bored with the discussion then, or perhaps ill and needing to vomit.

"perhaps ill and needing to vomit."

Not from the text, the quotes or the context, though (because the anthroposophists like those and pretend not to understand what's causing any problem, they're all so innocent?), but from those nasty people who keep reminding him that that Steiner stuff is there

I'm almost feeling sorry for Buzzy. He'll be reading all this and will be unable to reply. That's got to be an exquisite form of torture.

Why do you think he will be unable to reply?

And if he did, how much credibility would he have at this point? Hey, maybe he's brushing up on his English and coming back as another Mum... I'll be suspicious of any Tinkerbelles that suddenly show up.

Pete, what shocks me almost more than anything about the piece you've posted from Knowledge of Higher Worlds, is that it was republished in 1993
Anthroposophist defenders of Steiner's race belief always say he was speaking as a man of his times.
So why republish it and have it as a pre-requisite book for teacher training?

Pete - because if he's been banned from Mumsnet he'll be able to read what we're writing but won't be allowed to post in return.

The Blond blue eyed passage has been sanatised in a much newer set of steiner's lectures called "From Comets to Cocaine" Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 2000

(I hadn't realised that as late as 1981, he origional version was still published.)

""The earth was once young. Now it is past its prime, it is growing older and some day will perish from old age, though not in the way described by materialists. We are aldready faced with some of the signs of the earth's old age. Therefore, the entire human race has been weakened in regard to the driving force that moves food substances through the body. So what part of the population is going to be the first to disappear from the earth? Dark people can last longer, for they possess greater driving force; blonds have less and become extinct sooner. The earth is indeed already into its old age. The gentleman who asked the question pointed out that there are fewer blonds around than in his youth. (addition: the question is found on p. 69 and reads: I would like to know why people with blond hair are becoming increasingly scarce.) Because the earth has less vitality, only the black and brown peoples attain sufficient driving force; blonds and blue-eyed people are already marked for extinction becasue they can no longer drive nourishment with the necessary force through their bodies."
"You can understand a phenomenon like the gradual extinction of blonds if you comprehend how nourishing substances penetrate into both the eyes and hair, the colouring of which is closely related.