Here's a few specific questions Raconteur which I hope you will find time to answer. I very much appreciate your participation here.
"First of all, Steiner education, like all education, has a creative aspect and an applied aspect. As a teacher, in planning my lesson I can try to find a unique way of bringing a subject for the particular group I'm about to teach. Or I can look up the curriculum plan for the day and use this. If the latter happened regularly it would be a "Steiner method" school; they would use the nice beeswax crayons and teach acoustics in sixth grade, as the method says to do, but there wouldn't be any real creative work going on (in an extreme situation). Most Steiner schools want to have people working from the source, that is, the source of Steiner education."
You seem to be saying it would be more creative if the teacher is working directly from Steiner. My experience is just the opposite - those teachers who take lessons practically verbatim from Steiner were acting like robots.
I'm just curious if I misunderstood your meaning.
"One of our school's best and most long-standing teachers has no connection to anthroposophy, though she respects it; she is simply a very deep human being with a wonderful sense for how to enable children to learn. She is deeply respected at the school by everyone."
Is this teacher on the College of Teachers?
That reads a bit like even though she is not an anthroposophist, she is a "very deep human being." I find that a little icky. Perhaps that is not what you meant.
"Hierarchies...At some schools there might well be a group who thinks they are better because of their anthroposophical background; I have never experienced this personally, however."
Is there a College of Teachers at your school? Who is on it? How many anthroposophists and how many non-anthroposophists? To get at the heart of this, we might have to define "anthroposophist," so perhaps this is not as simple as it first appeared. So we could just start, if you are willing, with the simple question of is there a College of Teachers? Are there written criteria anywhere in the school's policies, and/or in the parent handbook, if there is one, that explain how a teacher becomes eligible for the College of Teachers? Who decides? For instance, is a certain number of years teaching a criterion?
"The practical demands of teaching are pretty clear, and trump anything else - if you are competent and stable you get a lot of respect. A teacher at the Steiner school I worked at before my current school mocked all the Steiner-trained teachers (she had attended a normal teacher training); she thought they had weak practical skills. So there was a potential for a kind of reverse hierarchy there."
Was there a College of Teachers at that school? (Same questions as above.)
"There are insecure and intolerant people everywhere, and having an ideology to fall back on can intensify this. I do think that practicing any spiritual path helps many people overcome such tendencies -"
Why do you think this? My experience would suggest the opposite.
"My personal take? For Germany at that era, he exhibited a fairly typical mix of idealism and racial stereotyping."
Maybe so. But wasn't he supposed to be a great spiritual leader? A "source" in a grand sense for daily inspiration, and teachers should be working from this "source"? How is that reconciled with "typical for his time"? You've told us you think it's appropriate that when this school hires teachers, they check to be sure they are either adherents to Steiner or to some similar, compatible philosophy. You've suggested these people are the better teachers. I'm trying to reconcile that lofty notion of Steiner with the rationalizations of his racism, "just an ordinary guy" kind of stuff.
"The question of how to address parents about the nature of Steiner education and anthroposophy is really good. We all find parent education a real challenge."
Parent education isn't a real challenge. You give people the facts. Some people won't like the facts.
"It's perfectly possible to bore a group or individual totally, or convince them that you are unhealthily single-minded, by going on and on about anthroposophical ideas when they just want to hear about the education itself. On the other hand, it's perfectly possible for a parent to feel that s/he was not adequately informed. Most people I've talked to about this have had more direct experiences with the former situation; many parents simply have a limited interest in hearing about spirituality, reincarnation, Lucifer and Ahriman (anthropomorphized yin and yang principles, more or less), or whatever."
That's right, 'cus it's such ridiculous twaddle for the most part. What parents need to know is that you spent 2 years studying this material in teacher training. THAT'S the facts we are referring to here, we aren't most of us hoping our child's school will offer seminars on reincarnation, no.
"If the question about being compelled or invited to study groups applied to the trainings, I suppose that there's little choice there (study of books by Steiner are frequently part of the course)."
I agree with Pete who wrote that most helpful here would be an actual list of the titles you studied. That is the sort of information parents need and can decide for themselves what is relevant without your having to be "sensitive."
"In schools, however, there are no compulsory anthroposophical study groups, at least that I've ever heard of (and it seems a pretty unlikely idea). But in faculty meetings teachers might well study a book by Steiner on education."
Could you please tell us, not whether teachers "might well" study a Steiner book on education but whether in fact at your school you DO study Steiner books?
Is Steiner study a regular feature at faculty meetings and/or do the teachers meet separately on a certain schedule, or even informally on occasion, to study these books?
Thanks very much, Raconteur.