waldorf steiner

[heninthemidden]

hi,

anyone had good experience of waldorf steiner education system?

I think we ought to be careful, cos I'm sure MN do not want a Mr Bratt on their case!

Facebook group anyone???

I wonder how you (or author) know that imagination means psychic whatever it was! Again I'm not saying you're wrong but a source on the internet could come from anywhere. I think your own stories are powerful, like the author talking about over hearing teachers saying that dark haired children should sit by the window. Personally, I think if you have ANY examples like that that is very powerful.

I'm up for a FB group

I shall get one sorted and post the details when I do...it won't be tonight, my brain is not in gear!!!

ra29 the trouble is the world can be a very small place and inevitably talking our experiences means talking our children or others who in some cases are still in those schools and would be easily recognisable. I have known the children of dissenters to be singled out by teachers and would not wish that on anyone.

sorry, talking about.

Just reading through the messages again and hope things are getting easier for Disenchantedgnomie.

There is a wonderful group called Waldorf Survivors that can help. The website needs updating and the title is a little eek but there are people from all over the world on there that completely understand what you are going through.

Just a thought x

ra29 - the teachers do know about the nuttier side of anthroposophy (although they don't think it's nutty!)

We were called in one day to discuss ds1's difficulties. He has Tourette's and at the time had a lot of arm/hand tics and delayed fine motor skills (not helped by having to do all that sodding wet painting on wet paper ...) His TS had been diagnosed by an eminent American neurologist and confirmed by the TS clinic at Great Ormond Street, so we weren't just imagining things.

DS1's kindy "teacher" said she'd been doing her own research (ie looking on the internet) and she "had been advised that doctors never diagnose TS until the child is 7" (wtf???) so the diagnosis we'd told them about was a mistake. Instead, they believed that his soul wasn't properly reincarnated into his body and that in one of his previous lives he'd done something bad involving his arms/hands thus resulting in the tics/motor skills problems in "this" life.

Just to remind you here, we're talking about a just turned 5 year old boy who was under the care of the TS clinic at the country's top children's hospital.

When I told them that I was not prepared to carry on discussing my son along those lines I was told "that's up to you, but you have to recognise that as long as he's at this school that's how we will see him"

Which is when we decided to pull him out! We managed to get him a place at our lovely local state primary as someone had moved away and he started the next week. When I told them he was leaving his "teacher" told me that I was making a huge mistake and that I would see the error of my ways and I WOULD end up bringing him back - all this in front of DS

bonkers, bonkers, bonkers but not just that, an undercurrent of malevolence towards ds's special needs - and even though they thought he was a substandard, damaged human being, they STILL wanted him in their clutches

OMG mimsum that is utterly shocking and exactly the kind of story imo that needs to be heard.

northernrefugee in answer to my question of whether there's been a statement that anthroposophy does not underpin the Waldorf/Steiner curriculum you had this to say:

"It's fascinating reading between the lines of the language they use."

I take that as a no.

isenhart7 therein lies madness, somewhat similar to the supporters of WW2 genocide who then maintainit never happened it while advocating that it was the only reasonable route to go.

wilderduck- I take your answer as a no as well.

tattifer-with whom does this madness you speak of lie?

Mimsum, I hope you and your lovely ds1 are ok now

Steiner schools are the fastest growing alternative education system in the world. It is experiences such as yours that highlight the need for urgent attention.

For all the anthos watching and wondering how to tweak their wordplay: Butterflies and Wheels Fighting Fashionable Nonsense Dictionary
and Euphemisms and Obfuscations

"whether there's been a statement that anthroposophy does not underpin the Waldorf/Steiner curriculum"

madness - who hasn's said what in where about soemthing that is or isn't there. Steiner schools are hardly likely to stand up and say NO - that would mean they were lying. Doesn't mean they're going to advertise it either if they felt that it would prospective parents off.

madness - if I have to run off to the loo to throw up one more time today when it distinctly says morning sickness in the book

mimsmum I just want to say that is one of the worst things I have ever heard regarding Steiner, that 'teachers' would say this about a child, or even think it, is so worrying, did you make a complaint at all???

And I can just imagine the patronising way in which they would tell you leaving is a mistake, I can imagine, because I have heard it myself, usually followed by a statement along the lines of 'State schools are very damaging to children'. sigh

Now there's a statement that I HAVE heard-and repeatedly-that Steiner schools are the fastest growing educational movement and I doubt that it's true.

ds1's fine now thanks he still has TS but at least no-one teaching him now thinks he's not properly reincarnated into his body

ironically he's now at a highly academic, traditional boys' school with strict uniform etc which is miles away from what I'd envisaged with my naturally liberal-leaning views on education - but he absolutely loves it I've come to realise that with his particular needs he thrives on structure

the whole experience is, thankfully, 7 years behind us now, but every now and then ds1 still talks about it - one day a couple of years after he'd left we drove past his old kindy and he suddenly said "I hated kindy and I hated xxxxx (old kindy teacher)" and he said it with such feeling that I did feel really guilty that we'd ever put him through it even if only for a few months

Glad to hear your ds is happy and well Mimsum, I think the guilt thing is a familiar feeling amongst many of us, but we must remember they make it very very difficult to find this information out, and most peoples point of reference is not suspicious or looking for bad, we all did our best with the information we were given or could find at the time. I had asked many questions and was still taken in.

Mimsum: xxx to you and your family

Isenhart - How you can read a description of this kind of anti-therapeutic twaddle aimed at a little boy and not express shame that it happened in a system you defend I can only guess. But of course you're nothing but a ghoul.

Well you know I wouldn't profess to understand more than the tiniest degree the mechanics of the brain, conscious and unconscious; since the top neuro-physiologists of this amazing world still don't understand it. I wouldn't be that arrogant or stupid. But what I do know is that the strides they're making through peer-reviewed empirical research are more likely to enlighten us, in that important, sadly threatened post-medieval sense, than any 'imaginative' or 'spiritual' hypothesis plucked out of the 'ether' in the glare of full-on lunacy.

Do you get my drift there?

But at the moment I only give a damn about the children who are damaged by this so I hope y'all excuse me when I ask this ghoul to go f* herself.

Meanwhile: may I make a plea for evidenced-based karma?

Right wilderduck-you expressed your shame yesterday I believe:

"To apply this in some way to Steiner education: when someone says 'Of course I don't believe in anthroposophy and it doesn't effect my family (we're far too rational) but I'm quite happy that the teachers believe in it and others are adversely effected by it because on the whole people have the right to their spiritual beliefs, however odd. And some people probably need it and benefit from it and anyway it isn't doing them any real harm, since it isn't real. (Goodness, I think that was me a few years ago)."

That was your statement, not mine. I have never said that I'm quite happy if others are adversely effected by Waldorf/Steiner education and I would be indeed ashamed if I had. While I do agree that you have the right to your beliefs, whatever they may be, including faith in modern science, I do not agree that you have the right to inflict abuse, including verbal abuse, on others, no matter how superior you feel that your beliefs may be. Apparently, you disagree.

mimsmum- I'm reminded again of how brave you are to tell your tale; it is horrendous, but I'm so glad you dc is happy and thriving.

The last time I linked to our story, the thread was deleted.....Northernrefugee- A Very Alternative Education should bring it up on google.

ra29 - what you say about the critics sounding like conspiricy theorists is interesting, because this is the line the defenders of the faith like to propogate. There was some interesting discussion about this on mothering- the US site; what tends to happpen there is that when any intersted or questionoing mother asks about anthroposophy, or expresses doubts, two long standing defenders swoop in, and dismiss all questions as unfounded; ( they both, allegedly, are co-writers of the websites advertising steiner schools called Americans for waldorf, or waldorf answers)

One of the tactics used is to make statements like "Steiner wasn't a nazi", implying that had been said; one poster picked upon this, saying the only time she had heard the nazi accusation was from defenders !
She and said it looked like a smear campaign to make the critics look nutty by accusing them of being nutty.
This detracts from the real issues too.

Anyway, the beliefs are so crazy, Steiners work so mind blowingly off the wall, it wouldn't be hard to sound crazy by realting it, because you couldn't ever think someone coud believe it.

And I'm not actually so sure that all the teachers know about anthroposophy in it's full glory.
The teacher training reading list would indicate that they know a fair whack...but as far as I understand, there are generally one or two experienced anthros at the helm, guiding, mentoring and suggesting which texts of steiner's merit futher discussion.

What bothers me is that no one knows who has read or picked up on which particular way out belief of Steiner's and applied it; what he "indicated" is what they follow. So who knows when they're delberately evasive?