wilder- karma and reincarnation are a fairly central theme in anthroposophy and therefore schools... I see the charismatic Eugen Schwartz of Millenium Child is in town giving a talk about it this month
thecaty teachers and parents are human beings- suspect choices and acts happen everywhere. The difference in a Steiner school however, is that they are dealt with in the light of karma and belief in the supernatural. I wonder why ofsted apparently quite often say that records are poorly kept about meetings staff have about children. Oh to be a fly on the wall....One of my daughter's teacher's "lost" some things when we were leaving...
Instilling a sense of "awe and wonder" in your children is quite possible without Steiner too; that phrase is repeated so often, along with "head heart hands" and "recieving the children in reverence" I'm surprised they don't own copyright.
One of the reasons we chose Steiner school was to extend our children's childhood, propogate a love of nature and keep the computer games, make-up and Jack Wills at bay slightly longer; ironically, some of the children who were at Steiner school with them are now noisily roaming the streets at night more made up/tarted up than the most rebellious convent girls if you get my drift.... there can be a violent reaction to the insular world of gnomes and rainbow wool....(and the Bodenistas too- there was a lot of that at the school ours were)
Teachers have a duty to be ultra vigilant and sensitive; wasn't there a case in Bristol I think, where the teacher cast the only Afro Caribbean children in the class as monkeys in the class play?
But if they follow the indications of a man whose dubious ideas and teachings were culled from his clairvoyancy, the scope for questionable choices is fraught with infinite uncertainty.
Knowledge is freedom and power; the powers that be within Steiner circles keep their true colours under wraps; I think they should be revealed so parents can be free to choose for themselves whether their children are taught within a framework of these beliefs.
Often the cry to peope like us, who discovered late in the day what anthroposphy was about, is that it was our responsibility to research before we placed our children in the schools; having researched (and everything is available on the net now, if you look beyond the websites promoting Steiner Waldorf, and read Steiner himself at the Rudolf Steiner Archive) we are castigated for advising others to do so too.
If a hundred parents do find out for themselves, they have the freedom make their own minds up. Rather than eating the "awe and wonder" phrases spewed up continuously by the schools. or letting the schools decide if and when they are "ready" to know.