Failed our steiner toddler group

[Orangeflower7]

I was looking for a smaller more relaxed kind of toddler group for my ds (2.5). Got a bit fed up with the big busy groups lots of ride ons etc..so tried the steiner group. Just met one of the mums from it today who is 'sad it didn't work out for me' and am feeling a bit of a failure.

I'll explain a bit. It went on for ages and we all had to sit round the table and make a woolen spider which to be honest the children were to young to do- ds got frustrated and threw it away. It seemed that it was for the mums really, (craft) I found it stressful as I had to help make the activity so much whereas ds wanted to go play, and there was no choice of activity, all the mums were sat doing the craft activity so the children who were playing didn't have much input really.

The routine was like this (over 2 hrs) Craft-then (adults make snack which children couldn't eat just yet) -singing-then wash hands (line up) then-sit up and eat snack- then story.

I just found it too much direction and sitting down stuff for a 2 year old..although the (mostly little girls) other children seemed very obedient

It is a shame as it would have been a nice change...didn't find it very child centred though. Please tell me it's not just my ds is it, I do know a little about early years and the emphasis is a lot on play, (adult led and child initiated, choice and independence, how does that sit then with steiner?

So back to the big groups we go.

Thanks Manatee. I get a bit scared when all of this brainwashing is talked about. It's a big decision not to send ds to the standard local school.

I asked my friends brother about any downsides of a steiner education and he said he felt the only thing was that he got a shock when he left and found life a bit harsh, which he hadn't expected. On the other hand he said he loved school.

My other concerns are the other parents, I'm a bit worried about them all being of the overly sincere type. Also...I can't do crafts, like at all .

Personally, it will be a very cold day in hell when I send DC to the care and under the influence of nutters who believe some soul will reincarnate in their bodies.

I abhor all religious education equally, that is one thing. Another is that belief in reincarnation takes away fear of death, which is much worse than any other religious dogma. After all, if these children have an accident and die, that is not a terrible thing, is it, if they will then reincarnate in some other body?

We will most likely be leaving the country when ds is 8 or 9 and we're thinking of moving to a montessori school at that point if the option is open to us.

I guess I don't see any difference between this reincarnation thing and the jesus heaven and hell thing

AandO I don't want to pour more water on your new school....some are not as full-on as others....but if art is important to DS then please take a look at the schools art curriculum.

One of the main things whch put me off taking DD to one, was the "Steiner Rules" about Painting.....ALL of the pictures on the walls looked like they were painted by the same person. There was no free expression and they were all wishy washy sunsests, vague veiled things and all used the same technique and colours.

As I say...this is not how it is done in ALL S. Schools...but in quite a large proportion of them.

I did notice a distinct different style of painting. Not sure if the pics on the walls were all the same. In most schools do kids just paint anything? In the non steiner preschool ds goes to now (just in local village hall) they seem to have themes, like one day they all draw butterflies because that's what they have been learning about at that point, at easter they all colour in pics of bunnys and eggs etc.

From reading the websites it seems that all steiner schools do the same things. Although this school might be different, the school is now state funded and it involved a lengthly process in which curriculum was revised etc and now they do the national school curriculum but don't use the text books.

I think the difference is between "we've been learning about birds, lets all paint a bird" and "this is today's painting, this is how you do it".

DS2 (now a cool and funky 11 year old) soon put paid to my attempt to take him to a Steiner playgroup. All was quiet, the candle was being lit, the leader was about to recite the closing verse when DS stood up, wiggled his bottom and sang at the top of his voice 'I'm coming up so you'd better get this party started'.

We beat a hasty retreat to the noisy church hall groups...

Can I just say, I have visited many a MN thread about Steiner and it is SO refreshing to hear it being discussed by people who have been through it and people who are considering it WITHOUT some person coming in and stamping a huge Steiner boot over it. For the first time ever I have heard people, who have obviously had a very bad experience of Steiner, admit the good things that some aspects of Steiner teaching can deliver (albeit unintentionally possibly).

I wish more of these thread existed. Maybe "they" have learned that threatening writs and stamping on peoples' own actual experiences does more harm to their cause than good.

Oh, a cult huh?? I am a Steiner kindergarten teacher and I don't think I do or think or practice ANYTHING cultish... I am very aware that Steiner education is not for everyone, it's not that we think we're right, just right for some. It's as simple as that, choice is what it's about.

By the way, I have never known a parent and child group in which the mother was actively discouraged from interacting with her child... this is NOT what our aim is.

Some parent and child groups do not have a craft during their sessions, I think both ways works, what I think is most important is the time Parents and Carers have during the sessions to stop rushing around like blue arsed flies and listen and observe and play and sing with their children.

Sounds like your Parent and Child leader is too keen on the 'rhythm' (I know I hate that word too) of the sessions instead of the needs of the parents and their very individual children...

I have known one parent and child group that was particularly painful... and would have fitted the description you give above - but it isn't the theory that's so bad but the way in which it is practised.

Don't feel like a failure OP - it sounds like the group leader is at fault here for being too rigid, the group should feel friendly and open and inclusive if it's well run. And, no-one should dictate what you should be doing, if you want to wander away from the crafts and play with your child and the other children, this is totally more than fine.

I have an old school friend who sends her kids to Steiner and when another friend asked her about it with an interest in sending her own children there, she (the original, Steiner one) said 'we are trying to keep out people whose children watch TV all day and eat cornflakes'.....make of that what you will!

In all seriousness, agree with previous comment that most of these 'camps' have some interesting ideas that you can extract the good bits from and add them to the mix (e.g. let's play with pine cones in the morning and polystyrene in the afternoon) - try anything twice, eh? - the trick is just not to get too sucked in to any one school of thought because they seem to be inevitably exclusivist, elitist, frightfully middle-class forums for turning your nose up at anyone who isn't in the club and/or dares to do anything differently. One of the big ironies of Steiner is that they (presumeably unlike the mainstream) 'advocate behaviours that encourage tolerance and inclusivity' - but in order to learn this you have to go to a marginal school which doesn't tolerate people who don't agree with its principles.

Spoke too son minster

soon

Excellent post maggie

Oh god I found myself nodding along to the OP
I took my middle son to Steiner toddler group at that age. It wA torturous! We had to take off our shoes, ds had to play with pebbles twigs and shells and I had to make a fucking teazle hedgehog arggggghhhh I really did NOT want to make this stupid hedgehog, I asked for some black wax for it's nose and the woman practically fainted in horror 'we don't allow black in Steiner!' apparently it's 'too dark' seriously WTF?!! I think I tried getting her to explain it and I got all confrontational and then started challenging the other mothers who had gone very quiet if they thought this was ok/normal/totallybatty??!!
The bloody woman leading the group sang non stop about every bloody thing eg ' we're going to have a cup of tea tra la la la la' on and on it was ghastly and ds1 who has asd and ADHD was going thru a bit of a hate singing stage so just kept shouting 'no no no singinging argghhhh!'. In the end we both had to stand in the corridor while they were singing about bloodywood nymphs and angels ,it would appear ds was a bit of a bad influence on the other kids ecause eventually ALL the kids were mucking around in the corridor and the crazy lady wassat inside singing on her own

We didn't go back!

Oh God. I am most concerned about my mate. She still has her Facebook account though so hopefully she hasn't submitted to the Ahrimania wotsisname Lucifer thing. I hope.

Wabbit - Yes, a cult. I'm glad you asked.

Here is the French government's June 1999 report on cults ('sects' in French).

Scroll down to:

3.- Les établissements contrôlés
Trois mouvements sectaires importants, l'Anthroposophie, la Scientologie et le Mouvement raëlien, se sont attachés à créer ou à prendre le contrôle d'établissements d'enseignement privés hors contrat, du primaire et du secondaire. Là encore, au-delà du prosélytisme, les enjeux financiers ne sont pas à négliger.

On compte en France une trentaine d'écoles se réclamant de la pédagogie de Rudolf Steiner, fondateur et inspirateur de l'Anthroposophie qui se veut l'héritière de sa doctrine.

S'il est clair que toutes ces écoles ne revêtent pas un caractère sectaire, plusieurs mériteraient cependant une investigation approfondie. La Commission a, en effet, eu connaissance de dérives. Les méthodes pédagogiques particulières à certaines écoles ont été critiquées notamment par l'Inspection de l'Education nationale. Ainsi, les apprentissages du langage structuré, de l'écrit et du calcul ne seraient pas engagés avant l'âge de 7 ans. En outre, les enfants inadaptés à la méthode Steiner seraient soumis à des sévices et beaucoup ne seraient pas à jour de leurs vaccinations.

Alors que les tarifs de la scolarité affichés peuvent être considérés, pour certaines familles, abordables (entre 14.000 et 18.000 francs par an), l'Inspection de l'Education nationale a repéré des établissements où les tarifs pratiqués étaient si élevés que des parents d'élèves, afin de pouvoir les honorer, s'étaient trouvés contraints de travailler pour l'Anthroposophie.

And a bit further down:

L'Anthroposophie, déjà évoquée à travers les écoles Steiner, exerce, parallèlement à la pédagogie, d'importantes activités thérapeutiques.

Elle s'appuie, d'une part, sur un important réseau de praticiens, fédérés dans l'Association médicale anthroposophique de France (AMAF), d'autre part, sur plusieurs centres thérapeutiques qui accueillent notamment de jeunes handicapés, enfin sur les laboratoires Weleda, qui emploient environ 180 personnes à la fabrication de produits cosmétiques et diététiques mais aussi de préparations médicamenteuses.
Officiellement, la médecine anthroposophique n'implique pas l'abandon de la médecine traditionnelle. On cite cependant des cas de patients, atteints de leucémie, de troubles neuroleptiques ou de cancer du sein, dont on avait arrêté le traitement médical pour les soigner exclusivement avec des poudres ayant subi des " manipulations spirituelles ", des massages, des tisanes et... le port de maillot de corps en soie (susceptible de guérir le cancer).

--------

Congratulations, your schools made it to the official shortlist of cults operating in France, right along Scientology and Raelians.

Cote could you translate the highlighted bits, please?

And here is the Belgian parliamentary inquiry into the cults operating in their country (1997) that features Anthroposophy and Steiner schools:

Part I and Part II

pg 98:

In summary, Anthroposophy has had good results in education but quite bad results in medicine, notably as seen in the death of little Annaelle, who was being treated by persons who were practicing medicine according to Steiner's aberrant teachings that said the blood circulation made the heart beat and not the other way around.
This movement has its own pharmaceutical industry and has recently built a financial holding company.

pg 292:

Witness account from a closed session, that talks about unexplained financial stuff, members abandoning family & careers, practice of a different medicine, etc.

There is probably more stuff on Anthroposophy on this report but frankly I can't be bothered to read any more of it.

belcantwait Your post made me spit tea over the screen. Sounds very familiar - I think Steiner kindergarten teachers are supposed to talk in that sing-song way. Not sure why though. The 'not using black' thing is familiar too.

I learned to read aged 4 when my brother taught me (we're close in age and did everything together so obviously I wasn't letting him know how to do something I couldn't) and there were apparently lots of catsbum faces when I sat in the corner of the room in kindergarten reading story books

Seriously, though, the whole Steiner thing can be a bit weird and culty but especially for younger kids I really don't think the pedagogy is bad or damaging in any way. Certainly it's no freakier, looked at from a sceptical agnostic perspective, than a Catholic faith school - in what way is it stranger to believe in reincarnation than to believe that some chap who was human and also God got nailed to a tree?

If I had/have a gripe with Steiner, it's that it's a minority belief system. And minority belief systems will always attract a fundamentalist element. There are plenty of pretty normal, moderate people who take an interest in Steiner's ideas; it's just that there's also a fringe of complete fucking weirdos that wear different colours on different days of the week because of planetary influences, believes that conflict between children at school is 'working through karma' and experiences any criticism of the Steiner movement (especially if it's done via the internet) as Ahrimanic forces hell-bent on destroying an essential step forward in spiritual evolution.

My primary Steiner teacher was one of the most mild-mannered, kind, humble and generous people I've ever met; my main secondary 'class sponsor' was a smug, stupid arsehole who systematically ignored my boredom and distress in favour of the sporty, sociable kids. But arguably I could have had that experience in any school.

So I joke about Steiner being a cult, but as cults go it's pretty benign. It's not like you get followed by Men In Suits And Dark Glasses if you try to leave the fold. Parents like AandO , who have assessed the provision in their neighbourhood and decided that Steiner is the best option available, are no different to parents who choose a faith school even though they're ambivalent about the faith professed: just trying to do their best for their DC. Chances are that a Catholic school will have its share of catsbumfaced fundies, just like a Steiner one, and having weighed that in the balance if the Steiner provision seems better in other ways then hooray. The problems only arise if people stop seeing the wood for the trees and just assume that a particular faith/ethos is best for their DC in the teeth of the child's underachievement, boredom, distress or whatever.

"Trois mouvements sectaires importants, l'Anthroposophie, la Scientologie et le Mouvement raëlien..." - Three important cults, Anthroposophy, Scientology, and the Raelian movement...

"On compte en France une trentaine d'écoles se réclamant de la pédagogie de Rudolf Steiner, fondateur et inspirateur de l'Anthroposophie..." - There are about thirty schools in France that claim to follow the pedagogy of Rudolph Steiner, the person who founded and inspired Anthrosophy...

"On cite cependant des cas de patients, atteints de leucémie, de troubles neuroleptiques ou de cancer du sein, dont on avait arrêté le traitement médical pour les soigner exclusivement avec des poudres ayant subi des " manipulations spirituelles ", des massages, des tisanes et... le port de maillot de corps en soie (susceptible de guérir le cancer)." - There are patients with leukemia, neurological problems, or breast cancer whose medical treatments have been stopped in favor of "spiritually prepared" powders, massages, herbal infusions and... wearing silk underwear (thought to cure cancer)"

Disclaimer: While my French is quite good, I'm a terrible translator

Urgh... there are some Steiner Waldorf practitioners that have sensible heads on their shoulders. I have trained with many of my Plymouth University trained colleagues and feel there's a more questioning approach to the practises we undertake. I think SW education is having to take a long hard look at itself and having to justify it's practises through research and by linking Steiners ideas with current understanding of neurological development in children.

like Manatee I also think elements within the SW 'community' have it wrong in many respects... there are too many gullible and judgemental attitudes within the Anthroposophical movement and it doesn't make for a healthy, questioning, research based educational system. Anthroposophy does attract some less than desirable waifs and strays within society who really DO believe in (gnomes, tv and computers exposing users to Ahriman... the cosmic vibes maaaan).

I would hope that I am not such a sheep that I would do something because it's what everyone else is doing. If I don't think there are positive developmental reasons behind say, protecting the senses, nurturing respect, reverence and providing a predictable pattern to each day, week, month etc in my setting, then I would not do so.

Any early years practitioiner worth their salt will meet the needs of their particular group of children by changing this and doing that and moulding the days activities to incorporate the interests, developmental stage, emotional intelligence and physical capabilities of the children they care for.

Also, from the working groups that I am involved in, I understand that SW practitioners who are modernisers (like myself), and desire to create settings that are capable of providing best practice, are looking beyond previous SW practices, taking knowledge from other professions such as developmental psychology and neurology to inform their work.

I think it's unfair to say that anything good that we undertake is unintentional, from my perspective all of my work is about best practice, from whichever pedagogical base: Mainstream, Froebel, Reggio Amelia... but perhaps not Montessori - the two pedagogical streams are just too different.

What I don't do is:

Take black crayons out of the crayon boxes!!!

I had a catholic education and home education, like Manatee it took me decades to get a real perspective of what the world is about. I sent my DD to mainstream schools and she had a diabolical time of it, unhappy, bullied, moved from school to school just to try to make things better - she has serious mental illness now and I wish I knew then what I know now.

What I aim in my setting is to provide a social, emotional and physical education that will support the children in the kindergarten in their development of a veiw of the world - an overall picture of their place in relation to history, society and humanity. It is my hope to promote a sense of self that could best be described by Aaron Antonovsky's theory of Salutogenesis.

Are you a believer Wabbit?

Sorry Manatee - we have crossed posts, has taken me ages to compose anything as I'm supposed to be doing paperwork but I also think this is very important.

I think we're saying very similar things about education really, it's about choice and 'best fit'.

I couldn't afford to send my son to a Steiner school and would have had to move to do so anyway - DD had an awful time in both faith and non-faith schools and I didn't want to homeschool as that supports an unintegrated perspective for the child within society (well, it did for me) So I got off my lazy arse and learned about education and development and pedagogical theories and Steiner ed was the best fit for me.

I agree with OTheHugeManatee that if you have a child who happens to have the right temperament for the Steiner approach it probably isn't the worst place in the world for them to be.

But IME its very much my-way-or-the-highway, and for kids who it doesn't fit with it they and their parents feel like failures, like the OP says. Which is just not how education should work, i don't think.

The thing that makes me most itchy about steiner (DS1 went to kindergarten for a bit) is that it is quite dishonest, they are not upfront about why they are doing things a particular way, about the spiritual philosophy etc... It was local and I just thought it was gentle, and a bit hippy, and arty...until I wised up. I suppose if I'd been on MN at that time I would have known better.