Steiner Schools?

[Moomalicious]

Does anyone have any experience with Steiner Waldorf kindergartens? My son is hating his preschool and I think this might be a better option for him but I'm an Atheist and am worried that may prejudice us.

that sounds like the best thing to do barking- if your kids are still young , moving won't really affect them.
We moved from London - and my kids have had a really awful time with schools- evangelical christians and bullying before steiner- steiner was meant to be a releif from that.

But they are now very happy and settled - children really are as adaptable as people say.

And if they know you're releived and happy they are too.

We all felt an enormous surge of releif when wwe left Steiner.

whats the 'gnome and dish thing'?
See we only got to first base, nobody taught me the gnome and dish thing, we were never going to be taken into the anthro fold boohoo!
All the long standing steiners did this incredible stare thing which reminds of your post about the forehead, they were looking for something that.....wasn't there, all my energy had been manifested into my........left upper cheek....to sneer at them with!

Vugar - please share your steiner encounter with us

merry- have yu read it- ? It's incredible isn't it? you honestly couldn't make it up- and it's nice having you on here! I just went on your voodoo knife one too-

barking- you could put the gnomes IN the satellite dishes...

Northernrefugee39 - I've always wondered about the singing, parents would sing to their children when they were naughty, another mum who has since left, told me a toddler whacked a newborn baby with a lump of wood and the teacher responded by singing in a very high wobbly voice 'kind hands, kind hands, kind hands' over and over again.
it will be such a relief when we are out of here, I will be sad because we have worked so very hard to be here and completely renovated the house as we thought we would never move again, but each day is such a struggle living amongst these people and there is an agenda of being gently pushed out, its all very passive/aggressive - not healthy at all. they want a steiner commmunity, they can have it, their children can work out their karma on each other!

Oh, I thought you were saying there was a special 'gnome and dish' ritual

Well- my weird encounter was just the FEELING it left me and Dh with afterwards. This is long and rambling so please forgive me . . .

We were invited to an acquaintance's house with our DS. The only other couple there spent no time in telling us that they embraced Steiner philosophy.

Me, being me, was fascinated but it became clear that this couple were weird. The father spoke to no one apart from his children and the mother was VERY overbearing and humorless. Children seemed quite pleasant but Ds was going through a major Thomas the Tank phase and seemed surprised that a boy of his age had never heard of Thomas. I gathered that they had watched no TV or had character toys in the space of 5 minutes. They also told us they were not allowed sugar at all. Maybe not such a bad thing but . . .

My Dh was totally ignored by this couple even though he tried to strike up a conversation several times. He is mixed race and it didn't occur to us then that this may have been the reason why.

Yes, it sounds like a load of cliches, I know. FFS, the dad even had a beard and one of those painter type smock things.

We sniggered on the way home that we had just met "The Modern Parents" from Viz magazine.

And then went and got chips from McDonalds.

I'm wracking my brains over some of the more . .er . . ."batty" statements this woman came out with. I'll ask Dh when he gets home. We often talk about this funny encounter.

She did mention letting children fight their own battles which raised alarm bells with me. But unfortunately NOTHING about gnomes! Or Atlantis.

Barking, your situation sounds awful. I would be seriously pissed off. This one encounter made me feel not quite good enough and made me question my fairly middle of the road parenting style. In fact, I'd want to plaster my house in satellite dishes, eat fast food every day and be throughly vulgar -well that's my name after all.

And your idea of planting gnomes in their gardens would be just genius!

Barking- I love your Steiner stories- they really make me laugh- but the thought of you leaving your lovely house- when you've worked on it to be the place you want really gets to me on a deep level- I think it's so UNFAIR on you- and the worst thing is that the anthros are so sanctimonious- that they're right, it's you're problem type stuff.

We're so lucky that the camphill community with the steiner schoolis very detatched and isolated- leave it and you're gone with no reminder.

I really want a gnome and dish ritual now

Vulgar- I completely recognise them! Isn't it weird when you can't quite pinpoint what the agenda is? They have a kind of midwich cuckoo-ness that's hard to define..... I used to think it was because the kids where we were didn't really meet many people from outside their community- so we held a novelty value- but of course it's when you discover the reincarnation and occult clairvoyance stuff it clicks into place.

My sister in law is black and their kids are obviously mixed race- she said she had odd feelings on the few occasions they went there- ( they live in London) but one German woman in our community said her kids never see black people - ARGGH! my warning bells started ringing- it was just the way she said it- anyway-that wasn't true- there were quite a few people from all over the world because in spite of it being remote , there was an international feel- lots of germans being steiner, and the eurythmy school attracted quite a few people from different countries.

Anthroposophy has racist undertones which they cover up with their interpretations.

Do they have secondary steiner schools?

And if so, does this twaddle about gnomes and plants get taught as science???

Hi Martian- oh yes- they have loads of seconary schools- the one mine were at went up to age 14, but there are quite alot that have six form too.
The thing about steiner schools that incenses alot of people is that the underlying core of the teaching is anthroposophy- but they don't actually teach it- it's a spiritual science/religion based beleif system.

There's an assumption, I suppose, that everyone takes these beleifs as a given- but you don't have to- it's quite possible to go through the system without a clue.
They are very unforthcoming- alot has been written about this earlier in the thread.

Anthros beleive that we all have the ability to communicate with the spirit world , and the schools are to help the children re incarnate.- The children are seen as stages in human development apparently- they're vessels for receiving cosmic wisdom.

So in schools for instance- there are nature tables which are a kind of altar- but they're no called that obviously-and they have these little fluffy gnomes on them ,which the teachers move around, and ell the children they're alive- right up to the age of 10 or so they're meant to believe it. The explanation is that it keeps the child's sense of wonder at the world.

The science teaching is dodgy - they're usually very behind in it if they transfer to the state system-. They don't do science until quite late- but it's quite wishy washy and there are things Steiner beleived like the heart isn't a pump, and he used Goethe's colour theory.

This is a Steiner take on evolution- so when the curriculum does the animal kingdom - which I remeber mine doing- it is with this idea in the background- although they don't actually teach it.

"We see then that man is not the result of animal evolution but that he is at the beginning of it and is central to it. Indeed he is the cause of it. The animal world represents soul qualities which the human being has discarded although he still retains remnants of them."

"spiritual beings were the creators." "Let us start from the point that the gods, or the divine spiritual beings, decided to create the world and man. For this we have a good authority in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible." (all quotes from a teachers' training manual by Roy Wilkinson, Man and Animal, The Robinswood Press, Stourbridge, England, 1990, p. 2-3,

The first quote is actually Steiner- not Wilkinson

'The heart is not a pump'

Jeeezy Peeps!

What a load of cobblers!

it's not only two stops short of East Ham- but secretive and a bit scary.....most people don't really knoe the full agenda and think it's all about art, stripey jumpers, aknitting and child centred stuff....

god my typing and spelling is quite appalling- aknitting sounds like a bizarre Steiner thing....I'll add it to barking's dish and gnome ritual ...

Just remembered a lot of our talk on this encounter was about starting school. I mentioned that Ds's school insisted on the pupils wearing black shoes (me, being a skinflint, didn't really want to shell out for another pair) and Steiner Mum piped up "Oh no, I would NEVER let my child have anything black"

Her kids will probably become goths later on!

That's karma for you!

Vulgar - lol at the black shoes, that is not all though, they all follow (with steiners blessing) Goethe's colour theory, so not only are you to wear colours of the prism, but it has to be the right kind of yellow, the right kind of green etc. so after a while one becomes attune to spotting a fellow member of the community at 40 paces as it becomes a type of uniform - also bloody expensive if you can't knit aswell, as it must be made from natural fabrics.

One observation when I was there were the high
proportion of green coloured cars that everyone had, it was rather like saying 'oh it's not really an evil car, tis a little tree on wheels and it runs on gnome faeces and pixie sputum.

There is no creativity in steiner schools, there is no art, it's all incredibly prescriptive. if you are ever at the open days look closely at the 'art work' it's all the same......

Audrey E. Mc Allen's book, "Sleep: An Unobserved Element in Education". p 40-43, writes:
"In this first exercise...only, I ask the pupil what color he would choose for the star, so that the vermilion red is held back from the star and kept in balance. Most children immediately say - yellow- and therein lies the
problem. Yellow is the colour which should not be confined, it needs to dissolve and fly away. . . . I have allowed the pupil to paint-in the star with yellow. . . . I then ask my pupil if he likes the effect. If the answer is yes, I make no comment. We repeat the exercise at the next lesson, asking which colour the star should be.
When he gives the answer that he does not like the effect, we discuss the relationship between the two colours, for example, the yellow makes the vermilion hot. Then comes the question, how shall we cool the vermilion red? There are some children who insist on the yellow,
others will suggest different colours, and then realise they are not satisfactory. We can now tell them to paint the star in the pale peach-blossom-like magenta. This always brings great satisfaction. I have learned to dwell on this first combination for several weeks and then to proceed with the sequence in their order, telling the pupil
which colours to use."

Barking. LOL at "oh it's not really an evil car, tis a little tree on wheels and it runs on gnome faeces and pixie sputum."

That is the funniest thing I've read for a long time!

It is obvious to me that you have too much natural wit and joy of life to fit in with these people!

There is nowt wrong with a bit of irreverence!

Like you, I think, there are some good things about Steiner but i do find it a bit sinister and cult like.

and they're all so bloody EARNEST!

What planet was the woman who wrote that book on?

Children are very dogmatic too, aren't they? I would find it hard to persuade my Ds that stars could not be painted yellow or white.

Steiner is so dogmatic, surely the teachers have a hard time persuading the children to think in their way? I think i would be banging my head against the wall repeatedly if I had to spend any time at all in this sort of institution!

Barking- why don't you write a book of your Steiner's - you're giving us a great time- I love it...

Did you see this green and peach blossom one ever?
"Green is the plant covering that envelops the earth. In addition to its "physical body", the plant possesses an "etheric body" which defines its actual life. Green is the dead image of the life within the plant.

Peach blossom, on the other hand, is the "colour of human incarnation", the "colour of human skin". This colour explains the moment when the human soul withdraws from the face, and the face assumes a greenish hue.

Accordingly, says Steiner, we can view peach blossom as the "image of the soul", and more exactly, as the living image of the soul.

Steiner emphasises that death does not lurk behind peach blossom (as is the case with green), since when the colour of peach blossom disappears the soul will indeed withdraw, but not life itself. "

Hey- I wonder if they realise that death lurks behind green

Interesting that you should mention the peach blossom being the colour of human skin. So it is...for some of us. How many people here have found a kindergarten in Steiner that wasn't painted peach blossom (or magnolia)? I have no idea; just askin'.

I don't know that I have a lot of anything new to add here, but perhaps some of the stuff I have at www.easeonline.org might expand a little.

I wouldn't think that anyone will be inclined to go through the whole thing, but maybe, as a starter, the Education page there might give some inkling as to why the karmic relationship between the teacher and the child is deemed to outweigh that between the parent(s) and child.

More generally, the first two pages at the site gives three (just three) Steiner quotes that might be sufficient to start some folk wondering.

I hope this is of some help.
Peace be with you.
Davy

Oops. Shoulda made that www.easeonline.org I hope!
Sorry
Davy

hi Davy at easeonline
very glad you've drpped in

or dropped in