Waldorf school

[!Kaggen]

OK, having read more of this thread, I should add that I speak from the Dutch experience.

The Waldorf school I went to was somewhat "fundamentalist", Rudolf Steiner could not be wrong and we should stick to his ideas.

I hate their system of teaching. I hate woo and I have been exposed to a whole lot of woo during my time there.

I hate Eurithmics. The Waldorf answer to yoga that I wasted three hours of my life on for many years.

I hated that they would let kids move on to the next class even if they couldn't keep up.

I hated their dogma on art which is all about round shapes, soft edges and pastel colors.
I liked drawing in black ink and I wanted to be a comic book artist.

Comic books, movies, computers and all technology invented after 1930 were frowned upon.

My parents gave me a Superman T-shirt when I was eight (the movie had just come out). The teacher told me to wear it inside-out when in school.

Pastel colors make my blood boil.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Its a shame, you have my sympathies. As a parent I would strongly object if my kid likes to draw comics or anything else for that matter. Any drawing is better than none i.m.o.
I hope you eventually found some space to explore your desire to be a comic book artist.

 

[Eddie Dane]

Its a shame, you have my sympathies. As a parent I would strongly object if my kid likes to draw comics or anything else for that matter. Any drawing is better than none i.m.o.
I hope you eventually found some space to explore your desire to be a comic book artist.

I do art direction for photo shoots.
Some of them even have pastel colors.

 

[!Kaggen]

I do art direction for photo shoots.
Some of them even have pastel colors.

So you overcome the handicap of your past and thrived, excellent.
Some pastels aren't bad.

 

[Cavemonster]

Ok, after a bit of research, I'm flipping my position on this.

1) The discouragement of vaccination, even if it's somewhat passive, is highly irresponsible, and seems to have led to disease outbreaks in both European and American Waldorf schools that endangered the students and the wider community.

2) I never denied that there was batty stuff in Steiner's writings, and the clearly don't teach that philosophy directly to the children, but from reading a number of Waldorf School official sites, I do not get the impression that teachers are encouraged to read his ideas critically or that those who take them literally are frowned upon.

While their level of academic success and college placement is high, and I agree with a greater focus on the arts, there is enough about the system that's troubling that i wouldn't send a child there if other private options were available.

 

[!Kaggen]

Ok, after a bit of research, I'm flipping my position on this.

1) The discouragement of vaccination, even if it's somewhat passive, is highly irresponsible, and seems to have led to disease outbreaks in both European and American Waldorf schools that endangered the students and the wider community.

2) I never denied that there was batty stuff in Steiner's writings, and the clearly don't teach that philosophy directly to the children, but from reading a number of Waldorf School official sites, I do not get the impression that teachers are encouraged to read his ideas critically or that those who take them literally are frowned upon.

While their level of academic success and college placement is high, and I agree with a greater focus on the arts, there is enough about the system that's troubling that i wouldn't send a child there if other private options were available.

I think your assessment is fair, but I would like to encourage you to critically engage with those within the Waldorf movement that promote the things which you find troubling and irresponsible.

I have had a lot of second thoughts deciding about the local Waldorf school. I am still not 100% yet. I plan on meeting first with all the teachers and grilling them before I decide. Ideally I would like to home school my children applying some of the principles of Waldorf education and ignoring the others.
However running a small farm and starting a business is not going to allow that. The problem I have with the other local private schools is the over emphasis in competition, especially sport, that is encouraged and the lack of interest in art and music.

 

[Senex]

I'm back. I will never be able to share this thread with my buddy because I called his school woo. Speaking only through my buddies life I know he is gettting divorced and his wife is the poster woman for woo. She believes in electric water. She believes in all sorts of woo. My buddy is embarrassed when I speak in particular woo.

He doesn't disagree with my atheist beliefs yet believes in letting his children have a Waldorf education.

This isn't on-line argument. i spend several days pack packing with his children every year. I've bit my tongue before but now his son is 17 and daughter 13 and I think I can speak my mind.

 

[Estellea]

I apologise to all for not keeping up with this thread as much as I would have liked. My gardens beckon however.

Senex, I'm sorry about your friend and I hope they can, at least, work out a satisfactory arrangement for their children's care and education.

Este

 

[Senex]

I apologise to all for not keeping up with this thread as much as I would have liked. My gardens beckon however.

Senex, I'm sorry about your friend and I hope they can, at least, work out a satisfactory arrangement for their children's care and education.

Este

I'm sorry. I didn't make this clear. My friend insists his children go to Waldorf (he blames his wife but he will make certain his daughter who does not wish to go to Waldorf will . There is no satisfactory arrangement despite what the children want. They go to Waldorf even if they go kicking and screaming. My buddy's wife is the one you can blame at first - but ask my friend and he insists this is the way to go.

Every year for the last 8 I have gone backpacking with my friend and his children. They are wonderful children who teach me. I'm not saying Waldorf is without merit. Alex gives me a good game of chess (but I'm a strong player and will never giver in to a child and he was as close to beating me two years ago as he is today.) Close but no cigar. I don't lose to children but maybe he should kick my ass given how much effort he puts into it these days. As much as he studies chess he hits a wall playing me. He playerd in a tournament and is one of the best high school chess player in NH but he can't beat me. That's BS. I know darn well the best High School chess player in NH can kick my ass. My buddy, who is as good as I am unless i'm pissed off) says they are50% when playing. I'm 50% when playing my friend but I never lose to his son. I'm talking 80 or 90 games over the last three years.

I have a chess story I'm going to start in this thread.

 

[!Kaggen]

And of course the latest research in childhood psychology confirms that the two main tenants of Waldorf education imaginative play and education from the inside out is how children makes sense of what is real.

When children are playing, they know they are just playing. Yet play is a very serious business, as Montaigne recognized: without the luxury of a uniquely long period of dependence on adults, in which we can afford to explore the world with unfettered imaginations, we would never learn how to be the most knowledgeable and powerful creatures on the planet. A recurring theme of Gopnik’s is the idea that playful immersion in freely conjured hypothetical worlds is what teaches us how to make sense of the real one. She describes, for instance, how small children’s grasp of “counterfactual” situations enables them to calculate the probabilities of alternative courses of action. She also discusses the invisible friends — most often found in the imaginations of children between the ages of 2 and 6 — who seem to help youngsters learn how to interpret the actions of others. Children who have imaginary friends tend to be better at predicting the thoughts and feelings of actual people. Autistic children almost never create imaginary friends or engage in any kind of pretend play.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/books/review/Gottlieb-t.html

Ironically, Waldorf education it seems will produce humans who can differentiate between woo and not

 

[Robo Sapien]

Isn't Waldorf the school in Harry Potter movies? Dude, they teach kids to fly and shoot fireballs, you just can't put a price on that.