5 ms·

I went to a Waldorf/Steiner school, which shares some of these traits such as the lack of a focus on assessment and grading and the emphasis on creativity. We

• Alex3917 16y ago
  "There's a reason the really big hitters are often first-time entrepreneurs - they are naive enough to try." I think it's often because they don't understand the difference between a good product and a good business, so their expected outcomes tend to be at the extremes. Some of them end up doing ridiculously well, but overall I wouldn't consider not understanding lead gen, sales cycles, margins, cashflow, lifetime customer value, etc. to be a virtue.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  • aik 16y ago
    I don't understand, why exactly don't they understand any of those things? I would expect them to be exceptional at them.
• il 16y ago
  I think it comes down to the fact that, considering the work involved and that the majority of startups fail, it's never an economically rational decision to work on a startup. Realistic to most people means in the "real world" you follow a safe familiar progression from school to entry level job to management to retirement. There are guide rails and evaluations along the way to make sure you're on track. You found a startup because you wouldn't be happy doing anything else. I can't imagine getting a real job. Ever. For me, the set of things I could be doing with my life is {startup}. I remember seeing a quote from some very successful founder saying that the only reason he went into entrepreneurship is because he was completely unemployable.
  • cynicalkane 16y ago
    It can be economically rational if you value things other than the expected value of your money-to-utility function. <rant> People forget that economics takes into account things other than money. A lot of "economic" discussion would go a lot smoother if people remembered this. </rant>
    • stretchwithme 16y ago
      Yeah, what's actually rational cannot all be put into a spreadsheet.
• grinich 16y ago
  I think that creativity in adults is often stifled because they don't want to "get it wrong". People are afraid of trying their hand at a new skill or taking a risk on a new idea because they are "realistic" about their chances of success. There is a fantastic TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson on this exact subject. By far one of my favorites. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_...
  • stretchwithme 16y ago
    That is an excellent talk. The dude is hilarious.
• ronnier 16y ago
  >We weren't taught the alphabet until the age of about 6-7 My daughter is 1.5 years old and knows almost all of the alphabet. Is this a good thing or bad thing?
  • crpatino 16y ago
    Neither good or bad. It is a clue that she probably is good at "symbolic thinking". More of this stuff to come in the near future. Just make sure she has plenty of chances to develop this (probably innate) ability. On the other hand, as she grows up, you probably should keep an eye on her and help to mitigate any shortcomings that'd eventually show up. But this is the same with all children anyway.
    • zipdog 16y ago
      It could be a clue about symbolic thinking, or it might be the result of the approach used. I've seen an approach where letter-shaped toys are handed out as toys, which provides a concrete object to associate to the letter. Children using this seem to be able to pick up the alphabet around 1 year old fairly easily.
      • Afton 16y ago
        The important thing is that, as a parent, it's easy to fall into the trap of comparing milestones. There isn't the evidence that e.g. knowing the alphabet early means being a better reader later in life. Just like early walking milestones don't lead to 'better walking'.
        • ern 16y ago
          Your comment resonated with me. My wife's very verbal niece could name 12 animals in a book of animals at 18 months. Her mother drilled her, and then they would take the book around to show how clever their daughter was. I'd feel quite bad since my son was the same age and wasn't talking much, let alone identifying animals. The constant showing off and comparisons by my in-laws led to us taking him to a speech pathologist and to his pediatrician for an eval, to make sure he had no delays (he doesn't have any). The other day, my wife realized that her niece (now over 2) couldn't identify the exact same animals, when they were in a different book, or using plastic models. She had learned the book, but didn't understand the concepts. I've learned my lesson about comparing milestones. I suppose a professional may be able to do meaningful comparisons, but the average parent or grandparent cannot.
• Groxx 16y ago
  >they don't want to "get it wrong" I, thankfully, realized this pretty early on, with help from my siblings. Collectively, we quit caring about gold stars, and started to actually learn. IMO, the main problem is that we're taught that it's bad to be wrong, and not good enough to try to outweigh the risks if you're not already fluent in the area. Success is essentially all that's valued at both an educational and social level, which entirely ignores the value of actually learning something, improving your future attempts. tl;dr: "Win or go home" is killing our minds.
  • paganel 16y ago
    > Success is essentially all that's valued at both an educational and social level, which entirely ignores the value of actually learning something, improving your future attempts. Which I find quite strange, especially as our Western culture wouldn't have existed without Socrates, who championed the exact same ideas you're talking about :)
    • qaexl 16y ago
      How's that Socrates championed these ideas on success? I'm curious. I never studied Socrates in detail and the closest I've come are hodgepodge collection of folklore. Do you have any quotes or references?
      • paganel 16y ago
        > I'm curious. I never studied Socrates in detail and the closest I've come are hodgepodge collection of folklore First and most important thing, when reading Plato you always hear Socrates say again and again that one should "know himself" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself#By_Plato http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself#By_Plato). I don't have any exact citation at hand, you can find the exact links on wikipedia, but this theme seams to permeate all his speeches. Sometimes even if it's not said in plain words you kind of feel that that's what he has been after all along, i.e. a better understanding of oneself. And there's also Socrate's mistrust regarding books, which isn't directed at the physical objects, but more at what the books represent, condensed wisdom that many of us already take for granted without questioning. In certain ways that's very similar to what the modern educational system does to today's kids, I mean we take lots of things for granted without bothering of thinking with our heads anymore.
• brlewis 16y ago
  At the Montessori school my kids attend, children learn letters when they're ready/motivated, usually around age 3 or 4. Basic arithmetic starts around around age 4-5, typically. I don't think Waldorf/Steiner emphasizes materials the way Montessori does: http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/2006-01-21 http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/2006-01-21 I'm not actually sure how similar Waldorf/Steiner is to Montessori, aside from both shunning the same bad ideas.
  • dhs 16y ago
    I've researched this for my children, and there seemed to be significant differences. The amount of superstition in the Steiner teachings put me off big time ("Beware of right angles and potatoes!"). Montessori makes far fewer wild assumptions.
    • chalst 16y ago
      Plus educators at Waldorf schools tend to talk up Steiner's poisonous Anthroposophy.
    • gmac 16y ago
      I went to Steiner school, and it's true that the theory is essentially nothing-but-crazy. But the practice of it can be utterly fantastic, and at least where I went the theory was entirely unmentioned. In the final half hour of school we had a lesson on "where did the last 14 years of your education come from?" -- we apparently (for example) literally have seven bodies, but you would thankfully never have guessed it from those 14 years of education. If I had to pick a single strength of Steiner education, it would be that it genuinely believes that traditional academic skills aren't the only skills worth having. Lots of guff is spouted elsewhere along these lines, but at Steiner school people who were good at sport or art or whatever were genuinely just as valued as geniuses in writing and maths, which gave the place a lovely ethos.
      • khafra 16y ago
        If there's a word for "deriving effective practice from insane theory," it's probably something like "to rudstein." Biodynamic farming uses esoteric geomancy techniques like burying a cow's horn filled with powdered quartz, and when used in vineyards yields some truly excellent wines.
• kwantam 16y ago
  My then-girlfriend and I did some work to help start a Waldorf school in western Massachusetts, so I've had a bit of direct experience with Waldorf schools despite not having attended one, and I agree with most of your assessment: the focus on creativity / learning to teach yourself is a huge departure from the traditional approach, "here is how we solve this kind of problem, now practice on these other, nearly identical problems." One problem I noticed with the particular school we were helping to start was that the majority of the parents were technophobic to the point of hysteria: they literally asked me not to bring my laptop to meetings. As far as I can tell, this isn't a necessary feature of such schools. The general lesson, for me, is that in settings like this (e.g., an alternative educational facility bootstrapped by a small community) the school can take on the pathologies of the community, with potentially undesirable results.
  • ladon86 16y ago
    Actually that isn't unique to the school you worked at, it's a philosophical feature of the education system. I wasn't allowed to use a computer until I was perhaps 11 years old, and then only sparingly. I don't think it affected my later abilities, and I was incredibly excited once I got the chance to code at home! I think this came about partly as an extension of Steiner's views on television as something that stunts imagination and creativity. The first 7 years of the education have a very strong focus on mental imagery, and there is probably a belief that viewing concrete depictions of concepts on a computer is harmful. I happen to believe that a computer can allow increased exploration of the imagination when used for creative tasks, but in the 90's schools were mostly using them for looking at Encarta and so on. That's exactly what Steiner schools want to avoid for their younger children.
    • gnosis 16y ago
      "I think this came about partly as an extension of Steiner's views on television as something that stunts imagination and creativity." I wasn't aware Rudolph Steiner had any views on television, since he died in 1925, before even the earliest television sets were commercially available.
• damla 16y ago
  For grading, I don't think much traditional preschools do grading. It begins usually with primary school. There may be more praises though, like drawing stars on hands, but until the age children buy such praises like 4,5. Creativity is very important for Waldorf, but not the main issue in Montessori. For example, you must be presented by a teacher on how to work with a material (play with a Montessori toy) first. There is not much room to art, nor imaginative play in Montessori. If Montessori has a remarkable effect on success, I think it's because it helps children the value of working hard at an early age. There are no programs to distract you. You pick something, play with it as long as you like, learn all you like from that one and continue with a more difficult one. As there is no rush, you do your all work like wearing cloths, putting your dish to the table. Being able to do all work yourself, one very important skill that every entrepreneur must have :)
• cwp 16y ago
  My Mom was a Montessori teacher. For a couple of years when I was a kid, we rented a house from a Waldorf teacher who lived in the basement. The clash of pedagogical philosophies was epic.
  • aik 16y ago
    I'm hooked. Please explain how?
    • cwp 16y ago
      Ok, take math. The Waldorf argument went something like this: "Little children can't absorb abstractions so we don't teach math until they're ready." The Montessori argument goes like this: "Little children can't absorb abstractions so we teach math by making it concrete. We don't introduce the abstractions until they're ready." There was a lot of that agree-on-the-facts-but-reach-different-conclusions. The conversation would go "Yeah, sure. Yup. Yup. WTF?"
      • chalst 16y ago
        This, the Montessori view, is really accepted wisdom now. It was only in the crazy days of New Maths that any educators thought that the right way to teach children was to give them a "foundation" consisting of the most general abstractions possible that everything else could be built upon. Think Bourbaki for children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
• Muzza 16y ago
  > We weren't taught the alphabet until the age of about 6-7 and basic arithmetic at 7-8. Is that strange? I started school (a "regular" one) at 7 (as is customary in Sweden) and I didn't know the entire alphabet or basic arithmetic then. None of my classmates did.