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My kids go to a Waldorf school. Around half of the kids in my oldest son's class came in later grades, with a story like this. While there are some odd things
by olau 5y ago
My kids go to a Waldorf school. Around half of the kids in my oldest son's class came in later grades, with a story like this.
While there are some odd things in anthroposophy, I think a great deal of it is actually metaphorical and coming from someone with a good intuition about how humans work. You have to look past the terminology, though, and the 1910-20ish free speculation about how the world works. :)
There's an emphasis on self-development, too, which I've come to see as a vital part of working with humans. If you can't look past your own self and own biases, you'll never be able to work with all sorts of people on their terms.
- actionfromafar 5y agoI think the success is partly accidental - when these schools started, traditional schools were often militaristic in style and with a focus on obedience and listening in silence. Montessori schools emphasised interaction and discovery using the simple tools of the day, like tools and toys. In todays school, the kids are often overstimulated by our current multi-media world. Montessori schools provide a calmer environment. So my pet theory is that they started out as stimulating under-stimulated kids, and today are calming down over-stimulated kids.
- sirspacey 5y agoPublic Schooling is explicitly about conditioning obedience. It’s more like that today than when it was first created. What Montessori and Waldorf both intuited is that children have a natural state which is optimum for learning. I too disagree with many aspects of how they get there, but the orientation matters. I even saw this growing up homeschooling, where arguably no institution is involved. Homeschooled kids who hated learning and mostly felt no one cared what they thought were taught with textbooks. Kids who were homeschooled with unschooling, Montessori, unit studies, or basically any other form of student-directed learning seems “in themselves.” They we’re curious, relaxed, interested in the world, helpful. Their parents could be weird, they could be raised in a cult, still it held up. There really is a fundamental gap in “what a human being is for” between authoritarian and self-determinate approaches. Authoritarians truly have no idea what they are trading for in order to enforce the “values” they pretend to have. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work to introduce human-first approaches to education institutions. Authoritarians recognize this approach as one they can’t relate to and they are afraid of it. Even when teachers, parents, and students are willing, authoritarian admins will completely shut it down. There’s one reliable way to distinguish these systems - tune into your kid as a parent and believe what you are feeling. It can hard to do in the face of societal expectations & realities, it’s even hard for me sometimes and I have a lifetime of choosing my own path. “Most Likely to Succeed” is an incredible body of research from Harvard on this and the documentary that goes with it hits even harder. Parents/guardians who care about their kids deserve to trust their intuition about what they need.
- spacemanmatt 5y agoI went to a Waldorf school that was incredible for me. The same school today is a disturbing little cult with a few roads on campus named for my former teachers and administrators. I love the potential of Waldorf (and Montessori, too!) but some of those parent communities are a toxic mess.