5 ms·
My sister-in-law has taught at a Waldorf school for years. The school the article describes sounds typical. Waldorf is actually based on an extremely deviant ph
by gruseom 15y ago
My sister-in-law has taught at a Waldorf school for years. The school the article describes sounds typical. Waldorf is actually based on an extremely deviant philosophy. They get away with it because they deliver results. In particular, their kids routinely decimate all standardized tests.
- jacques_chester 15y ago> In particular, their kids routinely decimate all standardized tests. Out of every 10 tests they have 9 standardized tests club a randomly-chosen 10th standardized test to death?
- derleth 15y agoNo, they learn how to look at context to determine what words mean in a given situation.
- gruseom 15y agoI was going to write "dominate" but thought I'd go for a little something different :) By the way, I hope I didn't sound like a believer in standardized tests. As far as I'm concerned they're for meat-packing plants. The fact that our schools are child-processing factories is a shame (probably the single thing I'd change about our society if I could). All I meant was that Waldorf schools would be a lot more vulnerable to mainstream condemnation if their kids didn't out-perform on those tests. You can't respond to criticism by saying, "just look at these children, they're happy and grounded". But you can sure say, "what part of the 99th percentile do you have a problem with"? Where my sister-in-law teaches, their results are at the top of our province (Alberta), which itself has a reputation for having one of the best school systems in the world. We're usually compared to Finland in this respect - which scares me, because the truth is that our schools suck, so it's an indication of how bad things are elsewhere.
- nightski 15y agoHmmm. Kids from affluent families who likely have highly educated parents working at high tech companies do well on standardized tests created to cover the entire spectrum of children? nowai
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- gruseom 15y agoPlease don't interject that kind of rudeness here. The school my sister-in-law teaches at has little in common with your demographic description. It's bland middle class with mild (very mild) alternative tendencies. What it has in common with the school in the article is basic Waldorf principles: eschewing technology in the early grades, emphasis on imagination and handwork and so on. The Silicon Valley aspect of the article is a red herring, no doubt because it's attention-getting, but perhaps also because the author doesn't realize this is simply an instance of a type.
- gruseom 15y agoEdit: I was unfair to the author. The article clearly discusses Waldorf schools as a type.