hi all,
we were very interested in putting our girls in steiner having attended several playgroups while we were travelling so when we got back i did a bit more research.
I have now discovered that in steiner schools the young children (not sure until what age) are not ‘‘allowed’’ to draw lines but instead must use block crayons to do more sweeping movements. I found it here here
can anyone tell me if this is true. I certainly remember the block crayons and the sweeping movements but never even thought that lines were seen as a no no.
I’m sure different schools have slightly different ways of doing things but this somehow makes me believe all steiners maybe similar.
I was also concerened about the lack of black and brown allowed to be used according to the above link.
And some of the ideas behind things.
has anyone here had their child have such a bad experience.
And is it true that it is very difficult to start a topic with any negativity to steiner without the topic being deleted/shut down
would love to hear others opinions on this as i was really shocked and have come to rethink our education plans.
We really loved steiner and the playgroups we visited, loved the whole calmness approach, the design, arts that would be taught etc. I find it hard to believe it’s just a front.
p.s sorry in advance if this causes anyone upset, i’m just interested in others opinions as i haven’t really formed a complete one myself yet. Other than i will take the bits i like and leave the rest:-S

There was a thread started here a year or so ago which contained lots of personal stories which were very negative about Steiner education (I contributed myself).  The thread was lengthy and caused lots f debate/discussion and THEN it was totally removed.  I think it was reinstated and the discussion continued for a bit but then the topic was CLOSED for further discussion.  I have just spent about 20 minutes searching here for that thread, in the education section, in the debate, but cannot find it!  Perhaps it has been removed after all.  Here is a post I wrote afterwards which was about freedom of speech online, perhaps this or someone else can direct you to the thread I refer too.  It was interesting.  I hope it is still here as it contained lots of info and perhaps you can find others from it who can help/sdvise you.

http://www.thegreenparent.co.uk/forums/viewthread/1367/

My children attend steiner school, as far as I’m aware the use of block crayons in the lower school is because they are easier to use and produce lovely results. My daughter prefers not to use hard lines and her pictures are softer and more real, my son however lilies curves and heavy lines and his pictures reflect this. School definitely don’t inforce No lines, it would be hard to do this I feel.
My daughter now writes beautifully. I’m amazed how well her handwriting is developing, mine is terrible in comparison.

The most important thing here is that every Steiner school is different. There are some that will enforce no black or brown or which will certainly see the use of hard lines as a challenge. There are others that are much more sensible. You need to talk to the teachers. I suspect that the more established the school the more dogmatic they will be, but thats a big generalisation.

“And is it true that it is very difficult to start a topic with any negativity to steiner without the topic being deleted/shut down” yes i have heard this and seen it on other fora. I don’t know whats going on, but I’ve heard anecdotally that adherents may be trawling the web and being very vocal. Certainly these debates often attract a disproportionate amount of first time posters, iyswim. I don’t think this is any kind of organised campaign, just that there are a lot of people out there who think steiner is the last word in education.

Sorry, I’m a first time poster, not a troll though I promise! I’ve been waiting for authorization to post for a while, having lurked here for a few months. I’m a mums netter at heart but enjoy green parent mag too.

My children go to a steiner school and they have brown crayons not sure about black and they draw lines, so not sure what that is all about.
I don’t really have any criticism of the school yet so can’t say what the response would be if I did decide to criticise something. I find most of the teachers/staff to be open though and available to explain things if I have questions. But as always I think these things depends on which school it is.
No school is perfect or going to provide you with what you might see as the perfect education and all schools will have things you don’t like about them and problems will arise.
It just a case of visit as many different types of schools as possible before deciding. Originally I was going to send mine to the local primary which has an outstanding offstead report but when I visited I didn’t like the approch or atmosphere at all. If mine hadn’t got into the steiner school I was going to send them to a different local primary which actually has the worse ofstead report in the county but when I went to look around the teachers were all so welcoming and friendly and the children all seemed so happy and relaxed with a really lovely atmosphere. I think when you visit somewhere you get a gut feeling about a place and whether is is right for your family.

Good luck with choosing it is a hard decision to make.

We did a term or so of a toddler group at the local Steiner school, and then stopped for a year or so, and then went back again. Mixed bag, really. For me, it was hugely dependent on the person running the group; the first time, the woman seemed disorganised, unfriendly and completely unaware of the potential hazards of a hot oven within easy reach of two-year-olds… The second time was much better - a very friendly welcome, and guidance on what happened when and so on, with a song sheet when needed too. I don’t think it helps that the school itself is rather run-down and in dire need of some investment, or that several of the staff just don’t seem that interested in helping practically, if you ask questions, or explaining the philosophical elements of anthroposophy and so on.

We aren’t going to the Steiner school at the moment, as DD1 is too old for their toddler group and we couldn’t afford the school (if we chose to, which we wouldn’t, I don’t think: for me the argument would be between conventional school or homeschooling, rather than a system that I - and this is just me, obviously - don’t really feel gives the advantages of either). I will probably continue to dip into their curriculum, that said, as it picks up on things that we already tend towards - the awareness of the seasons and whatnot, and the emphasis on surroundings and on gentle learning rather than objectives and so on - but I think I am destined to take a sort of dallying interest. Just my experience, obviously; I agree that the schools vary enormously (there is another one in this area which is a world away from the one closest to us, and, for me, FAR superior in that it has beautiful grounds and a much better set-up all round), so you might have a completely different experience depending on the school…

I have heard some very bad things about Steiner/Waldorf schools; but I think the pedagogy is so different form mainstream that often it’s misunderstood.  I remember one poster saying her sister was training to be a teacher and considered a Waldorf approach, but was appalled at how restrictive the art was - and apparently the sister was a trained artist too.  I wondered then how clued up the sister was on the waldorf approach to art and it’s use to art to teach much of the subjects covered.

But then pupils of a Waldorf school are taught a wet on wet watercolour technique that will produce work that is very similar.  But I have seen work by much older students who have progressed and the imagination, colour awareness and maturity of their work was very impressive.  Also, in Waldorf, art is not just an expression of self, it is a tool for teaching; and of course there will be tried and tested methods that will be adhered to.

I home ed and follow some of the waldorf principles with Rye.  I do find some of the stuff Steiner wrote pure bonkers,a nd since some of the stuff his adherents have written as being a bit of a stretch.  But then you have that with any movement in which the founder died a while back, and certainly before some of the technological advances we have these days.  At the end of the day its ab out reading as much as you can on the subject, visiting the school you think you’d like to send your child to, and chatting with the facility members.  I like waldorf kindergarten, I’m not so keen on the “formal” learning that comes afterwards - I find it a little to rigid - but then I am drawn to unschooling too so of course I have a bias there.

So go and look and see what you think, and at the end of the day if you realise it’s not hte school for you, there’s nothing stopping you from removing your child.

Jx

Wait, what? They can’t have black crayons? Why is that?

Personally I’m a little dubious of the theories behind Steiner—bonkers is putting it mildly —but in *practice,* from what I’ve heard, different schools have different measures of loyalty to those nutty theories.  Some adhere to all of it, some are more flexible; some spend a lot of time on the quasi-spiritual, cosmological aspects and some none at all.  I think you’d have to visit your particular school and talk with the teachers to know what their philosophy is.

I do like the awareness of nature and the emphasis on/respect for creativity.  But one of the things I most resist about Steiner is that children are not allowed to learn letters or reading or even to *look* at text until they’re what, seven years old?  I have a bias here—I learned to read very young and feel that it added immeasurably to my childhood (gave me independence, a way to amuse myself anywhere, fired my imagination)—but I also think children should be free to learn what they want when they want.  My daughter is not quite 2.5 and already interested in what words say; I have no plans to enforce “reading lessons” or anything like that, but if she’s interested and asks me what a word says, I tell her.  I refuse to believe that by doing so I am inflicting long-term damage on her pysche or her creativity or god knows what else.

(Now that there has been all this talk of Steiner minions trawling the web stifling the flames of dissent, I have to say I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for evidence of censorship.  Exciting times on the GreenParent forums!  Heehee!)

Preetabird just to say that the school my kids go to they do not have books in the Kindergarten but we are very encouraged to read to the children at home and buy them books with text and pictures to look at. I can’t speak for other schools but I have not ever heard that they are are discouraged from looking at text, there are a lot of misleading ideas out there and a lot of the ideas are at best misunderstood or false.

Edited to add that I don’t think I am biased because they go to a steiner school a lot of the ideas do seem a bit way out there and I don’t understand it all, but you have to take the good with the bad in life in general and for me the school was the best option for my son over the other options including home ed due to our own circumstances/interests. For me one of the best things about the school is the loving approach in general and the acceptance of the children as individual personalities, so if they don’t use black for whatever reason I don’t see it as an issue to worry about. All we can do is try to give our children an education we think is best for them at the time.

I have no plans to enforce “reading lessons” or anything like that, but if she’s interested and asks me what a word says, I tell her.  I refuse to believe that by doing so I am inflicting long-term damage on her pysche or her creativity or god knows what else.

Reading is an activity which needs both left and right brain. Most children reading very young will rely on right brain by reading sight words, the development of the left brain for reading (which can deal with phonics) generally develops much later. For efficient reading skills you need to use both sides of your brain. By delaying reading until 7 in steiner schools a childs brain is given time to develop in order to read much more efficiently. Of course some children ARE able to read earlier (Id still question whether they were just relying on right brain skills) but at least no-one is forced to read before their brain is developmentally able (which happens in mainstream and particularly affects boys, thus the huge amounts of dyslexia diagnoses etc). This is part of the beauty of HE for me. Im not going to be holding them back, but neither am I making them learn things they are not ready for. At least with steiner, you can compliment the learning at home if you feel its right for your child.

I agree on seeing individual schools too and go with your instinct. We have a lovely steiner school here but Ive also seen others that I wouldnt go near.

We live pretty close to two Steiner schools, one official, one not and it was a system that we considered for DS.  I loved the apparent freedom and nature aspects of the system and kind of felt I should like it, but once I started to read up more and actually visited one school I found plenty of restrictions, as some of you have mentioned above, plus it seemed to me to be religiously based, which I didn’t want for my son.  We ended up sending him to our nearest mainstream primary school, which seemed to offer the best of both worlds.  It has lovely grounds where the kids can hide in the trees and run around a lot, plus they have their own forest school and kiln, so they produce some lovely clay items, along with plenty of other crafts.  It is very friendly and open and I know of at least three families whose kids moved there from the local Steiner schools.  It’s not perfect though and I occasionally wonder whether I should have home schooled him, but although I still like aspects of the Steiner system and I do know people who love it too, I don’t feel it was for us.  I would say look at all the options and go with gut feelings and not what you think you should like.

I visited our local (any only) Steiner school before my eldest was due to start nursery and for me it was a decision between there and home education.  Although the setting of the school was beautiful I did have some concerns regarding stuff that was taught and stuff that appeared that was intentionally hidden from parents.

I was very sceptical about the kindergarden childrens artwork, it was all nearly identical (horizontal coloured lines) and didn’t seem like the sort of stuff that five/six year olds would choose to paint.  In fact most of the artwork throughout the school was nearly all the same.

I must admit the samey (is that even a word?) artwork put me off too. Not much creative about paintings that all look alike. On an open day I asked about that and they said something about ‘the process being more important than the end result’, I agree with that, but then surely that means the process is the same and not individual if the end result is the same?
But when you consider it, the artwork kids do in playschool and often beyond is all rather similar too though. Paper plate frogs etc and also kids in mainstream (again v dependant on individual school) often get to actually do art/crafts just once a week as they go up the school.
We couldnt afford Steiner and I wasnt interested past kindy I dont think. The school that stood out for me was one back in England, a state school, mixed catchment, not brilliant offsted atall but it had such a great family, community atmosphere, plenty of green space and when I went to look around every class was active, really engaged, not just sat at desks listening to the teacher at the front. Thats the kind of school Id be looking for. Its such a personal thing though.

I think anthroposophy is a very dodgy, scary philosophy.  To base teaching children around it would not be my choice.

I like the brief glances one gets of Steiner schools, I certainly take bits and pieces from it, but certainly not from anthroposophy based teaching methods. 

For one, every parent I have met who have pulled their kids have done so because of bullying which was not addressed by the teachers.  Their reasons when pushed was due to the karmic nature of life as viewed from an anthroposophical perspective; that is a child may need to experience bulling in order to become fully himself, in order to incarnate as intended.  Or some other such BS.  Yes, try telling that to a bullied child.

Can you tell I just LOVE Steiner schools?!!!  Well I probably would if they left out the anthroposophy and changed the teachers:)  I do in fact attend fairs and stuff to buy craft materials but that is about all…..

It certainly looks like a wonderful, visual and aesthetically pleasing environment, but scratch the surface more and the beeswax rubs off quickly, imo.