STEINER SCHOOLS - GOOD OR BAD? Post Reply

[doleofficedad]

What thoughts, anecdotes or experiences does anyone have with regard to Steiner schools? We get conflicting views - they appear to engender either a love or hate viewpoint with little inbetween. It would be helpful to hear any thoughts and see what people feel about Steiner schools? Are they racist or just a bunch of hippies - or neither? Would you send your child to one?

[ready2pop]

No I would never send my children to one and I don't think anyone should (you'll see I'm definitely in the hate camp).

Too many people seem to think they just offr private education at less than average cost and that the Steiner method is something along the lines of montessori or other educational methods.

It is not - the Steiner methods is based on some very specific beliefs that the children in their schools are taught. The entire idea is based on Steiner's teachings of "Anthrosophy" basically a religion involving prayers, meditation, reverence, gurus, and observances. Also remember Steiner himself was an occultist.

Whilst, I don't doubt that some of their educational ideas have value it is this odd underlying belief system that gives me concern especially as most people don't seem to know about it.

[Talkman]

I know a couple of people (one in her 30', the other in his 40's) who attended Steiner schools and they're perfectly balanced people. They gained good results, excellent degrees and both have very good jobs. They both loved their school life. Neither they or their parents are/were hippies or racists.
Two different friends of ours send their children to Steiner schools now and heap nothing but praise on their respective schools. The children are doing really well. Sure it's not for everyone, neither is Ravenstone or Broomwood Hall so go to an open day and check it out for yourself, don't just go on what you read on here.

[Vives09]

Hi! I grew up in a village where there was a big Steiner/anthroposophy presence. There's a Steiner school nearby (where two of my cousins went) and a teacher training college. The education is very child centered and they really push the arts over the sciences, so if you've got a child who's very logical and numerical they probably wouldn't do well there (one of my cousins got moved for that very reason). I wouldn't say that the religious thing is such a big deal, but since I didn't go there myself maybe there's something I missed? And I wouldn't have said that any of the people we knew were in any way into the occult (by which I assume the previous poster means devil worship etc.). They really were just quite nice children, although I always found them a bit unrealistic and unprepared for the outside world. We regularly went to the fairs given by the two institutions and they had lots of storytelling, beautiful handmade things, a lot of arts and crafts stuff. Having said that, I wouldn't personally send my children there because I don't think that it would suit them but I would consider it if we had a particularly artistic/musical child.

[Vives09]

One more thing - my aunt used to be headmistress of a Montessori school and she says that Steiner and Montessori are actually very different philosophies.

[ready2pop]

That is the point I was making - too many people think Steiner and Montessori are similar and they are not. Steiner is very much more unusual.

They won't allow children to learn to read until after they are seven years old for goodness sake! They teach a subject called eurythmy which is a kind of movement art you won't find on the curriculum elsewhere.

As to saying Steiner was an occultist - no I don't mean devil worship What I mean is that he believed in a spiritual world which one could access through inner development. This was what the Steiner educational method was originally designed to facilitate.

I suppose my point is that Steiner education was designed for a very specific and unusual purpose - the aim is not to give a child knowledge but to develop them spiritually. FIne if that is what you want for your child, my objection is that they don't publicise this so most parents don't realise the philosophical basis behind it.

[DinosMom]

You're getting some opinions without actual knowledge of the school. The Waldorf/Steiner school that my son attended in California was a bit different than here (nicer toys, classroom and outdoor play areas)- but even the one my son started here has the same basic philosophy - and we love it. They do not teach religion. The prayers are at meal times and they just bless the earth and sun for making the food. If anything, it's pagan based (following nature's rhythms and seasonal celebrations) which allows children from all religions to feel comfortable. Children are far too removed from nature today and Steiner corrects this. Read: Last Child In The Woods by Robert Louv. Great book!

The toys are natural wood, felt, silk, cloth, etc...- no toxic, plastic, blinky toys that are closed-ended. All open-ended toys with focus on nature and working together. Montessori focuses on the individual, while Steiner is about working together in a social group (the real world). There is obviously a misunderstood notion about not teaching to read until age 7. To say "they won't allow!" like it's a law is completely misinformed. It's not for no reason. (And they may already learn it at home!) They encourage a love of story-telling first- orally, to engage children into the world of the creative. They tell stories with finger plays (puppet -type shows daily). Then Steiner felt children were ready to read on their own and would embrace reading with more fervor once they developed a love of stories. Oral story telling is a long lost tradition.

I think the school is great for all younger children - Kindergarten and maybe first grade and then you have to assess your child and his/her strengths and weaknesses and see if it is still a fit. Our son is very independent, so we like the social integration of Steiner (rather than the Montessori method). But he is also really smart and may get bored in a year or so and want to learn to read b/c we already cultivated a love of stories and reading by doing a lot of Steiner stuff at home since birth.

I recommend going to a school and meeting the teachers, seeing the classroom, attending a parent evening and then deciding for yourself.

[GWcouns]

I know 2 people personally who's children go to Steiner schools, one in E Sussex one in hertfordshire. One is Japanese, the other mixed race so I don't think the racist label carries much clout, as they both love and are really involved with the schools.
My kids have both gone to traditional Wandsworth fee paying schools, and whilst I have been very happy with them, I also see nothing to criticize in an education philosophy that is interested in developing the Childs inner world. As for them not learning/reading til 7, isn't that true for most of Europe? It is us who are quite unique in pushing children to read and write aged 4/5, some schools even carrying out educational assessments at 3 to see if a child is up to scratch enough to be considered for a place. I find that a whole lot more disturbing than hearing about children being taught about spiritual growth.
As with all schools I'd say go and have a look and listen to your instincts. As far as I know their results at GCSE are comparable with a lot of othe schools, so the outcome is the same- it's just the journey there is different-possibly a bit nicer and less stressful for the child. Certainly the 2 I know are lovely kids, yes they are arty, and gentle and kind, but wouldn't the world be a different place if there were a few more like that?

[Virgil Tibbs]

The link below investigates what the inventor of anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner said about 'human races' in his writings - so this perhaps is the 'racist' element alluded to above. But is any of this relevant to today's modern Steiner schools? Was it even relevant then, when Steiner (an Austrian) was targeted by Hitler, who charged both that Steiner was influenced by his close connections with Jews and that he was himself was allegedly Jewish. Hmmm. After all, if a Steiner was good enough for Jennifer Aniston then who are we to argue!

http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=480

[ready2pop]

Ok, so maybe not reading until later suits some children (although it does mean they have no choice but to stay in the Steiner system as they lag years behind their peers in non-Steiner schools in terms of literacy for some time) but you really can't ignore the underlying belief system.

It may not be spoken about (especially at the moment with so many Steiner schools going for Free School funding) but informs everything the teachers do - from the puppet shows you mention, through the not reading to the discipline and running of the school. For example because of their belief in reincarnation and karma, Waldrof teachers don't believe in intervening when they see bullying - this is just the children working through their karma and they should be left to it!

If you don't believe me here is what the former head of Waldorf teacher training said about it:

"when we deny that Waldorf schools are giving children religious experiences, we are denying the basis of Waldorf education . . . The time has come for us to stop pussyfooting around [theories] that will sound too strange if we tell parents what we are really doing . . . Tell everybody what we are about. The day they walk into the school, let them know...it is our responsibility to share with the parents those elements of Anthroposophy which will help them understand their children and fathom the mysterious ways in which we work. Yes, we are giving the children a version of Anthroposophy in the classroom; whether we mean to or not, it's there."

There are plenty of accounts of parents of children who've been to Steiner schools that confirm this is the case.

[NQWWW]

I sent my son to the Steiner school in Wandsworth when he was 3. We had been going to the parent & toddler group there for some time and I loved the gentle creative atmosphere, the emphasis on natural toys and using imagination. At an open day I saw some of the teaching that was going on that day, and particularly enjoyed a language lesson, in which the teacher read to us (the group of prospective parents) in German, acting out the story in a brilliant way so that we understood it. She spoke in German throughout the lesson, as they believe that total immersion enables the children to learn the natural way.

My son was in a small class of 7. Unfortunately one of those 7 was a highly disruptive and at times violent child, and the lovely soft-spoken teacher had absolutely no strategies to control his behaviour. My son was extremely unhappy about going to school, with the result that I had to go and fetch him several times. In the end I took him out, and put him in to the 50-strong Nursery at Ravenstone, where he blended right in and was instantly very happy.

I have since heard that they teach creationism at the school. This was certainly not made clear to me when enrolling my son there, or I certainly would never have considered it.

I still think their approach to learning, including the "late" introduction of reading, is a very healthy one - as evidenced in several Scandinavian countries. But does not necessarily equip all children with what they need should they ever have to change school system, or if they want a more conventional type of career later in life.

By the way, I also heard that as a result of their language-teaching method, a pupil who had been learning Spanish for a couple of years by doing movements (eurythmy?) while speaking the words, thought that "hola" was Spanish for "star-jump".

[mims]

My eldest had a thoroughly miserable 6 months at the Steiner kindergarten which used to be on Balham Park Road, before we couldn't take it any more and pulled him out to go to the local state primary (which had been full at the start of the year)

There were many, many problems while he was there, but the biggest one was that ds has a recognised neurological problem (as in, diagnosed by Great Ormond Street), but his 'teacher' decided that, oh no, that wasn't the case at all as her 'research' (i.e. googling) told her that this particular problem wasn't diagnosed at 5 Instead, she decided that any problems he had were as a result of incomplete reincarnation - his soul wasn't ready to go back into a body, and that he had probably committed crimes in a previous life involving his hands this was told to me with a completely straight face and when I said I wasn't prepared to carry on the discussion about my son along those lines, I was told that was my prerogative, but I had to accept that while he was in the school, all the teachers would view him as a 'failed incarnation'

Thankfully by this stage the local primary had a reception place, so we took ds out of there as fast as we could and sent him to sanity round the corner

When I told his 'teacher' he was leaving she told me (in front of ds) that we were making a huge mistake and that we'd be back within weeks

we were driving past the site a few years later and ds suddenly said "That's where kindy used to be - I HATED kindy and I HATED xxxx (teacher)"

It really isn't all lovely, child-centred, natural education ... there are some deeply loopy ideas underpinning the whole flaky edifice - and the schools keep very quiet about them ...

[Mgoisai]

Good!
There is a lot to love- too much to briefly describe. I'm sorry about the bad experiences people have posted in response to your question- they sound awful. These problems are far, far removed from our own experience

[msinfo]

Bad.

It is well known that Steiner is a 'cult'. Like all cults you will get people telling you about their "good experiences".

There is a wealth of information here about Steiner schools. Some selected bits:

Rudolf Steiner was a central figure of the occult revival at the start of the 20th Century. He believed he had access to a higher consciousness through a clairvoyant knowledge of the spiritual world. After splitting with Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant, he took the German speaking theosophists and set up his own spiritual esoteric movement, Anthroposophy – the knowledge of man.

Anthroposophy blended ideas from astrology, spiritualism, Rosicruciansim, Christian mysticism and other gnostic and esoteric sources, to create a cosmology based on Steiner’s readings of the ‘Akashic Records’ – the cosmic history of the past and the future that exists on a spiritual plane and available to the few through meditation and clairvoyance. Thus was born Steiner’s Spiritual Science – his belief that ordinary science was really just a capability to be able to “spell”, but to be able to “read” one had to have knowledge of higher spiritual existences. Without such knowledge, we cannot fulfill our potential as fully spiritual beings.

Steiner’s cosmology is inherently racist and abhorrent. Black people are spiritually childish. Jews should simply ‘disappear’. Disabled people somehow must have wanted to be disabled though actions in previous lives.

Steiner was very clear about why delayed reading was a good idea – not because older children can learn to read better, but because memorising and reading interfered with the incarnation of the etheric body. It could damage a spiritual protective sheath around the child leading to illness and spiritual degeneration ‘Developmental needs’ in the Steiner world are to do with the incarnation of spiritual entities. Only after adult teeth have appeared is a child spiritually ready to learn to read.

The fact that the curriculum of a Steiner Schools is driven by anthroposophic goals requires Steiner Schools to seek special statuses to avoid breaking the law. Steiner Schools in the UK lobby to remove themselves from the requirements of various government curriculum demands and targets, such as EYFS, so that they can follow their own programme. Steiner schools have also sought to be inspected, not by Ofsted, but by the specially created Schools Inspection Service which has staff that will understand their ‘special approaches and characteristics’.

Obviously, if you believe in this complete nonsense, by all means, send your child to a Steiner School. Personally, I want my children to have a reality-based, rounded education.

[Mgoisai]

Hi. Amazing how polarised this kind of conversation gets.
I'm no cult member, no racist and also not stupid if you catch me on a good day!
My kids are thriving at this kind of school.
As a non- white, highly educated, professional, Christian family we did a lot of research before deciding where to send our kids and worried whether Steiner was for us.
There is a lot of vitriol online but it's worth making up your own mind. The books written by Steiner (who died in 1925) don't reflect the schools today and are pretty dull. He had good ideas, strange ideas and bad ideas. There are racist comments- in his writing along with other ramblings and odd theological stuff. The racism is unacceptable. Good luck finding organisations from this period that completely. cover themselves in glory from the diversity and equality point of view, although this is no excuse!!
Probably the best way is to visit a school and see for yourself, if you have the time.