vailian

I can really feel your frustration with the system-- and it is undeniable that the Peter Principle (people rise in an organisation until they land in the position for which they are not competent, at which point they languish for the rest of their career) is especially evident in smaller communities where there is not a large pool to draw on.
But as someone with an education background, I have become pretty sceptical of the Waldorf/Steiner schools.
For many years now, I have lived in areas that have alternative schools (mostly Waldorf), and have worked with students from those schools, even teaching part-time in one of them near Cologne.
I find that the orthodoxy of the state schools is merely replaced by another in the Steiner system, and it makes me very uncomfortable to walk through the halls of the Waldorf school and see that all the student drawings have to be in washy pastel.
But the worst thing for me (as a violin teacher) is that the Waldorf schools have a philosophy that discourages discipline, apparently-- I see evidence of this repeatedly with my students.
My advice these days to parents who ask me about schools is that it depends on the child's character: if he is naturally the type that always gets up on time, dresses neatly, has homework done on schedule, loves reading and is articulate (not a very common type, I know!), then Steiner schools are ideal because they allow a lot of intellectual freedom.
If on the other hand the child is lazy and sloppy, does only the essentials in school, and finds it hard to stay motivated and disciplined, then the Waldorf school will not do much to change this. (I, tragically, fall quite squarely into this category)
And an interesting thing is that here in Germany where the Abitur (high school graduation exams) are nationally standardized and quite rigourous, the kids who go to the Waldorf schools often go into a complete panic going into their final year when they realize that all the stuff they were supposed to be learning in the last 6 years they never got around to studying-- many of them then change to a state school for the last year.

# posted by vailian : 8:30 AM