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Freedom-in-Education Newsletter

July 2005

The Freedom in Education Newsletter is now entering its fourth year and this has given me some cause for thought about what it has achieved and what it could achieve. The experience of editing the newsletter (in association with my daughter Wendy) has brought home to me something about the nature of freedom and something about the nature of education. Most of the correspondence that we receive is from people who are experiencing freedom in education - in most cases because they are home educating their children - and this has opened their eyes to a whole new world in which education becomes a rewarding and fulfilling activity for everyone in the family.

This correspondence, however, clearly represents the experience of a very small minority of the population. The reality for most families is that they feel caught in a trap - experiencing terrible difficulties as a result of sending their children to school but being too frightened to do anything about it.

This month's article was written at the request of Lucie Smoker for her site  - Wonder Ranch Homeschool - which focuses on using Waldorf methods in home education.
http://mysite.verizon.net/res2216j/wonder/

Gareth Lewis

If you would like to send a comment, link, favourite quote, or news about an upcoming event to be included in next month's newsletter, please contact me.

Teaching Teenagers using Waldorf Methods

Waldorf methods are well known for their success with young children but so far have had little impact on the teaching of teenagers. This is something that home schoolers interested in Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on education might be able to remedy.

In order to understand the difficulties that have plagued the teaching of teenagers in the Waldorf school movement it is necessary to understand a little about the history of the Waldorf method of education. At the close of the First World War, Rudolf Steiner was approached with the idea of starting a school for the children of workers of the Waldorf cigarette factory in Stuttgart. It was a time of great social tension: the war had been lost, the government had collapsed and hunger and malnutrition were rife. Rudolf Steiner was acutely worried about the possibility of a Bolshevik revolution taking place in Germany, and he decided to try to initiate a process of social renewal which would involve people taking responsibility for their own lives, and creating a form of government which was fair and equitable. The creation of the Waldorf School was part of this plan; it was designed to be an example of a more enlightened form of education, and the hope was that it would set an example that would be followed by schools across the country. At the same time Rudolf Steiner was speaking at public meetings, describing his ideas for a new form of government, and meeting with industrialists and civic leaders who wanted to co-operate with his work. By the time the school actually opened, however, Steiner had realised that the time had already passed in which a revolution based on his ideas of justice and freedom could take place.

The Waldorf school was one of the few tangible remains of the movement that he had tried to initiate; he decided that it should go ahead, no longer in the hope that it would spark an immediate change in educational practices, but rather as an institution that had to stand on its own merit. It is to this change of direction that many of the problems now associated with Waldorf education can now be traced: children in Steiner schools often feel that they are receiving a slightly unworldly education and that their teachers are trying to inculcate them into a movement that is not part of the mainstream of modern life.

Steiner was always clear that he did not want the philosophy that he developed – Anthroposophy – to be taught to the children in the school. He did not, however, make this the main theme of his lectures on education – presumably because, at that point, he hoped that his ideas on education would rapidly be adopted by all the schools in the country, and that there would therefore be little danger of his pupils feeling that they were being brainwashed into being part of a minority sect.

Modern Steiner schools are usually identifiably different from other schools – the architecture is distinctive, the colour schemes and décor different and the curriculum often includes subjects, such as Eurythmy, which are not taught in other schools: these differences make children feel uncomfortable and by the time that they are teenagers they start to ask themselves why they are not being given the same sort of education as everyone else. Pupils start to worry that their teachers have some sort of special agenda which may prevent them from having all the opportunities that other children would expect to have: the trust between pupil and teacher is broken, and a large proportion of the children in each class simply waits for their period of compulsory schooling to be over so that they can then enter the real world: people do not like to admit it, but this is the reality of Waldorf education in most schools.

It is doubtful whether Waldorf schools will ever be able to resolve this dilemma, but it is quite possible for homeschooling parents to take the essence of Steiner’s ideas on education, and to use them in their own homes without their children feeling that they are being restricted to a minority way of living and thinking.

These are some of the tenets that can be incorporated into the teaching of teenagers, all of which reflect Dr. Steiner’s ideas and recommendations.

Freedom of Choice
Steiner often cited the idea that human development takes place in seven year cycles: thus from birth to seven years old a child is in a semi-dreamlike state, dependent on their parents for everything in life; from seven to fourteen years old consciousness starts to awaken and it becomes acceptable to teach a child to read and write, but they still cannot be expected to engage in analysis or to form their own opinions. From the age of fourteen a child embarks on the transition to becoming an adult, and starts to take responsibility for their own life, and to make decisions for themselves, including decisions about what they want to learn and how they should go about it.

It is generally accepted that the pressures placed upon children in the modern world force this development to happen more quickly (one could say at an unnatural pace). Children younger than fourteen should, therefore, be allowed to make decisions about their own education, if they express a wish to do so.

The important thing for a home educating parent (using Waldorf principles) is to take their child’s opinions and decisions seriously, especially once they have become a teenager. For example, it is essential that a home-educated teenager should know that, if they wish, they can start to attend school whenever they wish: they need to feel that the course of education that they were following is the result of their own free choice, and not the fulfilment of a desire of their parent.

Academic Excellence
Dr. Steiner had an uncompromising attitude to academic excellence. The pupils of the first Waldorf school were the children of workers in a cigarette factory, most of their parents were uneducated, semi-literate, and by no means well off, and many of the children were malnourished and distressed after having lived through the privations and traumas of the war. None of this made Steiner deviate from his resolve to provide them with a standard of education at least as good as that of the best school in Germany. His pupils learnt Latin and Greek, English, French, mathematics, geometry, German, history, geography, and science – all to the highest standard.

There is sometimes a fear of academic excellence amongst home educating families, especially amongst parents who did not themselves do particularly well at school, or who did not go to university. Steiner, however, was never particularly keen to employ trained teachers or graduates in his school; the qualities that he looked for in his teachers were a commitment to the job, a willingness to learn and an empathy with the children. These are all within the grasp of an average parent, and while there is no reason why a child should be pushed towards learning academic subjects, there is also no reason why any child should not be able to study the most advanced and complex material, no matter what their background, providing they receive the active support of at least one of their parents.

Technical Excellence
Steiner was not a great believer in the study of academic material for its own sake. His aim was to produce graduates who had both manual skills and academic knowledge; thus, all the pupils in his schools studied gardening, handwork, art, technical drawing, and other practical skills in addition to their academic work. One of Steiner’s aims was to produce engineers who had an eye for beauty, and who could use modern technology to produce buildings and urban environments that enhanced the quality of human life, in the same way as the great figures of the Renaissance.

No Judgement
Steiner was very clear about the relationship between adults and children: adults have the opportunity to influence young children up to the age of seven but once someone becomes a teenager they are largely beyond the control of adults. To a large extent, the way that teenagers behave is simply a reflection of how they themselves were treated when they were younger, and there is little that an adult can do to influence their behaviour: they are at an age where they now have to find things out for themselves.

Therefore, when dealing with teenagers, it is advisable to suspend one’s judgement and to simply accept them the way they are – and to support and encourage them as much as one can.

Questioning Established Beliefs

One cannot learn without questioning. Schools often want young people to learn facts and figures and to then repeat everything that they have been told in order to pass examinations. No understanding comes from this sort of learning, and even if the material being taught was originally correct it is reduced to nonsense by being passed through a few generations of people who have never thought seriously about it for themselves. Thus teenagers should not be expected to simply believe everything that they are told, rather, they should be encouraged to question everything that are taught – from the nature of beauty in art, to the validity of the germ theory in medicine. Other things that teenagers enjoy questioning and analysing are the way in which we interpret history, religious beliefs, the processes of logic and reasoning which underpin science (and whether or not they are being applied), and the way in which the world is governed.

Idealism
Rudolf Steiner is one of the few educators of recent times who has had the courage and the insight to stress the importance of idealism in the education of young people. He recognised that young people have an innate inclination towards fairness and justice, and he was keen that his teachers should encourage their pupils to explore ways of making the world a better place. In his view the purpose of education was not simply to train young people for careers: it should inspire them to build a world in which people could live in peace and harmony with each other.

Clearly, so far, Waldorf education has failed to live up to the hopes and aspirations of its founder, but before dismissing Dr. Steiner as a hopeless dreamer, one should stop to consider his achievements: not only did he inspire the creation of the Waldorf school movement, he is also the inspiration behind Biodynamic agriculture (the European forerunner to organic farming); he played a major role in the development of homeopathic medicine (helping to create Weleda medicines); founded a major hospital; and was an accomplished artist and sculptor, as well as being able to reach out and talk to people of all nations at a time when political tensions were at their peak. As time passes, and one has a chance to look back at events of the past century, Rudolf Steiner stands out as one of the few world figures who made a significant contribution to the quality of human life. In a sense he himself is a much better advertisement for his educational methods than are the Waldorf schools. If he, on his own, was able to have such a profound and long-lasting effect on fields as diverse as education, agriculture and medicine, then how many similarly-motivated people would it take to really change the world in which we live?

New to the Jamboree:
Recipe: Spanakopitta. This is a delicious Greek recipe for a spinach pie - highly recommended! 

Craft: There are two new paper dolls on the Craft Corner, Annette and Robin, the children of Patsy and Chris.

Story from History: The life of Alcibiades, the most beautiful youth in Athens.

Aesop's Fable: The Spirit of Strife. Read the cartoon about Hercules, as he finds himself pitched against a monster which even he is unable to defeat.

www.jamboree.freedom-in-education.co.uk 

Upcoming Event:

Friday 8th July

CHANGING CHILDHOODS AND EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES

A Talk at Michael House Rudolf Steiner School, Shipley, Derbyshire.

The speaker, Christopher Clouder, speaks widely across Europe and the rest of the world and is a world-renowned author. He is the Head of Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship for the UK & Ireland and Head of the European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education. He is also a co-Founder and Facilitator for the Alliance for Childhood, which is an organisation concerned with preserving and supporting the ideals of childhood.

8.00pm Michael House School Hall Free

www.michaelhouseschool.co.uk 


 Please send contributions to:

wendy@freedom-in-education.co.uk

Or you can write to Gareth Lewis at
gareth.lewis@freedom-in-education.co.uk

The contents of this newsletter appears in the Quarterly Freedom in Education Magazine, the Freedom in Education Magazine can be purchased for £12.00 at www.nezertbooks.net 

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