It is also worth mentioning here that Charlotte Mason has
very similar primary educational philosophy and pedagogy-- while not specifically Steiner-derived, and Biblical rather than, well-- whatever-Waldorf-is-- it has the same reliance on fairly rigid copywork and curricular choices, and has the same dogmatic belief in child development.
We used
elements of CM while homeschooling, because I thought that the expectations suited my then-4yo rather well, and the focus on natural science and literature was a good fit for her-- but it did her no favors to limit her written expectations like that, and frankly we then spent the following TEN YEARS playing "catch up" with that skill set, which lagged all the others.
CM believes that until children are 7 or 8, memorized "recitation" work is about what they are capable of. We clearly didn't believe that, based on the child we had in front of us. We did have DD keep a nature journal, and do
some copywork beginning at 5. We also (being non-theist) skipped the Biblical memory work, which is otherwise a pretty core thing in CM.
It's an interesting philosophy of education, however, and one that I found had a lot of positives.
As a homeschooling thing, though-- I think that a SCHOOL based on CM, if I could imagine such a thing, would wind up looking very much like a Waldorf school, with the attendant shortcomings (IMO).
