Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Waldorf Schools

It has to be noted that one of the more wonderful cognitive dissonances inherent in the Waldorf movement is that all the constraints placed upon the pedagogy by the esoteric mumbo jumbo (which is not supposed to be religious at all, but rather a form of epistemology, a supernatural way of understanding scientific truths) are supposed to have the goal of the freedom of the individual, who will be empowered to his or her own supernatural understanding of scientific truths - without being constrained by others. Which I suppose is one of the reasons the whole worldview behind it is deliberately NOT made explicit. It does not need to be, because after being empowered, the student will understand and believe all the truths anyway. That's what makes it different from explicit religious instruction.
Oddly, it a way it kinda works. Case in point, the experiences the PP described, which resonates with what many successful individuals have to say about their Waldorf experience.
Another case in point, my own grandmother, educated at the original Waldorf school just after it was founded - it made her immune to nazism, and when she had to move to a public high school as a junior shortly after hitler came to power, she almost got in trouble for her independent thought.
Of course the reason she had to leave was the death of my great grandfather, one of Steiners early adepts, due to his refusing to be helped by modern medicine, preferring homeopathy and divination - when she screamed at the adults to get.a.doctor.already, it was too late and he slipped into a coma and died.
She appeared to have no problems to hold both the gratitude and the resentment in her mind.
Similarly, my mother is still enamoured by many parts of the Waldorf pedagogy - the ideas about "balance", the 'creativity," the idea that a child can be "too much in their head", her comment on hearing about a special needs child in the family that the reasons must be that the family lacked "a musical side" - all while being completely supportive of her early reader and early maths children, rolling her eyes at the karmic (sorry, past lives) ideas, the temperaments, having no time at all for homeopathy...it is, I believe, the typical attitude of a Waldorf parent and it is very odd to me.

Not that I have to admit to often experiencing the same sort of stunned incomprehension that HK described when I read modern catholic writing. No, it doesn't make this bible passage, or whatever, any clearer, or more logical, or easier to accept and live by. Don't even try. It's religion, not science, it can't be falsified, so don't even try to verify. It's okay if a religious text is merely beautiful and mysterious.