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Waldorf News

puberty_signs

Puberty Before Age Ten: A New 'Normal'?

May 21, 2012

One day last year when her daughter, Ainsley, was 9, Tracee Sioux pulled her out of her elementary school in Fort Collins, Colo., and drove her an hour south, to Longmont, in hopes of finding a satisfying reason that Ainsley began growing pubic hair at age 6. Ainsley was the tallest child in her third-grade class. She had a thick, enviable blond-streaked ponytail and big feet, like a puppy’s. The curves of her Levi’s matched her mother’s. “How was your day?” Tracee asked Ainsley as she climbed in the car. “Pretty good.” “What did you do at a recess?” “I played on the slide with my friends.” In the back seat, Ainsley wiggled out of her pink parka and looked in her backpack for her Harry Potter book. Over the past three years, Tracee — pretty and well-put-together, wearing a burnt orange blouse that matched her necklace and her bag — had taken Ainsley to see several doctors. They ordered blood tests and bone-age X-rays and turned up nothing unusual. “The doctors always come back with these blank looks on their faces, and then they start redefining what normal is,” Tracee said as we drove down Interstate 25, a ribbon of asphalt that runs close to where the Great Plains bump up against the Rockies. “And I always just sit there thinking, What are you talking about, normal? More »

fiddle

High-tech vs. no-tech: D.C. area schools take opposite approaches to education

May 14, 2012

The Flint Hill School in Oakton is ultra-wired. Apple hails it as a model for its embrace of devices. Teachers here believe technology immersion will make their students more excited about learning and better prepared for college and careers. So they’ve given each child a device — starting with an iPad for every preschooler and MacBook Airs starting in the fifth grade. “Tech is like oxygen,” said Shannan Schuster, Flint Hill’s dean of faculty. “It’s all around us, so why wouldn’t we try to get our children started early?” The Washington Waldorf School in Bethesda is trying its best to stay unplugged. Its teachers think technology is a distraction and overhyped. They believe children are better taught through real-world experiences in the school’s vegetable garden and woodwork shop. Educators here fear that the immediate gratification of texts and Wikipedia threatens face-to-face communication and original thinking, so they ban cellphones, laptops and tablets and require students to hand-write papers until high school. “What is the rush?” said Natalie Adams, Washington Waldorf’s faculty chair. “There is a time and a place for technology, but children need to first relate to the physical world around them.” More »

rider

The Waldorf Teacher: Someone You Can Steal Horses With

May 7, 2012

Quite often the people with the least academic proficiency are the least damaged in their will forces, in their ability to take initiative and to act in the world. They never had the patience to learn about the world at one or two or three removes, but they were in the world as mechanics, social workers, nannies, forest rangers, fire fighters and the like. Such people often have the most potential to become wonderful teachers. Children know when they are looking at people who can manage in the world. Children know who’s reliable, whether a teacher is someone they can “steal horses with” as the proverb has it. If teacher training students have a bit of rascal in themselves, they have mustered the first pre-requisite for Waldorf teaching: not to be a pedant. More »

High price of materialism

The High Price of Materialism

April 30, 2012

Scientists have found that materialistic values and pro-social values are like a see-saw. As materialistic values go up, pro-social values tend to go down. This helps explain why people act in less empathic, generous and cooperative ways when money is on their minds. When people are under the sway of materialism, they also focus less on caring for the Earth. The same type of see-saw is at work here. As materialistic values go up, concern for nature tends to go down. Intrinsic values not only promote personal, social and ecological well-being, but can also act to immunize people against materialism. It's that see-saw again. As intrinsic values go up, materialism tends to go down. Build a life that expresses your intrinsic values. Spend more time with people you care about, finding meaningful work, volunteering for causes that you care about. But change in our lifestyles isn't enough. We also need to advocate for policies that promote intrinsic values. Recognize that well-being and a sense of community are necessary parts of policies that truly encourage intrinsic values. More »

Ruskin Mill_2033

A New Inspiration for Education: A report from the Western Waldorf Educators Conference featuring Aonghus Gordon

April 23, 2012

Working with teens and young adults with complex learning and behavioral difficulties, many of whom have autistic spectrum conditions, students have benefited from the practical skills therapeutic education. Mr. Gordon and the Educational Trust have discovered, through the learning of practical-craft skills, the engagement of will-intentions and movement-intentions facilitate well-being and social health. The transformation of matter requires sensory engagement and lawful movement, strengthening a relationship to the three planes of space, serving as a powerful aide toward incarnation. A new moral aesthetic emerges that inspires and awakens one’s self-worth and their relationship to the world. Our ability to consciously penetrate our dimensional existence with movement builds our ability to move through life. As Mr. Gordon expressed, “Meeting resistance in matter helps us move through our own inner resistance. The blacksmith hammers out his own stiffness. The carpenter smooths her own rough edges.” More »