Following on from my earlier post detailing my previous, decidedly disappointing experience of university, I will now explain why I chose to return to higher education having vowed never to subject myself to it again. I thought it was all pointless/brainwashing/jumping through hoops to get a piece of paper, and I concluded that it simply wasn't for me.
For the most part I still have reservations about the whole thing....BUT I have actually found one course that a) genuinely interests me and b) will hopefully lead to a worthwhile career at the end of it. That course is in Steiner Waldorf education. Steiner Waldorf is an independent schools movement (comprising about 900 schools over the world) based upon the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, who founded Anthroposophy and had something to say about pretty much any topic you can think of, not limited to education - but also farming, banking, medicine, science, architecture, special needs, etc. He based his ideas on what he called "spiritual science".
The Steiner way of education, as you can imagine, differs from the mainstream in a few significant ways. Imaginative, play-based learning is emphasized during the early years, and reading/writing are not introduced until age 7 (interestingly, a mainstream report was released in the UK last month which stated that reading & writing are best taught at the age of 6, rather than 3 or 4 as is the case in our state schools - not sure if this discovery will have any impact on the mainstream, but it at least provides some validation to what the Steiner crowd have been saying all along!). Introducing any overly intellectual material before adolescence is deemed unnecessary and in fact harmful to the child's development. Knitting is taught to both girls and boys. There is no fixed curriculum (although there is guidance on what to teach when for those who need it); the teacher is considered "an artist" and is meant to teach in an inspired and creative way at all times. All of these methods are founded upon a 'holistic' view of the child, which takes into account not just the adult that the child will grow up to be, but also the child's past lives.
Naturally this is controversial. No one wants to hear about karma, reincarnation, astral bodies or etheric bodies these days. Steiner was basically an occultist which ipso facto is bound to make a lot of mainstream people reject him outright. There's a lot of criticism of Steiner education out there - which I think comes, at least in part, from the fact that people fear what they know little about and are suspicious of anything that isn't approved, regulated and controlled by the state.
But all theories aside, I have visited our local Steiner school and the community spirit there speaks for itself. The place has an all-round good vibe, and that's pretty much down to the passionate and spirited members of staff that run it. Each school is only as good as its teachers. I really believe that in the right hands, this whole Waldorf thing could be a springboard for a new form of education where...
- the role of teachers is to inspire children to think for themselves and love learning for its own sake (whereas mainstream schools promote compliance and uniformity of thought);
- ticking boxes and passing exams is only secondary in importance to producing well-rounded, compassionate human beings (whereas in mainstream, learning facts by rote like parrots in order to pass exams is virtually all that is required);
- the child is considered as an individual or even spiritual being, rather than merely a future "cog in the machine" or "cell in the social body" as Huxley writes in
Brave New World (state education is naturally designed to engender obedience to the state and manipulate pupils' thinking/opinions to that end; children are regarded as machines into which the teacher can input the same material and get the same output);
- an attitude of reverence and respect for life is encouraged from an early age; different religions are taught so that children will be free to choose what to believe, or not; instilling that sense of reverence, as well as a healthy moral foundation, is of the utmost importance rather than any dogma (mainstream schools either teach dogma which is outdated/irrelevant to most young people of today, as in "Christian" schools, OR they adopt the new politically-correct paradigm which suppresses religious belief, prayer, reference to a higher being etc.)
From what I have seen, Steiner schools are already living out the above principles very well. What finally convinced me to go for this course was a comment I read by a Steiner-educated young man, which was along the lines of: "I can always tell the difference between students of Steiner schools and those of state schools, because the Steiner-educated ones know how to think for themselves".
So I've been on the course since mid-September, and thus far it comprises a diverse mix of art, philosophy, debate, history, science, music, speech/drama, as well as regular school visits and teaching practice in either Steiner or state schools, preferably both. (I am also undertaking an additional French module because I love learning languages and foreign language teachers are highly sought after in Steiner schools.) Most of us on the course would like to see a synthesis of the positive aspects of Steiner + the positive aspects of mainstream; there are no glassy-eyed Steiner worshippers as far as I can tell! This, my second go at university, has been completely different to my previous less-than-positive experience and I think this is a course that I can truly see through till the end.
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Further Reading:Kingdom of Childhood (book), lectures on Waldorf education by Rudolf Steiner
Education Towards Freedom (book) by Frans Carlgren
Montalk article:
The Horrors of Public Education
