What’s Up with Waldorf?
Last year, when we were trying to decide where to send Scooter for Kindergarden, I happened to chat with my cousin on this topic. We were close as kids, but she now lives clear on the other side of the country, so we don't get to talk all that often.
"Why don't you look at a Waldorf school?" she suggested.
"A Wal-Mart school?"
"A Waldorf school. We send our kids to one, and we really like it."
My cousin is a sharp cookie. Most young girls decide at some point that they are going to grow up to be veterinarians because they really like horses. She actually became a vet, and when we lived near each other in Illinois, she kept some of the best-fed horses in the county. I know this because I used to use the manure in my garden.
So I asked her more about Waldorf. It sounded, frankly, a little new-agish for my tastes, with talk about "holistic" teaching, and "nurturing the child's spirit." But around the time when we needed to decide where to apply for Kindergarden, I read a newspaper article about a parent suing a local Waldorf school for "educational malpractice." It seems that the 5th grade child was reading at a 3rd grade level, and the school wouldn't take any remedial action.
Well, that was enough to tell me to not bother researching Waldorf any further, and we put it out of our minds. We applied for Scooter to go to Blake, probably the most academically rigorous school in the Twin Cities and my alma mater. He got in, we were all thrilled, and Blake started making subtle suggestions that I should increase my annual contribution.
Fast forward to today. My cousin is coming to town for my sister's wedding, and she'd like to spend a few hours touring local Waldorf schools. She's really gotten into this Waldorf thing. I agree, if for no other reason than it's an excuse to catch up.
But this tickles my curiosity once again about Waldorf. So I start doing a little online research. And I start noticing some funny things.
The first funny thing, and a big red flag, is a paid Google link promising to answer "Waldorf myths." Call me a cynic, but the only time anyone pays to advertise that sort of information is when they're trying to counter bad publicity. And, gosh, some of the answers sure sound like they were written by a giant PR machine in full spin cycle.
Another funny thing I noticed is that every article I could find about Waldorf written by a third party (i.e. someone not associated with Waldorf) was negative. Sometimes alarmingly so. Yet every article by a parent, teacher, or other interested person was uniformly positive. This shows a certain groupthink which is worrisome, especially when it comes to something as important as education.
Waldorf's response to nearly every negative experience with a Waldorf school seems to be that "Waldorf isn't for everyone." This statement is trivially true, but it also serves to shift the focus from the school to the child or parent, reinforcing an us-verses-them mentality within the school community.
I also noticed that, of the three Waldorf schools in the Twin Cities, only one is actually accredited. And there's this funny thing called anthroposophy, some sort of not-really-a-religion-but-still-spiritual-philosophy which seems to permeate everything about Waldorf.
So what does this all mean? I'm not a child development expert, but I can confidently say that some of Waldorf's practices--such as not teaching reading before the third grade, and basically avoiding computers--are well outside the mainstream of educational practice and theory. Calling Waldorf a "cult" as some have done is probably going too far, though some of the groupthink and in-group/out-group behavior are very similar to cults.
Ironically, this cultlike behavior is probably the saving grace of Waldorf as an educational system. The most important factor in a child's educational success is the involvement of the parents. Waldorf clearly gets parents involved, to an almost frightening extent.
As for my own children's education, I care about making sure they have the knowledge and skills to be successful at whatever they choose to do in life. That means a more traditional education involving current educational theory and practice, lots of parental involvement, and high expectations. Waldorf, as they themselves like to say, isn't for everyone.