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10-01-2011 at 2:07 PM
mom2one
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Waldorf school?

Does anyone send their child to this type of private school? If so, what do you like about it? Anyone know anything about them even if your child does NOT go?

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10-01-2011 at 2:19 PM
CleoKitty
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Some are more dogmatic than others, but in general way too "woo-woo" out there for my tastes, IMO. Some of the schools are downright cult-like.

I think that Waldorf seems like a very sweet environment for little ones on the outside, but once you dig a little deeper it's a bit on the looney side.  Steiner, the man who developed Waldorf, has some pretty odd ideas about how children shouldn't be introduced to certain concepts such as learning letters/reading until they've lost their baby teeth.

There's some interesting reading here: 

http://www.mothering.com/community/t/199415/waldorf-doubters-thread

 
10-01-2011 at 2:39 PM
JOEBunny
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JOEBunny is not online. Last active: 04-23-2013, 10:19 AMPlatinum

I do not send my child, but one of my neighbors sends her two girls, 16 and 7 and is a teacher there.  It is a good school for some families, but you have to buy into the no tv, lack of consumerism, wooden toy culture.  Your child will also have the same teacher for several years.  This is good if your child has a good teacher, but bad if not.  You also have to be pretty committed to it for the long haul, since they learn things on a different path, so it is not easy to transition back to a regular school without being ahead or behind in some areas. 

Ultimately, it is just to out of the main stream for me, but I do like some of their ideas about imagination and story telling as a teaching tool.


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10-01-2011 at 3:36 PM
fredalina
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Agree with PPs. Pros are they have great arts/fantasy play and are basically child-led. Cons are the spiritual anthroposophy stuff and cultist behavior that goes with it, and the learning of stuff at such drastically different timetables as mainstream schools that it's so hard to mainstream again.

If you like some of the pros but not the cons, you might look into Reggio-Emilia. It's also more arts/fantasy play heavy but not the heavy spiritual stuff.

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10-01-2011 at 4:20 PM
cmeon_the_...
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There are some nice Waldorf schools that... well, I'd call them Waldorf Lite. Real Waldorf is just way too out there for my taste- the no electronics/t.v./computer thing would never work for us (I worked in computer engineering pre-kids and DH does web interactive programming- so, we're way too geeky). I really like Reggio Emilia, but, our closest is over 3 hours away. I would LOVE to have access to a good RE school.

We use a wonderful traditional Montessori and our son is thriving there. It's pretty much a world away from Waldorf, though. :)

 
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