Waldorf

Years ago, when C. was a baby, I started researching schools for her. I knew I did not want to send my children to public schools for various reasons (to be discussed in another post), but I didn't know exactly what I was searching for. I stumbled upon a website that had something to do with Waldorf education, I don't remember exactly what it was. I started researching and became more and more excited, as it seemed this was the perfect fit for me. It addressed all of my concerns about public school. The emphasis on integrated learning, a natural environment free from the noise of tv and computer games, the arts being incorporated into the curriculum...all of this appealed to me immediately. For those of you not familiar with Waldorf, here is some info.

I loved the soothing colors, the gentle music, the beeswax and wood, the organic wool and silk, the emphasis on creative play, open-ended playthings. As I looked around our apartment, I saw it filled with hideous plastic crap, beeping and staring at me with garish colors and toxic chemicals. I finally had found people who understood what I was thinking and feeling - who had created the environment I wanted to create in my home. I wasn't crazy after all!

Later that year we moved out to the country and I found myself more able to create this environment, although I never was able to achieve my vision. Barbies somehow appeared in our home, along with Baby Einstein and Sesame Street. I felt like a failure. I didn't have the perfect Waldorf home. I was a sell-out, another family sucked into the world of child consumerism. 

I discovered two Waldorf schools near our home. One, about an hour away, in Keene, NH had a lovely early childhood playgroup that we began to attend. C. loved it and fit right in. The crafts were soothing - felting balls, coloring with beeswax crayons, surrounded by wooden blocks. Eating snack (millet rolls and water) with glasses and proper plates, singing songs, feeding chickens, walking in nature, listening to stories...it appealed to both of us and influenced us in a positive way. I was so happy not to be dumping glitter on paper plates or gluing macaroni to a napkin. This was exactly what I thought Waldorf would be.

We also tried a playgroup at another local Waldorf school, which shall remain nameless. It was run by a woman who, frankly, creeped me out. She yelled at C. when C. touched some stuffed horses sitting on the windowsill because "those were her's and C. needed to respect her things." She was obsessed with lighting the candle at snack and chanting some bizarre Rudolph Steiner passage, and woe to the child who wanted to leave the table before she dismissed them, after chanting another odd passage and blowing out the candle. Mothers were required to sit around in a circle confiding how the big,bad world out there was so horrible and that living a complete Waldorf lifestyle was the only way to salvation. Needless to say, we didn't go back. The people there scared me, with a cultish lack of depth behind their eyes - I knew full well that every parent there was afraid to admit they watched American Idol or shopped at Target.

I still believed that Waldorf schools absolutely had the right philosophy about the early childhood years. Reading and writing are not introduced until Grade 1, and children attend kindergarten for two years, entering Grade 1 at about age 7. The work of childhood is play. I don't understand why parents are obsessed with their children learning their letters at age 3, or learning to write their names by age 4 or 5. What is the point of all this?

Young children should have huge blocks of time for creative play, unhindered by the intellectual focus of adults. They should be living in a fantasy world, where fairies dance on the lakes and trolls live in the forest. My children can play for hours as wizards and fairies with no need for me to direct their play. They don't need to be entertained, because they instinctively know how to play, without pressing a button or turning a switch. Not to say my children do not watch tv - they do,and too much for my liking. They have their Leap Pads and occasionally play games on the computer (think PBSkids.org). And yes, we have plastic toys. But generally speaking, I think we have incorporated some aspects of Waldorf into our lives, but just the fun parts:) And I no longer feel like a failure, because I don't want to dictate to my children what they can and cannot like, and I am not surrounded by "Waldorfites" - I just have to guide us in the direction I would like to be moving and hope for the best.

I chose a Waldorf-inspired curriculum for our first year of homeschooling called Oak Meadow. I'll review it in my next post, but for now I have to get the kids to stop playing and make their beds - wish me luck!