What are your personal feelings toward Anthroposophy - Page 3

[ema-adama]

Originally Posted by DimitraDaisy

Also, it might be that it's late and I can't think straight, but what is so bad about spiritual underpinnings? Every kind of education has some underpinnings, and right now I can't for the life of me see what's so wrong about spiritual ones. At the end of the day everything is a leap of faith -- assuming that there is no such thing as the spirit is a leap of faith as much assuming that there is.

This is me sorting my post out.

:

I had written about Eurythmy. Basically I take the approach that if there is a reason other than the spiritual one given, I am not too interested in the spiritual reason. It just does not bother me. Nothing is being forced on children who do Eurythmy other than movement to speech and music. Movement that I think can be beneficial to the overall development of children. It could be interesting to look at the spiritual reasons if that rocks your boat. It does *not* rock my boat.

I would love to look at Eurythmy from a developmental perspective. For the role that it could play in sensory modulation, development of rhythm and coordination, development of sense of self and being part of a group. Yes, there are other types of movement that do this, but why does that mean that Eurythmy should not be used?

I am not a huge fan of Eurythmy personally and realise that the teachers are often rather problematic.

But I really do not see it as quite so problematic.

[orangewallflower]

At the risk of being a broken record player, I have no problem with the idea that eurythmy is spiritual nor did I say (or would I) that it shouldn't be used. I simply think that parents can handle the level of discourse that is truly important to Waldorf teachers. I wonder why this is translating in to "spiritual is bad" so automatically on this thread? If somene has any insight into that, I would really appreciate your perspective.

[PrincessDoll]

I am just starting to read Steiner's actual words in regards to Waldorf education and the child. I am taken aback by his insight over and over and there are times that that I find what he says goes over my head....lol No doubt this man was a visionary and ahead of his time (even ahead of this time). He talks about how he is not interested in dogmatic schools, instead he explains how he wants the schools to be a living organism and that means each school will be slightly different as the children are different, the teachers are different etc etc.

I am definitely going to study more regarding anthroposophy in the future. For example, he discusses how a teacher should approach the child with complete reverence that (s)he is being entrusted to educate this particular child (soul). Wow, what a way to approach someone else's child. How truly loved and accepted would a child feel in such a teacher's classroom?

His issue with the reading too early is because our current alphabet is so foreign to a young child's being (he talks about how the formation of the letter has absolutely no concrete connection to the sound hence it is an abstract formation, which is an alien concept to a child of imitation as they are until the change of teeth). So, his issue is that teaching a child the letter by looking at them and teaching them a sound, sure they'll learn it but it is too much head knowledge and makes the education too one sided which will in turn detrimentally affect a child's development. Instead, children's whole beings should be part of the process (think Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory) and the letter itself should naturally come out of the own child's inner being (that's why they teach writing before reading).

Anyway, the commentary on the internet is very scary, boy did it make me so scared to pursue this especially because I am a devout Christian. But I decided knowledge is power and I'm not going to take second hand third hand, etc etc reports on Steiner. I decided I'm going to read Steiner myself and make up my own mind. I'm a big girl with big girl panties and can handle a perspective that may be different than mine and just discard what does not resonate with my convictions for my family.