Pardon me, mjakka, if I am skeptical about trusting that an organization that is set up and run by a leading figure in the Waldorf movement -- Millenial Child (run by master Waldorf teacher Eugene Schwartz) -- would give parents the complete, unadulterated truth about Waldorf science. Upon brief questioning, Waldorf teachers will say that the only thing different about Waldorf 'science" is the method by which it is taught. That is not true. The content is also different, and teachers (at least in my experience) will finally admit this when pressed to the wall. (I did so when my older child was in 3rd grade and having her first "science" unit, and the material was just plain weird. People have 12 senses that correspond to the signs of the Zodiac?? Humans originated on Atlantis? Of course, the Waldorf school called these subjects by ordinary, scientific names, such as zoology, botany, etc. It was only when I pressed the point at a public meeting -- which I cassette taped -- that the teachers admitted that yes, the science taught in Waldorf schools is different!)
Mjakka, I am not sure how familiar you are with Waldorf in reality. My older girl spent almost 6 years in a Waldorf school -- from early nursery school thru half of grade 4, at which time she was so bored and so miserable that she cried every day before school. We also were appalled by the slow pace of the class -- many of the 4th graders could barely read Dr. Seuss, a number of parents were saying they thought their children had learning disabilities, etc. We actually had our daughter tested by an educational pyschologist whose first question was "Where the heck has she been going to school? Wherever it is, get her out -- now!" Turns out our daughter tested in the gifted range, but there was such a spread between her ability results and her achievement results that the psychologist called it "a teaching disability." He told us that the school was trying -- obviously deliberately -- to hold her intellect in place and that he was frankly disturbed by what he saw. We spent a half year homeschooling our daughter to give her the basic knowledge to catch up with her peers, and now she is an honor student at a very rigorous college prep school. She looks back on the Waldorf experience and says "I thought something was wrong with my brain. I thought thinking was bad!" She now delights in questioning things, researching them, and challenging herself intellectually. (The Waldorf teacher, on the other hand, told us that we had to "move her from her head into her trunk" or else she would have "hardening" in her "organs" in later life.)
Interestingly, Eugene Schwartz (Millenial Child guy) is rather a hero with we Waldorf critics because he is the only, to our knowledge, Waldorf establishment person who has said publicly that the Waldorf movement MUST stop deceiving parents. At a conference at Sunbridge College in 1999, he told an audience of Waldorf teachers, parents and others that the movement was putting itself in peril by not revealing to parents that Waldorf schools ARE anthroposophical thru and thru, and not just, as the admissions folks and brochures tell you, BASED on the ideas of anthroposophy. Schwartz gave such a strongly worded directive to his fellow teachers that he ended up losing his place as head of the teacher training program there. Though various other Waldorf officials deny this happened, Schwartz himself told people on the Waldorf critics internet discussion list that that was what happened.
People always seem to accuse critics like myself of being mean spirited, or wanting every Waldorf school to close, etc. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Though knowing what I know now, I would never send a child of mine to a Waldorf school, I affirm the right of every family to choose for itself. I ask only that Waldorf schools tell the truth, that they tell parents that they are the parochial schools of anthroposophy, and that each and everything done inside their four walls is dictated by anthroposophy. I ask that they tell parents that the system is based entirely on the views of Steiner, who was not a scientist and teacher (as they claim outwardly, to the uninitiated public) but a mystic and clairvoyant (which is what they call him among themselves.) I want parents to know that Waldorf's view of child development is often at odds with what modern science and educational theory knows about human development, and that Steiner based Waldorf on VISIONS he had. Steiner had extremely limited experience with children; he tutored a boy with hydrocephalus (or what seems to have been hydrocephalus) for a short time, and that is it. In Waldorf, Steiner designed the school that he -- a white child born in the 19th century in a rural area -- would like to have attended.
Lisa (who again wonders why I am the only one who uses her real name)