(translated by M., who is a part-time teacher at Brno WS for IT)
Most of you here have come for a general introduction to Waldorf Education.
The focus this weekend was on Eurythmy with Dana Holečková, Watercolour Painting
with Roman Vančura and Foreign Language Teaching. I hope the examples of foreign
language teaching methods helped give insights into Waldorf School teaching as a
whole.
In the introductory lecture I mentioned that mdern research has shown (but we all feel
it) that children are inherently creative, eager learners, healthily curious and
learn best without pressure. For most children (and indeed grown-ups, too!)
pressure starts when we correct children too often, when we criticize them, when
we contradict them, when we say "you are wrong!" en we talk sarcastically
(class-four child is late, teacher says "you are early today!"); or when we
laugh at them!
I also mentioned children very much need moments of success. This means we teachers
must avoid children feeling lost, not able to understand what we are saying. We
avoid saying and explaining things but try to help children experience
things,
[3-MINUTE EXCHANGE WITH NEIGHBOUR: some best and worst moments in my own
schooldays]
[some participants share some rally attrocious experiences of
feeling stupid, not-understood, lost and giving up]
Children need to be able to trust their teachers. In the higher classes there's
no better way to make them lose trust than to say things like:
- when I was your age ...
- you're not doing this for me ...
- you could've used the break to go to the toilet ...
- I would've expected more from you ...
- everything we've done will come up in the next test ...
- you don't need to play the clown ...
etc.
A teacher needs to be 'de-professionalized', she needs to stimulate and provoke,
not just pass on information; a teacher needs to engage the children not teach
AT them.
Of course we should know how our pupils are progressing but diagnostic tests
should not ne the dominant culture. We facilitate learning, support the learning
process. We avoid obstructing it. Otherwise children will lose their creativity,
and their interest; and submerge in a culture of compliance.
I said we have four radically different kinds of pupils:
(classes 1-3, classes 4-6, classes 7-9, classes 10-12).
The youngest trust their world to be 'good',
the 10-to-12-year-olds that their world is 'beautiful' (aesthetic);
in puberty, when their world starts to appear as 'logical' the first doubts
appear but that's 'thinking' (contradictions, arguing, asking difficult questions
starts) and we must never feel offended but take it with a lot of humour
and inwardly applaud these first manifestations of thinking!
In 10-12 we try to 'throw the youngsters back on their own
resources', allowing them, giving them the freedom to discover things for
themselves, to think things out for themselves, alone or in discussion.
Our reactions, our way of teaching, our methods as well as the background content
of our curriculum as well as the actual lesson topics all combined may well be
the chief determinants of whether our older pupils develop into 'idealists' or
'cynics'. Classes 7-9 are the age in which we must never be dogmatic or try to
pass on our private judgements. Youngsters at this age are extremely impressionable
as well as critical but they still have to develop their independence.
At this age the youngsters have questions like: Do hospitals only care for the good
of the patients or are there financial interests? How free are journalists really to
write what they think and see? Is scientific research really free from commercial
interests? Do the politicians in the parliaments debating new laws really think about
what is best for society? Etc. etc. At the same time these teenagers are often aware
of the fact that they might be getting too absorbed by their cell-phones and computers
and need to learn how to make really good use of internet media.
And we as parents and teachers ask ourselves: Do government departments and
politicians responsible for education really consider what is necessary for the
healthy development of the younger generations or are there business-interests
here too?
This question was already there in 1919 when the first Waldorf School was founded.
And this is why Rudolf Steiner spent a lot of time calling for freedom from state and
other interests in the realm of education, the arts, the sciences, medicine etc.
Many of his lectures at this time shortly after the end of WWI, the 'peace'
negotiations of Versailles and Trianon were about what he called the Social Three-
fold Order and Cultural Spiritual Freedom (Freies Geistesleben) was at the centre
of the Threefold Order, and the founding of the Waldorf School an essential part of
'Freies Geistesleben'!
One of the central attitudes behind Waldorf Education was prompted by questions
such as "Do children choose their parents". Thinking about such questions, living
with such questions influence the way we bring up children in a positive manner.
Other questions are: Does science explain everything in our lives? Aren't we all
in a process of development pur whole lives?
I'd like to finish with a quote from Shakespeare (Hamlet to Horatio):
"There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy!"
philosophy here including what today we call 'science'.
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