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| Waldorf High School; Anyone know anything about them? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 26 2009, 09:14 AM (491 Views) | |
| Eileen | Jan 26 2009, 09:14 AM Post #1 |
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Junior Carp
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Am considering a Waldorf high school for my daughter. I am more familiar with them as an elementary school..... This is the first Waldorf high school in our area and because it is new has not finished the accreditation process. There are other Waldorf high schools across the US that have achieved accreditation. The program is the same in all the high schools. Is anyone familiar with this program? Do you have a sense of the pros and cons? What are the implications for college entrance from attending a school that is not completed the accreditation process? I know that there is a wealth of knowledge among our "piano friends" and thought that I would take advantage. Eileen |
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| Klaus | Jan 26 2009, 10:15 AM Post #2 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I don't know about Waldorf schools in the US, but if they are similar to what we call Waldorf school here, then I'd certainly never send a child of mine there. I believe the Waldorf philosophy does not prepare children for the life after school very well. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| sue | Jan 26 2009, 10:41 AM Post #3 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I did some quick googling, and was surprised to see a couple of waldorf schools here that go to grade 12. I always thought they were geared to very young kids; preschool/kindergarten age. $7760.00 - 11,100.00 a year (that's for a local student)! Gardening, book-binding, environmental art as part of the curriculum.....no thanks. Like Klaus, I don't know about the US Waldorf schools, but if they are like ours, I wouldn't send my child there either. |
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| DivaDeb | Jan 26 2009, 12:02 PM Post #4 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I have had several high school aged voice students (from one extended family) who are Waldorf students. One of them was pretty bright, the others, not so much. I do not expect that the youngest (the bright one) will be going to university at graduation. I think she is planning to do two years of junior college. If what I see of her cousins is typical, she will need that to catch up and function in a university setting. I never saw any of them do anything they didn't want to be doing. I got the impression from their families that discipline wasn't a big priority in Waldorf. I also had the strong impression that they believed they could sort of will their children to be talented. Even with plenty of anecdotal evidence of fundamental mediocrity, they persisted in spending buckets of money and inordinate amounts of time practicing playing very expensive wooden recorders (we're talking @ 1000.00 an instrument...for a RECORDER) So...they could blow a tune with great precision on an all but extinct instrument, but weren't anymore musical for all the hours and expense. These folks are loaded idealists...it doesn't really matter if their kids learn to be competent adults...they can afford for them to be flakes. It's probably an unfair thing to assess Waldorf on the basis of these related (but not sibling) children. But their friends from school do not seem to be much different. I have been invited to several end-of-the-year demonstrations of what they spent the year doing. Every time, I came away with the thought...'hey...must be nice to be 15, 16, 17....and to have so arrived and developed, as an individual, that I get to do pretty much what I want, and don't have to do things I dont like' |
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| jon-nyc | Jan 26 2009, 12:06 PM Post #5 |
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Cheers
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I find it interesting that I've never even heard of this. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
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| sue | Jan 26 2009, 12:12 PM Post #6 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I only know of a couple of people who had kids in a waldorf school, and both pulled their kids after a year or so. (Kindergarten) The concern (which I gather was also the intial appeal) was just what Deb said. They were allowed to do just about whatever they wanted, and these parents came to the realisation that maybe that wasn't the best way to learn in the long run. Definitely seems to be a 'moneyed' environment. |
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| Phlebas | Jan 26 2009, 12:32 PM Post #7 |
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Bull-Carp
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There's one on Long Island. The tuition for nursery school - 3 days for 3 year olds - is 6K and change. It goes up from there to level off at about 19K for 8th grade +. That's a lot of coin to learn how to play the recorder. |
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Random FML: Today, I was fired by my boss in front of my coworkers. It would have been nice if I could have left the building before they started celebrating. FML The founding of the bulk of the world's nation states post 1914 is based on self-defined nationalisms. The bulk of those national movements involve territory that was ethnically mixed. The foundation of many of those nation states involved population movements in the aftermath. When the only one that is repeatedly held up as unjust and unjustifiable is the Zionist project, the term anti-semitism may very well be appropriate. - P*D | |
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| Klaus | Jan 26 2009, 12:42 PM Post #8 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Waldorf schools demand virtually nothing of their pupils. Everything must be "fun", and the performance of the pupils is never assessed (no grades). IMO this is just not a good preparation for real life, where you need discipline and diligence to perform well, and where you are constantly assessed. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| DivaDeb | Jan 26 2009, 12:46 PM Post #9 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I'm not sure of the details, but I remember something about this from talking to the family in the past. Something in Waldorf philosophy has to do with there being something monumental (in an educational sense) about when a kid loses their baby teeth and their permanent teeth come in. To be honest...I pretty much nodded my head, said "uh huh," and tried not to laugh after that. |
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| Klaus | Jan 26 2009, 12:54 PM Post #10 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf education, was deeply esotericist, hence it is not surprising that the Waldorf ideas do not hold water from a scientific perspective. |
| Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman | |
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| Renauda | Jan 26 2009, 12:57 PM Post #11 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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http://www.religionnewsblog.com/1213/gnomes-and-critics-at-waldorf-schools That's been my impression as well since the mid '70's when I first became acquainted to anything pertaining to the Anthroposophical movement. |
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| sue | Jan 26 2009, 12:59 PM Post #12 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Anthroposophy edit: or just read Renauda's post
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| sue | Jan 26 2009, 01:12 PM Post #13 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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That was eye-opening. I was not aware it was that bizarre.
Wow. |
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| Frank_W | Jan 26 2009, 01:17 PM Post #14 |
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Resident Misanthrope
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At least they admit that they are turning out illiterate kids. Most schools insist that they are providing a good education, but it seems like so many that are graduating high school now, can't spell or write above a third-grade level, and if what I see so often on the internet is any indication, there seems to be a lot of college graduates in the same boat, and it's not a phenomenon epidemic to only the United States.
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Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin." Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!" | |
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| Renauda | Jan 26 2009, 01:29 PM Post #15 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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The only person I met who was ever enamoured by Steiner and Anthroposophy was a grad student who was equally obsessed by the music of Alexander Scriabin. He insisted that Schoenberg and Stravinsky teamed up with musicologists and critics and formed what in effect was a conspiracy to eradicate the Scriabin's music from the repetoire. He also maintained that they may have succeeded had it not been for the efforts of Rachmaninov and Horowitz to keep the *divinely ordained spirit of the Beethoven-Liszt-Scriabin trio* alive. Bizarre. |
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| kathyk | Jan 26 2009, 02:00 PM Post #16 |
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Pisa-Carp
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Oy, Waldorf. If you guys think I'm a lefty kook, meet my sister. She is into both Waldorf and homeschooling. With her first child (whom she is convinced is a genius), everything had to be by Steiner's book. Yup - losing the milk teeth was a critical marker for when the child was ready to learn to read. Mind you, this kid is bright (genius, I'm not so sure), and it pained me to see her preventing him from doing things he wanted to do, like learning to read and working through math problems. They also adhere to the notion of natural toys (all wooden and natural materials - kind of nice actually) and dolls must be very simple with no facial features (they take away the child's imaginative abilities).. Deb is on to something when she mentions very expensive supplies. Have you ever looked at a Waldorf toy catalog? We are talking big bucks! Learning to knit is an integral part of education (don't ask me why). For learning math, they have four little knitted gnome dolls in four different colors, e.g. blue for addition, red for subtraction, or something like that and little rhymes to go along with the learning exercises. It was rather hysterical the way my sister went about this. By the time her son was milk tooth ready for the math, and she had her little gnomes knitted up and ready for him to learn addition and subtraction, he was off on his own doing multiplication, division and fractions. Boy, did I piss her off one day when I obliged him by doing problems with him. Oh, and reading material has to be "age appropriate" which in Waldorf world is a strange concept indeed. Again, her son, who is very bright wanted to read Harry Potter a year or two after it came out. She insisted that he could only read each book when he was the age of Harry in that particular book. Here again, the poor and sly kid was sneaking reading it when he was at my Dad's house (I had bought it for my Dad - hehe). It is bizarre, and many of these people revere Steiner like a guru or someone who had divine powers; hence the blind acceptance of silly notions like the loss of milk teeth being associated with stages of learning. Funny the Scriabin/Steiner connection. I know Scriabin was into goofy notions of colors blending into music and spirituality, but at least his music has an immense depth. I don't think you could say the same about anything Steiner did or wrote. Not surprisingly, my sister is into a lot of other fringe beliefs, including the family bed, breast feeding until adulthood (very slight exaggeration there) and lots of New Age mumbo jumbo, not that I find anything wrong with any of this; but, I find that people like my sister tend to become so rigid in their alternative ways that they shut themselves out from 99% of the world. It's sad, and it's only getting worse as she gets older. I suspect that it makes them feel that they're special and better than most everyone else. Again, I think Deb hits on this with the idea of buying the ridiculously expensive wooden recorder. So, anyway, Elaine, that's my take on Waldorf, but I really only have my sister's situation to go by, and I have no idea what a Waldorf high school would be like. Hard to imagine. |
| Blogging in Palestine: http://kksjournal.com/ | |
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| Renauda | Jan 26 2009, 02:17 PM Post #17 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I imagine it to be full of a lot of narcissistic adolescents all with a highly individualized sense of entitlement and as Klaus says, quite unprepared for what awaits them when reality hits them between the eyes when school's out for good. |
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| RosemaryTwo | Jan 26 2009, 02:20 PM Post #18 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Wow. I'd say whatever the school has to offer that is positive, those things can be found elsewhere. Spend the money on quality music lessons or art classes after school. |
| "Perhaps the thing to do is just to let stupid run its course." Aqua | |
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| brenda | Jan 26 2009, 02:25 PM Post #19 |
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..............
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Eileen, what type of elementary education has your daughter had so far? Public school or private? If private, any particular type? We have various charter school options in Minnesooota, many of which are very good and specialized toward certain skills. Do they offer that where you live? |
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“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.” ~A.A. Milne | |
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| Renauda | Jan 26 2009, 02:55 PM Post #20 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Regardless, I think the two of them would have got along rather splendidly had their paths crossed. Oddly enough, while in Switzerland Scriabin actually became quite good friends with his dialectical opposite, Georgi Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, then in exile from Russia. I recall reading an anecdote in Bower's biography of Scriabin in which Plekhanov after being subjected to one of the composer's mystical meta-aesthetical diatribes during a walk, invited Scriabin to jump off a bridge to demonstrate how his artistic spiritual will could overcome the force of gravity and prevent him from falling into the river below. Needless to say, Scriabin declined the suggestion. |
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| DivaDeb | Jan 26 2009, 05:32 PM Post #21 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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edit: I'm adding this edit to the beginning of this post because I don't want Eileen to misunderstand. My ONLY experience with Waldorf is the students from one school, although I did read quite a bit since they were to be under my tutelage in music and I wanted a frame of reference for where they were coming from. Basically, I think the whole thing is incredibly self-indulgent. The parents of these kids were the kind of people I have a hard time with anyway...just so removed from reality that they are vacuously hovering off the ground 100 percent of the time...levitated by their balloon-like heads. When you talk to them, they are SO convinced that everything they do is really deeeeeeep...and it makes me want to slap somebody :-) The kids I know had all their work for each year in large format books they made. Like big coloring books. Pages maybe 16x20, but very thin. They did a tremendous amount of *copying* but not much computation or even creative writing. Writing a poem is different from copying a poem. They definitely spent many hours coloring...I don't mean art class...I mean...decorating...their class books. They reminded me of low-rent illuminated manuscripts. These were highschool kids. |
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| Free Rider | Jan 26 2009, 06:10 PM Post #22 |
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Fulla-Carp
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Waldorf Sucks. My nephew and neice went to one in Vermont and I am appalled by what they called education. |
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| RosemaryTwo | Jan 26 2009, 07:14 PM Post #23 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Sorry you asked, Eileen? |
| "Perhaps the thing to do is just to let stupid run its course." Aqua | |
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| Eileen | Jan 26 2009, 08:22 PM Post #24 |
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Junior Carp
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Not sorry I asked.....I was leaning toward it being a hippie, dippie kind of place (please excuse the non PC utterance) but, they came and presented to the 8th grade at my daughters school and she was entranced by their "no Pressure" approach. I think that she is exhibiting a little fear of high school. Anyway, I think it is time for a lesson in evaluating a school and how it impacts your future. She wants to go to the East coast for college and I am pretty sure that this choice would negate that possibility. Eileen |
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| DivaDeb | Jan 26 2009, 08:36 PM Post #25 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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oh whew...I'm glad Eileen. I hated to sound like I was on a tyrade, because I'm probably the biggest advocate of choice in education in all of the forums. I just know that the kids I know are ill-prepared to live in the cruel world. |
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