Please your advice and info about steiner schools...

[hermanmunster]

I am not sure how old your children are but as you mention that they don;t have to take the 11plus at the school and they can stay until they are 18, I assume that they are quite young..

Worth asking the school how many children stay all the way through - I reckon kids benefit from going to at least 2 schools - can suit what they need at different ages. Appreciate the Steiner looks nice at nursery but if you want results you are going to be frazzled in the senior part of the school.

[menagerie]

I knew a man who went to Summerhill and he bitterly resented having gone there. He hated it. My kids were watching a film about it, framed to show how lovely and freeing it was, but the man I knew said they mooched around all day every day, completely unguided and lost, with no ambition or enthusiasm because none was encouraged. He also claimed they were pushed to 'enjoy' physical relationships with each other before they were ready and that also left him very confused.

Not that a Steiner school is like that, but I can't quite see how freedom of expression and 'whole child' building equates with having banned colours during finger painting and hideous over simplified wooden toys that children loathe.

OP, if you want a school that encourages freedom of expression of the whole child, come to our sunny primary. They forget to do academic work, oh at least 70% of the time. They are so full of swimming galas and Indian dance week and how to grow peas, design scarecrows, catch watersnails, make curry and have teddy bears' picnics (all this even in Yr6) that oops! they clean forgot to teach times tables. The kids catch up if tutored and then do well because they have a broad, creative and curious approach to learning. This is a normal state school btw. Look for a 'community school' aka 'academia is low on our list of priorities.' They are free and you won't be force fed angels or get colour bans on your finger paints.

[yoyo123]

They forget to do academic work, oh at least 70% of the time. They are so full of swimming galas and Indian dance week and how to grow peas, design scarecrows, catch watersnails, make curry and have teddy bears' picnics (all this even in Yr6) that oops! they clean forgot to teach times tables

the beautiful thing about good primaries is that learning actually sneaks in without the children realising it, justthe way it should be

[menagerie]

True yoyo, and they do learn a great deal at our school. The success rate for getting into super-selectives is high but it would be non existent without the back up of tutoring, and the school doesn't ground them in the basics of times tables, grammar, punctuation. But it does teach them to think independently and creatively and they are exceptionally knowledgeable about a vast array of subjects. I swing from seething that they have all the fun whilst leaving me to do the dull stuff (what's 7x8 etc.) to thinking it's great that there's never been a day they didn't bounce into school except when ill.

[mystery]

Something that is substandard and free of charge is mildy annoying. Something that is substandard and extremely expensive is a pain in the ****. The major advantage of some low achieving independents is that you have longer holidays in which to catch up.

[Freya]

Please be sure you are happy with the following concepts before allowing your child anywhere near:

- some children are 'on a higher level' and 'more evolved' than others based on their appearance / skin colour
- some children shouldn't sit by the window because their colour is blue and therefore 'melancholic'
- a child experiencing physical violence from another child is receiving 'karmic' justice and needs this balance
- a child shouldn't read until they are 7 years old and is not fully incarnated into their bodies until 14
- T.V / radio / computers should not be used by anyone in the family
- gnomes are real

and yes, please research anthroposophy, realising that of course the school are not going to have this conversation with you.

If you are happy with all the above then I'm sure you'll love it!

[mystery]

Where did you find those first two points? They sound weird and shocking.

[sherry_d]

Mystery its because Steiner sees black as the evil color and so black stuff like black pens are prohibted.

He believed in hierachy of the human race into 6/7 categories, with Caucasians belonging in the higher level and blacks in the lower level. In short I view him as a deeply racist man and the whole philosophy of nurturing the superior race to be quite racist but other may disagree.

[katel]

sherry-d, absolutely. That was what Rudolph Steiner believed. Modern Steiner adherents will say that this is all in the past, but the echos of it remain in the attitude to black crayons and so on.

They do not have a good record when dealing with children with special needs either.

[menagerie]

It's even more bonkers than I thought!