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Nine days in Haiti: Waldorf School students find deep meaning on service trip

They flew to Haiti to help others. They journeyed home on an odyssey of self-discovery. Four seniors at Monadnock Waldorf School in Keene prepared for months, raising funds and learning about Haiti, steeling themselves for a service project that they knew would be nothing like they have experienced before. But, really, books and videos and discussions with those who have been are mere primers. To see Haiti, to listen to Haiti — to smell Haiti — stokes a sensory overload that is common among visitors. That first anarchic drive through Port-a-Prince itself, the capital of the Caribbean nation acknowledged as the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, invariably leaves an indelible impression. “It’s hard to explain,” said Tyler Bell of Keene, four days after returning, studiously weaving through his feelings. “I see how we live now, and our surroundings, in a way I’ve never seen it before. What felt familiar before feels foreign.” More »

The Scientists Who Make Apps Addictive

In 1930, a psychologist at Harvard University called B.F. Skinner made a box and placed a hungry rat inside it. The box had a lever on one side. As the rat moved about it would accidentally knock the lever and, when it did so, a food pellet would drop into the box. After a rat had been put in the box a few times, it learned to go straight to the lever and press it: the reward reinforced the behaviour. Skinner proposed that the same principle applied to any “operant”, rat or man. He called his device the “operant conditioning chamber”. It became known as the Skinner box. Skinner was the most prominent exponent of a school of psychology called behaviourism, the premise of which was that human behaviour is best understood as a function of incentives and rewards. Let’s not get distracted by the nebulous and impossible to observe stuff of thoughts and feelings, said the behaviourists, but focus simply on how the operant’s environment shapes what it does. Understand the box and you understand the behaviour. Design the right box and you can control behaviour. More »

Creating a future for Palestinian children

Waldorf initiatives in the Arab world are rare. The initiative started by the German political scientist Wiebke Eden-Fleig in Beirut is thus all the more remarkable. Since last autumn, a kindergarten has started in the Shatila Palestinian refugees camp which works on the basis of Waldorf education. NNA spoke with its founder. More »

It’s time for a real revolution in Britain’s schools: A different world is emerging around our children

‘Imagine a world where you are enclosed by war, not knowing if you are going to die tomorrow or tonight, or maybe even in an hour. Living in a world of fear. Hearing gunshots and shelling day and night, hoping that you won’t be the one to get hit. Not wanting to step outside your door to go to the shops, in fear that you might not return home.” Ava has poise. Her eyes scan the gathering. She has them hooked. “There are children like Wasem and Maher, who were three and 11. They were both executed with knives in front of their parents, who felt as if they were being tortured themselves.” This is a conference room in the House of Lords: an audience of academics, politicians, charity leaders and experts. “The people who are killing and destroying the country and causing the civil war are following harsh dictator [Bashar al-]Assad and are fighting against Isis, an equally brutal militant religious group. The citizens are caught up in the middle of this awful war and are fleeing the country. This has caused one of the largest refugee crises known in history.” There are nearly 200 people in the room. Ava is only 12. More »

The Gift of Play: Reflections of a Waldorf Nursery Teacher

I continue to be amazed by young children, their wonder and joy for life is infectious. However, they are still just landing and growing so rapidly. Four years of life go quickly for us as adults and yet for many of our children they were just a parent’s dream. I have been thinking about this quality of play and imagination that live so deeply in young children. It is a precious gift and one that is not offered at any other time in a human being’s life. How do we as a culture and as parents and caregivers honor and support this time of childhood? More »

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