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Waldorf News

Physicists Seek to Lose the Lecture as Teaching Tool

January 22, 2012

The lecture is one of the oldest forms of education there is. "Before printing someone would read the books to everybody who would copy them down," says Joe Redish, a physics professor at the University of Maryland. But lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique and now that information is everywhere, some say it's a waste of time. Indeed, physicists have the data to prove it. When Eric Mazur began teaching physics at Harvard, he started out teaching the same way he had been taught. "I sort of projected my own experience, my own vision of learning and teaching — which is what my instructors had done to me. So I lectured," he says. More »

What is a Steiner School? A video for the Steiner Schools Fellowship by Saskia Anley McCallum

January 16, 2012

The editor Simon Fildes writes, "Both my daughters go to the Moray Steiner School in Forres, Morayshire Scotland, so obviously I was pleased to have the opportunity to help put the record straight about what these independent schools are about. If you care about the future of our planet, if you think that the current way of educating our children is crazy, and that the society we should be aiming to build should be based on a holistic view of humanity, the environment and the planet then watch this." More »

"This Is What a School Is Meant to Be" - Ecuador's Dr. Angel Castillo Visits American Waldorf Schools by Eugene Schwartz

January 16, 2012

Dr. Castillo is the Minister of Education in Imbabura, a large province in Ecuador. After a long period of dormancy, a new President has laid out ambitious plans to reform the Ecuadorian public school system. Dr. Castillo’s visit was a state-mandated mission to establish partnerships with American universities – and to explore Waldorf education as a potential alternative to the test-driven and intellectually-oriented methodologies that are so prevalent in the northern hemisphere. This visit was arranged by Sue Brown and Paul Murtha of Mountains of Hope, a social/educational/service initiative that has been active in Ecuador for several years. More »

The Lakota Waldorf School: Our children must walk with the Lakota language and Lakota way of life

January 8, 2012

Tabor White Buffalo: "Yes, we have decided to be a Lakota-speaking school. There aren’t that many people that speak Lakota anymore; I can only think of a handful. I grew up with it. I’m grateful that my family kept it alive for me and I learned it from my parents and my extended family. There are so many things that I can say in Lakota, that just aren’t the same in English. Our word for child is “wakan yeja,” which means “sacred being.” We put a lot of emphasis on our language. There is a lot of trauma surrounding our language. Many of our grandparents were sent away to boarding schools and the language began to die when they quit speaking it. Like many of our traditions, Lakota has become hard to preserve, but we’re trying and really making an effort to integrate Waldorf education with the Lakota culture." More »

When an Adult Took Standardized Tests Forced on Kids

December 12, 2011

A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public. By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen. He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadn’t done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members don’t seem to be playing much of a role in the current “reform” brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests he’d taken. “I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction. He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate. More »

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