Where is the book in which the teacher can read about what teaching is? The children themselves are this book. We should not learn to teach out of any book other than the one lying open before us and consisting of the children themselves.
— Rudolf Steiner, Human Values in Education
I’ve never been a fan of standardized schools. Looking out at the world and all the people in it, I long ago came to the conclusion that, while iPhones might be relatively standardized, and Cheerios might be relatively standardized, human beings tend to be unique in their range of talents, strengths, weaknesses, and interests.
I’ve long wished that public education could address our children, based on those individual talents and interests.
Many years ago, my two oldest children had the opportunity to attend a Waldorf school for one year. Some of our readers will be familiar with Waldorf education, a type of school first developed in Germany back in 1919, based upon the ideas of philosopher Rudolf Steiner. This education model quickly spread across Europe, and the first Waldorf school opened in the US in 1928.
In September, last year, the Waldorf school movement celebrated its 100th anniversary, but Rudolf Steiner’s 20th century philosophy continues to guide the movement.
Waldorf pedagogical theory considers that during the first years of life children learn best by being immersed in an environment they can learn through un-self-conscious imitation of practical, everyday human activities. The early childhood curriculum therefore centers on experiential education, allowing children to learn by example, and giving opportunities for imaginative play. The overall goal of the curriculum is to “imbue the child with a sense that the world is good”. As the children move from Kindergarten into the elementary school grades, the declared goal is to “imbue children with a sense that the world is beautiful.” In order to allow students to connect deeply with the subject matter, academic instruction is presented through artistic work that includes storytelling, visual arts, drama, movement, vocal and instrumental music, and crafts.
An elementary school teacher’s stated task is to present a role model children will naturally want to follow, gaining authority through fostering rapport and “nurturing curiosity, imagination, and creativity”.
Steiner believed that engaging young children in abstract intellectual activity too early would adversely affect their growth and development, and he considered the skill known as “reading” to be one such ‘abstract’ intellectual tasks. So reading, as such, is not typically introduced until 3rd grade, or later.
This is not at all the model applied in most public schools here in the US. Thanks to federal and state mandates, children entering Kindergarten are immediately immersed in language arts activities. Conventional American schools are desperate to have students reading abstract texts — like the one shared previously, in Part Seven — so they can show ‘proficiency’ on the standardized CMAS tests given in third grade. Those tests will be used by bureaucrats in Denver to define “ratings” for school districts, and will be used by administrators to judge the performance of teachers.
Rather than nurture curiosity, imagination and creativity, a typical American public school focuses an inordinate amount of instruction on reading activities generally devoid of curiosity, imagination, and creativity.
From a website called The Art of Homeschooling:
We are fooling ourselves when we think we are teaching a child to read. The child cracks the code, and does a lot of memory work, just as he did when he was learning to speak. If you watch a child who is at the stage where he is ready and wants to learn to read, you will see him repeating words and sounds to himself, memorizing books that are read to him, and suddenly he goes from memorizing to really reading, seemingly overnight! Then he can read everything, including newspapers, and big chapter books. All this will not happen until the child is ready, and forcing it may make him avoid reading for life. To me… a child is not really a reader until he can pick up any piece of written material and read it.
One of the statements here is crucial.
All this will not happen until the child is ready, and forcing it may make him avoid reading for life.
As mentioned previously in this editorial series, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development determined that 50 percent of American adults can’t read a book written at an eighth-grade level. Not only have we learned that most Colorado third graders cannot read a third-grader level book, but we are told that half of all adults cannot read and understand a book written for high school students.
It’s tempting to say that schools and other institutions charged with ensuring a literate citizenry, are failing at that task, with about half of their students.
It’s just as tempting to say that parents, who have the ultimate responsibility for ensuring a positive future for their children, have also largely failed.
But of course, we can also lay the blame on the students themselves, for being unable or unwilling to fit into a mold created by bureaucrats in Denver and Washington DC.
Based on my years of involvement with various school systems, I strongly suspect that Rudolf Steiner hit the nail on the head, back in 1919, when he designed a school curriculum that introduced ‘literature’ in a slow and gradual manner, built first upon oral storytelling and only later, when the child is more mature and ready, introducing the abstract process we call “reading”.
But as perceptive as Rudolf Steiner may have been, he can hardly have imagined the future that faces Johnny and Judy — the third graders of 2020 — as jobs of all types are handed over to computerized machines, in a world where communication is based less and less upon the written word.