Are there any Germans here who know about Waldorf schools/ have been to a Waldorf school?

Are there any Germans here who know about Waldorf schools/ have been to a Waldorf school?

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I saw some of them on a school trip once.

Pure prime autism

Tell me more.
I am writing a thesis on waldorf education

Well to be honest they seemed quite smart. We went to a StemCon were we learned more about Stemcells and participated in quizes and the Waldorf pupils excelled. But their whole behaviour was strange. They were way to extrovert and active. They would randomly start singing in the floors or talking intime or unappropiate things with complete strangers. They also showed their emotions a bit over the top. Additionally they love to gesticulate.

Are these like montessori schools?

>They would randomly start singing in the floors or talking intime or unappropiate things with complete strangers. They also showed their emotions a bit over the top. Additionally they love to gesticulate.
They sound incredibly obnoxious.

Sounds like my kinda people. How do I enroll?

They are basically just grown up childs. I would call them a bit too cheerful

There are 90 waldorf schools in the netherlands.

m8 of mine attended one. he's pretty normal but some of his classmates were a bit strange.
Like that one guy who wanted to become a surgeon but was afraid of blood. later on he wanted to become a pilot. He's studying something in london now.
Another guy was completely obsessed with military stuff

It's very conservative.

They promote fetishism by teaching that everything has a spirit, and that a lot of things are sacred. They also have a cult of personality around their founder.

Nah, montessori are ruthless neoliberals. The opposite of waldorf. They teach you how to to be independent, and that nothing has any real value.

I had a classmate in high school who had been to a montessori elementary school. He plainly refused to participate in any group assignments.

>Steiner schools

Wish I went to one. Maybe I wouldn't be autistic.

I went to a Waldorf school in Baltimore for one year (first grade), AMA

Would have been fall 1994-spring 95
>didn't believe in children using non-wooden toys or electronics
>no TV, computers, video games
>didn't teach reading until the 4th grade

But the best part
>didn't believe in antibiotics
>had horrific earaches, needed tonsillectomy or at least antibiotics
>somehow (my parents are smart and tight with money) conned them into paying for eurythmy
>Greek dancing > modern medicine, apparently
>surprise surprise it didn't work
>didn't go back after that year

To summarise:

Waldorf will turn you into a 19th century eccentric aristocrat. If you can't afford this lifestyle, you'll be fucked over for life.

Montessori will turn you into a strong independent man who don't need no friends. Unless you have rich influental parents who can hook you up with the right people, this will also fuck you over for life.

I think eurythmy is mandatory in all classes

>mfw captcha was down

Possibly. But I had to do a special session in lieu of getting antibiotics. Dancing when you're in excruciating pain sucks.

Do you have any questions (assuming you are OP)? I do not mind, since I seldom get a chance to talk about this. People just don't believe how batshit insane these schools are. Although maybe it's better in Europe idk

Also got sent out of class for acting out:
>they would send me to the fourth grade
>the teacher would make me stand in front of the class while they all said "Shame on you, Sam!"
>I thought it was hilarious and enjoyed the attention
>but my parents, when they found out, were ENRAGED to say the least
>threatened the school with everything they could think of and it never happened again

Good things about the school:
Hard to think of, since they strongly discouraged antibiotics. Spoiler alert: I got my tonsils out + antibiotics and was immediately better.
And not reading until 4th grade? WTF, still can't believe that. When I got to second grade and didn't know how to read, they put me in the reading group with the immigrants, but by the end of the year I had been promoted to the advanced (above grade-level group). Later I got into gifted programs so it all worked out.

We didn't get a TV until 9/11 happened, so from age 5-13 I didn't watch ANY TV, just read books. Thousands and thousands of books. And I was better for it, I didn't have to even study until first year of college because I'd read every book they assigned for fun. Probably going to do the same for my kids, if I have any.

What do you want to know?

OP here.
I am confused about what the "Main Lesson" is and how it is taught.
I read that it is taught in blocks of 3 to 6 weeks. What does this mean? That you only cover one subject (e.g. arithmetics) for that time?

thanks!

>I am confused about what the "Main Lesson" is and how it is taught.
You have a singular teacher for the first eight years that teaches you essentially everything but languages and crafting skills. This teacher teaches "main lesson", which is taught in "epochs", that usually last for a few weeks. This means practically that you spend two hours in the morning learning about a singular subject, every day. Main lesson may be maths, biology, German (not in the sense of a second language but for native speakers), etc.

After these eight years you have "regular" lessons taught by specialised teachers, as you would find them at a regular school, with the addition of the occasional odd field such as the already mentioned Eurythmy where you learn to dance your name properly.

Is it true that classes change color according to student grade? Yellow in first class, then blue in higher grades?

Are there no textbooks in all grades, or only in the lower grades?

Are steiner dolls only used in kindergarden?

>Is it true that classes change color according to student grade? Yellow in first class, then blue in higher grades?
This may differ from school to school. If the school is located in an old building that may not be the case but if it's a newly built building based on anthroposophic ideology then that is indeed the case. You'd have to read Steiner to understand why that is the case though. When going to a Waldorf school you're rarely presented a motivation for why things are done the way they are done.

>Are there no textbooks in all grades, or only in the lower grades?
There are no textbooks for the first eight years. The teacher lectures, you listen and write down what you have memorised (or you don't and your teacher ends up annoying you about your incomplete textbook). I don't know whether this is always the case but where I went to school lots of problem children like myself simply stopped keeping track of these things which is quite problematic because you have no way to look up old knowledge resulting in huge gaps of knowledge that were only widening over time.

>Are steiner dolls only used in kindergarden?
I don't know what Steiner dolls are, perhaps I've seen them but known them by a different name.


I may add: I was actually wrong about what I first wrote. Main lesson actually continues until 12th grade, it's just that after 8th grade it's taught by a different, specialised teacher for the epoch, depending on the field that is covered. After 6th grade you have - in addition to main lesson also lessons in certain fields that are also covered in main lesson, e.g. maths, German, etc. - certain fields are not covered in main lesson at all, such as Eurythmy, PE, etc.; however it should be considered that the interpretation of Steiner may differ from school to school. Some may be more orthodox than others.

thank you!

steiner dolls:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_doll

I see.

I think you make one of these in one of the lower grades, maybe somewhere between 3rd and 6th. Never seen them being used otherwise though. Usually you end up gifting the crap you make to parents and family who then pretend to like it.

But as I said: in different facilities things may be handled differently, so they might as well put them to use otherwise.

Ah, I'm glad you asked about math. So it was 23 years ago, but I'll tell you what I remember:

We studied German and French a lot, I used to be able to count and say a few words in both of those languages. Main lesson was often a story where we sat around and listened; they were often what I would think of as stereotypical German stories, i.e. scary and pretty grim. Can't recall any others, possibly because I was probably in the 4th grade classing getting publicly shamed for many of them :D

Knitting was also a big part of first grade. As in, it was assigned. I knitted a bookmark and a cat, which was acceptable progress (still have the cat upstairs, I'll snap a pic). There were two girls in my class who knitted a scarf and a sweater, which made them far ahead of the average first grader.

So math was taught briefly, and I remember it *extremely* vividly. There were 4 knitted gnome dolls, one for each basic operation. Addition was green, subtraction was blue, multiplication was yellow, and division was red. They were used to illustrate various concepts, which I'm sorry to say I don't remember anything specific.
But the coolest thing (for me at least) was the impression it left in my mind. For the rest of my life, any math I do, from simple arithmetic to calculus, takes on those colors in my head.

E.g.
Negative numbers are always blue
Fractions are always red or orange
1+1 = 2 is two green shapes combining into another green shape
4/5 x 2/5 is four red shapes, mixing with yellow to yield an orange 8/25
A triple integral in spherical coordinates is dozens of threads of those 4 colors, changing color as it gets integrated across each variable.
It's weird man, but kind of cool.

not German, I did go to a Steiner Waldorf school though

>Waldorf will turn you into a 19th century eccentric aristocrat. If you can't afford this lifestyle, you'll be fucked over for life.
I can confirm this.

I am an eccentric 19th century aristocrat that takes great pride in not working and cultivating his virtues through appreciation of the finer arts.

Were the teachers all really crusty in Germany? Pretty much all of our teachers were either ex-hippies or new age types

That varied quite a bit. In general, there's a tendency of this sort of thing appealing to hippie type of people, but not all of them were actual hippies. Some of them were just esoterically minded people with a certain hippie-esque habitus but no real ideological overlap beyond a few environmentalist views. In my experience they were mostly apolitical. In some areas there's also a certain overlap between right-wing people and Waldorf ideologues, so depending on which Waldorf school you look at you might as well find your history teacher having 'interesting' views about certain subjects.