I mentioned to someone how I think there should be more hands-on learning in schools and he told me to look up Waldorf schools. Very interesting to say the least. Rudolf Steiner had very unique philosophies, some very weird or outright morally questionable, but some that I think were an appropriate reaction to the “thinking in the box” that is often dolled out in school.
The parts I agree with are that kids are taught engagement with crafts (eg, carving), music and creativity, an inquisitive exploration (reminds me of the Socratic approach), and an adaptive progression of subject matter that is based on the students’ individual levels. It reminds me a lot of the origins of the liberal arts being the skills a free person needed to engage the world, which included music and logic/rhetoric.
The parts I don’t really agree with are the pseudo-spirituality, the pseudo-science, and the racist parts of Steiner’s theory. I think I would need to do a thorough investigation of the specific school before I would consider sending my student there, but the philosophy definitely seems to meet some needs of students that are otherwise under-developed in the current school systems.
What are your thoughts?
I went to a Waldorf-Kindergarden and while it was okay mostly (except for some weird stuff like having no black crayons and not being allowed to leave white parts in paintings - or being left-handed, that was fun!) I would never ever recommend it to anyone, solely on the basics that it's basically an ideology not unlike conspiracy-myths/religions. Even if you don't realise it as a pupil I think it's very dangerous - especially in today's ai-fucked, post-truth climate - to grow up / learn in an institution that is basically anti-science (since is based on random shit* some racist dude made up a hundred years ago).
*Can't really remember but there are some weird theories about children's mental development that are super out of date and mean that children aren't allowed to learn stuff they're super interested in because "they're not ready yet". Not a place I would want to sent anyone.