Comment by borkt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by borkt | Hacker News Reader

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I'd have to say whatever the waldorf schools are doing is working. My father-in-law's neighbor is an education PhD and her son has been in waldorf schools from the start. He is the most intelligent, wise, and confident kid I have possibly ever met, and he takes care of a wide range of animals at home (horses, chickens, alpaca, pig). He always seems fulfilled and is always excited to talk about what he is learning in school.

His mom who was previously writing and editing textbooks took a job at a public school in a lower income area of the county. She couldn't stay for even a year as she was so upset and dissapointed with the methodology they were using, heavily relying on screens and allowing kids to get away with everything.

I know that I will definitely do everything I can if I have children to get them into the same school.

Have you considered that the kind of parents that raise such children re the kind of kids to put them into waldorf schools, not that waldorf schools do something special.

(waldorf kid here) while that is an obvious confound, the waldorf pedagogy strong encourages children not be exposed to any screen time at all. It goes further: even at the kindergarten level, all toys and costumes are natural materials, you won't find a single piece of plastic among items intended for a child's use. Even the crayons are made of beeswax.

> It goes further: even at the kindergarten level, all toys and costumes are natural materials, you won't find a single piece of plastic among items intended for a child's use. Even the crayons are made of beeswax.

I can't possibly imagine the purpose for these restrictions.

Waldorf is all about fostering imagination, so they try to limit anything that comes with a pre-defined set of ideas that tell you how to interact with it. A plastic firetruck already has an identity; an unfinished wood truck can be anything.

> I can't possibly imagine the purpose for these restrictions.

Satisfying parents who reflexively think "natural" == "good"

Are they still making you memorize colors for days of the week? My ex gf tried to go out of a Waldorf program into engineering at CU Boulder and had no clue how to use a computer.

No doubt, it's absolutely soaked in weird Christian Theosophy. More likely to pick Montessori for my own youngins, wanted to provide some accurate info.

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