Hacker News Reader

Comment by kwantam | Hacker News Reader

My then-girlfriend and I did some work to help start a Waldorf school in western Massachusetts, so I've had a bit of direct experience with Waldorf schools despite not having attended one, and I agree with most of your assessment: the focus on creativity / learning to teach yourself is a huge departure from the traditional approach, "here is how we solve this kind of problem, now practice on these other, nearly identical problems."

One problem I noticed with the particular school we were helping to start was that the majority of the parents were technophobic to the point of hysteria: they literally asked me not to bring my laptop to meetings. As far as I can tell, this isn't a necessary feature of such schools. The general lesson, for me, is that in settings like this (e.g., an alternative educational facility bootstrapped by a small community) the school can take on the pathologies of the community, with potentially undesirable results.

View on HN

Actually that isn't unique to the school you worked at, it's a philosophical feature of the education system. I wasn't allowed to use a computer until I was perhaps 11 years old, and then only sparingly. I don't think it affected my later abilities, and I was incredibly excited once I got the chance to code at home!

I think this came about partly as an extension of Steiner's views on television as something that stunts imagination and creativity. The first 7 years of the education have a very strong focus on mental imagery, and there is probably a belief that viewing concrete depictions of concepts on a computer is harmful.

I happen to believe that a computer can allow increased exploration of the imagination when used for creative tasks, but in the 90's schools were mostly using them for looking at Encarta and so on. That's exactly what Steiner schools want to avoid for their younger children.

"I think this came about partly as an extension of Steiner's views on television as something that stunts imagination and creativity."

I wasn't aware Rudolph Steiner had any views on television, since he died in 1925, before even the earliest television sets were commercially available.

It's certainly true though that Steiner schools tend to be very down on TV, and I have to feel that if the alternative is some kind of creative or social or engaged-in-the-real-world activity then the alternative is almost certainly better.

Can confirm technophobia in the New Zealand Steiner system too. I believe things have improved somewhat, but TV was definitely the Antichrist.

As a counter-point, using computers was an essential part of my education when I attended a Montessori school. I agree with your conclusion though; schools like this might easily adopt the "pathologies of the community".

As an aside, I think the biggest benefits I received from attending Montessori were independence and self-motivation-- I was never forced to learned something, I had to want to learn it first and pursue it myself.

At my kids' Montessori school they begin using computers in 4th grade and are required to own one in 7th-8th grade, so my experience is the same as yours. However, I wouldn't call it a "counterpoint" since Waldorf and Montessori are different.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com