<p>I used to be terribly attracted to Waldorf schooling- we had a couple in Seattle, and I loved their materials ( for elementary)
However, when they found out that my daughter was reading ( she had been reading since three) they were<em>agahst</em>
so she ended up in a school that wasn’t so freaked out about kids doing what they were interested in.
We still went to their holiday events though</p>
<p>EK4–you made me laugh. We looked at a Waldorf school years ago, but decided against it when they told my husband (as if it were a big secret) that they forbade the kids to listen to rock ‘n’ roll because it rotted the brain. Little did they know they were talking to a man who LOVES rock!</p>
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<p>heh, heh, – we had a eurythmy teacher who forbade the little ones to kick a soccer ball because “engaging the feet instead of the hands would have negative pedagogical influences” or, worse yet, “kicking a ball was a metaphor for attacking the astral body.” Poor guy finally lost it and tried to strangle one of our more annoying seventh-graders, got hauled off in a not-entirely-metaphorical straight-jacket.</p>
<p>I’ve seen some nut cases in the public system too. More, perhaps. </p>
<p>Actually, the teachers you talked to may have conveyed their message in Waldorf-speak, which can be hard to decipher. Chances are they weren’t so much opposed to rock music as to amplified/electronic music – music of all sorts was much encouraged in our Waldorf school, but it had to be live and preferably acoustic. They actually made a pretty good developmentally-appropriate argument for surrounding the youngest kids with “natural” sounds (voice, recorder, harp, guitar, piano, stringed instruments were always in the air) but discouraging amplified music and tv/radio/recorded music. They start by teaching rhythm and pentatonic-scale instruments so every sound the little kids make is music, and work upwards from there. Their music director is a very cool PhD musicologist who also teaches rock history at a UC.</p>
<p>My two Waldorf kids learned violin and cello, from classical to Led Zeppelin. D sings in a cappella choir, plays in the orchestra at college, loves (almost) all kinds of music. In her spare time she draws, paints, dances, and does sodoku (she’s a math/physics major). So don’t believe everything you hear about Waldorf.</p>
<p>oops … strayed from the thread … sorry … but the admittedly weak connection here is that Waldorf schools worldwide teach “main lesson” in blocks.</p>
<p>I think elementary schools often do teach things more “holistically”
My daughters class combined history with writing and english, even science and math. But it was a different approach, and what you can do with a very small class size is different than in high school where public schools have 32 in classes here</p>