Demurring wasn’t an option when my friend roped me into asked me to help her at her Barefoot Books stand. Though I didn’t get to see much of the festival due to an injury that kept me in the booth, often with my foot propped up, I did get to talk to a lot of people…mostly moms, often of very young children.
Barefoot Books tend to attract parents interested in well…what everyone else is not interested in. One woman asked me if a certain book was popular. Misunderstanding her question, I said, “Yes, that one is one of our best sellers.”
“No”, she said. “I mean, Can you buy it at Barnes and Noble?”
My kind of gal and no, you can’t. This, in her mind (and mine) is a good thing. I think she was looking for something unique. I’m almost always looking for something that’s not overly commercial, nurturing, educational and well written.
This type of book attracts a class of moms who are, not surprisingly, often also interested in Waldorf Education. One mom of an infant announced that she was a “crunchy mom” and was considering a Waldorf preschool. To which I happily replied that we had attended one for two years.
I also shared that we had decided not to pursue Waldorf education because I felt we were “not crunchy enough”
“Oh, I’m REALLY crunchy” she replied blithely.
Well… we watch videos on occasion I told her and watched the look of astonishment cross her face. My crunchy mom, it turned out is a big fan of baby videos.
Hmmm. This encounter and a post over at Anthromama got me thinking about the perception of Waldorf education. Populated by organic food eating, holistic and attachment parenting Moms…Waldorf doesn’t really espouse any of these things. In fact, some of the main tenets of Waldorf schooling are positively anathema to the principles of attachment parenting.
Waldorf education started by and now based on the writings of Rudolph Steiner has morphed from a style of education to a bastion of crunchydom. And…is, perhaps on its way back.
More and more parents are adopting what was once considered a an alternative lifestyle.
Eating organic
Limiting or eliminating media until middle school or beyond
Following Holistic medicine in whole or in part
Going Green
Practicing attachment parenting
Unschooling or homeschooling
The list perhaps goes on. What’s striking is that all of these things don’t necessarily go together. Adopting one or two of these lifestyles doesn’t’ mean that you adopt them all. And so, we parents looking for the perfect school for our children, come to the crushing realization, say around kindergarten age, that…it’s not out there.
Sigh. There is not school where our kids will be with other children of other parents, “just like us”. We’ll have to fight the commercial monster, or put up with unhealthy eating habits or cringe at different discipline styles in most schools. Or, we’ll be on the other end and find ourselves defending our TV watching or attachment parenting lifestyle.
This is perhaps just the way the world works.
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7 comments:
Thanks for the link :)
I always marvel at what it must be like for non-Waldorfy parents who go through the enrollment process at a Waldorf school. No media consumption, even on the weekend? No clothes with characters, no light-up shoes? No computers in or out of the classroom? No intellectual learning in kindergarten?
I would say that many of the parents of Waldorf students follow many of the lifestyle choices you list, like eating organics or using alternative medicine. Those are not part and parcel of Waldorf, but the media ban certainly is.
There are also both more and less crunchy Waldorf schools!
What an interesting post! You are right that there are a whole pile of 'crunchy' things thrown in together, that don't necessarily go together. It takes a lot of confidence to take what you need out of any 'thing' you choose to get into, and to remember the reasons why you are there. At our Steiner playgroup there are lots of mothers breastfeeding toddlers during circle time, and some parents interpret the TV stuff more strictly than others ... right through the whole school. Like Anthromama says, there is huge variation in Waldorf, just like in AP circles or anything else. Thanks for such a thought provoking post.
Oh my gosh, I so relate to this! We espouse healthy eating because that's who we are, and we don't have television because we deliberately gave it up eight years ago (although we do watch the online version of Lost and Grey's Anatomy ;-)). But even though we live this way, I get uncomfortable around people who raise the banner and say it's the way everyone should live. And I get the feeling that the Waldorf crowd, around here anyway, leans in that direction.
My son goes to a Waldorf school, and after reading your post I'm happy to say that it's a very accepting school. Lots of different people doing lots of different things, and for the most part there's very little judgement of others. We're all struggling with our kids watching too much TV and attempting to reduce the amount. The thing I love is that most of us are trying to reduce TV, not give in to it. It's so helpful to have support in this particular struggle.
I like some of the stuff I've heard about Waldorf but not others. The bit about actively discouraging reading by the child until he/she loses his/her baby teeth I definitely object to. I don't believe that dental development is a sign of cognitive development, and if a child is ready to read at 3 (like mine was), then I'm not going to keep her from it for another 3 or 4 years simply because Rudolf Steiner decrees it, KWIM?
I have been reading your blog for a while now and I love it!
I am a very crunchy Montessori teacher, and I totally relate to this post. Although the Montessori and Steiner philosophies go in 2 very different directions, I think that some of the core principles are the same: a deep respect for children and thier individual development, recognizing the importance of nature and natural materials, cultivating a sense of peacefulness and calm in our classrooms, fostering compassion in our children, etc. I know that sometimes people in both camps get a little dogmatic, but I really think that we all have things we could learn from each other.
My school has been getting crunchier lately and is in the process of implementing some very Waldorfy principles: i.e. no junk food at lunch, no commercial characters at school, limiting electronic media at home etc. It should be interesting to see how parents react in the next few months!
:)
Odd.I know so many non-crunchy people who put their kids in waldorf schools. Yet all of the crunchy people I know either unschool, homeschool or send to public school LOL
What's with the eliminating media?
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