The Homeschool Journey

Report from Informed Family Life Conference Boulder CO

I just got back from Rahima Baldwin's "Whole Family, Whole Parent" conference sponsored by her organization, Informed Family Life. What a great weekend it was!

 

I had the privilege of being one of four keynote speakers. The three people preceding me spoke on fascinating subjects (please go to www.waldorfinthehome.org for more information about the conference and to purchase cd's of these talks), mainly to do with supporting and nurturing the growth and potential of modern children. At first I was daunted by the prospect of having to follow these amazing speakers (including Eugene Schwartz who is just terrific) but then realized I was actually in a wonderful position. My subject was the art of homemaking - and I soon realized that I could bring many themes from their talks into mine as I put forward the suggestion that the home is the best place to truly nurture and care for each family member. So that was really exciting. It felt wonderful to be able to bring together the conference in that way through my talk.

 

I also gave three workshops - one on being at home with under 7's, another on Waldorf and unschooling and a third on language arts. Each was very enjoyable and it was gratifying to see people who hadn't signed up for the latter workshops returning for more and crowding into the room! These talks were not recorded but I have audio downloads available from my web site www.christopherushomeschool.org on the first two topics. There are also a number of blog entries here on language arts - as well as homemaking - which people might like to read!

 

So the workshops and the keynotes were a joy to present. And, even better, it was lovely to connect and reconnect with so many people! There were familiar faces from other conferences, either my own or from Boulder in the past. And there were several people that I knew only as voices from telephone consultations or as e-mail names on my yahoo group! That was really fun to meet them and to see how wrong my mental images of what they looked like were! Another highlight was going out on the Friday evening into the Rocky Mountains with Barbara Dewey - she and I had spoken about doing this for several years and we finally got to do it. We drove an hour out into those beautiful mountains and stuffed ourselves silly at a amazing German restaurant. Sauerbraten - yum! She and I spent a lot of time together during the conference. She is a wonderful person, with great warmth and humor. I intend to write a review of her "Geometry with 6th Graders" booklet here at some point - might as well give it a little plug now. It is a very good resource for a subject which is often hard for parents to fathom.

 

I believe the Conference was a success - Rahima seemed pleased by the numbers and by the enthusiasm of the participants and presenters. There were a few grumbles about food shortages on the Saturday but all in all, people did seem pleased by the Conference as a whole. An ecological waste company offered its resources to the conference with the aim of making it a zero waste event. I don't know if this was successful, but it certainly was a great goal to shoot for.

 

 

Defending Oak Meadow

(here is a post from my yahoo group, Waldorf At Home which I wrote about Oak Meadow)

 

I think there is much to recommend OM and I also have found useful information in reading some of their materials - as I have found useful information from the likes of Charlotte Mason, John Holt and Maria Montessori.

 

But being holistic and respecting the child, while being characteristic of Waldorf are not solely hallmarks of Waldorf - the same characteristics could be said to be hallmarks of the educational philosophies founded by the people I mention above. But Montessori, CM and unschooling, whilst all sharing a few characteristics with Waldorf are, at essence, planets away. And this is not (necessarily!! - grin!) a value judgment - it is a statement of fact in terms of the grounding of these educational approaches and their very different foundational cores.

Likewise, OM, although founded by Waldorf teachers - and so having a few small things in common with Waldorf - is not, at essence, Waldorf.  And despite some people's reluctance to define Waldorf out of fear of perhaps sounding dogmatic, it is entirely possible to  say "what is Waldorf"! One can easily identify things about Waldorf pedagogy which are clearly discernible and which do not feature in Oak Meadow.

Again - this does not mean that by using OM someone forever loses any karmic Waldorf cred they might have ever had or might ever earn in future!! I , for one, have used all sorts of things - and adapted them as I see fit. One could imagine a model Waldorf homeschooler (you all do realize I'm being playful here I hope!!) who uses no Waldorf curric of any shape or kind! She might be able, out of her own relationship to anthroposophy and to Waldorf to be able to create a wonderful Waldorf homeschool for her children! So it's not the materials themselves, necessarily, which determine whether one is really working deeply - or at all - with Waldorf.  In all my publications I repeatedly stress where I think things from Waldorf might or might not be easily adapted at home and give suggestions for how one might do that.  And I often suggest materials that are not Waldorf in the slightest.  Further, I also list OM as a possible resource for people to use so that they can truly create the homeschool they want.

So for me, this is not a matter of purity - it is a matter of clarity. For instance: OM  use form drawing, but do not put it into a proper context (which could only be done with a clear explanation of Waldorf pedagogy). One is therefore left with a very shallow and misleading relationship to this therapeutic art. Again, in the kindergarten book there is a paragraph where Steiner is actually mentioned - but misleadingly so, leaving one with the impression that he advocated teaching letters in kindergarten!So there are these fragments of Waldorf  - but no summary of their relationship to Waldorf is printed in the books or in their catalogue so parents who are looking for Waldorf buy OM thinking they have found it. This is what I have a problem with. If parents buy and use OM because they like it, because it's right for them - and know that it's not Waldorf but that's fine with them - then that's wonderful!

So for me the point is not "Is OM a holistic curric?" or not - it clearly, in its own way, is. And that's fine. But it has this unclear relationship to Waldorf which is not explained - and although one might be able to find articles like the one posted on their web site which give something of their background, there is no clarity about this either in their catalog or in the books themselves - or at least not the many volumes from the grades which I have looked at. And for me the problem is that parents are left thinking that OM is a Waldorf curriculum when it is clearly not.

 

Lastly, the fact that Oak Meadow has recently cheerfully embraced an on-line format means that they have more clearly broken whatever tenuous links that have had with Waldorf.  I can't see how anyone could say that they are "doing Waldorf" and use an on-line curriculum - even with high school students! I would, of course, like to give OM the benefit of the doubt and hope that the materials on the computer are for the parents, not for the students. I am interested in hearing people's experience of this.

 

 

The Well Trained Mind and Waldorf

(here is another old post of mine from my yahoo group, Waldorf at Home. This one comes from a thread about Waldorf and classical education. I would like to call it "so-called classical education" - see my quote at the end of this entry!)

 

While not wishing to be offensive here, I am amazed that anyone who has delved into Waldorf and Classical (by which I mean Well Trained Mind approach - there are also other approaches called Classical ) could find anything in common between the two ways of educating children other than the fact that they do indeed work with children!  I should think the title to Bauer's book gives a good clue as to how different it is from Waldorf - Waldorf is anathema to anything having to do with "training" of a mind! I have looked in Susan Wise Bauer's work extensively - articles she and her daughter have written plus the Well Trained Mind plus their language arts book - they are as different from Waldorf as one could get! I was so appalled by the mechanistic approach WTM takes to language arts that it actually inspired me to write my own language arts book!

 

What on earth have they in common? WTM teaches academics to kindergarteners, does not teach via art, does not teach via the body, does not explicitly work from a spiritual perspective, has a totally different view of the developing child and human being.... Its methodology is organized according to beliefs about the different stages a child goes through - but these stages and the implications of them are as different from those in Waldorf as one could get! In Waldorf the curriculum is crafted according to developmental changes in the child - why Old Testament  stories are given in third grade, why physics in 6th, why Parzival in 11th arise out of what is happening on a physical, soul, and intellectual level in the child.

I'll give some examples - Page 67 (WTM) "Remember, you want the child to read quickly, easily, early. Many children are ready to learn long before they have the muscular coordination to write. Why delay reading until the muscles of the hand and eye catch up?" Why indeed.

Page 79 "Spelling is the first step in writing. Before you can put a word on paper, you have to know what letters to use". Diametrically opposite to the Waldorf approach which is not merely "whole word" (mainly) in orientation - but whole sense of the sentence, paragraph etc.

Page 85 "try to give the child simplified versions of the original literature that he'll be reading in the higher grades..." In Waldorf one would never water down literature - either you read it to the child in confidence that the power of what you are reading will speak on some level to the child or you wait until s/he is capable on his own to read the work.

Page 235 "A classical approach first explains the properties of brick, wood,concrete, plaster, steel; then teaches the prospective builder to read a plan; and only then sets him on the task of house building". Classical goes from part to whole - it is absolutely intrinsic to Waldorf that one goes from whole to part.

I could go  on.... and I have no wish to embarrass anyone or poo-poo anyone's choices - but let's be really clear. Classical and Waldorf go together like oil and water! Which doesn't mean one can't take from wherever one wants when creating one's own homeschool. But let's be really clear on the foundational basics of the methods of education being discussed - they are about as far apart as one could get! Their very orientation, their very ideas as what a child is and how he learns and what and how he should learn are poles apart.

 

Here is a quote from author Barry Sanders which I use in my language arts book, Living Language. This quote tells me that those modern people who claim to base their educational methodology on what was does in Greece during the Classical period have missed a rather fundamental component to the Ancient Greek ideas on education:

 

The Ancient Greeks called education mousike, Modern English "music", because they danced and clapped and sang out loud their mathematics and poetry and rhetorical exercises. Aristotle makes no distinction between rhythm and education, between motion and emotion. In both cases, one is "moved".

Form Drawing

(the following are two posts from our yahoo group, Waldorf At Home on the topic of form drawing).

 

How to explain..... form drawing is like water, it is like the movement of plants as they grow, it is like the forms snowflakes make.... Form drawing is about a moment of movement caught on a page. It is about concentration , perseverance, control of the will, grace and purposefulness.

 

Form drawing is a therapeutic art practiced in all Waldorf schools usually from first through 4th grade (after that geometric drawing somewhat takes its place).  It is not worked with in kindergaten because it is too "waking up" - it calls for a mindfulness that kindergarteners, who are still in the state of consciousness that keeps them "at one" with the world should not be asked to have. In first grade it usually precedes writing (which precedes reading) not so much because it improves handwriting (which is a nice by-product and not the aim of form drawing) but because it calls up the inner discipline the child needs to work beautifully and skilfully within the confines of a page. It helps a child learn about boundaries - and about many other things as well.

 

When one does form drawing one needs to be aware of one's surroundings, think ahead where one is going with a form, control what one's crayon or pencil is doing, and relax into the movement of the form. It is a profoundly healing art. Anyone can do form drawing and  one should start at the beginning. So an older child or an adult should really start  with the first forms and progress through them. I explain all this in my form drawing book and lay out many guidelines, tips and ideas for how to proceed. Please go to the Bookstore page of the Christopherus web site to look at my book to get an idea of what's in there. On the "Homeschooler's Work" page on my web site there are also several lovely examples of form drawings done by homeschooled children.

 

(In another post, a list member asked about doing form drawing with her third grader, who was resistent to the idea of form drawing).

 

In my work I often suggest to people that they work "homeopathically" with children, starting with what is present and trying to ennoble it - not opposing it with something different.So why don't you and your daughter spend some time watching water move or leaves fall - and draw what you and she see. Let her experiment with  how nature does form drawing - currents, ripples, streams etc. Do non directed form drawing for a while, that which is called for by nature. Let the power of your child's observation - and her desire to do what is true and beautiful, find expression in a way that takes it out of the potential head-to-head conflict with you. Work sideways (there's mantra number three for Christopherus, closely following "not school at home" and "homeschooling is about family"!). Don't get into her stuff or into an unnecessary conflict.

Then let form drawing rest for a while. Do none for a time. When you judge the time is right,  spend some time talking about the forms in nature that you two drew and then perhaps let her look through your form drawing book for a for a form that reminds her of the water (or leaves). Let her copy it - and if she's still being a tricky customer, let her copy it directly out of the book - otherwise, I'd suggest you do it in the usual way with you drawing it large on the board and then her copying. Maybe recite a verse about water or leaves while she works - (though some children would prefer not to have a verse, would prefer to remain in the memory of what they experienced in nature) let her work with it in her own way. This might just help break any stalemate that could be forming over this issue between you two. And, assuming all goes well (??!!!) you can see what to do next - "Here's a more complicated form - let's try this".