Waldorf and Giftedness, any advice appreciated (UPDATE, SORT OF, POST 54)

[fourisenough]

With any child, I think it is always best to play to their strengths (but especially so for a gifted child who has some deficits, relatively speaking). Sounds like you can do that at home much more so than at the Waldorf school, or probably any school for that matter. Hope your little guy is happier with the new situation!

[Pen]

ty, reading now

 

eta: okay stopped reading, blood boiling

 

 

 

I want to add that while a lot of what goes on turns out to be about par for the course from one Waldorf to another, not an aberration, one of those links said that all big kids at their Waldorf were bullies, as if that were true for all Waldorfs. That was Not true IME at ours. So I don't think you'd need to worry that your dd would automatically become one.

 

There were some classes with major bullying problems. But there were also 'nice" classes, usually I think related to having a teacher who helped them to be so. Some of the kids were great with being big buddies to the little kids, and treated each other really well. I think teachers were significant because one teacher was on second time through the 8 year cycle and had had both classes with terrible bullying. Another was second time through with a really nice class, and supposed to have had a really nice class the first time.  They would perhaps have felt that it was karma that the teachers got the classes they got, but I think it was largely skill or lack of skill on the teacher's part in managing the class so that there would not be bullying--and in a way that didn't offend the Waldorf pedagogy. And also I had been impressed when we first visited with a kindy teacher teaching the kids some good conflict resolution skills--not realizing till some time later that that was unusual, and that she might even have been reprimanded for it, had more senior and powerful teachers known.

 

In our Waldorf, though, I did notice that many, but certainly not all, of the kids seemed to develop a certain amount of what I'd call a very bratty and self-centered attitude--more than I've seen at a lot of other schools. I think maybe this came at least in part from so much being done for them, constant special festivals that the parents bend over backwards to make special...everything... food, too-too decorations, yada, yada, big fancy birthday parties, extra curriculars and playdates to the max. The kids should have been doing more for themselves, and more for others, IMO, like service projects perhaps, and more around the home, instead of an idea that it was the parents' job to provide a perfect "Waldorf environment" that mimicked the school. Possibly a charter Waldorf would have less of that.

 

 

[Sk8ermaiden]

I've read a lot about Waldorf schools and the philosophy, and yes it does appear that bullying is an underlying theme that is not discouraged. 

 

I also know a number of adults who went through waldorf schools, and parents of children who were in them for some period of time. All of them who transferred to other public or private schools were horrifically behind. I know two who were in Waldof schools from K-9/10 grade and when they entered high school they were being remediated at an elementary level. I think people fall in love with the wooden toys and the art and ample outside time and sometimes miss the flaws. 

 

When I found out that teachers were told to tell children that electricity was actual, literal *magic*, I  fell down the rabbit hole of anthrosophy.