Volume II Issue 17
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Jennie Abbott
Robin Brooks
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by Jennie Abbott
Beyond the well-rounded "Renaissance man," Waldorf education seeks to develop
the whold child: body, mind, and spirit. Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the figurehead of
Waldorf and the father of Anthroposophy (the study of human beings), saw the "new
school for a new society" as a means to developing a unifying vision of society as a
whole. As with the curriculum itself, the school community was developed holistically.
"‘To achieve impact we have to reach down into the deeper layers of
consciousness, the world of feeling and will.’ At this central point Steiner placed
imagination and, as the key to unlock this imagination, artistic talent. Good education,
in the sense of total education, he observed, restores the balance between thinking,
willing, and feeling, thus healing the social fabric."1
While many lessons are myth and, later, abstract thought, much of what Waldorf students
learn is in the context of the real world, and they contribute to the school community
through work outdoors on the school grounds, paintings and hand crafts displayed in the
school, and performances of music, movement, and drama. A distinctive feature of the
structure of the Waldorf curriculum is the block system of concentrating study on a
certain subject for several weeks, in depth, rather than fragmenting a topic over a long
period of time in small, disconnected chunks.
From the first day a child starts in a Waldorf school, the class teacher begins to
analyze the student and to challenge her in directions she is ready to explore and to
nurture her to develop in new dimensions. Children of all ages are encouraged to play as
well as work, to use their bodies as well as their minds. Various forms of art provide
Waldorf students with a creative outlet and a means of using their imaginations.
The body, mind and spirit are key. I will address these three concepts in discussing
the faculty, students and social action (body) of the school,
the classes and theory of study and curriculum (mind), and the
imagination and the goals of the education (spirit).
BODY
In Waldorf schools the faculty not only teach the students, but run the school. There
is no principal or superintendent. They meet on a regular basis and have various
committees for specific tasks, such as deciding how to apply Steiner’s theories to
modern-day social dilemmas, changes in the curriculum, extracurricular activities, or
faculty assignments. The weekly meetings allow teachers to discuss issues and specific
cases and to learn from each other both as teachers and as students of Anthroposophy.
Consensus is a difficult method and requires absolute dedication; limited to the faculty,
Waldorf schools have made it work. In Theodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential
Schools, consensus of the entire school, including teachers, administrators, and parents,
has proven ineffective because of resistance to "large-scale programmatic
change,"2 and the size of the group seeking consensus.
Founding teachers and other community members developed Waldorf education together with
Steiner. They designed the original, foundation curriculum and lesson plans, and with
Steiner’s guidance, they developed general guidelines which followed a "clear
pedagogy," which the teachers decided upon and held weekly meetings to discuss and
refine.3
There is no bureaucracy and no central board for the Waldorf schools around the world,
each school is different to some degree, but is the same because they are all based on
Steiner’s philosophy. From the beginning, Waldorf schools have been able to maintain
their autonomy by being free of government intervention.4
The students, of course, are the body of any educational institution. As a Waldorf
school student K-12, I profited from the conscious nurturing of all my teachers. What I
value most from my childhood schooling is the development of a love of learning. Maybe I
would have that love even without a Waldorf school education, but based on stories I have
heard of the strictness of public school structure, I doubt it. I don’t test well, I
think that is by nature and not due to an education which offered other methods of
measuring what I learned and evaluating my skills and knowledge. I also feel that being in
a Waldorf school I was able to study a breadth of subjects I might not have had the chance
to explore in the local public school. There I might have been pushed into a level of
learning I was not yet ready for or held back from expanding the limits of my ability and
creativity.
In my experience, the social action of the Waldorf school is concentrated on the local
community of the school. At Green Meadow the whole school (to various extents) was
involved in the care of the elderly and mentally challenged, participated in the cultural
and horticultural activities of the community, and cared for the children not in school.
In high school, beyond the protected, figurative gates of the school, we did community
service activities such as volunteering at an unwed mother’s home or as companions
for a few hours to elderly people living on their own in a nearby housing complex.
On a larger scale, the social action of Waldorf is the schools themselves. There are
many Waldorf schools around the US that start with Kindergarten or elementary school
classes, but due to financial or logistical resource limitations, or to community interest
and numbers of students in the school, growing into high school is a challenge. Teachers
from established schools often go to developing schools to help them move forward, and in
this way also share what they have learned and promote consistency. In high school one of
my class advisors went to Colorado for a year to help get the Denver high school off the
ground. There are also many activists trying to make Waldorf schools accessible through
public school voucher programs, or integrating Waldorf methodology into public school
classrooms or private child-care programs. Abbie is the director of The Child Care Center
in White Plains, NY and has been steadily trying to encourage her teachers to incorporate
certain Waldorf ideas into their interaction with the children, as well as to have more
wooden and cloth toys for the children--leaving much more to their imaginations than
detailed plastic ones and giving them the freedom to explore their creativity by not
having the figurative lines inside which to color.
MIND
The Waldorf curriculum was designed, in 1919, with utmost care by teachers and other
Anthroposophists in Stuttgart, Germany. They took into consideration the biological,
intellectual, and spiritual development of the child. The subjects taught at each level
reflect what the child is ready to learn or the challenges appropriate at that stage of
the child’s development. For example, students create intricate toys in woodworking
class in seventh grade to advance their dexterity, or in sixth grade make a wooden egg
that demands regular, methodical attention and discipline, and encourages students to
lengthen their attention spans in deliberate preparation for more complex and in-depth
exploration of future academic subjects.
In high school, blocks included subjects such as zoology, Russian literature, physics,
art history, chemistry and a class play where each person in the class (at Green Meadow
approximately 20 students) played a role and participated in the preparation and
back-stage work. My senior year zoology block is exemplary of the Waldorf ideal of
applying study to our experience of the world around us: We spent the first week on Hermit
Island, in Maine, camping near the beach where we could examine some primitive organisms
in their natural habitat. Then we continued our studies back in the classroom, continuing
on to more complex organisms.
Another important feature of the Waldorf method is that from first through eighth grade
each class has one primary teacher who teaches the basic subjects during the main lesson.
Main lesson is the first class period of each day, lasting about two hours, because that
time of the morning is when the mind is most alert and able to absorb and process new
information. The rest of the day is broken up into 50-minute periods for subjects such as
language, physical education and movement, handwork, reading, and morning and lunch
recesses.
Having one teacher for most subjects allows the students to grow accustomed to a
certain teaching style and to have stability in that routine. The teacher also develops an
understanding of the whole child--ow the child learns, what are his or her strengths and
weaknesses in the different subjects, how different children interact and how they grow
and change over time. Waldorf schools deliberately foster a safe and dependable
environment where children can take risks. As Ruth Simmons, president of Smith College,
wrote, "school was time set aside every day for learning without the distraction of
other responsibilities."5
As a Waldorf student, I didn’t know why I learned what I did at the time and with
the teaching methods used. It is not necessary to know the theory behind the structure
until a person has developed the ability to theorize and purposely seeks out the
"why?" behind the curriculum structure. "Anthroposophy itself is not taught
to the children, since it is a highly complex and demanding esoteric philosophy."6 Even now I do not know why I learned certain subjects in the way I did,
but I know that they were effective in developing skills and creativity I value in myself.
SPIRIT
I could not address the philosophy behind Waldorf education without mentioning the
strong suggestion that Waldorf students not be exposed to television. Because TV is not a
part of my daily life (still), it is easy for me to forget. Yet it is extremely important
in the context of the modern and extremely technology-oriented Western world in which we
live. One story I love to tell is that when my sister and I were very young my mother
tried to get us to watch Sesame Street and one day had the television on the table in the
kitchen. But it turned out that my mother watched the show, and my sister and I paid no
attention but instead played happily with our finger paints. TV is discouraged in Waldorf
schools for several reasons: it takes away from a child’s imagination by showing too
much; it hinders the development of a long attention span; often it shows children
unnecessary and inappropriate violence; it is highly commercial, focusing too much on
material items and causing an imbalance with the immaterial: intellect, emotion, soul.
Frankly, I have too much else I want to do, I don’t have time to watch TV.
I must also admit that Waldorf education is not for everyone. Some children need more
or less structure, some families are too attached to the material world (and their
televisions) to commit to the Waldorf doctrine, and some Waldorf teachers or schools are
not ready for particular students (in particular I mean that a class teacher might clash
in personality with a child who is the right age to begin school with that teacher).
Waldorf education is also not the only alternative to public schools. I am happy to
discuss my positive experience in a Waldorf school because I think that parents (and
children) should consider many possibilities before selecting a school; early education in
particular is so important to the development of a child.
The sign by the driveway to my school said "Education towards freedom;" a
bumper sticker I saw in Berkeley read "Waldorf: Education from the inside out."
The goals of Waldorf education are to develop the whole person, and that whole person then
can go out and learn first hand from life, further study, and exploration. With a solid
foundation of knowledge gained over years of study, attention and challenges met, an
active imagination to envision what could be, and a strong sense of self, a Waldorf
student is well prepared to face the world beyond the protection of the school and
community and to effect change on what she or he finds there.
1.
Oberman, Ida, "The Mystery of Waldorf: A
turn-of-the-century German experiment on Today’s American Soil," presented at
the American Education Research Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, March 1997, p. 4.
2. Cohen, Rosetta Marantz, "The Rhetoric of Reform," Smith
College Alumnae Quarterly, Fall 1996, p. 17.
3. Oberman, p. 9.
4. Oberman, p. 6-7.
5. Simmons, Ruth, "Children + Teachers = Learning," Smith
College Alumnae Quarterly, Fall 1996, p. 10.
6. Zwart, Alexander, Informing new parents about Waldorf and
Anthroposophy, from the Internet, September 1997.
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by Ima Teacher (an avid IC reader)
Other Irwin Courterly readers can only imagine how thrilled I, a lowly high school
teacher, was when I learned that my favorite newsletter was seeking informative articles
on a subject about which I have infinite knowledge, or at least a lot more experience than
I really like to admit. Education is certainly a subject that everyone--not just those of
us sort of engaged in it--ought to be interested in, so I am convinced that the article IC
readers are currently wading through (that would be this one, I hope) will prove as
interesting to some of them as it is to me.
Education, as usual, is in a state of flux right now. Another way of stating this (the
way educators would state it) is that we (those of us somewhat in the field--in other
words, secondary school teachers rather than those at the college level) are in the midst
of a major paradign shift. Now what this shift is moving away from it not clear, although
I sort of think it is Ebonics. But what it is moving tward is something that was made
perfectly clear to me just this week. The most important thing in education today appears
to be saving the taxpayers money.
My awareness of the new paradigm happened in a rather abrupt way. I accidentally
noticed on my my contract that someone had forgotten that although I teach journalism to
45 students at once and produce something like a newspaper for the school (it is true that
the IC is longer, more interesting, and has fewer typos, but then the editors of this
publication do not have to deal with a roomful of 15 year olds and equipment older than
their grandparents), the journalism class is really two classes (levels I and II to be
exact) and I am supposed to receive an additional $50 a month because I am offering a two
for one (plus $50) bargain to whoever pays me. This is actually stated in the union
contract.
But my principal saw this in a different way. He told me in a very mean and growly
voice that this class is not hard to teach and it would be embarrassing for him to ask for
my extra $50, so I should forget about getting it. Well, my own paradigm shifted slightly
in my seat at that point, and I adopted my own growly voice, one that I didn't even know I
possessed. The ensuing fight, IC readers will be glad to hear, did net me the
aforementioned $50, but at what cost?
I am sad to state that the cost is not only to me, a single saddened teacher of
important skills for the futures of many budding journalists who some day may go on to
publish newsletters similar to the one you and other fortunate IC subscribers are
currently perusing, but to everyone of you as well and even to people that as of yet are
unable to read the publications yet to be (that would be infants, small children, and the
unborn.) For the cost of this paradigm shift is more than simply money (much of which my
own principal is certainly trying to save, but for what purpose? I'm guessing the purpose
is as shifty as he is). The cost is in human potential, the one commodity that should
become the next shifty paradigm for all the shifty administrators everywhere. I hope IC
readers will join me in mentioning this important fact to everyone whose influence might
actually influence someone with influence. This is our chance to make a real difference!
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"From the earliest reform onward, school reform traditionally has been
conceptualized and initiated by outsiders, by university theorists, by researchers, by
politicians and administrators at the district or state level. Teachers almost never have
been involved in decisions about reform, and they certainly have never set the agenda for
change. Having had no direct input into the programs and policies that are imposed on
them, it is no wonder that teachers historically have resisted reform, or gone through the
motions half-heartedly and cynically--a sure recipe for the failure of any
innovation."
--Rosetta Marantz Cohen, The Rhetoric of Reform
by I. M. Jaded
[Author’s note: As a first-time contributor to the Irwin Courterly, I am excited
to be a part of this well-received journal. Hence, let the author’s anxiety and
trepidation factor into your estimation of the following. Also, the author would like to
give thanks to the editors for their encouragement and general companionship to a
newly-arrived Bay Area immigrant.]
Nothing is as fundamental to the "American Dream" as access to public
education. Besides national politics, education is a topic on which everyone can chip in
her two cents:
- "We must move towards national standards."
- "Charter schools are the hope for urban education."
- "The only way to attract and keep good teachers is to decrease class size."
- "If we lengthen the school year, we can track student progress more
effectively."
These statements are heard as often as cries for curtailing lobbying and campaign
finance reform. Of course, it’s always easier to point out flaws in a system rather
than strengths. But when the flaws are costing you our nation’s children, you
don’t have to abide by the dictum, "If you don’t have anything nice to
say…"
Apparently, I have been the product of a "good education." Having immigrated
to this country at age three, barely speaking Korean, I was able to learn English and do
well enough in my studies to enroll at one of the country’s finest learning
institutions. I could be a veritable poster-boy for the American Dream. (However, like any
other poster-child, I have too many skeletons willing and waiting in my closet.) Armed
with these experiences I took a position researching changing urban initiatives in
Baltimore City, for a local foundation, working for a man that I had gotten to know
intimately through a friendship with his children and vacations and work. I mention this
because working relationships are sometimes as important as the actual work itself. But I
digress.
As I began research on the Baltimore City Public School System, I quickly realized that
perspective was the most crucial component of analysis. So many statistics and opinions to
comprehend and relate. In short, the more "educated" I became, the more confuse
I got. I was inundated with countless reports about "Management Reform,"
"Budgeting Discrepancies," "Creating a Network of Enterprise Schools,"
and many more. The facts alone were dismal enough: only 33% of students graduated 4 years
after entering the 9th grade, over 85% of children were living in poverty, approximately a
third of children ages 16-19 not in school, the alarming rate of violent juvenile crime
arrests, and the list goes on and on. Of course, you don’t have to read a fact book
to learn the misery. Just take a drive to a public school in downtown Baltimore. What sort
of impression do you walk away from when you visit a high school with a student body of
over a 2900 that had no water fountains, no nurse or health aide and where teachers locked
themselves inside classrooms? Where teachers advised you not to go down certain stairwells
because of the daily drug distributions? Scenes like this are common, and the damn shame
of it all is that those in charge can still collect their salaries and go home to their
suburban homes while every day a child is beaten, killed, intimidated, within the halls of
the most egalitarian of our society’s conventions. (For further reading, I highly
recommend Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol and Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun
by Geoffrey Canada, for starters.)
The purpose of stating these facts is to ask the question: "Where do you
start?" It’s comparable to a boat that is sinking from twenty different leaks.
You can always plug up a few holes, but it won’t keep the boat from sinking. So who
are the "leak-pluggers?" Parents, think tanks, foundations, politicians,
corporations, teacher’s unions, the government, and the list goes on. How do you
carve up solutions among those disparate groups? In assimilating my afterthoughts, the
least amount of energy is spent in building coalitions and the greatest amount on creating
ownership. When a local civic group or business wishes to aid a failing school, they
don’t invest in an existing program but want to create their own, staffed with their
employees with a curriculum of their choosing. From a business standpoint, companies feel
that beneficial change can occur in what they consider a "failed system." From
the school’s perspective, companies largely ignore the strengths of a school system
and prefer to start their own program, often meaning that school staff must support an
untested program. These are generalizations of course, but have been substantiated as I
became educated about education. This article was not meant to be a diatribe against
different educational groups, to lay blame or point fingers, but just a general lament
about the high price for confusion in public education today. Everyone knows what the cost
is to let this system run itself down. Just no one is willing to stand and pick up the
tab.
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by Victoria Shin
Oh, what do I think about standardized tests? I think they are a necessary evil. A
common denominator is necessary when there is competition between people with disparate
backgrounds. For instance, although Smith is highly respected, if I am up against someone
from Harvard with the same GPA as I have--everything else being equal--I have little doubt
that that person would be selected to a grad school before me. However, with a test like
the GRE, I have a chance to surpass the Harvard grad because it is the closest thing to a
level playing field. No, I don't think SAT's and GRE's reflect intelligence, especially
since you can prepare for them. I do think that on some level, however, they measure
potential for success in academics. Now, let me qualify my statement. What I mean is that
someone who earnestly takes the GRE and receives a composite score of 1500 (three
subjects, 800 points max. in each) will almost undoubtedly be less capable of doing the
kind of work that someone who scores, say, 2100. Acumen and critical thinking habits
developed over a lifetime are necessary to do well on the test. The rest of the
application shows how dedicated and serious you are.
I will venture to say that I do not believe that someone who graduated from Hunter
College with a 3.9 should be considered equally with me, barring everything else. One
could ask why the school should matter. Graduate school admissions is always a sensitive
area because it seems to reflect a person's worth (though I do not believe this to be the
case). The fact is that graduate admissions cannot possibly take the time to account for
the entire person. They have to base their decision on a more narrow set of criteria
because that is the only way they can compare hundreds of applicants. It might seem
unfair, but if you consider job applicants you will find that there are as many points of
objection in those processes as with academic procedures. As I said, they are a necessary
evil. Standardized tests are desirable on some level, but repulsive on others. What do you
think about it? It's a rather convoluted topic, isn't it?
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by Leta Herman
B.C. (Before Child) I used to confuse Montessori and Waldorf. All I knew about them was
that they were private schools, one of which was started by some woman in Italy--a school
for mentally disabled or children with learning disorders or something. Now I know that
that was Montessori, and that I knew even less about Waldorf.
A.D. (After Dunan--that is, after my son Dunan's birth) I first heard about Waldorf in
the check-out line of a cool health food store in Sebastapol, CA (a hip, earthy-crunchy
city north of San Fran., if you don't already know it). The guy in front of me was talking
to the cashier about a school that discourages children from watching TV. Although I
wasn't really paying attention, the TV thing piqued my interest immediately.
My son Dunan, then only one-year old, was becoming a TV-aholic before my very eyes.
Every day he begged and pleaded until we relented and let him watch his Barney video over
and over and over and over. I cursed the day I bought the dang thing as I watched the
purple dinosaur and those saccharine kids dance around bouncing their heads unnaturally at
everything Barney said.
The guy in front of me said he'd gotten so gung-ho about this new school that he'd put
the idiot box out in the garage.
"No!" the woman exclaimed, putting her hand to her open mouth in
astonishment, pausing her rapid fire check-out, infrared beeping.
"Yes, and we don't even miss it at all," the man said. "Our children are
happier doing other things."
After he left, I asked the woman what school he'd been talking about and she said,
"Oh, it's a local private school called Waldorf or something."
Ding went the bell in my head, registering no-TV with my Montessori/Waldorf category of
private schools. It wasn't until a few months later that I started hearing a lot more
about Montessori--good and bad. But the bad alarmed me; "It's so rigid," one
person told me, "when I was there, we all did the same thing on a very rigid
schedule." This did not jive with my vision of what these schools were about.
Then I met Jennie. Of course, it took me a while to learn where she went to school.
Well, that's not entirely true, since all we talked about was where she went to
school--college, that is, since I am also a Smith alumna. But one day, as she was prairie
dogging (that means popping up over her cube wall to talk to me), she told me she went to
a Waldorf school.
Now, Dunan was two-and-a-half at this point, and his schooling was weighing heavy on my
mind. I was feeling guilty that while other moms were frantically going from pre-school to
pre-school to register for a year or two in advance, I was putting on my blinders and
ignoring the whole issue. It just seemed too overwhelming. I knew I wanted to give my son
something different in his education--different from what I experienced growing up. Not
that my experience was so terrible. From kindergarten to 5th grade, I attended several
rural New England schools until my parents settled down in rural Woodstock, CT. Many
suburbanites don't understand what I mean when I say rural. I usually have to say,
"Imagine a town that has more cows than people." There were 70 in my high school
graduating class--and they came from three different surrounding towns!
I was at the top of my class and involved in every school activity that would accept
me--Class Secretary, Band Vice-President, Glee Club member, soccer player (not very good
though), winner of the Voice of Democracy contest for the state of Connecticut, and many
graduating awards, etc., etc., etc. I don't go through this list to brag, but to emphasize
that even with all this, all that the school gave me and did for me, I would never send my
son there. It was so provincial. I never could fit in no matter how hard I tried--just
because I looked different (Jewish), though no one in the town even knew what Jewish was!
And I didn't really learn all that much. School was too easy. I feel like I missed so
much in my education: the first time I read a "classic" was in my Gen. Lit.
course at Smith. I didn't even know who Homer was until I got to Smith. I read maybe one
or two Shakespeare plays in English in high school--I think they were Romeo and Juliet and
As You Like It, but we all thought it was a big joke. We were more interested in acting
cool than anything else--and learning wasn't cool. I used to hide the fact that I got good
grades from my friends.
My grammar school was really sad. The teachers were very mean for the most part, except
our band teacher (he wasn't the music teacher, just the conductor). He was very friendly
with the students (bordering on sexual harassment by today's standards), but he was the
high point of any day. It was a creative outlet for us--one of the only ones we got. The
only time I sang in grammar school was for about a half an hour once a week with a music
teacher who used to travel from room to room. Art was about once or twice a week, too, and
was mostly little craft projects that failed to imbue any appreciation of art in me. In
fact, I hated museums until I met my artist-husband who taught me to love art.
The scariest part about my home town is that it's a miracle I got out of there alive.
Many of my friends died in car crashes on the curvy country roads. Most were drunk, others
just goofing off. For me, I didn't comprehend danger--I had no problem driving 80 miles an
hour to show off in front of my friends. I was crazy then because nothing mattered but my
peers and what they thought of me. I think all teens go through this stage to some extent,
but I truly believe that we took it to an extreme in my town.
I want to create an environment for my son Dunan where this kind of stupid behavior can
be avoided. I believe if I had had the kind of school and learning environment that would
challenge me intellectually, creatively, and spiritually even, then I would have not
risked my life on a daily basis.
I could go on and on, as you can see. I know today I have so much left to learn and so
much I'd love to teach Dunan that I never got. I've contemplated home schooling him very
seriously. But then I became fascinated with what Jennie was telling me about Waldorf
schools. It sounded so ideal that I visited one on my trip back East. The school was
located in Hadley, Massachusetts, and was beautiful. I took my mother-in-law, who taught
at my grammar school for years. The whole philosophy really excited me. I was super jazzed
after I left and my mother-in-law was equally excited. She really liked the idea of
waiting until kids are seven before teaching them reading because she'd experienced a big
change in maturity in her kids when they turned seven, too.
What I love about the Waldorf philosophy is the way that children are given lots of
time and space to be creative and not forced to read too early. I love the emphasis on
singing, playing instruments, painting, movement, etc. And the paintings I saw were simply
beautiful! They reminded me of Neo-Tantric art--an Indian art movement that my husband
(who's an abstract painter) loves.
I like that there are no school bells and that subjects are not taught individually and
isolated from reality. Instead, they are intermixed, taught in the context of broader
topics that apply to real life. I love that they don't use text books for the most part.
They have what I call copy books. These are large format blank books that the children
write and draw in. They write the lessons down in the books and draw pictures that relate
to the topics that are being taught. The reason I love this approach so much is because
when I was in the Peace Corps in Mauritania I had to teach without text books. At first I
felt so bad for the poor African children who didn't have text books. But as time went on
and I saw how fast the children learned, I began to reevaluate this copy book approach.
The children had incredible memories. They grasped things the first time around, and I
believe that the act of writing everything down in their books helped them learn faster.
And they didn’t just write things down offhandedly. It was a labor or love, and
teachers were expected to evaluate the copy books at the end of the year on the baiss of
their beauty alone. Students saved their books forever and proudly displayed them to
friends and relatives. They were works of art. The Waldorf books I saw were also works of
art so this thrilled me.
The only thing that worried me at first was the Christian emphasis. When I read the
list of things that are taught and saw Old Testament Bible stories, I was taken aback.
Religion in schooling is so foreign to me, and growing up in an atheistic family doesn't
help.
But I learned that all religions are taught at Waldorf--that fables, myths, and bible
stories are taught as stories and not doctrine. And the school I visited celebrates
Hanukkah as well as Christmas. I liked the spiel that the woman at the school gave me: She
said, "We are not saying that any one religion is better than any other. We just want
to give children a space to experience their own spirituality."
That can be interpreted in many ways and it's not an exact quote. But it meant to me
that a child could be raised an atheist or a born again Christian, but at school the child
would be allowed to explore all aspects of an inner spirituality.
So what now? Well, I've been thinking about becoming a Waldorf teacher to pay for my
son going there. But I think it's not in the plan for me. Instead I have three years to
decide where to move before Dunan starts kindergarten. I'm planning on looking for a town
that has a Waldorf school, but I will continue to explore other options. But one thing is
for sure, when I find the right Waldorf school, we're settling there until Dunan is ready
for college!
I think after seeing the Waldorf school (I also visited Jennie's school in NY), my
standards have been raised very high. I don't know how many other schools I can find that
can compare and if for any reason I can't live near a Waldorf school, I'm definitely home
schooling. It's Waldorf school or no school for my boy.
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To: Jennifer Abbott
Subject: The IrwinCourterly
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 18:15:22 -0700
From: Bob Holness (Bob@holness.com)
Dear Ms. Abbott,
I represent the Disney corporation. We have had copyright on the name 'IrwinCourterly'
since 1963. Please desist from using this brand name, or face legal action from the Magic
Kingdom, 'The Happiest Place On Earth'.
Bob Holness
Vice President in charge of Intimidation, Disney.
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DEMOGRAPHIC STATISTICS During the month of September, two of our faithful IC readers
aged significantly. Brian Brooks, of Louisville, KY, turned 28 on September 16. He is
Virgo. He and his lovely wife Virginia are expecting a baby, whose name will be H.P.,
short for HoneyPeaches, the real name of Hotspur from the famous Shakespearean drama. H.P.
will probably be Libra. Betsy Brooks, of Pueblo, CO, turned 19 on September 30. She is
Libra, and received a chia pet as a birthday gift from her foreign exchange student,
Julie.
CONCERT UPDATE Upcoming cultural events in the lives of the IC editorial staff include,
but are not limited to, the following: Robin and Jennie will attend the
"Tangent" comedy show, created by the illustrious Heather Gold, in San Francisco
this week. At the end of October, Ani DiFranco is playing in Berkeley, and hopefully will
accept an invitation to Dave Hoffman's Halloween masquerade ball. Over Thanksgiving break,
Depeche Mode will be playing in Denver, CO, and conveniently Robin and Jennie will be in
Pueblo, and if Betsy buys them tickets the whole group will go see the concert and will be
very, very happy.
TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS Robin's stereo has recently innovated itself such that it is
now more appropriately called a "mono." One speaker refuses to work. The problem
is endemic to the tape player itself, not to the speaker component. Robin thought last
night that she had fixed the problem, but in reality she only broke it for good. Perhaps
she will be able to find a new stereo sometime in the near future. In other technological
innovations, Robin recently taught her friend Christine how to make an "egg in a
nest" which has revolutionized Christine's egg sandwich eating for good. We expect
that this modernization may lead to global economic convergence, and extreme and dangerous
cultural imperialism by the West, possibly followed by increased salience of identity
politics in the Third World. Watch this space for further updates.
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