Child appropriate education

Earlier I posted questions from a Steiner school parent. These were questions asked to me by a good friend of mine who I convinced to enroll his children in the Steiner school in the Philippines. Some of his questions are common among the parents in the school. Others, are unique to him.

As a result of this Q&A, Laurent and I got to thinking, what are some of the unique features of a Steiner school compared to other schools. This is an interesting question and a very common question as well. It is easy to answer, yet a bit challenging to understand.

The easy answer to the question is that Steiner schools teach in a "child-development appropriate" way. What does this mean? It is best answered through an example:

One of the key challenges for parents placing their children in a Steiner school is related to reading. When do they learn to read? In most schools today, the alphabet and reading is introduced when children are quite young, even at the pre-school level. By comparison, reading in a Steiner school is taken up around class 2 or 3, quite late by modern standards. Why is this so? Let us look at what does it take to learn to read. It needs a few basic skills but the one key skill that is absolutely necessary is that the reader can sit still for the duration of what he or she is reading. It is very difficult to read while running about and jumping. Of course that's silly, I can hear everyone say, and yet this is a reality that is often overlooked.

Let us look at a young child, between the ages of 2-7 years of age (more or less). Being a parent with children that have already passed this age, I can say, with quite a degree of certainty, that at the age, my children just wanted to run and play. Sitting still was a real struggle for them. In rural areas, we see that running and playing are the key activities of children. This would mean that sitting still, even just to have dinner, can be a real effort and exercise for them. As they grow older though, you begin to observe that on their own, they can sit for long stretches without having to run and play. Once this happens, other activities may now be possible, such as learning in a classroom setting, and learning to read.

It is with this understanding of the characteristics of the child that Steiner education brings reading as an experience at a later age. And there is another approach they have.

I remember when I was learning to read. I read sentences like: "See Dick run. Run Dick run. See Jane run. Run Jane run." and so forth. To this day, I have no idea who Dick and Jane are. In a Steiner school, children first learn to write (in Class 1). They copy what the teacher puts on the board. By the end of the year, they have a book full of short sentences that they have written themselves. Come the next year, the same approach takes place. Again they copy what the teacher writes on the board. The difference is that later in that year, they begin to read it as well. What is it they actually learn to read? They learn to read something they wrote themselves, copying what the teacher wrote. Suddenly, it makes sense. It makes sense because they were part of the process that wrote the word and they can relate to what they wrote. This is what a Steiner school means a child development appropriate education. By this age (around 7-8 years old) the child can sit still long enough and allow his or her eyes to do the "running about". In other words, around this age, it is appropriate for the child to learn to read because they have developed to such a degree that they may now sit still long enough to learn.

All subjects and presented to the children in a Steiner school in this manner. This is why we can say that a Steiner school covers all the academic requirements of any school. It just does it appropriately.

Of course, some children will be gifted and will pick up reading earlier. This is a quality unique to this child. And, based on the above description, one can also see how modern life, TV, video games, etc, can have a strong impact on the child's development.. but that is another discussion.