Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 121

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 37:

Along with privileging ostensibly "spiritual" considerations over cognitive and psycho-social ones, the static uniformity of this scheme is pedagogically suspect. It also suggests that Waldorf schools' reputation for fostering a spontaneous, child-centered and individually oriented educational atmosphere is undeserved. In fact Steiner's model of instruction is downright authoritarian: he emphasized repetition and rote learning, and insisted that the teacher should be the center of the classroom and that students' role was not to judge or even discuss the teacher's pronouncements. In practice many Waldorf schools implement strict discipline, with public punishment for perceived transgressions.

In suddenly declaring Waldorf "pedagogically suspect" without ever having bothered to study it, I have to wonder where Mr. Peter Staudenmaier gained such expertise in the field of in education. I also have to wonder what comprehensive background in pedagogy informs his expert opinion on the subject. We have already seen just how little Mr. Peter Staudenmaier knows about Waldorf in his failure to use the proper term in discussing even the most basic aspects of the pedagogy. The fact that he finds Waldorf to value un-named "spiritual" considerations, supposedly over other, un-named "psycho-social"* ones is quite curious; curious in that he has evidently not undertaken even a basic study of these "spiritual" considerations. I have to wonder how he is so sure that they are wrong if he doesn't even know what they are. Nebulous references to superior "psycho-social" considerations without any elaboration or citations strikes me as the work of a writer who is putting ink to paper in the effort to make a point without actually thinking first.

* Ironic indeed is the fact that the odd construction "psycho-social" essentially says the same thing as "spiritual". "Psycho" is derived from the Greek "soul" so Peter Staudenmaier is decrying Waldorf 's ostensibly "spiritual" bent over a more mainstream "soul-social" one.