Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 127

Continuing my commentary on the 37th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

Students in Waldorf schools hear fairy tales only in the first (and sometimes the second) grade. During that time, they do not read them; they hear them (and fairy tales are certainly not the only thing in the curriculum for those grades). After that the curriculum moves on to more challenging things. So Mr. Peter Staudenmaier's claim that fairy tales are a staple of the Waldorf curriculum is only true for Kindergarten and first grade. Usually by second grade the curriculum has the teacher telling stories of great men and women of history and their achievements, told in a manner appropriate for the age group.

Some product reviews I wrote over the past year

2007 was a good year, and I wrote a number of interesting product reviews.

A recent article I wrote was a list of lens bargains for the Sony Alpha (formerly Minolta Maxxum) lens mount. The article was titled Sony Alpha (Minolta Maxxum mount) lens bargains.

I also wrote a review of my main wide-angle lens, the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM. And predictably review was titled Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM Review.

A couple years ago I wrote an article called How Ebay profits from software piracy, based on my experiences with one transaction. Those are the most recent articles on my photography blog.

Several years ago I wrote a review of the CompactDrive PSD PD7X. This is a portable hard drive casing that ran off of AAA batteries and allowed you to dump the contents of CompactFlash drive cards on to your portable hard drive in the field. In the days of 16 gig CF cards, it is not terribly useful anymore. It back when he spent $200 for a one gig card, it made a lot more sense.

I also written a review of Genuine Fractals 3.5, were I compared it to Photoshop CS bicubic interpolation, and found Photoshop to upsize better than genuine fractals. The article is titled Genuine Fractals 3.5 Review.

Before that I wrote a review of the Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D. I am still very pleased with the camera, and think that the 7D still takes better pictures than my Sony Alpha 100. Read my review at Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D Review.

My latest article is titled Flatbed scanner comparison: The Canon CanoScan 4400F vs the CanoScan 8600F. in this article I attempt to answer the question, "What is the difference between the Canon CanoScan 4400F and the CanoScan 8600F?

Daniel

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 126

Continuing my commentary on the 37th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

I would certainly like to discover the source of Peter Staudenmaier's hilarious understanding that jazz and popular music are considered to harbor demonic forces; as usual, he has no footnotes for that claim.This is a distressing trend for this article.

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 125

Continuing my commentary on the 37th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

I'm not sure I understand the accusation that there is “no jazz or popular music“ in Waldorf schools. Does Peter Staudenmaier mean that these subjects do not occur in the curriculum? Or does he mean to imply that there is some sort of blanket ban on such things anywhere on school grounds? As far as the curriculum goes, the music does generally lean towards folk and classical music, but that is the discretion of the individual class teachers and music subject teachers.* The music program varies depending on the size of the school and the talents of the teachers. Singing is required from Kindergarten onwards, in ever increasing complexity, and in larger Waldorf schools choral singing is introduced by the sixth grade. Every student participates. European Waldorf students are as interested in popular music as students anywhere in the world.

*As an aside, how many US public schools have jazz or popular music in the curriculum? How many US public schools have any music in the curriculum? I personally have included a section on the development of popular music in the 20th Century – with numerous recorded examples – in a 12th grade course on the history of the 20th Century that I teach at a Waldorf School. This fact alone disproves Peter Staudenmaier’s claim in its absolute formulation.