Alternative Education

[Cairber]

Ok, to clear this up quick, when I say "alternative" I don't mean schools that problem kids are sent to.


I want to get everyone's opinions on alternative education. I am thinking about specific educational methods/theories that are made into schools such as Reggio Emilia, Democratic, Montessori, Waldorf, Enki, etc. Also I would like to throw in homeschooling and radical homeschooling such as unschooling.

While we were looking for a school for our kids, I ran into a lot of the above types of schools. Some of what I saw greatly interested me (we ended up choosing a Montessori), but some of it was just plain horrifying and scarey.

We looked into a Waldorf school. Waldorf is based on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner and the philosophy of anthroposophy. On the surface, it seemed like an interesting school. The kids all seemed happy and the atmosphere was full of energy. But I got to wondering what all the candle lighting, rules against plastic toys and media, rules about not reading until age 7, (etc) were all about. So someone told me to read up on anthroposophy and Steiner. Holy shit...it freaked me out.

Steiner believed kids could see angels and fairies up until about the age of 7. He based his ideas of learning on (what we would call) imagination. He believed it took children a number of years to "incarnate" into the world and that plastic toys, tv, and the like did not aid in incarnation. They teach about there being 12 senses and 4 temperaments. Children are made to copy pictures of fairies off the board and chastised if they draw something else (another mother told me her son was punished for drawing a truck instead of a fairy).

salon article on waldorf

From there I met a woman who was "unschooling" her child at home. This was not an option for us, but my curiosity made me look into it. She gave me two books to read: The Unprocessed Child and The Unschooling Handbook.

Unschooling is essentially what it sounds like. It's homeschooling with no cirriculum, no structure...completely child led. They base a lot of their ideas on those of John Holt (Learning Without School and many other works on the subject).

A few recent articles on this:

cnn article

NYT article

So, after encountering the mind boggling world that is alternative education, we actually went with a more structured version of AE in the form of Montessori.

But my research left me wondering if ideas like the above education systems (which seem to be growing in popularity- one article on Waldorf claimed it was the fastest growing private school method) are dragging down the entire educational system in the USA. In addition, I have to wonder how schools like Waldorf get federal money.

I know this post isn't exactly a question or a debate. But i wanted to share my experience here and see what everyone has to say on the subject.

[Darth Wong]

The problem I have with alternative education theories is that you are basically experimenting with your child, and that seems like risky business. I'm too much of a risk-averse person to do that, unless I'm quite sure that what I'm doing will work better than traditional schooling.

[Cairber]

After all of our research and going to schools, I almost hesitate to even call Montessori "alternative". But I think the focus on structured play with the teacher guiding and not actually leading makes it "alternative" (to some), while I guess, in my opinion, that's just the way PreK and K should be.

My husband and I are both Montessori products (and his family runs one in panama) so we are very into the method, but even going out there and seeing the ways different schools fit the ideas behind Montessori into their school was interesting. Lots of public schools and catholic schools around here use Montessori as their base (even if they don't advertise it that way).

So I am pretty comfortable with our choice, which, truth be told, maybe I went into this whole search already knowing what we were going to do so maybe that jaded me a bit.

Our public schools are horrible and full of violence against teachers and students (a couple months ago a teacher got his neck broken and last month someone was killed in middle school parking lot). We have decided against religious schools, so we started looking into what we both went to for early childhood (montessori) and other schools like that.

I don't, however, think I would keep them in Montessori past first or second grade (unless, of course, they were just thriving beyond my ability to justify making them go to public school). We are currently aiming to have enough money to buy a house in a nice district within the next 7 years.

[Cairber]

A question (sorry for double post)

Is Canada experiencing any kind of alternative education push like the USA is? I know there are Waldorf schools and Enki and unschooling in Canada, but do you get the sense that these methods are becoming popular?

One article I read said that unschooling is becoming the most popular form of homeschooling, and that homeschooling itself is soaring in the USA (more so amongst nonreligious people, too!)

[Aaron]

A question (sorry for double post)

Is Canada experiencing any kind of alternative education push like the USA is? I know there are Waldorf schools and Enki and unschooling in Canada, but do you get the sense that these methods are becoming popular?

One article I read said that unschooling is becoming the most popular form of homeschooling, and that homeschooling itself is soaring in the USA (more so amongst nonreligious people, too!)

Not that I know of. In fact I had never heard of these methods until you brought them up. My wifes niece attends some kind of private school but I don't know the details. As far as I'm concerned the public school in town is more than satisfactory despite my disapointment with their handling of the special ed kids in my sons class.

[Cairber]

A question (sorry for double post)

Is Canada experiencing any kind of alternative education push like the USA is? I know there are Waldorf schools and Enki and unschooling in Canada, but do you get the sense that these methods are becoming popular?

One article I read said that unschooling is becoming the most popular form of homeschooling, and that homeschooling itself is soaring in the USA (more so amongst nonreligious people, too!)

Not that I know of. In fact I had never heard of these methods until you brought them up. My wifes niece attends some kind of private school but I don't know the details. As far as I'm concerned the public school in town is more than satisfactory despite my disapointment with their handling of the special ed kids in my sons class.

It is like two different worlds. Within 20 miles from my house, there are more than 10 Goddard schools, 8 Montessoris, 1 Waldorf, 2 Free Schools, and a whole bunch of smaller alternatives that champion Reggio Emilia or Enki.

It seems that the poor state of the public schools here has created a surge in these kinds of schools. Although the Montessori we are sending Anna to is 57 years old, so not exactly new.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

From the amount of information you have given so far about the teacher as a guide, active involvement (hands on activities), structured play, etc, it seems that the Montessori school method has foundations in Social and Cognitive Constructivism. The educational philosophy has good, useful applications in the elementary as well as the secondary level, if the people doing it are competent.

The one problem is that a lot of the method isn't taught properly to teachers or teachers only have a superficial understanding of Constructivism, so it's applied incorrectly (which leads to entirely child-centred, unstructured settings).

Constructivism is generally daemonized partly as a result of this by conservative "anti-progressive" educators, even though Constructivism isn't the fundamental way children are educated in public school; they simply fight it tooth and nail and assign every bad thing to it, even if it's unrelated.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I went to a Montessori school through the 4th grade. For a smart, curious kid, it's almost certainly better than a normal school until about the 2nd grade. After that, a kid needs structure (at least I did), and Montessori doesn't provide it.