Review of Atkinson Series “Brainstorm” “ Toronto Star, Saturday, November 07, 2009, p. L1 Story by Alanna Mitchell.

The series is based upon the results of a year long fellowship aimed at investigating the controversial push to use brain sciences to improve education.
Allison Hudgins delves into the series and sees how Waldorf Education holds up to ‘Brain Science’.

This is the essence of neuroeducation: an openness to let the brain grow as it needs to, fuelled by jubilation at the process and sensitive guidance from someone who’s learning, too.

For years, this has been the underlying wisdom in Waldorf education, the focus on joyful and lived learning with teachers who are given the flexibility and authority to vary their curriculum to match the passions and interests of their students. Steiner’s one question to students when he visited Waldorf classroom’s was, “Do you love your teacher?” In a nutshell, that two way love fest between student and teacher creates the perfect learning environment for jubilation and sensitive guidance. Moreover, it is critical that the teacher is modeling learning (their own striving as it is called in Waldorf lingo) in front of the children.

Mitchell’s article is just the latest example of how science is starting to catch up to the insights Steiner had culled from wisdom teachings and science learning of his day over 80 years ago.

Mitchell has a four part manifesto for academics, teachers, parents and students on education. Here they are:

Academics: Neuroscience and education are among the most highly researched and contradictory fields in academe, but share a commitment to innovation, flexibility and creativity. Be it resolved that we all build on that commitment, just as we build neural connections when we learn, and vow to push the movement forward.

Innovation, flexibility and creativity in both student and curriculum have been the touchstones of Waldorf education for over 80 years. The lack of a standardized testing and unchanging curriculum has been a kicking can of doubtful parents for years, but it is the very lively nature of Waldorf education that makes it a superior model for actual life long learning.

Teachers: Teachers take criticism from parents, administrators, academics, politicians and even students, who slyly imply that anyone could do their jobs and probably better. In fact, they are having a biological influence on children that is in scale akin to a baby’s growth in the womb. No other profession has this sway over the fundamental cellular structure of so many human beings. Be it resolved that teachers are at least as important to society as doctors, and let’s treat them, recruit them, educate them and compensate them accordingly. Be it further resolved that today’s teachers educate themselves about neuroscientific findings and teach their students about this emerging field, and that they begin to think of themselves as scientists in the classroom. Every school has the potential to be a laboratory school where the science of learning is under exploration.

Waldorf teacher education is based on a sophisticated understanding of the interactions between the physical, life energy, psychological/emotional realm and the intellect. Science has not reached the complexity and elegance of Steiner’s teachings, but many of the essentials (mind/body connections; importance of visualization and imagination to successful learning; different child development focii, physicality as foundation for later learning, importance of emotional connection and intelligence to learning, mastery and scientific observations as precursors to thinking and analytical prowess; joy as a foundation of learning, etc.) are slowly being documented by scientists. Finally, Waldorf teachers are trained to observe their students and to daily meditate on the student’s learning needs that are emerging in the classroom – this is then fed into curriculum timing and presentation methods. In other words, Waldorf teachers have been trained to approach their classrooms from a disciplined, scientific observational point of view, but not in a way that makes observing the mood in the classroom as important as whether an academic concept has been mastered so that the learning environment can be optimized. The students stay with the same teacher for several years that allow the teacher to act on their cache of observations. Waldorf teachers also know that some answers will just be stumbled upon and so they are also encouraged to maintain that present, open attitude that many philosophical and religious practices emphasize to allow for inspiration to enter their teaching.

Parents: Some of the saddest stories I heard over the course of the year were about obsessed parents who were living their own dreams through their children’s schooling. Be it resolved that parents take a deep breath. Chill. Remember that your kids task at school is to build strong connections among nerve cells that carry information. To accomplish that, they need less anxiety, less stress and more ability to take risks in how they learn. They need to find their own way. Ultimately, they will only learn in order to meet their own goals, not for the sake of their parents goals.

Waldorf classrooms are the model of low anxiety, less stress and ability to take risk environments. The attention to visual beauty, calm or joyful classroom atmospheres as the learning task requires, and the modeling of teachers making mistakes in front of their classes and then learning from them is all there. Parents do, however, have a key role to play as loved authority figures in their child’s life and Waldorf community’s do all they can to help parents support a healthy authority that is often lost prematurely in our societal push to treat toddlers as mini adults. Children do not have the skills or bodies of adults – there are some tasks that need to be accomplished first before later capabilities can flourish. Waldorf provides parental support in ensuring the right capacity is developed at the optimal time for its development in the child’s growth.

Students: Biologically, every child’s brain needs to learn, just as the heart needs to beat. Learning is survival. And built into that is a powerful joy of mastery and understanding. Be it resolved that students find a way to plug into the joy of building their brains at school every day. It’s different from being the receptacle of information.

Joy always has been a Waldorf motif. Waldorf schools do not force premature testing or artificial deadlines. Crafts such as knitting and woodwork help drive home the pleasure in mastery as much as allowing children in early grades to take the time they need to master a new topic in Main Lessons taught over several weeks, rather than several days. Only as the majority of children are developing a sense of time are the notions of projects, tests and homework gradually and gently introduced. Teaching is like surfing-you need to catch the natural wave of the child’s interests and enthusiasms and your teaching will be amazingly efficient, reaching heights that forced teaching can never achieve. Steiner always talked of the importance of humour and enthusiasm in teaching spirit in the lively and best sense of the word.

Over 80 years ago, Steiner recognized the mind/body synergies contained in many wisdom teachings and discovered through his own research. He put his insights into the Waldorf School movement which has always approached teaching as part medical, part psychological, part theatre and arts, and part physical. Dr. Steiner would be pleased with Alanna’s understanding of the importance of this critical task in society  but he would lend a note of humility that much of this is beyond human understanding even now and that we have to be very careful and not arrogant in how we support the growth of our miracle children who each bring a gift to our world.
Allison Hudgins