Unfortunately, there has been a trend in that direction, especially considering its origins as a school for children of factory workers in Spain we are 100% private, while in other countries the schools are publicly subsidized. Waldorf schools have been accused of being elitist.Ī. What they do tell us at the universities is that ours are very motivated students who show great criteria. It is true that in the last cycle before university examinations we accelerate the pace, but our students pass the exams in the same proportion as the others. Do Waldorf students have integration problems after finishing school?Ī. The fact that the Nazis didn’t like them is good propaganda. In Germany, these schools only began to revive after the war. The opposite of what the Hitler regime wanted. They seemed dangerous to them because they gave students too much autonomy and encouraged them to think for themselves. Schools were banned, and some teachers ended up in concentration camps. It seems that the schools did not do well under the Nazis.Ī. At present, the Waldorf method has the specific aim of promoting creativity across all subjects. Ours is a mixed cooperative of teachers and parents. Waldorf schools are independent, there is no central body, no orthodoxy. There is nothing weird or sinister about our school. That and his idea that the teacher’s most important task is to develop students’ enthusiasm for learning. What interests us today about Steiner is his idea of free education, albeit free with a structure, obviously this is an idea that was revolutionary in its time. Steiner was also the founder of anthroposophy, a school of thought that has been dismissed as pseudoscientific and associated with esoteric beliefs. Today there are Waldorf schools in 60 countries. For this he enlisted the philosopher Rudolf Steiner. It is derived from the Waldorf Astoria company, a Stuttgart cigarette factory whose owner, Emil Molt, wanted to create a school for the children of his employees. Waldorf sounds like a hotel and a movie theater.Ī. It’s about giving value to art, which is a great ally to create criteria, but also to science. And at the same time learn to work as part of a team, to be an individual within a group. A methodology that aspires for each child to discover and cultivate their own talent. He seems like a kind, sensible man who doesn’t get upset by awkward questions and speaks passionately about his profession.Īnswer. He arrived in Barcelona in 2000, and in 2005 he joined the Bellaterra center project. The Waldorf method has been contested and even been considered suspect, but the reality is that it is taught without trouble some parents are happy and others dissatisfied, just like those whose children go to conventional schools, and students go on to higher education just like their peers in other schools.Įsser, a native of Hamburg in Germany who studied at a Waldorf school (his mother was a teacher at one), became a music teacher, learned theater (which is part of the Waldorf curriculum), traveled to South America and worked on educational projects with troubled kids. It is one of the more than 2,000 schools worldwide that follow the Waldorf method, an educational system that grants a lot of freedom to students so they will learn to live and think for themselves, as the school motto maintains. Klaus Esser, 48, is a teacher and member of the management team at El Til.ler School in Bellaterrra (Barcelona).
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