RE: [xmca] Rudolf Steiner

[Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>]

One of the strengths of the Steiner movement is the support provided by a community of schools and teachers who share a common tradition and set of values. This community helps individual practitioners to develop the confidence to trust children to learn in close-knit class and school groups. I think it is widely recognised (though not so much in political circles) that 'what works' in one situation cannot simply be identified and prescribed as a solution for all other situations and the benefits of a wider practice community are not sufficiently recognised. In early childhood practice, for example, teachers are often very isolated in schools where other staff may be more willing to go along with pressures to 'lever up standards' and achieve better test results so they are particularly dependent on wider networks of support and solidarity to help them to maintain beleaguered values. This sort of practitioner 'collusion' (getting together to explore ways of playing the system), like the strategies mentioned by David for getting through tests, may prove more effective as an engine for social change than either crude 'top-down' imposition of 'successful' approaches or reliance on individuals to invent their own 'bottom-up' solutions in isolation. If teachers are able to meet teachers from other settings and share in extended conversations about their different values, principles and practices, understanding may be communicated and helped to evolve and adapt to different contexts.

In the past, it may have been possible to accuse Steiner teachers (in the UK anyway) of keeping themselves to themselves, circling the wagons and protecting their tradition but with the creation of the first publicly funded Steiner academy in Hereford we are now also seeing a much greater willingness to engage in dialogue with other traditions - though this has also highlighted the fact that we are rather short on traditions now, with much teacher training more focused on compliance with government standards than with the development of deeper held convictions and principles.

It may be that open conversations between confident traditions are more productive than efforts to break down differences between traditions - I know that it is easy to overstretch analogies with secure attachment but we also now have evidence from Small World Theory which indicates that communication works best where tightly-knit local groups with dense networks of short-range connections are also linked by a few longer range connections with other tightly knit-groups (dendrites and axons!).

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: 12 January 2010 04:50
Cc: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
Subject: Re: [xmca] Rudolf Steiner

I won't drag out the discussion, David, but the point is 
that (broadly speaking) you either work within the existing, 
dominant social relations of a country, or you struggle to 
change those social relations, or some combination of both.

I apologize if I have shattered your hopes, but improving 
education practices in the ghetto is unlikely to bring about 
a revolution and a social transformation. But there are 
plenty of other reasons for such work.

That doesn't mean that working from the top down is my 
"solution," and nor does it suggest that the poor should be 
abandoned.

Self-evidently, the observation does not extend across state 
boundaries.

Andy

David Kellogg wrote:
> Andy, I couldn't agree more with at least one thing that you said 
> below: it sure is a dreadful thing to say. Imagine a healthcare reform 
> drawn up along the lines that you suggest: we establish preventive 
> medicine healthcare plans for the very wealthy, and having shown that 
> they appear to work for some mysterious reason, we hope to find them 
> emulated by insurance companies in China and public health programmes in 
> India. 
>  
> Actually, Andy's solution of building clean, efficient, and 
> inexpensive subway stations   ...
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