On Learning a Foreign Language

For the past year I have been taking a weekly Astrology class.  It starts at 7:00 pm on Tuesdays nights and ends at 10:00pm.  By Wednesday morning I have all the answers to the meaning of life and I’m quite full of myself.  By the following Monday night, I am all out of answers again and I get in my car on Tuesday night and drive back to my next class.

My drive is an hour each way, from my home in the north side of Houston, all the way to the west side of Houston in Spring Branch.  It’s a monotonous drive over non-descript elevated freeway with little to offer in the way of scenery.  It has been a huge commitment for a tired teacher on a school night, a commitment not so much in dollars, but in energy and sacrifice of family time.

I’m able to make the sacrifice because my search for understanding goes back many years.  As a ten-year-old, I would read the newspaper horoscopes but joked to my parents that the horoscopes were not written for kids to enjoy.   It didn’t seem fair.  Why did they only talk about grown up stuff? Why couldn’t they write horoscopes a kid could relate to?  I would have to wait many years before it started to make any sense to me.

As a teen, I read each description of the 12 zodiac signs and I was so relieved to find out that my combative bossiness could be explained.  I was an Aries! I learned that side by side with my bossy, self-centeredness was also some fine leadership potential if well channeled.  Armed with some new self-acceptance I had a way to frame a more positive and balanced picture of myself.  For many years I would continue to read horoscopes with more than casual interest. I always had a keen memory for everyone’s sign.

Eventually I got more curious about “real” astrology.  Astrology was a like a new, exotic foreign language that I wanted to learn.  It was especially true during and after my Waldorf teacher training and after reading Bernadine Jocelyn’s Citizens of the Cosmos. I began to understand more about the cycle of Saturn, and how itimpacts one’s adult life, the formation of the ego and one’s life purpose, the 7 year cycles, and other planetary cycles.  I started to get it, all humans have a cosmic blueprint based on the chronology of birth.

Two years ago I had a medical astrology reading done for some health issues I was having.  It was fascinating what I learned.  At the time I did not even know what an ascendant was, I had little vocabulary for understanding the bigger picture being shared with me.  Then it became a quest to penetrate that vocabulary.  I began to read basic astrology books and to study my natal chart more intensely. As I gained more vocabulary, I got a few more professional readings done.   I began looking at the charts of loved ones and friends.

Then a year ago I began taking classes at the Houston Institute of Astrology.  I’ve now logged some 90 hours of astrology class time.  I have studied between 30-45 charts of friends, acquaintances, and family members, attended some additional lectures and listened to probably a hundred hours of Adam Sommer’s Astrology podcasts.   It is still fascinating to me and I still feel I am at the beginning.   I guess I’m hooked.

I don’t worship astrology.  It isn’t a religion.  To me, an astrologer doesn’t require believers or followers.  I personally feel astrology need never conflict with any religion.  It is a symbolic language connected to ancient wisdom, mythology and archetypes.  It’s also a bit like watching the weather.  It is a way of connecting the meaning of personal patterns and events in our lives through a universal symbolic language and how it might be applied today, it need not conflict with faith.  It’s a tool, but where watching a weather forecast might only help you plan your day or your week, astrology might help you make make sense of things or make decisions on a larger scale.

When I started studying this a few years ago I had this idea that I would be using astrology to understand the psyche of fictional characters, to write stories.  I would emerge from my hobbit hole as the next JK Rowling, a successful novel in hand, retire a rich author to my lakeside cabin in the woods and defect from the folly of all human society with a full bank account.   It’s a nice fantasy, until I eventually lose my mind all alone in the woods without internet access, and get attacked by bears.

What I have come to accept is that Astrology will be a field of lifetime study for me and it’s only the beginning.  I’m not sure where it will take me, but the train has left the station and I can’t turn back now, sorry guys.

The 12 Archetypes

The 12 Archetypes Applied to Successful Business

The Four Temperaments

What makes one child so boisterous and another child meek?  What makes one social and another shy? Based on ancient Greek wisdom, Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf Education movement, elaborated on the four temperaments:  choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic.  Somewhat like personality types, the Four Temperaments give us a helpful way to understand people, and especially children.

In a lecture he gave in Berlin on Mar 4, 1909, Steiner referred to temperament as “the fundamental coloring of the human personality.” Heredity plays a part in determining one’s temperament; however heredity is only one factor. The other influence comes from a person’s own unique blueprint in life.

The choleric person comes across as one who always must have his way.  Archie Bunker might have been a choleric. Cholerics show a forceful will that derives from the choleric’s blood circulation.  A choleric person possesses a blood system that dominates his physical being.  The body type of a choleric is often stocky, and his gait is often firm in the heels. Choleric children always stand out a little in a classroom.  They usually take charge of play at recess time, and they can be naturally competitive.

The melancholic is a very inward person, continually experiencing emotional and physical pain interrupting the feeling of well-being. The depressed hypochondriac Felix Unger from The Odd Couple was a classic melancholic. The melancolics body type is usually thin with a heavy gait, dark circles around the eyes, or dull, rather than shining eyes.

The sanguine person is like a butterfly flitting about, generally unable to linger on an impression for too long.  In the sanguine person, the nervous system is always fluctuating because it is not restrained by the blood flow, therefore sanguines exercise no control over their thoughts and sensations.   Dory from the Disney movie Nemo is the perfect Sanguine, as is “The Absent-Minded Professor.”  Most children exhibit some sanguinity due to the nature of childhood, but adults can retain the sanguine temperament.  They tend to walk on their toes a little, as if floating about or almost hopping in the air like a rabbit.  Sanguines also tend to be thin and tall.

The phlegmatic has strong growth forces and metabolism.  Phlegmatics usually are plump in shape and love food.  They generally let external events run their course while their attention is directed inward. Phlegmatics are passive and have a loose shambling gait.  They show a calmness and even temper and are not easily ruffled, though sometimes timid. Augustus Gloop from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Nevil from Harry Potter are excellent phlegmatics.  Phlegmatic children need to be surprised out of their comfort zone once in a while and must have lots of playmates.  They should not be allows to grow up alone. Interest arises in the phlegmatic when he sees an interest reflected in others.

The guiding principle in working with the four temperaments is to work with what is given, not with what is not there. For example, if a child has a sanguine temperament, no amount of forcing an interest into the child will help.  No amount of “being calm” with a choleric will change his tendency to rage. No amount of seeking excitement will cure a phlegmatic of their disinterest and passivity.

If a child is melancholic, don’t attempt to get them to stop being inward.  Rather, work with the prevalent tendency to examine pain and suffering.  Help the melancholic see and empathize with the suffering and pain of others whenever possible, help them to delve deeply into the temeprament.  This type of approach has a very balancing effect. Choleric children must have contact with an adult who shows strong competence in something they admire and they must encounter many challenges, attempting many difficult tasks.  It is also wonderful if cholerics have the opportunity to see another person in rage and then watch them bring that rage under quick control, as if able to turn it on and off ant the drop of a dime.

In working with the four temperaments described by Steiner, it is never the goal to pigeon-hole or label a child.  Rather, we use our understanding of the temperaments to create the social groundwork in the classroom and in life upon which we can come to know and understand each other.

How a Child Grows into a Thinker

 

With the three realms of man, THINKING, FEELING, and WILLING, or, if you prefer, head, heart, and hands, Steiner outlined  corresponding and distinct stages of human physical and spiritual development.

It makes sense because we don’t come into the world with all of our powers of thinking ready and available to us at birth.  A pony is able to stand moments after birth, but humans, the thinkers of the animal world, do not think right out of the womb.  It takes many long years for our thinking to develop and mature.  So, again, humans develop these three realms of thinking, feeling and willing in distinct, seven year stages and this is important to the thought about how to EDUCATE a child.

From ages 0-7, we are developing our WILL, or the use of our hands, our limbs, and the ability to exercise our intent to “do,” “to act,” “to create,” out of our own volition.

From ages 7-14, we are developing our FEELING, or the ability to make meaning out of what lives in our mood life, our emotions.

From ages 14-21, we are developing our THINKING, our judgement, our abstract mind.

By age of 21, we have the ability then to focus on a fourth aspect of the human being, the entrance of the ego, or the “I,” the assertive, adult identity that can stand as one.  The ego is not fully matured until much, much later, taking perhaps 3 seven-year cycles to emerge as mature, thus the age of 42 being an excellent age for someone to begin to have the ability to take office as President!

During these stages, Steiner offers a particular area to serve as a focus for that stage.  The focus tells what to emphasize and provide at that stage. It tells what to surround a developing child with during that stage that will enable the child to grow towards freedom and wholeness.

Age        REALM                  FOCUS                  Explanation

0-7         WILL                      GOODNESS         A young child must be shown goodness.

7-14       FEELING               BEAUTY                An older child must encounter beauty.

14-21    THINKING           TRUTH                  An adolescent must encounter truth.

With this as a picture of “What is a man,” we can make some informed decisions about how to design an educational path for a growing child using the good, the beautiful and the true as headings.

A child is not an adult in miniature.  This is a mistake that many make about children.  A child is vulnerable and susceptible to so many influences of the adults world around them, until they are fully mature.  They are depending on adults to provide what they need until they can provide it for themselves.

Out of this framework, Steiner set out of devise what has become known as Waldorf Education.

Visit Beverly Amico’s blog at AWSNA’s Blog

How Not to Read Steiner

First, the DON’Ts:

• DON’T skim the surface
• DON’T expect to get it the first time or to get it fast
• DON’T dismiss it until you’ve pondered for a time

Here are my top 3 suggestions for reading Steiner successfully.

1.Read slowly.
The best advice I ever got about how to read Steiner came from Torin Finser, who at the time was the head of the Waldorf Teacher Training program at Antioch University.  When I asked Finser about this question I had just applied for acceptance to the program and was a busy mother of three.

I was already teaching, working full time in a developing Waldorf school, so I asked Finser for his best recommendations on how best to read Steiner so that I could begin to study the philosophical foundation for my Waldorf teaching.

His advice was to put the reading material by my bedtable and just read very small passages before going to sleep.  There was this idea of meditating on what I read rather then cramming it all into my brain.  He advised not to read it in big chunks or too passively/casually.  A small paragraph well digested was better than reading a whole book but only skimming the surface.    I took that to heart. I eased off of trying to power-read a whole book in a few weeks and settled into a more leisurely pace.

2.  Read with others.
I recommend if you do read Steiner, to give it time and try at some point to read Steiner with others and try to “sit with it” for a while. Ponder it over.   It was a slow process for me and I had to become more patient with it over time and am still working on that and still studying with others who greatly accentuate my understanding of the material.

There is a comprehensive collection of Steiner lectures on Rudolf Steiner Archive website.  I recommend starting there to get an idea of what Steiner spoke about during his life.  It’s very esoteric.  It’s free, and just perusing the listing of titles might be enough to give you an idea of whether the endeavor would be worthwhile to you.

Much of it could be overwhelming in its depth and I question if very many of the titles would truly help the average person just trying to find a good school for their child, or particularly someone who is not interested in delving into the study of philosophy or human spirituality. A person doesn’t need to read everything of Steiner’s get some of the gems though.  But there are some key ideas that I do think every parent could benefit from knowing.

But, if you are really wanting to get a full picture and really understand it and are willing to go straight to the source, I recommend to read The Study of Man.  http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA293/English/RSP1966/StuMan_index.html

3. Have an open mind.
I recommend also reading it when you are in a philosophical mood, because much of what he reveals to his audience is a bit like going on a guided journey through the human being’s development and our innate structure on a spiritual level.

If you live in the greater Houston area and would like to study Steiner in person with others, I invite you to connect with me via this blog or on Facebook and we will add you to the Friends of Michael  Study Group for meeting times and locations. We meet bi-weekly, rotating in the homes of members who host voluntarily. Most members of our group are affiliated with Great Oak School, but you don’t have to be associated with the school to study/read Steiner with us. Contact

I will say, that in addition to Steiner, some of my favorite writers and thinkers in the field of education include the John’s: John Taylor Gatto, John Dewey, and John Holt, but also Maria Montessori, and many others.    In some of my future posts perhaps I can condense what I love about these as well into what is useful for parents and educators.

 

What is a Man?

A man, (as in male or female) according to Steiner, is made of  three interwoven forces which Steiner terms thinking, feeling, and willing. The human being with her three forces of thinking, willing and feeling exists both in a material world and a spiritual reality. 

Because a man has these 3 interweaving forces, we cannot be educated through one-sided means.  We can’t educate a child through intellect alone, nor can we educate through feeling alone, or willing alone.   But, here we are in 2016.   In modern life, we tend to look only at the material world and leave discussion about spirit out of dialogue about education.  We separate the spiritual matters from the rest of life.  As such most schools tend to educate strictly through one channel: the intellect, avoiding any notion whatsoever that man has a spirit. Through the idea of separation of church and state we conveniently leave that pesky matter of a man’s spirit to be dealt with somewhere other than school.

 I’m not talking about the redemption of the soul here, religion or religiosity.  Materialization is something Steiner railed against – the materialization of everything in the modern world, but especially this materialization of thinking.   Steiner assumes that his audiences agree in the existence of a spiritual world beyond the physical world, though in some lectures, to some audiences he takes greater pains to prove this point.   He spends most of his time trying to take his audiences well beyond just merely proving its existence. He leans more to how things work between the material world we see and the spiritual worlds we can’t see and how this knowledge of spiritual worlds can be applied to matters like schools in practical life.

To return to the thinking, feeling and willing, sadly, even in the realm of thinking, schools often do not do so well at training our children.  Though educators would like to claim education as a science, most curricula don’t emphasize what would enrich the feeling realm and willing realm.

Occasionally, a school or curriculum may address a child’s feeling realm, especially if an arts program is rich with variety and is well-designed.  Most schools are not investing enough in the arts or truly using the arts as a channel for learning.  This is a shame because the arts are universal and can truly enrich the learning process through multiple modalities.  Music, visual arts, performing arts, fine arts, practical arts.  There are endless ways to express through the arts what lives in the human spirit, both heart and mind and allows us to work actively rather than passively with ideas, feelings, and what it means to be human. 

Perhaps the most neglected of the three is that of educating the will.  This use of the hands enables a human being to understand his physical world and his relationship to the world.  Human hands need to work, to make practical things, to do meaningful tasks that produce tangible results in physical reality. 

Watch a young boy or girl in a sandbox and how she plays.  Watch a child building a model or with legos.  A child is always naturally using the hands to fill, shape, mold, and make.  Why?  He does this to experience reality.  Filling in test bubble answer sheets does not educate the hands or the body, or mind in how to perform useful work in the world.  Our over-emphasis on standardized testing and school accountability has contributed to a chronic lack of meaning and real life experiences for children.  This is like denying food and water for a growing child’s will.  The education of the body in motion and the hands in space is just as valid and just as much a part of the human experience as thinking and feeling, but we so often neglect it, not allowing children even the chance to help with household chores or simple tasks.  Without our limbs, we could not have survived the demands of hunting/gathering because we could have never learned to provide the food, clothing and shelter we needed to evolve.  The lack of meaningful activity for the hands degrades the human being into something less than what we were intended to be in our fullness by this definition of man.

Further, the lack of overall physical bodily movement that many school children experience doesn’t contribute to physical wellness or overall healthy development and research points to how a lack of movement negatively effects both thinking and feeling.    The absence of daily play time in kindergartens, diminishing recess time and the diminishing time allotted for physical education are all harming our children.  These are all good reasons to consider school reform or as I suggest, take a look at what Steiner has to offer and consider how to free your children from these limitations.

In summary, Steiner tells us that a man is made up of his thought world,  his feelings, and his deeds and an educational path must include all three to be complete.  This is a key idea that forms the basis of Steiner’s education, also called Waldorf Education.  In addition, Steiner defines many other aspects of the spiritual world and man’s spiritual development through the Study of Man, or what he calls Anthroposophy, or the wisdom of man.

Why Every Parent Should Know Rudolf Steiner

Our world is running out of time.  Or at least it feels that way to me.  There is a sense of urgency that is putting all of us on perpetual heightened alert.  A hopelessness, a deafening call or cry of humanity to wake up seems to echo from the hilltops and skyscrapers. But what are we to wake up to?  What is it that is calling us?

I know I don’t have the whole, complete picture and that essentially, none of us hold that, even those of the best thinkers in their respective fields.   But we each have a small a part to contribute to the ensemble of understanding and for me, I feel compelled to tell the story of what I have heard and seen  and to tell it as truly as words can allow me to define it.  I am a person who sees education as both a problem and a solution to the crisis we are in.  I helped form two very different independent non-profit schools modeled after very different forms and approaches  since 2001 and have been part of 4 or 5 other, small non-profit private schools in addition to homeschooling. 

Many parents I have met know in their hearts that the school system is broken and needs fixing but feel helpless and don’t know what they can do other than attend PTA meetings.  I was one who was not willing to turn over my own children to public school, especially  having started my own teaching career in Texas public schools.  I felt helpless and hopeless, but instead of submitting to it,  I extended my hand to my community,  seeking others to walk with me in forming our own schools. This was a huge experiment and I had lots of doubts.  We struggled to organize, to get financial backing, and much more.  I also can’t say that it has done good things for my personal financial outlook.  In the end, many of my friends turned to homeschooling, or homeschooling together with others.  Some turned to creating community around the need for educating our children free from the violence of traditional structures.  What I have learned through the process  has been largely about the power of real community. 

Tempting though they may be, the latest trends in curriculum development, school programs, or self-development tools are not the answer.  These are quick fixes, or band-aids.  There has been a long addiction to quick fixes in our government schools and in our culture at large for centuries.   Tempting though it may be, the legal system is also not the answer.   The charter system has failed to produce substantive results, as has school voucher programs, and other legal solutions.  These have not truly transformed our ways of educating.     I have taken to wrestling with the bigger questions that others have asked for millennia along the way:  

Who and what is a man or a woman in essence?
How do we nurture our own humanity based on that definition?   

A school could be one way to answer the question, but so could a farm, a community, a business, a person’s way of living, or any organization, really.   In summary, the answers to this deeply philosophical question could take many different forms quite effectively.

Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf Education might not be to everyone’s liking politically or spiritually, but Steiner offered me some interesting ideas about this question of “What is a man?” In practice, Steiner’s ideas do seem to work in terms of the education of children in my opinion.  AS a person who founded both a democratic free school and a Waldorf school, I can see that his ideas have relevance and coherence , and application potential in many areas.  My hope is that through my own journey in self-education about schools and  the process of creating schools, that others who read this blog and what I hope to develop into a body of work, may find help and be inspired and empowered to make bold new decisions, to break away from the most toxic forms of mainstream mis-education.  This is what I hope to achieve through my writing, of what I have learned, namely, to free children, thus the title of my blog Free Your Child.  It is not as lofty as an intent to start a revolution, but I wouldn’t be unhappy if a generation of children could be made free to become truly human, I would feel I have truly completed my mission if such a grand thing were to come about in my lifetime, yes, I am an idealist.

What every teacher should know about Rudolf Steiner is also what every parent should know about Rudolf Steiner and that is this: 

What is a man?
How does a child become a fully realized adult and how do we support that process? 
How do we become a truly free society of fully realized adults
out of that never-ending educational process from
one parent to one child and from one teacher to one student? 
How does humanity reach its potential and break out of its materialism and evolve? 
How do we know ourselves as humanity and what supports that human evolution? 

That is the real question when it comes to life and living. This is what I think Steiner  asked and sought to answer through his life work.  It is through redesigning education and designing new forms of schools (and other supportive structures) that we come to a constantly evolving redefinition of ourselves as human beings.  Note: I did not ask, “What supports our local industry?” Nor did I ask, “What supports our multi-national corporation, nor even our government?” Nor did I ask, ” How will my child survive and  be competitive in the global marketplace?” 

Governments are not in the best position to determine these things for us, thus I think the first step is being willing to step away from the herd mentality of government institutions altogether, in essence, get yourself free, get your child free.  This seems required or at least it seems a given.  It seems essential to make a clean break.  Government has its necessary functions, but we should question its over-extension into the very core of human progress and evolution: the moral development of our youth.  Our comfort level with that step of breaking free from the governmental control of the moral development of youth must be present in order to make possible the experimentation necessary that would move humanity forward.  Elite, powerful corporations seem to be the cloaked controllers of a majority of forces effecting the world, including but especially government-provided education and the congenitally conjoined penal system, perhaps even more especially if you are a member of the “minority class” in the United States.  Parents relying on the government educational system and using the government educational system for free daycare in the form of public schools are stuck in a debilitating and self-perpetuating cycle. Further, by having so many people stuck in this way, humanity as a whole is imprisoned in the cycle of degradation we are currently in, even if you personally don’t feel effected or degraded. 

Those that can step away from free government-provided education, should be encouraged to, by all levels of society, from top to bottom classes.  Homeschooling and other forms of private schooling could be the accepted norm, and the more that such alternative forms of living and schooling can be encouraged and be made available free of cost, without fear of punitive measures imposed by governments the better. The poor are trapped there.  It is their plea, their desperation that we hear on a soul level now and we cannot progress as a society as a result.   

But we cannot throw children into the streets or cut them loose without a place for them to go, without a plan for their development.   No self-respecting parent would pull their child out of school and allow them to sit at home to rot their brains and/or rot their body, with nothing to carry them forward in life.   No one wants to see children aimless, falling prey to decadence or poverty.  This is the other danger, a total loss of the soul through neglect, and a total degradation of humanity due to lack of structure, morality, and form.  This is what I would call the lack of a container, the lack of an incubator, the lack of an alternative and perhaps also, a lack of love.  That is not what I propose.  We cannot create a yet another void for more vices and depravity to seep in.  Humanity must create new possibilities that better match the highest definitions of what a human being is.   Whether Steiner had a complete and accurate picture of that, I trust you can decide for yourself, but I hope to share in distillation, some of what I have learned through my travels into his philsophy and education in general and what it offers to us as a picture of what a human being is for your own consideration.