Joan Jaeckel

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  Joan commented on the article | over 2 years ago

  In Education Reform We See The Real Change That Was Promised

  PARENTS, real education reform is in YOUR hands. Rethink the effects on your child's mind, feelings and self-motivation from long-term exposure to the standardized testing environment. It's like sending your child to do hard labor in his or her neighborhood "standardized testing workhouse" - formerly know as "school".  Your child is a conscious human beings and not a machine. A conscious human person should measure his or her progress, not a Scantron machine. Do not accept the idea of standardized test scores as a valid assessment of your child's knowledge, being or abilities. Rethink the long-term results for your child and the future by reducing your child's intuitive mind to learning stuff that is dumbed down enough for a Scantron machine to "read". If you really want your child to be able to compete in the global marketplace, rethink standardized testing. Government's hands are tied unless individual parents act on their conscience. 

  
  

   

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  Joan commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Charters Exclude the Most Challenging Students, part 1

  Hi Caroline, 
  
  Yes, even though some people still believe that the conceptual origin of Waldorf education, "anthroposophy", is a religion, does that make it true? 
  In reality, the notion that public Waldorf education teaches or is based on religious teachings is false and the incorrectness of that myth has been legally discounted as untrue according to the January 21, 2006 "Waldorf Methods Litigation Update" which states:
  "The trial court's final judgement in favor of the [Sacramento Unified] School District's states in part: Plaintiff [PLANS] failed to carry out its evidentiary burden establishing that anthroposophy is a religion for purposes of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution or other California constitutional provisions involved in this case, as stated in the Court's pretrial order dated April 20, 2005.  Because the issue of whether anthroposophy is a religion is a threshold issue upon which the relevance of all other issues in this case depends, Plaintiff's failure to satisfy its burden of proof on the threshold issue is dispositive of this action."
  Judges all over the world, including in the now dead California case you refer to brought by People for Legal and Nonsectarian School (PLANS) against the Sacramento Unified School District (which fought for the right of Sacramento students to have the public Waldorf education option ) have found in every case that anthroposophy is not a religion because, unlike a religion, anthroposphy doesn't advance a set of things to believe, has no creed, not set of prayers, and there are no places of worship or a belief in any deity.  
  Yes, some people do "believe in" things that Steiner described despite the fact that the man arguably went to his grave early wearing himself out by continually begging people to think for themselves and not to believe anything he or anybody else says.  "Anthroposophical" practice involves no faith or belief, just a willingness to take up a meditative practice of focused concentration and to work on your own stuff by practicing objectivity, openness and positivity.The aim is to find things out for yourself, just the opposite of religious belief. There is plenty of mainstream scientific cognitive research evidence around today that proves focused thought or meditation opens up insight much as focused attention by scientists opens up parts of our minds we don't know we have until we flex those neurons.  Steiner was just ahead of his time in that department.  
  The most presigious educational research organization in the U.S., the American Education Research Association (AERA), meets in San Diego this week and researchers will present evidence that the Waldorf educational principles, standards, practices and assessments are, indeed, highly compatible with children's state of consciousness and therefore truly worthy of inclusion in the U.S. education landscape.  
  It's also not true any longer that public Waldorf education can only be found in sleepy hollows. One such exists in the big, bad Los Angeles Unified School District and another in inner city Sacramento.  I participated in the LAUSD chartering process of that school and the LAUSD lawyers of course found the PLANS website and became alarmed and poked and twisted and squeezed and ... could find not even a hint or shred or whiff of religion in the charter's curriculum or proposed teaching practices.  The teachers may do their personal daily meditations, and they are not required by the charter to do so. The students are not asked to meditate or to engage in any practice that any objective observer would call religious.  On the contrary, Waldorf teachers are specifically trained to get students to think instead of giving them answers. Teachers are taught to get the students to observe the phenomena and raise questions.  The public Waldorf education LAUSD charter in Los Angeles has just been renewed after five years is the biggest such in the nation and the 12th highest scoring school among all charter schools in California. More such in the inner city serving our educationally impoverished children and young people are under discussion.  For more about the science and research corroborating the Waldorf educational approach, please read the new study just out: Edward Miller and Joan Almon, CRISIS IN THE KINDERGARTEN: WHY CHILDREN NEED TO PLAY IN SCHOOL, College Parkm MD: Alliance for Childhood, 2009.  
  
  
  

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  Joan commented on the article | almost 3 years ago

  Charters Exclude the Most Challenging Students, part 1

  Hi Sharon and Caroline,
  The larger question behind this fascinating discussion you started is:  "Does public education need to change, and if so, how, and who decides?" Without putting blame on anyone or justifying anything, its just a fact that every once in a while a system must go through the upheaval of change.  It's usually messy.  Real change doesn't jump fully mature and all the kinks worked out from theory to practice. That's a dictatorship.  We have a democracy and so change has to be lived out one trial baloon at a time. There are no slick answers. It's b e c a u s e the children you champion in Oakland are not served by the prevailing educational culture that people are trying things.
  
  Here's the story of why I, a citizen concerened about expanding educational excellence to all U.S. children ( www.whole.org ) and a "Waldorf" educator, welcomed the arrival of public charter school legislation. Until it became possible for Waldorf educators to petition their local school district for the privilege to serve public school students, Waldorf education in the U.S. only existed in private schools. 
  
  Yes, before public charter school legislation made public Waldorf education possible, there were individual Waldorf-trained teachers working in public schools who just went ahead an implemented as much of the Waldorf educational standards and assessments as they could in their public school classrooms.   Our documentary, "The Waldorf Promise: Eight Waldorf Teachers Talk About Their Public School Classrooms" (www.landfallprods.com ), tells this story. 
  
  Now, ten years later, according to the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education (www.allianceforpublicwaldorfeducation.org )there are around twenty schools in the U.S. offering the Waldorf educational approach in U.S. public schools.  As a matter of fact, the growth of the private Waldorf educational movement has slowed to a trickle with no new private Waldorf schools opening in the last five years while public Waldorf education is growing rapidly. 
  
  Should we vilify Waldorf educators for jumping at the opening to serve all children? Public Waldorf education does more than just serve public school students an education formerly only available to private school families.  Public Waldorf education also aims to transform the U.S. educational climate:  We question the prevailing education dogma that says test scores, alone are a measure of the child, the teacher, the parents or the school.  Accountability, Waldorf educators in public schools propose, must go beyond standardized test scores and look at gains and losses in children's overall physical and mental health. 
  
  Your public school students in Oakland not only suffer from poverty; perhaps the biggest hurdle they face is that despite spending 8 hours a day in school they are fed a thin veneer of instruction rather than a juicy, meaty education.