Articles

Turn Off TV To Teach Toddlers New Words
Recent research from Wake Forest University confirms the vital role that human beings play in the young child's learning of language. Read the  full article here (pdf)..

The Significance of the Child Study
Sally Vince illuminates the importance and depth of the relation between teacher and student as it is revealed in the 'Child Study' that is practiced in Steiner Education. Read the full article here.

Kids behaving badly after just two hours TV
Young children who watch more than two hours of television a day show clear signs of bad behaviour, lower social skills, and disrupted sleep patterns, a study, reported in the UK Sunday Times, has found. The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, questioned almost 3,000 parents about their children's television viewing and behaviour when they were 2½ and 5½ years old. They concluded that the evidence against sustained television viewing was now so strong that parents should ration viewing for younger children. They also warned that having televisions in bedrooms posed particular risks. Read the full article here..

Unplugged Schools
Susan Howard let us know about the article "Unplugged Schools" in ORION magazine. Lowell Monke, an associate professor of education at Wittenberg University, emphasises the role of education in acting to compensate for extremes that manifest in the wider culture. He addresses the importance of schools and education today for "combating the alienation bred by a technology-obsessed culture". He pays tribute to Waldorf schools as an example of an "un-plugged school" that "directly and comprehensively links children's over-mediated lives to spiritual health", and also mentions the Alliance for Childhood. A good article for working with parents! Read the entire article here

Hi-Tech Turmoil
A parliamentary inquiry has been set up to look at the scientific evidence for how computer technology and modern life may be changing children's brains. An article in the UK Independent gives a comprehensive perspective on the work of a growing number of specialists who feel that tomorrow's classrooms are likely to be filled with pupils who will think more episodically, have shorter attention spans, communicate through pictures rather than words, have more learning difficulties, and be less able to control their impulses and emotions than the children of today. To learn more about the important research that points to these areas of concern for our children and our future read the complete article (PDF)

Health, Wholeness, and Learning through the Flow of the Natural Breath
by Nell Smyth
Rudolf Steiner tells us that "in breathing there dwells already the whole threefold system of physical man." How can we work with children to harmonize these physical foundations for supporting the continuity of development, and joy in language and participation? Nell's article, from the Autumn/Winter 2006 issue of Kindling summarizes some of the approaches in her new book The Breathing Circle, that have emerged over many years of working with children. Read complete article (PDF)

Toxic Childhood
In a letter to the London Daily Telegraph, 110 teachers, psychologists, children's authors and other experts call on the Government to act to prevent the death of childhood. The front page article entitled 'Junk culture is poisoning our children,' summarizes that "A sinister cocktail of junk food, marketing, over-competitive schooling, and electronic entertainment is poisoning childhood" and leading "to more depression among children." The BBC and the Daily Mail also reported on the letter's contents. Read complete article (PDF)

Just Say No To Baby Einstein
by Michael Mendizza, founder of Touch The Future and the Nurturing Project
Einstein didn't watch videos as a baby. His genius did not come from knowing lots of information. In fact, baby Einstein spoke very little before the age of four. So much for early reading programs and pre-school examinations. Einstein's genius was not based in what he knew. His genius grew from his capacity to wonder and imagine. Read complete article (PDF)...

Kindergarten Readiness
by Dr. Elisabeth Jacobi, Stuttgart
The question of whether there is a time of "kindergarten readiness" has become an urgent question in Europe only in the last few years. Not long ago, in our experience, a child came into the kindergarten before the end of its fourth year. There was no room. With the decline of the birth rate, however, an increasing number of kindergarten spaces became available, and the younger children entered to fill them. The kindergartens want to fill their places, and the mothers are glad to be able to bring their children into the kindergarten early. Thus, the age of the children who come into the kindergarten is now lowered to such a point that it is necessary to become clear about what constitutes kindergarten readiness in a child. Read complete article...

Further Considerations About Kindergarten Readiness
by Joan Almon, Acorn Hill In talking with kindergarten teachers from all parts of North America, it has become clear that many schools are wrestling with the question of what age children ought to be when they enter our nurseries or kindergartens. Some schools have resolved the question by allowing young threes to enter into a nursery class where they are separate from the fours and fives, while others integrate them into a mixed age group. Read complete article...

Articles from Renewal
Sample some articles from Renewal, the Journal of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America.

A Different Way of Knowing
by Pearse O'Shiel M.A. in Ed.
Our experience of time is generally associated with rhythm. The daily rhythm of day and night or the yearly rhythm of the seasons are familiar to us and in the process of human development there are rhythms associated with the various changes that take place over time. Rudolf Steiner described how the seven-year phases of development have particular significance for the development of human consciousness and how the world is meaningful to us in ways that are qualitatively distinct from phase to phase. Read complete article...

Steiner and Wholeness
by Pearse O'Shiel M.A. in Ed.
There is no doubt that all our lives are being transformed by technology and there is a generally expressed sense that "things" are speeding up. We all seem so busy, too busy perhaps to realise fully the extent to which our lives and the lives of our children have changed over the past few years. Children, of course, appear to be well able to adapt to change but there is a danger that some essential elements of the developing child and of our own adult development are not being addressed in a world transformed by economic and technological forces. Read complete article...

A Visit to the Cork Steiner Kindergarten, Quaker Meeting House, Cork
by Máire Corbet, NCNA Regional Support Worker
On June fourth last I spent a very pleasant morning at the Cork Steiner Kindergarten, in the company of Nicole Grünewald and her children and staff. I had no previous experience of the Steiner Approach, apart from some reading and discussion. Now I want to learn more!! Read complete article...