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about a Catholic monk. It was worth visiting the Washington Waldorf School simply to see the children’s art — nothing I saw anywhere else could hold a candle to it.
I asked about grades, and the teacher told me he tallied the number of correctly spelled words on the weekly spelling tests, beginning in grade 3. That was it for tests and grades.
The quarterly evaluations consisted of the teacher writing an essay on each child and presenting it to the parents in a face-to-face conference.
These children appeared to be as motivated, as self-disciplined, as the best students I saw elsewhere, without the threat of grades or strong disciplinary measures. The atmosphere in the classrooms and hallways was one of calm order.
Steiner’s View on Education
I had read a book by Rudolf Steiner, the man who founded the Waldorf system 75 years ago, which helped me to understand what I was seeing. Most of these children had started at grade 1 together and would stay together, with the same teacher, through grade 8.
Steiner thought education should nurture the God-given spirit of each child. Children must be given plenty of time — years in fact — to explore their imaginations, their emotions and their roots in the natural world.
Fairy tales, Old Testament stories and myths are a large part of the Waldorf curriculum at the elementary level, usually told dramatically by the teacher. Steiner felt direct interaction — storytelling instead of reading stories, music played by the teacher instead of recorded music — touches the
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