Editorial
The following article is a reply to Stefan Rather’s article which you can view at
old.hltmag.co.uk/oct10/sart04.htm. Tony Cañadas’ original text can be read at
old.hltmag.co.uk/aug09/sart06.htm

Rudolph Steiner’s Theories and ELT (2): A reply to Stefan Rathert’s Article

Tony Cañadas, Spain

Tony Cañadas is an English teacher and writer. His main sources for working in ELT are NLP, Multiple Intelligences, drama and storytelling. He is doing some research on coaching and the use of art and therapeutic music in the classroom in the primary school where he works at the moment. He has published a book about ELT methodology (Creative Learning, Ed. Hablame, 2010) E-mail: airtonys@hotmail.com

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Introduction
Antroposophy, ELT and Positivism
Practical activities: How they were conceived and how they worked out
Conclusions
References

Introduction

In this article I will try to reply to Stefan Rather’s article “Rudolf Steiner and E.L.T? A reply to Tony Cañadas's article”. I will use the best arguments I have bearing in mind that I don’t try to sell or prove anything and I am also quite conscious I am not in the whole possession of the truth (Thank goodness for that), though is anyone?

First of all Rathert’s article seems to question my clear awareness of the validity of Rudolph Steiner’s theory and then he also does it with the practical activities I’ve used to prove that theory is more beautifully developed in practical things.

Antroposophy, ELT and Positivism

First of all I’d like to say that describing the main principles of how education should be according to Rudolph Steiner or any other author, doesn’t make anyone an advocator for the theory and neither someone who is against it. It is part and parcel of any scientific, educational or philosophical publication which deals about different ideas from an objective and not passionate point of view.

Mr. Rather seems to point out a very serious remark suggesting that I have plagiarised the well-known internet encyclopaedia called Wikipedia. Should I remind Mr. Rather that it is a well known fact that all encyclopaedias including “Wikipedia” take references from some other sources where some other authors may have taken them as well! Does it imply therefore a willing violation of fundamental copyrights as Mr. Rather suggests?

The most surprising thing about Mr. Rather’s interesting article is to claim the nature of clairvoyance esoteric practice within Waldorf education system.

I’d like to clearly say that any person or professional who is or has ever got in touch with Steiner Education system knows that it has nothing to do with “magic-psychic” schools which better belong to the literature of J.K Rowling and her most interesting “Harry Potter books”. I don’t know for example if Mr. Rather knows of the existence of “Steiner school” in Canterbury, Kent. As he claims not to know very well how Steiner schools are run in the U.K, it would be a very good idea if he visited the Canterbury school or any other Steiner schools in Britain.

I was also a bit astonished by the claim made by Mr. Rather about the according to him “suppression of intellectualizing” in Steiner schools. It seems that the author knows very well how Waldorf education is designed in countries like Germany. Well, I happen to have three German cousins (I was also born in Germany) who have gone through the whole spectrum of Steiner education since they were little children. After finishing their school education at Steiner schools in Germany the three of them went to University and graduated with merits. Today one of them is a physician, the other an airline pilot and the other one an accredited journalist. The three of them speak at least four languages apart from their native German.

It is true that the development of “critical thinking” is not encouraged obsessively in Steiner Schools until the child has reached a reasonable mature state, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t recognize the great value of criticism and intellectualism. Indeed I’d rather say these too late aspects are very much encouraged in “Steiner schools” throughout Britain.

The question of spirituality in Steiner education is not at all imposed. One can finish the studies at a Steiner school and be a Buddhist, a Christian, Muslim or whatever the person likes as there is no imposition whatsoever in this institution. The question of karma may be related to Rudolph Steiner’s theories many years ago but it has absolutely nothing to do with the actual curriculum nowadays.

To the claim of “Racism” among Steiner Schools I haven’t yet come across a colleague or student related to this education that is racist in any way as the final outcome of his/her whole education. It is very easy to label things when we are not in whole agreement with something. May I suggest that instead of destructive criticism we put into practise an exercise of tolerance for those ideas we don’t fully share?

Going back to ELT, we all know that the main purpose of learning a new language is communication. If apart from good humanistic resources, the student has the chance to develop the linguistic left-side of his/her brain with emotional aspects (right-side brain), then the process of learning is faster and therefore more efficient. That is precisely what Steiner Education does in its curriculum and so do I as an English language teacher.

Then why is the reason that sound specialists in English Language desperately want to find problems in systems that are clearly open, jargon-free, unity with the world-generated and most importantly receptive to critical dialogue?

The only idea that crosses my mind is the latest orthodoxy we are having in the teaching world with fundamentalist attitudes in science and education.

The argument Professor Rather expounds in his critical view of Steiner Education is exactly the same view shared also by Professor Richard Dawkins in his books “The God delusion” and “The Selfish Gene”.

This way of challenging everything that is not perfectly rational, empiric and also likely to be demonstrated in a laboratory becomes immediately suspicious and therefore shouldn’t be taught or even considered in both the educational and scientific world.

If Professor Rather questions the validity of Steiner’s curriculum in such a way, and I totally defend his perfect freedom to do that, I also wonder what he might think of perfectly effective language teaching methods, as Suggestopaedia, Neurolinguistic-Programming, Transactional analysis or Multiple Intelligences as possible future elements within the international European curriculum.

Practical activities: How they were conceived and how they worked out

As Professor Rather has described my activities with such terms as “sunshine and lollipops”, I feel the ethical and moral obligation to reply to this accusation.

As I am going to describe these activities didn’t come out of the blue for me at all, but on the praxis of nearly twenty years of experience as an English teacher and as a consequence of having studied in depth all the alternative methodology within E.L.T.

First of al, the “Hugging as a warmer exercise” as Mr. Rather well implies is not an original idea. I was very lucky to come across it at one of the wonderful Pilgrims workshops held every summer at The University of Kent. What the outcome of this exercises have done for my students is more than “beneficial”, it has not only improved their own emotional world but it also has created a very good and better understanding between peers, which is another key to Steiner School systems: Solidarity.

It’s strange that Professor Rather doesn’t mention anything about the “Classroom Library” or the “Fairy tale transformation”. Both exercises were taught to me at the Spanish National Board of Education where there happened to be teachers from more than 15 different European nationalities. Between them, there were some British teachers who belong to “Waldorf Schools in Spain”. Apart from enriching us with their authentic and practical ideas within ELT, they also shared the enthusiasm for the activities I have mentioned before. I keep doing “Classroom library workshops” every single Thursday morning at Simón Fuentes School in South East Andalucía, Spain, and the results have been just amazing. Students who were supposed to be “lazy readers” turn up reading an incredible number of books and all of them get a very sound interest in literature without being pushed at all. If a student doesn’t like a book he/she simply gets it back to the library and gets another one.

And so it has been with the “Fairy Tale” project. I was doing workshops of these kinds of activities when I worked for two years at “Juan Ramón Jiménez” school in Almería, Spain. I had different age students who “obviously used (as I am sure Mr. Rather would like) different grammar patterns and different graded vocabulary. We prepared at the end a special “parents’ day” where they could come and see the exhibition of what their children had done. It was both very gratifying for both parents and students.

Let’s talk about the “Free choice project now”. Where did “Professor Rather” get the idea that students were left completely on their own without being provided with vocabulary, necessary information for their topics and proper “expounding resources” such as Power Points and OHP?

Does it mean that if students don’t understand a hundred per cent of information, the activity is useless? Can students really get anything from the pictures and the context? Well, they do and very well. Precisely the subject of freedom of choice and not “boring compulsory book instructions” is very much encouraged at Steiner schools, so where are the contradictions supposed to be?

Finally talking about the “Role play” exercise I am perfectly aware of the role that different cultures play on individuals and society. I know that the respectable and exotic Muslim world is very different to the culture that we have in Western and Asian countries, but I am also aware of the growing number of people who are physically or psychologically abused by their respective partners in the “Western World”, especially in a country like Spain, so easing up the burden by educating our children and teaching tolerance in the reversal of “domestic” roles doesn’t mean an offence at all. On the contrary it helps building up a better society. This is precisely one of my most common activities as a human rights defender.

I would feel very happy to have given the idea that the activities I use with my students are not “hocus-pocus” but very carefully researched pedagogical activities which happen to have a link with Steiner’s tradition.

Conclusions

1. Mr. Rather claims that my ideas and praxis don’t correspond to reality. I’d better leave this judgment for the readers of this article.
2. I’d still like to know quite sincerely where this reputation attributed to Steiner’s school about lack of “critical thinking” stems from. It’s rather the opposite of what I’ve seen.
3. I think I have now exemplified enough why Steiner’s theories have a very important role in the learning of a new language.
4. I hope that the ideas I have expounded in this article may sound convincing enough if not for Professor Rather, at least for the majority of ELT professionals.

Finally, Mr. Rather seems to suggest HLT magazine that some articles “including mine” shouldn’t be published. Of course I am not surprised; it is the funny way that orthodox teaching systems have tried to root out any ideas that don’t match with mainstream conservative teaching ideas. As I said before, professors by the like of Richard Dawkins would be very happy to have followers who write articles like Professor Rother’s one.

All in all, I think innovation, the respect of individuals as free human beings without neglecting their artistic, emotional and spiritual capabilities is the key to future ELT, so I very much stick to my guns and say that Rudolph Steiner’s theories apply very well to ELT indeed.

References

Rudolph Steiner. Education: An Introductory Reader (Christopher Clouder, ed.), Sophia books (March 2004)

Rudolph Steiner. The Education of a child and early lectures on Education (Foundations of Waldorf Education, 25)

Edmunds, Francis. An Introduction to Steiner Education. Rudolph Steiner Press

Wilkinson, R (1996) The Spiritual Basis of Steiner Education. London: Sophia books

McCarty Marietta (2009) How Philosophy can save your life. Tarcher-Penguin

Pennac Daniel (2008) Chagrin d’École. Éditions Gallimard

Savater Fernando. Historia de la Filosofía. Ed.Espasa

Cañadas, Tony. How Rudolph Steiner’s theories apply to ELT? HLT magazine. www.htlmag.co.uk/aug09

Rather Stefan. Rudolph Steiner and ELT? A Reply to Tony Cañadas’s Article. HLT magazine. old.hltmag.co.uk/oct10

Anthroposophy. Wikipedia. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophy

What is Anthroposophy? www.waldorfanswers.org/Anthroposophy

Canterbury Steiner School. www.canterburysteinerschool.co.uk

Why Anthroposophy is cult like? www.uncletaz.com

The Creative Methodology for the Classroom course can be viewed here