Talk:Waldorf education

Evaluations of students' progress section

This section reads like a promo for Steiner schools. At a cursory glance there are claims about Steiner vs state schools, but no mention of within which national or local government area the comparisons are made, education standards and outcomes can vary wildly from local government area to local government area, let alone nation to nation. We are not here to praise Steiner, this should be treated with a more even hand. In Australia for example they generally perform no better than state schools at NAPLAN, in the UK they have been found to be under performing in various areas. Bacondrum (talk) 20:49, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I searched and found only one comparison that might have been unclear; it was the second sentence of a paragraph, the first sentence of which explicitly compared European Waldorf and state school students. I added "European" to the second sentence, as well. Are there more places I'm not seeing where this specificity is absent?

Do you have sources for the Australian and UK comparisons? We can add these in. Clean Copy^talk 13:57, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

"Waldorf schools/draft" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Waldorf schools/draft. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 February 3#Waldorf schools/draft until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 16:29, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Cartogram

The cartogram near the top of the page is nice in principle, but it seems difficult to make much out there. Retain? Remove? Share your thoughts, please. Clean Copy^talk 15:33, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

• Replace with a regular color-coded map. Some countries in heavily-distorted regions like the Middle East are hard to identify. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 08:50, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

Putting here to work on and then insert back:Clean Copy^talk 15:01, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

A cartogram of Waldorf Schools—countries are resized according to how many Waldorf schools in that country.

References

Andreas Schleicher

In this review about the history of Waldorf movement is noted that Andreas Schleicher, director of PISA, is himself a proponent of the Waldorf movement. This is relevant to the section and, furthermore, it has been noted by himself in interviews (ES Andreas Schleicher sur la pédagogie Steiner-Waldorf | ÆTHER) and the fact that Schleicher is a proponent of the Waldorf education is cited by the Waldorf schools, and here.

But the edition was reverted by M.boli, arguing that Cited reference is mere trash-talk, not a reliable source. And attended Waldorf school as a child does not equal "part of the Waldorf movement.". We can discuss that, but the reference is a well stablished scientific webpage on skepticism, which notes exactly that Schleicher was a student at Waldorf, and that he is a promoter of the Waldorf idea. Which is true. So, the source is reliable, the comment is right and the facts are true. -Theklan (talk) 18:56, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Please review our policies on reliable sources; blogs and other self-published materials do not qualify.

Schleicher is Director for the Directorate of Education and Skills at the OECD. His work and that of this organization certainly does qualify as reliable sources. Clean Copy^talk 19:50, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Here is what the reference says about Schleicher, translated from Spanish by google translate. Schleicher attended Waldorf school as a child. The claim -- completely without evidence -- is therefore PISA assessments are garbage and this is why Waldorf schools score well in science. The reference also detours into the notion that Schleicher relies on mystical nonsense for his work.

Coincidentally, these days and in apparent support of the massacre against public education undertaken by the extremist Spanish government, Andreas Schleicher, director of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD ), stated that there are too many teachers per student in Spanish public education.

This of course was received with delirious jubilation by what in Spain is known as "the media cave", a group of manipulative media and journalists that includes militants of fundamentalist Catholicism, social ultraconservatives, economic neoliberals, nostalgic for Francoism, neo-Nazis irredentist, caricature anti-communists and mixed rightists, all of them identified as having a colossal vociferous capacity inversely proportional to their arguments, and a total absence of good faith.

But it turns out that Don Andreas Schleicher is also part of the Steinerite sect. In fact, he is a graduate of a Waldorf school (we do not know if he is clairvoyant, but we suppose not, if he were, he would not have to do studies but only go into a trance like Steiner and consult the universal wisdom contained, say the members of the sect, in the “Akashic record”, which is where Steiner learned, without having to study them in real books, pedagogy without having educated a child, agriculture without having harvested a tomato, medicine without having treated a patient and economics without having worked a day in their life).

In any case, the seriousness of the PISA program (invented by Andreas Schleicher himself and according to which Waldorf schools are always examples of excellent education, what a surprise) is quite questionable. Again, Don Andreas can believe in any religion or superstition, but this should not set the course for him when he is in charge of a major OECD office.

I call hooey. This is not an authoritative source that says PISA is biased toward Waldorf education. It is trash talk which does not belong in an encyclopedia. -- M.boli (talk) 21:19, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

@M.boli: It would be interesting not to use words as trash talk in a discussion. Such an aggresive statement towards a good faith edition is out of context and out of the code of conduct we should have. There are some questions we should answer to know if the claim that Schleicher himself was a Waldorf student and is a proponent of Waldorf education is true or not and is relevant here or not. I would like to do this easily:

• Did Schleicher study at a Waldorf school? Yes, he did. This is even cited in his biography here at Wikipedia.
• Has Schleicher promoted the Waldorf education program? Yes, he has.

• Is Schleicher responsible of the PISA Programme? Well, he is the co-ordinator of the programme.

Once we know that in fact Schleicher was the co-ordinator of a programme which gave Waldorf schools the best score AND we know that himself is a proponent of this pedagogy AND we know that he studied there, we can decide whether this information is relevant or not. A way to know if we should include it is to see if this has been mentioned elsewhere. And it has been mentioned, so we can note this because criticism is also knowledge.

Is the source relevant? Well, this is a good discussion. I don't think this is trash talk, you think that a web devoted to scientific knowledge and criticism on sects is trash, but the burden of proof there is yours. I'm not judging in the source is the best one, I'm only saying that there has been criticism on this (true) and that all the points in the critic are true. I'm not judging all the other statements in the source, because I'm only using that one. We can let the critic (which exists and is fact-based) without source, but that would be the worst solution. -Theklan (talk) 18:53, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

I believe it is noteworthy. I added it with RS. Gandydancer (talk) 20:44, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

References

Study removed

When it come to science, we expect to see peer review and even then one study without follow up should get only a brief mention, if that. Plus it is quite old. Gandydancer (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2021 (UTC)