This has been on my mind a lot this week {{ subscriber.first_name }}. The ‘shoulds’ of Waldorf Education. It seems that these shoulds (or shouldn’ts!) have a very loud voice at the moment, and it can start to overwhelm the true intent of why we do what we do. You’ve probably seen or heard them too:
“you shouldn’t let children use black crayons”
“you should make sure you’re teaching the exact Main Lesson blocks that are in the ‘curriculum'”
“you should always cut the corners of your painting paper so that they’re rounded”
“you should always start your day with an extended morning circle”
“you shouldn’t follow a structured approach to literacy in the early years”
…I could go on and on. And I’ll bet that you’ve heard at least one of these before.
Now, I don’t want to go through each of these and call them out, except to say that for many of these Waldorf ‘shoulds’, there were once good reasons. But, times have changed, and we as Waldorf educators and parents must stay current.
A term I really appreciate is ‘sacred nothings’ – this term has arisen in Waldorf Education in recent years to reflect some of the traditions that have become embedded for no good reason. It’s still important to recognise the plethora of wonderful, important, traditions that make Waldorf all that it is, but, the idea of sacred nothings is that they don’t all have to be the ideal standard.
The other challenge that comes with sacred nothings is the tendency to encourage comparison between us – we all know the feeling of seeing someone else do something one way, for example cutting the corners of paper to round them, and then feeling like surely we’re missing something if we don’t also trim our paper carefully. There’s nothing wrong with doing this if it serves you and your children. But if you’re doing it for the sake of it, then I encourage you to ask yourself “Why?”
“Why do I not want my children to use black?” (what if they need to draw a friend’s black hair or their own black cat?)
“Why would I teach this Main Lesson block that feels so Eurocentric when my children couldn’t be further away from that experience of life?”
“What does it add to the experience of painting if I round the corners of my paper?”
“My children feel too worn out or escalated after a 30-minute circle time – why would I not pare it back to 15 minutes to ground us and begin our day together in a way that supports our learning?”
“My child seems to be struggling with letter and sound knowledge more than their peers – maybe I need to consider a little bit of structured literacy support to ensure they get the instruction they need”
So, rather than allowing these shoulds to become a source of truth or comparison to others, I encourage you to remind yourself to question the things that may not feel quite right to you, or that you don’t understand the purpose of doing them. Read and research, talk to others, and more than anything – look at the children before you and ask yourself “what do theyneed most of me, and this education, here and now?”