A group of parents and teachers have launched a campaign to create a new free school. The Bristol Steiner Free School group announced...that it would bid next February for government approval of the project. Free schools are state-funded but independent of council control and set up in response to demand from groups of parents....[The group said the school would have] a strong academic element, specialising in environmental sciences...The Steiner School movement emerged from the ideas of early 20th century educationalist Rudolf Steiner. (full story). Steiner (pictured) claimed direct experience of the 'spiritual' world. He was a philosopher, occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist. and founded Anthroposophy. Anthoposophy claims to investigate the spiritual world and believes it can attain precise and clear conclusions in the same way that science concludes about the physical world.
I've been an active green for 30 yrs and I teach environmental sciences (which is simply the proper application of scientific methods to the environment). I do not support Steiner's ideas or Steiner Free Schools and would point to the British Humanist Association concerns about them (see http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/1042 ).
Like others commenting on
this Post report I can’t see how Steiner's ideas are at all consistent with
modern science and its methods and so I am as concerned about Steiner Free Schools
setting up with public money and support as I am about certain other kinds of
Free School with a significant ideology behind them instead of openness,
questioning and reason.
Background on Steiner:
http://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner
Background on Steiner:
http://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner
