Trouble With The Popular Waldorf Literacy Tome, Part 1
It's Time to END the reading wars, apparently, with one hundred dollar book written for people who believe Rudolf Steiner was clairvoyant. That'll probably work.
Ok folks, this is a fun one (for me)! Over the last winter I picked up a copy of a popular Waldorf book on reading and writing instruction, and I’ve been slowly making my way through it and am finally ready to share some of my thoughts with you.
Why the hell would I want such a book? It isn’t cheap. Well, there are several reasons. The first reason is that there is somethin truly strange about my brain and I simply love reading about reading? The second reason was that at the time I thought I might be homeschooling for third grade and since we have done some Waldorf inspired things in our homeschool from the start, you know, it might come in handy. But also… I had an idea to create more of my own curriculum, maybe around the kindergarten level. I know there were things I loved about Oak Meadow Kindergarten, and I knew some of those things came from Waldorf education. It would be great, before getting to work on that, to understand them better, wouldn’t it?
The book I am referring to is The Roadmap to Literacy, (a guide to teaching language arts in waldorf schools grades 1 through 3), by Janet Langley and Jennifer Militzer-Kopperl. It came highly recommended. These authors were leading the charge to integrate more phonics and science of reading in Waldorf Education! And as I found myself constantly telling “Waldorf parents” that what their kids needed was more phonics instruction, I was definitely interested.
I’m goin to spoil this right out the gate: it does in fact advocate for more phonics instruction than the average Waldorf teacher (or homeschooler) uses to teach reading and writing. Ultimately that is almost certainly a net gain for kids! But it also has some weird pitfalls that deserve examining, and ultimately I don’t see it as having much at all in common with science backed or based reading instruction.
Let’s dive in. Please note, explaining the first and most central problem in this book ran long. Rather than writing you a whole novel, I’ve decided to split it up into parts. I’ll follow up with more problems and with the stuff I actually really liked (and may or may not be implementing in a curriculum I am currently creating, eeeeee!) soon.