The free-play hour at Inodai Waldorf School is when children rid themselves of any negative energies that they may have absorbed during the day. On the surface, it looks like regular play time: one child wears a cape and swishes it about grandly, another fiddles with a box of wooden blocks, yet another crawls along on the floor. A teacher observes the surprisingly quiet chaos as she knits – watchful, but utterly sanguine.
“This is their free play hour,” said Bindu Chowdary, a founder member of Inodai in Andheri, Mumbai. “We don’t disturb them, we let them be.”
The Waldorf school model that Inodai emulates is based on an ideology called anthroposophy, founded by the German philosopher Rudolf Steiner in 1919. Institutes like Inodai (also called Steiner schools) focus on the inner needs of children – emphasising on the importance of imagination in the process of learning. They rely on a system of continuous qualitative assessment instead of regimented exams and attempt to expose students to a wide array of subjects and activities – ranging from woodwork, clay moulding to drama and astronomy.
Waldorf education focuses on fulfilling the physical, emotional and mental needs of children at various stages of their life. For instance, since anthroposophy maintains that students learn through their physical body in the first seven years of their life, children engage in a lot of activity that involves the active use of hands till they turn six. Alphabet and math operations are introduced directly in Grade 1.
The curriculum also focuses on the evolving emotional needs of its students. In Grade 2, for instance, they are exposed to stories about saints because, as the founder of another Waldorf school explained, “that is when they are consciously becoming aware of the polarities of human nature.” In Grade 8, when the teenage students are just learning to rebel, they are taught about American, French and Russian revolutions. “We attempt to highlight that any revolt is always associated with a higher purpose, a higher ideal. We never moralise or talk explicitly about their internal own revolution, but they themselves make the connections,” the founder added.
Alternate system of education
Both the Inodai Waldorf School and the newest Mumbai-based Waldorf school, The Golden Spiral, take their lead from Tridha, a school which was established in 2000 in Santa Cruz, Mumbai. Each of these schools has also been founded by parents looking for an alternative system of education for their children.
The initial guidance for setting up Tridha came from Aban Bana, a trained Waldorf teacher and Eurythmist – Eurythymy is a performance art which has therapeutic applications in education.
Tridha began in a converted bungalow and had to shift base twice, before the management could generate enough funds to purchase their own land and construct a school building in Andheri, a suburban locality in Mumbai. Although the management has since added to the building, they now hope to acquire some space outside the city, where students can spend a month to “be in the green and perhaps work on the farm” said Ruth Mehta, one of the founders of Tridha.
The Inodai Waldorf School was founded in 2010 by a subset of the group of parents who began Tridha. “We thought there should be many more schools like Tridha and we were advised by parents to start another such venture,” said Binu Chowdhary, a founder member of Inodai. The school operates out of the premises of the Shree Ram Welfare Society School and currently teaches classes up to Grade 7.
The success of Tridha inspired a group of six parents to start The Golden Spiral in 2013, which currently operates till Grade 4. “We were considering other non-conventional options like the Krishnamurti schools or even homeschooling,” said Insiya Husein, a founder of The Golden Spiral. “But Waldorf has a very clear understanding of curriculum in tandem with the growing child. Its thorough grounding in child development made us choose this alternative.”
The stark differences between Waldorf education and the conventional system can sometimes unsettle parents. The schools conduct orientations to acquaint parents with the basic ideology behind Waldorf schools. Children are considered for admission only after parents attend one of these sessions.
“There are always concerns among parents about why their children are not able to read, or why they are not at grip with certain mathematical formulae,” said Husein. “That will always be a challenge faced by Waldorf Schools, because the current scenario exerts so much pressure upon the parent body of a school like ours. Parents also often find it difficult to accept the schools’ insistence on keeping children away from technological devices.”
Founder members believe that the Waldorf system demands patience, trust and perseverance from parents. “This process bears fruit only very much later in the child’s life,” said Husein. “Steiner students who are pursuing higher studies fare very well, because they are able to thrive and compete healthily.”
Given the high cost of private education, most students who attend these schools come from privileged backgrounds. But Husein insists that the egalitarianism inherent to Steiner’s model makes it amenable to application across different social and economic strata.
Curriculum with a difference
Mumbai-based Waldorf schools adhere purely to the Steiner curriculum till grade 7. Beyond that, they gradually integrate the IGCSE curriculum into their system. Waldorf Schools in the country have adapted the Steiner curriculum to also make it relevant to cultural and social scenario in India.
Although it has been observed that students who graduate from Steiner schools are generally more successful, the system has come under attack for its esoteric and observation-centric handling of science and mathematics. “Steiner stressed upon the sense of imagination, which science has no explanation or counter for,” said Husein. “I can understand why modern science thinks it is unscientific because science itself has not been able to untangle the questions before us as humans.”
Some schools are attempting to make their science and mathematics curriculum more balanced. “We have made it a point at Tridha to study CBSE and ISCE curricula and find out what is missing in the IGCSE or the Steiner curriculum,” said Mehta. “We don’t want children to lose out, because we know that they sometimes drop out after Grade 10, and would want to join a college.”
Training teachers
The schools conduct weekend and tri-weekly training programmes for teachers and only employ educators who are sufficiently proficient in the Waldorf method. “We also have a weekly mentorship programme for teachers, and sometimes this even occurs on a day-to-day basis,” said Mehta.
“The teaching method is so practical, that even if you do not spend too much time training your teachers, the results in the classroom will reveal the greater reason behind the process,” Husein explained. But she acknowledged that Mumbai-based Waldorf schools require a more streamlined training program and a formal association for teachers.
Regardless of curriculum, Steiner schools like Tridha and The Golden Spiral ultimately aim to help their students develop a deep and sustained love for learning. “Most international schools still focus on how much can be given to the head,” said Mehta. “But in Steiner education, it is about how you can approach the head through the heart and hands.”