Why I'm posting On Beyond Waldorf, Team Human K-12 education

After 4-5 months of re-writing, writing and revising, I'm ready for some feedback.  If nothing else, posting this online will help me revise material towards a final draft. 

This is the most complex writing project I believe I've ever undertaken.  Why?  Since so much K-12 ed literature already exists; what to honor?  What to ignore?  How much complexity can my ideal reader handle?  How radical to make this?  How to balance radical ideas with accessibility? 

Comments on the title are invited.  Yes, I will contact Random House and ask permission to use the image if I stay with it.

On Beyond Waldorf, 
Team Human K-12 Education; 
Goethean Psychology Applied to Child Development and K-12 Schooling; 
Some Assembly Required

A five-minute sketch of the current cover image idea:

To prepare for this text, I naturally asked Mr. Google to catch me up on K-12 school reform from several angles. If you have kept up with this field, you won't be surprised to hear much consensus has been achieved on the problem and some consensus exists on partial solutions even the most educated school reformers I have met, Waldorf educators, would be happy with.

My summary of the current state of some aspects of current K-12 school reform:

INDENT Mainstream public education has exhausted the progressive momentum possible to be wrung from curriculum research, standards-testing and piecemeal teacher strategies.

In one sentence: Where there is no inspiring, healthy, sustainable vision for a future, for the majority--K-12 schools perish.

K-12 schooling now must draw inspiration again from expanding our vision of the K-12 student, the K-12 teacher and the symbiosis between schools and stakeholders.

Q: what happened to the vibrant, often parent-led alternative ed and holistic ed conversations of 1975-1995?

A: K-12 school reform became big business. It also became a big conservative political cause because of profits to be made in privatizing schools--for better and worse. Recent reports tell me we are in an era of K-12 reform which began in 2003 and is now best represented by ESEA was reauthorized on December 10, 2015 as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) by President Barack Obama.

The alternative-holistic education conversations, outside of Waldorf-methods, peaked and remain in decline since 2003. Charter schools, good and bad, now call themselves "holistic" and "alternative" muddying what these terms originally connoted in the 1970s.

So yes, I have kept abreast somewhat on school reform issues. Still the audience for a text like this is not professional school reformers. My audience is Cultural Creative Progressives, some of whom will be in teacher trainings, looking for more direction and more clear direction. This won't be many people in 2018. As the old system dries up and blows away and local stakeholders re-assert local control, there will be more readers.

QUOTE Most educators today advocate a more holistic approach. How far this goes depends on how encompassing are the "wholes" one has in mind ~ James Moffett in the forward to Keynoting School Reform, Heinnemann, 1992

[[piecemeal reform sent to TH vs TM could go here in the mss]]

Outside of Waldorf methods, does K-12 ed have any positive future?

To me in 2018, we appear to be in a Turning of the Ages (1968-2019), as the Protestant, corporate, consumer, capitalist "cultural engine" exhausts the few fumes left for it to run on and no new gas coming (hence all the cannibalization and mergers). Sadly. in its response to the rising frequency of Earth, Western mainstream culture is so far behind, any bold proposal for a positive K-12 future, will appear more or less radical to many.

If the proposal for a positive K-12 future is based not on incremental expert-driven reforms; rather, on an expanded vision of the human being, it will appear even more radical.

Not trying to appear radical, this may put me in the position of appearing radical, no matter how conservatively I present a positive vision of future Team Human K-12 schooling.

If this is the case, then little reason to hold back. Why ask for only a loaf of bread if you are being offered an entire bakery? Feel free to scale back this presentation of Team human K-12 ed to what your local stakeholders are likely to achieve consensus on.

Schooling now must again draw its inspiration from visions of the whole person

This was the original impulse behind Rudolf Steiner's K-12 school now known--un-transparently--as "Waldorf."

"Goethean Psychology applied to K-12' or 'Team Human K-12 ed' may be an improvement. How to engage existing corporate and governmental sponsors and underwriters is not yet known to me. It may happen the public hue and cry for better, cheaper, more fun, more effective K-12 ed will draw these ideas to the forefront in times to come--perhaps within a couple years.

Q: Are you proposing an "alternative education" or "holistic education"?

A: Not in how these terms were used in the mainstream, 1975-2015. Charter schools are also "alternative schools" and these run the gamut from wonderful to crapola.

The best way to grasp what HEALTHY "alternative education" and "holistic education" look like in practice, is to tour; or better, teach in, a successful, working Waldorf school, charter or independent, with good teacher morale.

If you, dear Reader, did not attend K-12 schooling with good teacher morale; and, some vision of the "whole person" separate and distinct from the "whole consumer," I think difficult to grasp what a successful Team Human school looks and feels like.

A workable look and feel, converged with adequate and sufficient Emotional Intelligence among teachers--so it can be absorbed by children--is both a good starting place and good endgame.

Q: Weren't "free schools" and "Whole Language" discredited in public schools?

A: Yes, they were, decidedly so. Whole language was a wonderful, humanistic approach to acquiring language and writing facility. What happened? The teacher corps; and behind them, teacher training institutions, were not up to the task of implementing the values of Team Human ed over and above Team Machine ed.

The innovations of holistic K-12 ed (1975-1999) were always in danger of failing exactly as Whole Language failed in 1996, driven by enlightened, but still faddish thinking. Characteristically "holistic" ed avoids the big enchilada: a comprehensive vision of the whole-person to give its vision both tangible roots in human perception and experience; and, wings to fly.

Whole-language, mixed-age schools, etc, etc have made little impact on the mainstream of education because they are primarily only methods-. While they have wings to fly, they lack sufficiently deep roots. The wholes they have in mind, are simply not big enough, if we apply James Moffett's words.

Educational faddism can be summed up as good ideas with insufficient philosophical grounding, a problem this text hopefully solves.

Only a more attractive, i.e. expanded, view of the whole-person, whole-child, whole human being, can replace the current exhausted paradigm of the mechanical-child.

"Free schools" and "child-run" schools of the 70s

Some younger, affluent families today, are too young to recall how unworkable some holistic-alternative schooling ideas of the 1970s were. The fad I believe most timely to address in this text is the idea of K-12 schooling based on neuroscience.

We also address workable criteria for replicating new school successes. I believe this is yet another aspect of K-12 schooling best addressed as a challenge to healthy group process and managing healthy group process--once you have achieved local consensus among stakeholders about theory and method.

What have we learned? Briefly, if your school success is primarily due to a single personage, your success is unlikely to be replicable in additional locations. A much-healed theory and much-healed method others can implement according to local culture, language and talent is required. Some of these theories and methods already been invented by the Waldorf folks; who, after Catholic schools are the largest system of K-12 ed, across every known major culture, except Eskimo.

Q: Are you proposing a reformed rubric for school success?

A: Partly. Got Emotional Intelligence training and behaviors among your adult teaching staff? If not, why not? If your parents are not asking for more Emotional Intelligence, your school is excused from this until your stakeholders DO ask for this.

In other words, if your parents are satisfied with a school where bullying of teachers and students is the norm, helicoptering in a Team Human approach is useless. Parents, stakeholders get the schools they ask for and work for.

Q: Are you saying better Team Human schools cannot occur except where local Tribes-communities-stakeholders ask for and work for this?

A: I am. How else can it be?

Q: I infer you intend Team Human schools to be few and far between?

A: Temporarily, yes. As Western culture evolves and swings away from one-size-fits-all Amazon.com-Walmart culture and back towards more tribal arrangements, more and more local stakeholders will be empowered to take back their K-12 schools and make them useful tools of local values, not corporate-government values.

Surely very few groups of local stakeholders will fund nor support the worst factory-style K-12 schools now "serving" their communities. These are better-termed "baby-sitting institutions; or 'the first leg of the "school-to-prison pipeline."

Team Human K-12 theory-method equips interested parents and school-starters, of any kind, with rhetorical tools to conceptualize and train teachers for a "quality school," to use William Glasser's phrase.

Q: Are you arguing to professionalize K-12 teachers and pay them more?

A: Possibly. I don't think teacher pay and staff development have as much to do with improvements as the media advertises.

I believe undue focus on teachers as saviors, excuses principals, state and national education people from changing their approach and their allegiances. The sustainable, long-term K-12 solution is not a few handfuls of highly-trained, Emotionally Intelligent teachers.

The sustainable, long-term K-12 solution I see is local communities becoming more active and vocal. Probably for many this starts with, "We're not tolerating nor putting up with incompetent and inadequate leadership and teaching talent and low -performing graduates."

After people know WHAT THEY DON'T WANT, after they reach and voice their Howard Beale moment, "I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it any longer!" they need a positive K-12 vision to go TOWARDS. The Team Human K-12 text does a pretty good job of pointing them and teacher trainees in the direction of solutions. We don't have to re-invent the wheel. We do have to assemble the parts of the wheel. Local hands-on assembly is absolutely required.

Q: Do you see "pink collar" K-12 teaching jobs going away entirely?

A: No. I see them sustainable where the consensus in local community remains, "Factory-style baby-sitting institution is the best we can do here, at the moment."

Q: So you see a two-tiered K-12 system? One for the "Haves" one for the "Have-nots"?

A: No. I see a hundred-tier K-12 school system, way more diversity and way more creativity than we have now.

Consider: Corporate-consumer-paternal-dominator culture is running on fumes, cannibalizing consumers and smaller corporations. The Age of the Isolated Ego Dinosaur is over. I acknowledge the present USA Bully in Chief is assisting more people to recognize the Age of Isolated Ego Dinosaurs ended decades ago.

Once released, where do you think all the pent-up creativity in unnecessary corporations and unnecessary government is going to go? Back into local communities. As it does, a large fraction will flow into local public schools. Don't hold your breath. This could take a couple generations.

Here at least is a pretty good book to inspire teacher trainees; who then, can inspire students to learn and keep learning.

This is not a rebellious book. My constant image is the blind men feeling out the elephant. In this case the "elephant" is a healthy, sustainable, Team Human K-12 ed. Behind this is the work of, "what is community?" Behind this is exploration a few generations hence on, "What is our etheric body?"

Q: Is Team Human K-12 a Waldorf-methods "wolf in sheep's clothing"?

A: No. You'll have to read the book to learn how this sorts out. If it was easy, this would have been done decades before. The short version is: The Waldorf hierarchy, in the USA and Europe, in the period 1965-1995, failed to perceive and capitalize on the natural synergy Waldorf theory and methods had with aspects of the work of giants in holistic education outside Waldorf:

- Carl Rogers ideas about group learning and "unconditional positive regard,"

- William Glasser incorporating W. Edwards Deming (also spelled C. Edward Deming), incorporating John Dewey,

- Rudolf Dreikurs Four Mistaken goals of child mis-behavior (not his family council ideas), incorporating Jane Nelson,

- George Kelly's ideas about our subconscious Naive Scientist,

- Marshall Rosenberg cited here as the beginning of an actual trainable method to increase Interpersonal Competency.

Aspects from these innovators could have been incorporated into Waldorf as early as 1985. The intellectual climate within Waldorf, as I experienced, was unfavorable for this. It may as well be done now.

Finally, Team HumanK-12 ed addresses the danger of church-state collusion; and, suggests a solution for the public's desire to keep the good in whole-child ed and jettison the sanctimonious, the religious and the dogmatic. Briefly: Team Human K-12 schools are likely to increase their success by adopting an ecumenical spirituality "plank" tolerant of all religions and paths based on truly human values of some kind.

If any of the above interests you, please comment below and feel free to read further pages.

Each Reader is warmly invited and encouraged to compose their own vision of K-12 ed. based on truly human values. Hopefully enuf here for readers to construct their own vision.

You and I are co-learners on this journey. How else could it be?