Bad schools are children of bad psychology

Chapter 12 serializing of Growing Sustainable Children; and, Schools Worthy of Our Affection.
My best guess how, in the next 100 years, whole-child K-12 schooling can evolve worldwide.

collage by the author

• Chapter 12 — Bad schools are children of bad psychology
• Suggestions for improving this section for accuracy, coherency readability-accessibility are welcomed.
• Q: What is the significance of psychology for K-12 systems of education?
• A: Each K-12 system devolves from a Psychology of some kind.
• To make the above title more gentle, we can say bad schools devolve from partial, unworkable psychology.

More precisely, we might say,

dismal schools devolve from

an absence of a child development theory;

and, curriculum tied into theory,

honoring the The Land of Childhood,

as a period oriented towards the Mood of Birth,

not towards the intellect and its Mood of Death.

• Unworkable K-12 psychology is usually adult ideas of:
• - What the Land of Childhood was in the past, should be, could be; and
• - How to arrange children and childhood more conveniently for adults to manage.
• Q: Why do you say psychology oriented towards the intellect, is oriented towards the Mood of Death?
• A: Hold on to this question. We have a ways to go first.
• Goethean Holistic Psychology, as outlined pretty well in this text, is a psychology of Life and Death forces, in balance in the human being. This psychology is an umbrella for psychologies of Life, the natural protector of The Land of Childhood and healthy K-5 schools. K-5 grades run this way provide the best foundation in the whole of Life on top of which curriculum aimed at the lesser intelligences of the Intellect can then be appreciated and given their place and their due.
• Goethean Holistic Psychology comes from Goethean insights. Classic Waldorf is the child of Rudolf Steiner’s Goethean insights into child-human development.
• Divorcing from 1900s psychological materialism
• I’m happy to say it appears, by the end of this book, we will be able to demonstrate, how 1900s materialistic psychology was death-mechanical-oriented; and how, Goethean Psychology is life-whole-brained-oriented. Those familiar with Iain McGilchrist’s rectifying of brain laterality will appreciate how the two resonate here.
• Q: Wasn’t this also RS’s intention in 1919?
• A: Yes. The newer rhetoric had simply not yet developed, could not develp until the 1970s at the earliest.
• More clarity seems to arise when we detach Goethean Holistic Science (GHS) and Goethean Holistic Psychology (GHP) from how these have been perceived and practiced within Steiner-Waldorf, since the 1970s. GHS ands GHP are larger than any versions of Goetheanism I’ve seen so far in Waldorf or the nature Inst. as of 2014. GHS and GHP taken together are perhaps smaller, more circumscribed, than Iain McGilchrist’s ideas.
• Tongue-tied to explain Classic Waldorf’s successes
• I wish I had five-cents for every Waldorf parent I’ve seen struggle, when asked in person:
• - “What do you like about this Waldorf school?” or,
• - “How is Classic Waldorf better for kids than factory-style schooling?” or,
• - “How do Waldorf Grade 12 graduates differ from factory-style school Grade 12 graduates?”
• Q: What ties our tongue when asked these questions?
• A: George Lakoff and Iain McGilchrist might say, if our mind-frame is ONLY QUANTITY MATTERS, only measurable quantities matter, only physical-material matter is “real;” then, there can be no discussion or appreciation of quality and positive qualities.
• Physical-materialism is the dogma of the one-eyed, color-blind cripple in the wheelchair with his ruler and measuring devices. (The first 12 chapters of Ernst Lehrs’ Man and Matter contain many of the intermediate steps between Waldorf’s Goethe-Steiner and GHS-GHP).
• Every useful answer to the above question about schools, has to address the value of quality, positive qualities and qualitative change.
• Changes in Quality are rarely possible to measure in Second Order Science. What you can do is point out objective patterns of quality change.
• Q: WHY are changes in quality more challenging to measure in Second Order Science?
• A: Because a change in quality is chiefly only possible to measure subjectively. Let me say this again: Changes in quality can chiefly only be measured in the Domain of One Person at a time (First Order Science). Make sense?
• Sheeple
• We want each young adult graduating high school to measure the changing quality of their life and conditions. If you are not, others are ready, willing, able and wanting to tell you what to do, how to live your life, what to buy; what not to buy, what is good and what is bad. If you will follow, they will lead you. This is how the unwary frog got cooked to death in that pot of water, with the slowly rising temperature. Make sense?
• Q: Do you mean to suggest much of 1900s Psychology, framed as Second Order “hard” Science, can and will be shifted over, re-framed as First Order Science?
• A: Yes. A large fraction of 1900s psychology pretended it was based on the logic and rules of physical-materialsm; when in fact, it was based on the equally valid rules of first-person subjective observation and self-sensitivity. This is a radical insight percolating; not yet stated explicitly, in virtually all of Rudolf Steiner’s output. I don’t expect this to embraced fully for another 100 years.
• Back to “tongue-tied.” Imagine trying to explain to a know-it-all, physical-materialist, Sherlock Holmes, skeptic; who, frames what is real and true in strictly quantitative terms, how children differ qualitatively in consciousness from adults.
• On top of this; try to explain why children can and should be treated differently in K-5 especially. Our skeptic can only cognize The Land of Childhood as an abstraction, from the neck-up. The heartfelt experiencing of it does not interest him; and so, it escapes him.
• Some big ideas here. The Land of Childhood differs from Adult Nation (see also: Alien Nation (1988).
• All psychology concerning primarily qualitative differences, is primarily qualitative and First Order Science. It may have secondarily quantitative Second Order Science. It may also have ethical-moral Third Order Science aspects.

The above gives us more language for the better unconscious boundaries teachers need between Science, Psychology, Education, Childhood and Adulthood. I also think all of these developments can be inferred from, Steiner’s Goethean Psychology insights.