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[quote=Anonymous]I'm one of the PPs whose child goes to WWS, responding to 20:51's comment, "There were some writtings from the kids about saints that didn't actually exist and I couldn't quite figure out what the basis was - was it actually something they taught the kids, was it something the kids made up, was it some sort of religion class???"

One of the foci of the second grade curriculum is to study saints and fables: saints represent the highest, most "pure" form of human being, whereas fables represent the lowest form.  As with all of Waldorf, the choice of saints and fables for second grade is very carefully made; anyone who has had a 7-8 year old knows that these little beings often embody all that is pure and also all that is base, all at the same time, so what better time for them to learn about these in history and myth.

The definition of "saint" is very broad -- and also what I would say is non-religious, though certainly it IS spiritual in that there is definite value - and judgment of "good" - placed on the acts and beings of those who give to the poor, care for the weak, nurture the needy, etc.  In my daughter's second grade class last year they looked at especially good human beings from a whole range of beliefs and religions, and I, through my daughter, learned about saints I had not heard of before --- but this doesn't mean that they were "made up;" in fact, they all derived from different traditions and different sets of beliefs, ones that I had not been exposed to in my own combined Christian/Jewish background.

This bringing together of beliefs and drawing from a very international, multi-ethnic, multicultural, interdisciplinary base for the curriculum is part of what we love so much about the Waldorf school -- and part of what I am sure attracts such a nicely diverse population to the school.  In one class of 23 children, we have several Jewish families of varying strains of Judaism, several Muslim families (again, of different strains), a fundamentalist Christian family, several atheists, and a whole range of folks of general Christian belief.  There is also real ethnic and racial diversity, as well as a nice range of class diversity (rare in a DC private school).

Overall, if you're not comfortable with the idea of spiritual underpinings to a curriculum, then Waldorf isn't right for you.  But it's distinct from "religion" per se, and certainly there are no religious beliefs pushed at all.[/quote]

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