A Peculiarly Waldorfian Joy
Dear Member of The Waldorf School of Santa Barbara Community,
To hear children playing stringed instruments is a peculiarly Waldorfian joy.
In a Waldorf school children experience music every day, starting in Early Childhood. However, in third and fourth grade that experience becomes more formalized with the study of violin, viola, cello, or bass.
Why does such study take place? Why do children at WSSB have a separate class—“Strings”— led by Ms. Amy Hagen? There are many ways to answer that question.
The founder of this education, Rudolf Steiner, relevantly wrote this of playing a stringed instrument:
The human being feels how her whole organism is being enlarged; processes which are otherwise only within the organism are carried over into the outside world. . . When the child learns the violin, the actual process, the music that is within her, is directly carried over and she feels how the music in her passes over into the strings through her bow.
Waldorf teacher Monika Sutherland elaborates on Steiner’s understanding of the role of music in the developing child:
Steiner spoke of the threefold nature of the human being, the fact that we are comprised of head, heart, and hands, that we have a capacity for thinking, for feeling, and for doing (willing). From Steiner’s perspective, the stringed instruments, with their bowed sound and deep connection to the life of feeling, are a good match for the changing nine-year-old student, whose feeling realm is expanding and who is seeking emotional expression.
Further, learning to play a stringed instrument imprints in the student the capacity for sustained attention and hones stick-to-itiveness. It shows the child that excellence demands the ungrudging sweat of care, the persistent, often unglamorous commitment to incremental, small-step progress. Sutherland baldly states, “There is no instant gratification in learning a stringed instrument!”
There are other fruits of playing a stringed instrument: crossing the midline (understood to be a crucial activity for children) and brain development. Scholar Brenda Brenner writes:
Neurological research suggests that the early study of music, and particularly string study beginning at a young age, changes the development of the brain. String players have greater neuronal activity and a larger right motor cortex than non-string players.
Finally, there is the spiritual dimension of the activity, the creation of—and participation in—the transcendent. “The sound made by the bow pulled across strings,” says Sutherland, “resonates in the core of one’s being.” Sometimes in Strings class—or during a school concert—the children feel that resonance and know the enchantment of being alive.
Come see this peculiarly Waldorfian joy in action on Monday, June 2nd at 8:45 a.m. when we have our Spring Strings Performance.
Important Dates:
Friday, April 18th and Monday, April 20th: No school (Spring Holiday Weekend)
Wednesday, April 23rd: Rising First Grade Preview Evening at 5:30 p.m.
Friday, April 25th: Professional Development Day: No school for students (except Grade 5 for the Pentathlon)
Thursday, May 1st: May Faire and Grandparents’/Special Friends’ Day (see May Faire flyer below and Parent Square post)
Friday, May 16th: Hike-a-Thon (details forthcoming)
Monday, June 2nd: Strings Performance at 8:45 a.m.
Happy Spring Holiday Break,
The Admin Team
PS The Thoughts of the Day — edifying thoughts, which we shared in a November newsletter — are from Kim John Payne:
I have heard a definition of addiction as being “an increasing and compulsive tendency to avoid pain, boredom, silence, inner development, and moral responsibility by displacing it with outer stimulation.”
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What we as parents want above all is to be at our most loving when our kids are at their most vulnerable.
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We need to guard against harmony-addiction, in which we strive for rainbow-colored, aura-balancing family experiences daily. Where joy is good and struggle is seen as bad. Everyone knows that an idealized picture of family life where everyone is happy and contented all the time is a mirage, and yet the desire to achieve it lies deep within us. We need to remind ourselves that we do not become happy with how things are going in our family by rejecting the parts of ourselves that we don’t like.
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When children and teens are their most angry selves, they are also at their most vulnerable. In such moments they are hypersensitive to any shift in the emotional current flowing between them and their parents. If we harden our facial expression, narrow our eyes, drop our forehead, or draw ourselves up, growing perceptibly larger, harder, and sharper, our children will retreat…However, if they pick up on an almost imperceptible softening of the eyes, relaxing of the shoulders, or unclenching of the hands, their nervous system can stand down. Acknowledging and understanding that our children are disoriented rather than disobedient when they act out helps us embrace a more accepting attitude. Our response can then tilt toward kindness and understanding at the very moment when our child needs our acceptance the most.