Computers, considered stifling, are not introduced until later grades. Intervention of the Spirit Steiner believed movement and rhythmic exercises to be healing. In our culture, children spend way too much time indoors and in cars. The rhythmic exercises children do also can be applied to conventional learning. In his book, School as a Journey, Waldorf educator Torin Finser tells how rhythmic clapping prepared his first-graders for multiplication.
More profound results seem to be possible, as well.
Currently, Waldorf methods are proving effective in helping juvenile offenders at the Thomas E. Matthews Community School in Yuba County, California. When children are approached through the arts, they haven't built up their defenses. It's helping them focus on oral language, through recitation of poetry, and it builds a foundation for literacy. Mark Birdsall, an administrator and teacher at the Urban Waldorf School in Milwaukee, explains that Steiner believed the development of children corresponds to the development of mankind. For instance, Aesops fables, moral tales about human strengths and vices in the guise of animals, speak deeply to children of about seven or eight, says Birdsall.