Waldorf Television

What Does Waldorf Education Say About TV?

References for this article are listed below the article. As a naturopath, writer, and teacher, this is one of my favorite projects to take on. I enjoy researching the historical uses of herbs and healing therapies and then tracing their usage up until the modern day, where we find that they are still being used for the same ailments – only now their usage is “proved” by modern research. After writing many of these articles, I have concluded that many visionaries have existed who were able to convince hundreds of people of their vision, but sadly, they were not fully listened to until “modern” methods could be used to prove what they said was true.

And some visionaries are still waiting! In the book The Field, Lynne McTaggart explores fringe science, such as EMF waves, light therapy, and ESP, and shows how even these fields are finally getting the “proof” they need to stand up in modern society.

What Did Steiner Say about Television?

When re-printing this article, please credit Kristie Burns AND www.TheBEarthInstitute.com

So what did Steiner have to say about television? Nothing. There were no televisions in his time. But he said enough about early childhood education that we can surmise what his views on the tube would have been.

These reasons center on Steiner’s views of the astral body, imagination, and how a child learns.

A cornerstone of Steiner’s educational theories was the idea that children go through three stages in their lives. First, from ages 0-7, the spirit inhabiting the child’s body is still getting used to its surroundings. This explains many standards in the Waldorf curriculum, such as teaching the alphabet at age 7 or 8. During the second stage, from ages 7-14, the child is said to be driven by imagination and fantasy; during the third stage, starting at age 14, the astral body is said to be drawn into the physical body, marking the onset of puberty.

Waldorf educators saw a direct link to this astral body and the watching of television. The scenes, the lack of imagination involved, and the topics covered on most channels would obviously bring on the astral stage of the body at an early age. This was one reason that television was banned from Waldorf schools.

Modern researchers, however, have just recently made this connection when they recently announced, “Watching Television may Quicken the Onset of Puberty” (Dr. Laura Markham, 2006). In her article, drawing on 35 research studies, she states that this connection is closely tied to the hormone melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in the brain, which plays a key role in regulating the body’s internal clock. Light emitted by television screens suppresses melatonin levels in the blood, which disrupts sleep patterns in children and teens and delays the age at which they enter puberty. It is also interesting to note that the problems of early-onset puberty have baffled researchers since 1950. This was the same date on which televisions became widely owned in the United States.

This is not the main reason given when Waldorf Schools state on their websites that children should not watch television. When I reviewed 40 Waldorf school websites, I found that 36 stated their main reason for discouraging television was that it hinders children’s imagination.

And this is indeed one of the most important elements in early childhood education that Steiner, himself, promoted. Rudolf Steiner, in his 1919 Essay, “An Introduction to Waldorf Education,” states, “Of prime importance for the cultivation of the child’s feeling-life is that the child develops a relationship to the world in a way such as that which develops when we are inclined towards fantasy.” Fantasy, in Waldorf education, is not the fantasy of Disney movies or only the fantasy of fairy tales. It is a holistic process of allowing the child to expand their imagination into expanded realms. Fairy tales are one aspect of this process.

Recent studies show that television hinders this process in young children. In a study led by Dr. Aric Sigman, an associate fellow of the British Psychological Society, which concluded in 2007. He shows that television affects the brain in many ways that weaken children’s imagination. The first factor contributing to weaker imagination is the use of “jump cuts” in television, which fractures attention spans. At the same time, studies show that the brain is then programmed to reward itself with “dopamine” (the happy drug) for coping with this fractured attention span. Basically, people become addicted to functioning with a broken attention span. Extreme multi-tasking and children being enrolled in tens of “after-school activities” are also a result of this addiction. Imagination is naturally lost when our minds cannot focus. Have you ever tried to write an article while being interrupted every five minutes?

As for being educational, brain scans conducted by neuroscientists have shown that television and many interactive media games do not stimulate the brain’s intellectual areas.

Teachers in Waldorf schools also discourage television viewing because of its effects on a child’s behavior at school. But any teacher could tell you that! Not just a Waldorf teacher. And we have all heard that enough times to be tired of that reason. But how can we bring Steiner’s research into this and understand it more deeply?

Steiner said, “From birth to about the sixth or seventh year, the human being naturally gives himself up to everything immediately surrounding him in the human environment, and thus, through the imitative instinct, gives form to his own nascent powers.” If I didn’t know that Steiner was not alive during the time of television, I would expect his words to address the effects of television. But his following words are even more powerful. He says, “From this period on, the child’s soul becomes open to take in consciously what the educator and teacher give, which affects the child as a result of the teacher’s natural authority.”

So, what, then, would happen when that “teacher” is the television? What Steiner is saying in his statement is that the child is in a stage where he/she is imitating everything around them. Everything becomes their teacher. Any parent who has been embarrassed by a child’s actions that reflected their own knows this to be true. Rahima Baldwin Dancy’s book “You Are Your Child’s First Teacher” explores this issue in depth. It becomes obvious, then, to a Waldorf teacher, that if you allow television to be a teacher, you expose the child to many things you do not want them exposed to.

On the website of one Waldorf school in Ireland, it states, “Television, as well as film, videos, DVDs, recorded music, computers and electronic games have a very powerful effect on children. It can take several days for the effects of a single video to wear off. If children are watching every day, the effects never wear off at all; many children now speak a lot of the time in ‘cartoon’ voices, make ‘sound effects’ to accompany their jerky movements (kicking, punching), and compulsively repeat lines from videos they have seen over and over again. This is now seen as normal childish behavior, but it really comes from the media, not from the children themselves.”

Another concern about watching television is that it can hinder a child’s ability to reflect on and apply the lessons taught during the day. Steiner believed that “What is learned more slowly at any given age is more surely and healthily absorbed by the organism than what is crammed into it.” (Spiritual Ground for Education by Rudolf Steiner). This is one reason that when a child is given a lesson in a Waldorf manner, they are allowed time to reflect on it and often given the “same” lesson twice. Lessons usually depend on the child taking in the content of the first lesson, sleeping on it, reflecting, and then coming back the next day to recall and work through it. During this time of sleep and reflection, the lesson will have been digested, together with mental pictures a child has made for themselves, and it is this that makes the lesson really “sink in” to a child’s being.

If children are watching television or using any other electronic devices during this process, these devices will “override” the lesson. So instead of reflecting and creating images of the lesson, the child’s head will be filled with photos from television and other media. Once again, his own imagination is denied him. This view of television’s damage aligns with modern studies on television viewing and its effects on concentration that I discussed earlier.

Recent studies are also showing that TV can be linked to obesity, autism, and even diabetes.  Steiner gave numerous lectures on nutrition and education and believed that the health of the body was greatly affected by how it learned, and that how a person learned was also greatly affected by their health. Given what we know today about television’s health effects on the body, we can assume that Steiner would not have approved of this as a healthy medium for holistic learning.

How Do Earthschooling Living Lessons and Videos Tie into This?

We realize that some children may choose to watch some videos with their parents for instructional purposes. Videos that children may be watching for instruction are meant to be “instructional lessons,” not “shows to watch.” So, if your child chooses to watch a show, they should be aware of the presenter as their “teacher,” and participate with the presenter and their parent together to learn new things. This is a way to bring Waldorf into your home via the incredible tools of the modern Internet, and it is NOT a way to get TV into your Waldorf home.

Waldorf Radio and The Waldorf Channel (our social media channels) are intended for parents to listen to alone or with their children. After listening to a show, parents should be able to retell the stories to their children, and children should be able to retell them in their own way – including by creating plays. This is one way to bring the magic of storytelling and fantasy into your home as a family.

References for “Waldorf and TV” Article

“Children’s TV is Linked to Autism & Cancer” from The Scotsman, reprinted at:
http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=20384 

“Children’s TV Watching is Linked to Early Puberty” by Dr. Laura Markham at:
http://www.wellness.com/blogs/DrLauraMarkham/294/childrens-tv-watching-linked-to-early-puberty/dr-laura-markham

“Why Do Steiner Schools Discourage TV Watching?” by the ISKA (Irish Steiner Kindergarten Association) at: http://www.steinerireland.org/faq/#11

“An Introduction to Waldorf Education” by Rudolf Steiner, 1919. Published at:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Articles/IntWal_index.html

“Spiritual Ground for Education” by Rudolf Steiner. 1922. Published at:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Education/SpGrEd_index.html

“Curative Education” by Rudolph Steiner. 1924. Published at:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/Dates/19240702p01.html

“Cosmic Memory” by Paul Marshall Allen. 1959. Published at:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA011/CM/GA011_intro.html

 “Problems of Nutrition” by Rudolf Steiner. 1909. Published at:
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Biodynamics/Nutrit_index.html

“How TV is Killing Us” by Dr. Aric Sigman. The Daily Mail, 2005. Reprinted at:
http://www.whale.to/b/sigman.html

 “Why Do Waldorf Schools Discourage TV?” St. Michael’s School in London at:
http://www.stmichaelsteiner.wandsworth.sch.uk/html_site/index.html

“The Field” by Lynne McTaggart at: http://tinyurl.com/366×39
(This is an entire reprint of the book provided by Google Books!)