A trip to the Waldorf

No, I don’t mean the swanky hotel, but hang on. Thanks to an invitation from our editor-in-chief Isaac Belmonte and his wife Isa (who had been my student in Diliman quite a few years ago), I sat in on a very interesting meeting the other Saturday – a meeting that, for a pleasant change, had little to do with the crying concerns of the moment, but rather with the question of what to teach and how best to teach our high school students.

The occasion was an informal gathering of parents (the Belmontes included) interested in setting up a very different kind of high school here in Manila – an offshoot of the small but highly regarded Waldorf grade school that’s been operating for about eight years now at its Heroes Hill compound in Quezon City.

The Manila Waldorf School is one of about 600 such schools the world over, and it subscribes to the Austrian-born (1861-1925) "anthroposophist" Rudolf Steiner’s sometimes controversial theories of child education, which (to cut a long and complicated story short) emphasize imitation, imagination, and creativity in various stages of the child’s development. (The Waldorf name comes from the first school Steiner set up for the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart in 1919 – nothing to do with the Manhattan hotel, sorry.)

Rather than misrepresent the school and its methodology, let me quote from a critic who’s looked more closely into the Waldorf system, Robert Todd Carroll:

"Some of the ideas of the Waldorf School are not Steiner’s, but try to harmonize with the master’s spiritual insights. For example, television viewing is discouraged because of its typical content and because it discourages the growth of the imagination. This idea is undoubtedly attractive to parents since it is very difficult to find anything of positive value for young children on television. When children are very young they should be socializing, speaking, listening, interacting with nature and people, not sitting in a catatonic trance before the boob tube. I don’t know what the Waldorf teachers think of video games, but I would be very surprised if they didn’t discourage them for their dehumanizing depictions of violent behavior as well as for their stifling of the imagination.

"Waldorf schools also discourage computer use by young children. The benefits of computer use by children have yet to be demonstrated, though it seems to be widely believed and accepted by educators who spend billions each year on the latest computer equipment for students who often can barely read or think critically, and have minimal social and oral skills. Waldorf schools, on the other hand, may be as daffy over the arts as public schools are over technology. What the public school consider frills, Waldorf schools consider essential, e.g., weaving, knitting, playing a musical instrument, woodcarving, painting, etc."

I was just a guest at that parents’ meeting – my daughter Demi just turned 27, so a high school wasn’t going to be of any personal benefit to me – but they were kind enough to solicit my opinions as a teacher.

I said that I was impressed by what I’d heard and seen so far of the Waldorf approach; one of my own best student-writers at UP was a Waldorf graduate, so it apparently worked. I expressed my hope that their high school wouldn’t be another high-priced, hyper-exclusive enclave insulated from the rest of society, producing maladjusted kids who couldn’t even speak Filipino or ride a jeepney home for the life of them. On the other hand, I also cautioned them against a curriculum that would overburden the students and lead to early burnout in college – a phenomenon I’ve observed of a number of science high school grads (myself included).

The Waldorf idea certainly bears watching; Lord knows we need more schools that encourage creativity in a low-stress environment (Waldorf schools dispense with grades at the elementary level). Speaking as a certified geek, however, I wouldn’t dismiss computers or even TV too quickly; Steiner himself never saw them, and they can be used as creatively as any harmonica or box of crayons.

All the best, all the same, to this country’s Waldorf pioneers.

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One of the most useful things that the UP Creative Writing Center does – aside from holding its annual writers workshops – is to come out with collections of outstanding new work by Filipino authors. That’s more difficult than you think, because it involves, first of all, reading through a mountain of published material, and then going by one’s best lights (i.e., your preferences and prejudices) to come up with shortlist of "the best." As I’ve noted in this space before, any judgment like that is an open invitation to controversy. One editor’s jewel can be another editor’s garbage, and a lot depends on the editor’s taste (or the lack of it – "taste" here being determined in turn by the editor’s own educational, social, and political conditioning).

That said, Ricky de Ungria and I ventured to pick out what we thought was the best of 1999’s poetry and short fiction, respectively, and came up with the list below, which should shortly appear in book form in the Likhaan series. Our introductions will provide specific justifications for these choices, but let me cut the suspense by telling you that we chose these because we liked them – i.e., we found something fresh, interesting, different, and significant in them, aside of course from their having been well written. You’ll note that the list includes both new and familiar names, and that three writers – Jimmy Abad, Edith Tiempo, and the much younger Jhoanna Lynn Cruz – appear in both the fiction and poetry sections.

Aside from congratulating these writers in advance, I’m also publishing their names to ask them for their permission to publish their work in our anthology (individual letters will be sent out formally requesting permission and spelling out, yes, terms of remuneration); if you have any violent objections early on to being published by us, please get in touch with me ASAP by e-mail at penmanila@yahoo.com; e-mailed permissions will also be appreciated. If you know these people, please spread the word.

Fiction: "Scenes from Boyhood" by Gemino H. Abad; "Accidents Happen" by Ichi Batacan; "The Capture" by Ramon Bautista; "Comadrona" by Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz; "Shift" by Indira Myra C. Endaya; "The Body of the Father" by Raymond G. Falgui; "One of These Days" by Bobby Flores-Villasis; "Breathe" by Alessandra G.L. Gonzales; "Life Before X" by Angelo Rodriguez Lacuesta; "Curaçao Cure" by Paulino Lim, Jr.; "The Moon Worshippers" by Sunshine Mendoza; "Of That Other Country We Now Speak" by Charlson Ong; "A Gathering" by Cesar D. Polvorosa, Jr.; "Good Intentions 101: SY ’72-’73" by Menchu Aquino Sarmiento; "Reconnaissance" by Tara FT Sering; "Lines" by Lakambini Sitoy; "The Frontiers of Sleep" by Edith L. Tiempo; "Nanking Store" by Macario D. Tiu; and "The Reluctant Flyer" by Cristina R. Velez;

Poetry: "How Our Towns Drown" by Gemino H. Abad; "Position" by Ceres Y.C. Abanil; "Absence" by Carlos Angeles (who has died since the poem was published); "When You Step out the Window" by Amado Bajarias; "Memory’s Gift" by Luis Cabalquinto; "Problem Is" by Conchitina R. Cruz; "Doing Time" by Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz; "Reconciliation" by Carlomar A. Daoana; "The Emptiness of the Limelight" by Simeon Dumdum, Jr.; "At a Loss for Words in the Garden" by Israfel Fagela; "Inside Orphanhood" by Marc Escalona Gaba; "Gift" by J. Neil C. Garcia; "New Dance" by Alex Gregorio; "Somewhere in the City" by Karen Kunawicz and Friends; "Seeing" by John Labella; "The First Time" by Arvin A. Mangohig; "Bloodlines" by Reine Arcache Melvin; "Memo to Councilor Pogoso" by Clovis O. Nazareno; "Blur of Early Light" by Michael U. Obenieta; "Destinations" by J. Edmundo Reyes; "Souvenir" by Neva Kares P. Talladen; "Sunset View from a House in Jasaan" by Anthony L. Tan; "Sapiens Evolving" by Edith L. Tiempo; "Grandma’s Detail by the Window" by Melecio F. Turao; "Sea Urchin" by Camilo M. Villanueva, Jr.; "About My Garden" by Ernesto Superal Yee; "At the Village Chapel" by L. Lacambra Ypil; and "Captives of the City" by Alfred A. Yuson.

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Speaking of schools, a new contest has been announced that involves schools, communities, and the Internet: the Philippine Schools CyberFair Competition. The contest asks primary and secondary students to do research on their communities and to publish their stories on the Web. Prizes will be given to the best entries in each of eight categories: local leaders, businesses, community organizations, historical landmarks, environment, music, art, and local specialties. The Philippine entries will be joining what has been described as the largest educational event of its kind on the Internet, the International Schools CyberFair, which engages the creative energies of 500,000 children in 70 countries.

The good thing is that the competition will be looking at content rather than design, leveling the playing field to a great degree between those of us whose computers are powered by coconut juice (that’s a joke, folks) and First World geeks armed with the latest version of Photoshop and Macromedia Flash.

For more information on the Philippine Schools CyberFair Competition, visit http://www.cyberfair.ph, or iskul.org at Suite D, 10th floor, Strata 2000 Bldg., Emerald Ave., Ortigas Center, Pasig City, with tel. nos. 687-20-74 to 76. The event is being organized by the Philippine Internet Commerce Society (http://www.pics.org.ph) and Iskul.Org (http://www.iskul.org), and sponsored by Eastern Telecoms Philippines, Inc, (ETPI) and dotPH, Inc.

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Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.