Many schools and eldercare facilities are tied to religious organizations.
Schools and facilities which are not affiliated with religious organizations may have employees or volunteers whose beliefs are sincere and heartfelt.
Most of the time things things go well. But there have been situations where there is trouble.
Trouble arises if:
* Some employees or volunteers exploit the job setting as a venue for proslytizing without prior knowledge or consent.
* You are not told clearly and at the very beginning what if any doctrines underlie the curriculum or philosophy of care at your loved one's school or care facility
* Disruptive clique dynamics between those clients and personnel who do not know of or share the religious beliefs of the school/care facility vs clients and personnel who do share the religious beliefs of the school/care facility
Here are examples.
Rick Ross, CEO of Cult Education Institute got involved in this work when he discovered a cult had infiltrated his grandmother's nursing home.
[www.abc.net.au]
"Q How did you end up being a cult expert?
A My grandmother got me involved. She lived in a nursing home that was infiltrated – that is, the paid staff were – by a particular fringe religious group that targeted the elderly. "
Waldorf schools are notorious for concealing information about their doctrine when offering school services to parents.
You deserve to know the actual complete doctrine behind any school or facility where you pay for services and, often volunteer your time. If you do not know this, you are expected to follow a set of unwritten rules which is crazy making.
Our Brush With Rudolf Steiner
by Sharon Lombard
[www.waldorfcritics.org]
Lombard was not told that a specific set of doctrines undergird Waldorf school education. As a result, she found herself up against a set of unwritten rules. She was reprimanded for violating rules she was unaware of - which is a fast track to crazy making.
Lombard was not told that use of black markers and pencils is forbidden in the lower grades at Waldorf schools -- because of the religious philosophy held by Rudolf Steiner, a theosophist whose doctrine is called Anthroposophy.
Women (and, increasingly, men) can get hostaged into bad situations because of their roles as parents and caregivers. If women rely on services or institutions (schools, eldercare facilities) and the agencies and personnel do a wonderful job, a tired mother or daughter has high exit costs if over time she gets powerful gut feelings
that something is seriously amiss.
You may find you are in an emotional hostage situation if find you have misgivings but
feel afraid to follow your gut and investigate further.
To be hostage is far more than being appreciative of a valued service such a therapist, a school for your children, your own training program, an agency that cares for your elderly parents, or a job that finally finally meets your needs.
To be hostage is different from gratitude or reliance.
If, this moment, your gut is feeling sweaty as you read this, you may be held hostage by a situation and dread having your fears confirmed.
To be hostage is to be in a state of fear so profound that you do not want to admit just how afraid you are - or how angry you feel.
Hostage situations are where you fear you or your child or parents cannot survive outside the situation itself. You fear this because of high exit costs.
Exit costs can be social, financial, emotional
Some examples of exit costs
* A child or parent who would be heartbroken losing friends or care providers -- do I want to compromise their welfare because something about the situation is giving me the creeps or seriously pushing my buttons.
*The angst of looking for another school or care facility all over again
*Financial costs including lost time from work due to searching for another school for your child or another care facility for your parent/s
* Loss of the routine and stability you've come to rely on
* Loss of friendships you've formed with other parents at the school (unless they turn out to be real friends who stand by you)
* Leaving a school or care facility that is affordable but gives you the creeps which means you will have to pay more (or fear you must pay more) by sending your child or elderly parent to a different institution.
*Discord with your spouse or partner if the latter just does not understand why you want to get out of the situation.
These are examples of exit costs that make parents utterly, anguishingly vulnerable if they
have doubts and misgivings about a school or care facility they have come to rely on.
In a hostage situation you feel as though you are in a situation that has no outside.
A room that had an entrance but, once you stepped in, all doorways and windows have vanished. You may be socially and intellectually brilliant but in the hostage situation, primal fear has snuck in and slowly colonized your mind and emotions.
Schools and facilities which are not affiliated with religious organizations may have employees or volunteers whose beliefs are sincere and heartfelt.
Most of the time things things go well. But there have been situations where there is trouble.
Trouble arises if:
* Some employees or volunteers exploit the job setting as a venue for proslytizing without prior knowledge or consent.
* You are not told clearly and at the very beginning what if any doctrines underlie the curriculum or philosophy of care at your loved one's school or care facility
* Disruptive clique dynamics between those clients and personnel who do not know of or share the religious beliefs of the school/care facility vs clients and personnel who do share the religious beliefs of the school/care facility
Here are examples.
Rick Ross, CEO of Cult Education Institute got involved in this work when he discovered a cult had infiltrated his grandmother's nursing home.
[www.abc.net.au]
"Q How did you end up being a cult expert?
A My grandmother got me involved. She lived in a nursing home that was infiltrated – that is, the paid staff were – by a particular fringe religious group that targeted the elderly. "
Waldorf schools are notorious for concealing information about their doctrine when offering school services to parents.
You deserve to know the actual complete doctrine behind any school or facility where you pay for services and, often volunteer your time. If you do not know this, you are expected to follow a set of unwritten rules which is crazy making.
Our Brush With Rudolf Steiner
by Sharon Lombard
[www.waldorfcritics.org]
Lombard was not told that a specific set of doctrines undergird Waldorf school education. As a result, she found herself up against a set of unwritten rules. She was reprimanded for violating rules she was unaware of - which is a fast track to crazy making.
Quote
Soon doubts about our decision arose but they seemed superficial. I ignored the ever mounting references to cosmological forces, the zodiac, and other peculiarities, indulging myself that certain individuals were overtly "New Age."
Our new Waldorf school required participation from parents, and I threw myself into service with much enthusiasm working for what I believed to be a good cause. I volunteered to be on the school store committee to help raise funds. As an artist appreciating aesthetics and color, my first attempt at improvement was to transform the existing store into something with more pizzazz. I had hoped to use children's illustrations as part of the new decor, but I found it not to be acceptable. Not understanding what was wrong with my lovely collection of drawings, I put them away assuming that people just could not imagine the final effect.
So, instead, using my assortment cans of paint, I went to work transforming the blank walls with color. Soon, I received notes, phone calls, and a visit from one of the faculty who asked if I had permission to paint the walls as I had done. I answered that the store committee had given me the go ahead. Despite the disapproval, I thought the store looked much better than it had and was happy that sales increased.
During this time, I came up with a fundraising idea.
To help the store reach its financial goal, I designed a T-shirt to be printed with a small self-portrait drawn by each student in the school. I couldn't imagine a parent being able to resist buying one! Bundles of small squares of paper and black markers were distributed to teachers with instructions that each child should quickly draw a picture of themselves. These would be collected for me to have silk-screened.
My idea met with great opposition! I found out that markers were not permitted in Waldorf schools, no exceptions. I passed this off thinking that crayons and pencils were probably more environmentally sound, and I suggested that dark pencils could be used instead. The teachers were aghast; pencils were not allowed in the kindergarten.
After negotiation and hours at the copy machine reducing the large block crayon self-portraits and redefining the lines lost in the process, the T-shirts were eventually printed. They raised a nice sum for the school, but what was wrong with pencil line drawings? Along with these indiscretions, I had apparently inadvertently broken other rules and an inquisition took place before the faculty, accusing me of being "irreverent" and "nonsupportive".
Lombard was not told that use of black markers and pencils is forbidden in the lower grades at Waldorf schools -- because of the religious philosophy held by Rudolf Steiner, a theosophist whose doctrine is called Anthroposophy.
Quote
As a member of a committee, I had been pressured to study the work of Rudolf Steiner but had rejected the imposition, intuitively equating Anthroposophy study with bible study. Apart from a photograph of Steiner that hung on the faculty lounge wall and the constant references to him, I hadn't a clue about the man. I assumed that he was indeed the scientist, educator and philosopher that the school purported him to be....
Tackling Steiner's Art in the Light of Mystery Wisdom, I waded through his endless injunctions to try and fathom the "wet-on-wet" technique and found many clues:
"In painting, the line is a lie; the line is always part of the memory of life before birth. If we are to paint with a consciousness that extends across into the world of spirit, we must paint what comes out of the colour." (p. 68)
The wet paper, liquid paint, and large brushes are used to frustrate the possibility of line. Along with logical thinking at a young age, line is believed to affect the health in later life. But what of the paper with its cut, rounded corners and the "blobs" of color? According to Steiner, the astral body is a perfect circle. Perhaps that is the connection! He instructed that only liquid paint in pots could be used - in order to make the color shine inwardly. He explains his reasons in Colour:
"You will see that a yellow surface with definite boundaries is a repulsive thing; it is quite unbearable to artistic feeling. The soul cannot bear a yellow surface which is limited. We must make yellow paler at the edges, then paler still : in short the yellow must be full in the center, shining out into a still paler yellow. If we are to experience its inner nature we cannot imagine yellow in any other way." (p. 33)
As perplexing, is the added mystical significance of liquid paint:
"The `I' itself is within the colour. The human `I' and astral body are not to be separated at all from the colour; they live in colour and inasmuch as they are united with the colour they have an existence outside the physical body. It is the `I' and the astral body which reproduce colour in the physical and etheric bodies. That is the point." (p. 54)
It is impossible to go into detail concerning Steiner's heirarchies and decrees on color due to their sheer complexity and quantity, but it is important to note that contemporary Anthroposophists like McAllen endorse his views: "The colour sequence works as a cleansing-reorientation of the soul, helping the individuality to accept the present incarnation in a physical body." (p. 40) So, these wet-on-wet pictures are actual moral exercises exposing pupils to the healing influence of color. For instance, the use of yellow and blue in the kindergarten is a mystic weaving of the soul with the hereditary body, until the growth of secondary teeth, when the etheric body enters. On and on it goes. A rather bizarre benefit concerning the years spent experiencing these color exercises was more recently expressed in Drawing: From First Grade to High School: "It should help protect them from being sucked out altogether into the physical world." (p. 165)
Another idiosyncrasy I found in Steiner's book Colour is that "The soul lives in the actual colour of the skin ...Of all the varied colours in the world around us peach-blossom is the colour we would select as being the nearest to that of the human skin..."(p. 24) From reading Art Inspired by Rudolph Steiner, I discovered that the classroom walls must be painted with a transparent wash so that pupils can see through them into the spirit world. ( Now I understand why my paint job was such a shock!)
Just as the liquid paint had a mystic mission in preparing the well-reincarnated for the new world order, so too do all the myths, legends, and fairy tales Steiner adopted in his Anthroposophical pantheon and Waldorf curriculum. This was born out in Colour where he expresses his doctrine:
"Until we have thoroughly overcome the habit of inquiring in terms of symbols and allegories and of interpreting myths and legends allegorically and symbolically, and start sensing the breath of the spirit that weaves throughout the cosmos and feel its life in the figures of myths and fairy tales - until we do this we shall not have attained real spiritual knowledge." (p. 68)
[www.waldorfcritics.org]
Women (and, increasingly, men) can get hostaged into bad situations because of their roles as parents and caregivers. If women rely on services or institutions (schools, eldercare facilities) and the agencies and personnel do a wonderful job, a tired mother or daughter has high exit costs if over time she gets powerful gut feelings
that something is seriously amiss.
You may find you are in an emotional hostage situation if find you have misgivings but
feel afraid to follow your gut and investigate further.
To be hostage is far more than being appreciative of a valued service such a therapist, a school for your children, your own training program, an agency that cares for your elderly parents, or a job that finally finally meets your needs.
To be hostage is different from gratitude or reliance.
If, this moment, your gut is feeling sweaty as you read this, you may be held hostage by a situation and dread having your fears confirmed.
To be hostage is to be in a state of fear so profound that you do not want to admit just how afraid you are - or how angry you feel.
Hostage situations are where you fear you or your child or parents cannot survive outside the situation itself. You fear this because of high exit costs.
Exit costs can be social, financial, emotional
Some examples of exit costs
* A child or parent who would be heartbroken losing friends or care providers -- do I want to compromise their welfare because something about the situation is giving me the creeps or seriously pushing my buttons.
*The angst of looking for another school or care facility all over again
*Financial costs including lost time from work due to searching for another school for your child or another care facility for your parent/s
* Loss of the routine and stability you've come to rely on
* Loss of friendships you've formed with other parents at the school (unless they turn out to be real friends who stand by you)
* Leaving a school or care facility that is affordable but gives you the creeps which means you will have to pay more (or fear you must pay more) by sending your child or elderly parent to a different institution.
*Discord with your spouse or partner if the latter just does not understand why you want to get out of the situation.
These are examples of exit costs that make parents utterly, anguishingly vulnerable if they
have doubts and misgivings about a school or care facility they have come to rely on.
In a hostage situation you feel as though you are in a situation that has no outside.
A room that had an entrance but, once you stepped in, all doorways and windows have vanished. You may be socially and intellectually brilliant but in the hostage situation, primal fear has snuck in and slowly colonized your mind and emotions.