Rudolf Steiner School - Spectrum Yearbook (New York, NY)

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I5 East 78th Street 1 9 6 1 THE PECTRUM Rudolf Steiner School Published By THE CLASS OF I96l RUDOLF STEINER SCHOOL NEW YORK, NEW YORK

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STAFF Mrs. Ruth Pusch.. Gail Simon ..... Jinny Berne... Dominique Lunau.. Frank Fiynn .... Thomas Lesiey .... Andrew Singer .... Christina Mclnerneyc... irene Stein Pamela Susskindm. I5 East 79th Street FOR THE SPECTRUM Faculty Advisor Editor-in-Chief Asst. to Editor- Managing Editor Photography Edit in-Chief or Asst. to Photography Editor Art Editor Literary Editor Business Editors l J

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v My Looking back on 1960-61 from the vantage point of the year 2000, when today's seniors will be men and women of close to sixty, this year may well stand out as marking the first organized invasion of American schools by the so-called teaching machinesn. Our seniors, looking back, may well ask whether we, their teachers and parents, kept our heads in the face of the tide or succumbed to the general confusion. The teaching machine has already proven to be a persuasive gadget, yet in itself it is only a symptom for a far more insidious attack on the foundations of American education: the general mechanization of instruction and the standardization of values. The colleges, for example, lament the fact that their students can not Write English, yet permit increasing emphasis on standardized tests which atomize vocabulary and substitute for genuine knowledge and skill in the use of words a cross-word puzzle mentality. At an elementary level, the teaching of reading is fast becoming a matter of mechanical word efficiencyu in which the wonder and excitement and dreamy pleasure of an unfolding imagination has no place. The writing of a paper tends, already in the upper elementary school, to become a matter of researchf in which the raw material is skimmed from an encyclopedia and is presented, undigested,inlieu1mfthe student's own observations and conclusions. Grades become an end in themselves and the student works for marks instead of for the sake of the subject and any interest in learning. These are symptoms only, over against which stands the example of countless devoted individual teachers, yet the trend is clear and the results, we know, may be the apparently successful training of technicians but will not, and can not be, the creative education of free, intelligent men and women. What can effectively turn the tide? There is no simple, single recipe. Only a knowledge which can find its way to the spirit in man can help, a knowledge which reveals the inner mann who experiences the world in its qualities and weighs its imponderable aspects, recognizing the difference between wisdom and mere information. It is Rudolf Steiner's contribution to the modern art of education that he opened the door to such a knowledge of the spirit in man and in the world which is as exact and responsible as the scientific knowledge of the material world. And it is only in taking this fundamental step forward in knowledge that we can hope to transform the merely mechanical imparting of information and the training of routine skills into a genuine process of inner growth and education. fy Wi, enry Barnes 5' ww Q CU'-