Waldorf and Television?

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Waldorf and TV

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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 come to the conclusion that there are many visionaries that have existed that 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 say is true.

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

Article: What Did Steiner Say about Television?
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 view of the astral body, imagination and the way a child learns.

A cornerstone in Steiner’s educational theorems was the fact that children go through three stages in their lives. First, from age 0-7, the spirit inhabiting the body of the child is still getting used to its surroundings. This explains many standards in the Waldorf curriculum such as the standard of 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, and during the third stage, starting at age 14, the astral body is said to be driven into the physical body, creating 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, based on 35 different research studies she states that this connection has a lot to do with 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 of children and teens as well as 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 in 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 of them stated their main reason for discouraging television was that it hinders the imagination in the child.

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 (and concluded in 2007). He shows that television affects the brain in many ways that would weaken the imagination in children. The first effect that translates into a weaker imagination is the occurrence of “jump cuts” in television that fracture attention spans. At the same time, studies show that the brain is then programmed to reward itself with “dopamine” (the happy drug) for being able to cope with this fractured attention span. Basically, people become addicted to functioning with a fractured 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 far as being educational, brain scans performed by neuroscientist have shown that television and many interactive media games do not stimulate intellectual areas of the brain.

Teachers in Waldorf schools also discourage the watching of television because of the effects it has on the 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 on a deeper level?

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 next words to say something about the effects of television. But his next 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 much depth. It becomes only obvious, to a Waldof teacher, then, that if you allow television to be a teacher you open up 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 behaviour, but it really comes from these media, not from the children themselves.”

Another concern about television watching is that it will hinder the child’s ability to reflect on and carry through on the lessons they were 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, that 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 that they are allowed time to reflect on it and often given the “same” lesson twice. Lessons often depend on the child taking in the content of the first lesson, sleeping and reflecting on it 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 “over-ride” the lesson. So instead of reflecting and creating images of the lesson, the child’s head will be filled with images of the television or media. Once again, his own imagination is denied him. This view on the damage of television ties into the modern studies done on television watching 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 the topic of nutrition and education and believed that the health of the body was greatly affected by how it learned, and how a person learned was also greatly effected by their health. Knowing, what we know today about the health effects of television on the body, we can assume that Steiner would not have approved of this as a healthy medium for holistic learning.

Post-Article: How Does www.thewaldorfchannel.com Tie into This?
The Waldorf Channel is intended for adult viewing only. Programs are designed to be short in span (3-8 minutes) so the ill effects of using electronic media for all people is minimized.
I do realize that some children may choose to watch some of the videos in an instructional way with their parents.

Videos that children may be watching for instruction are mean to be “instructional lessons” and not “shows to watch”. So if your child chooses to watch a show then they should be aware of the presenter as their “teacher” and they should participate with the presenter and their parent together as a way of learning new things. This is a way of bringing Waldorf into your home via the incredible tools of the Internet in the modern world and is NOT a way to bring TV into your Waldorf home.

Waldorf Radio is intended to be listened to by parents alone or parents and children together. After listening to a show parents should be able to re-create the stories for their children and children should be able to recreate the stories in their own way – including creating plays. This is one way to bring the magic of storytelling and fantasy into your home as a family together.

IN THE NEWS: Bad News about TV...Again

A friend of mine sent me the following article:

By Anne Harding
Fri Sep 7, 11:30 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Young children who watch more than a couple of hours of television a day are more likely to have attention problems as adolescents, researchers from New Zealand have found.

The two-hour point is very, very clear with our data, very consistent with what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends," Carl Erik Landhuis of the Dunedin School of Medicine at the University of Otago, the study's first author, told Reuters Health.

"We're not saying don't watch TV, just don't watch too much TV," he added.

While there is a widespread perception that TV can contribute to attention problems, there is actually very little data on the issue, Landhuis noted in an interview. To investigate, he and his colleagues looked at 1,037 boys and girls born in 1972 and 1973, following them from age 5 to 15.

On average, kids watched about 2 hours of TV daily when they were 5 to 11 years old, but were watching 3.13 hours on weekdays by age 13 to 15.

Study participants who had watched more than 2 hours of TV in early childhood were more likely to have attention problems as young teens, the researchers found. Those who watched more than 3 hours were at even greater risk.

The researchers used statistical techniques to control for the effects of attention problems in early childhood and other factors that could influence both TV watching and later attention difficulties. They found that TV watching, both in early childhood and in adolescence, independently influenced the risk of these problems in adolescence.

"Although it doesn't prove causation, it certainly provides evidence that the causal link is in that direction," Landhuis said.

He and his colleagues suggest that kids who get used to watching lots of attention-grabbing TV may find ordinary life situations -- like the classroom -- boring. It's also possible, they add, that TV may simply crowd out time spent doing other activities that can build attention and concentration skills, such as reading and playing games.

It's likely, Landhuis said, that kids today watch much more TV than the participants in his study, who had only 2 channels to choose from in the late 1970s.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, September 2007.