Glencraig 'Steiner' and Camphill Communities

I find it appalling that the Glencraig 'Curative' School in Holywood, has children who attend there, fully funded by the Education Boards in Northern Ireland yet we do not have an autism specific school for our children. (see: http://www.glencraig.org.uk/)
Link to the Holywood Steiner School: http://www.holywood-steiner.co.uk/


Tens of thousands of pounds per year is spent to fund individual children with special needs to attend this 'curative' school but to what end? Has anyone in Northern Ireland actually bothered to look into the teachings of Rudolph Steiner? Funny how if you want funding for an ABA program for your child you will have great difficulty, probably a tribunal, on your hands in order to get it. But, if your school Board thinks your child is a 'no-hoper' you might get a paid-for placement at the Steiner School. If ABA has little peer reviewed research backing it up, Steiner has absolutely none, yet it still gets funded.

Who in their right mind would submit their child to the teachings of these lunatics? How did Steiner's Anthroposophic ideals find their way to Northern Ireland, much less to the school boards who fund the school? He did have an affinity for Ireland, maybe that's it. Or maybe the schools thought that Ireland would be a good place, particularly Northern Ireland because of the political divide between the society and of course, schools. Steiner schools are no less politically motivated but they aren't 'catholic, nor are they 'protestant', so maybe someone at departmental level figured the school would be a kind of 'integrated' school? Integrated into what is the question? Give me religious sectarianism any day compared to anthroposophy!

I do not know, maybe someone has some answers? As a practicing Christian, I would never send my child to a 'Steiner' School. As a person who has a modicum of common sense and who is by no means a navel gazer or new ager, I also would not send my child to such a school, particularly a vulnerable child who has autism and who may take everything these people say literally.

If you google Rudolph Steiner or Waldorf School together with eco facsist, screwball and brainwashing/cult/ Anthroposophy you will form a picture of how unfortunate children with ASD and other difficulties as well as adults in Northern Ireland, this very minute are having their brains melded and their opportunities and potential scuppered by this movement.

Most of you can't get an OT to pay for a pencil grip for your child, but some 'lucky' (God help them) children are being funded by education boards year after year to attend schools such as these.

Here is an account of a Rudolph Steiner School in Wisconson USA. Sounds like a cult to me, in fact google brings up thousands of hits on cult like behaviour of these schools.

http://www.waldorfcritics.org/active/articles/lombard.html

Here is a thread of messages (over 1000) from UK based 'Mumsnet' from parents outraged by what the Steiner Schools have to 'offer' - pay particular attention to what one mother has said regarding Steiner's beliefs about children with development difficulties. http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=education&threadid=487528-steiner-waldorf-schools-and-institutions&pg=1&go.x=14&go.y=8

'Here are some Rudolf Steiner quotes'
• “[A]n island like Great Britain swims in the sea and is held fast by the forces of the stars. In actuality, such islands do not sit directly upon a foundation; they swim and are held fast from outside.” [Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner, p. 607.]

• “[I]t is not that the planets move around the Sun, but these three, Mercury, Venus, and the Earth, follow the Sun, and these three, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, precede it.” [Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner., pp. 30-31.]

• “If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will become increasingly dense.... Blond hair actually bestows intelligence. In the case of fair people, less nourishment is driven into the eyes and hair; it remains instead in the brain and endows it with intelligence. Brown- and dark-haired people drive the substances into their eyes and hair that the fair people retain in their brains.” [Health and Illness, Vol. 1, pp. 85-86.]

• “[Science] sees the heart as a pump that pumps blood through the body. Now there is nothing more absurd than believing this, for the heart has nothing to do with pumping the blood.” Freud, Jung, and Spiritual Psychology, pp. 124-125.]

• “There are beings that can be seen with clairvoyant vision at many spots in the depths of the earth...Many names have been given to them, such as goblins, gnomes and so forth...Their nature prompts them to play all sorts of tricks on man....” [Nature Spirits, pp. 62-3.]

• “[T]he brain and nerve system have nothing at all to do with actual cognition....” [The Foundations of Human Experience, p. 60.]

• “In the course of its development, the good portion of humankind will learn to use the Moon forces to transform the evil part [of mankind] so that it can participate in further evolution as a distinct earthly kingdom.” [An Outline of Esoteric Science, p. 393.]

• “The use of the French language quite certainly corrupts the soul.” [Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner, pp. 558.]

All too surreal.


When your child completes the primary/secondary Steiner school,and enters adulthood after years of being cloistered away from real society and a real life (and is fully brainwashed, probably along with you as well) they can then be moved on to the Camphill adult wing and live there forever (if you can pay for it). Your child will be given duties of mucking out barns, growing vegetables or cooking. They will celebrate occultism, harvest moons and will be forced to suffer an unending turnover of staff, many of whom are students from abroad. They won't be using computers, their access to the outside world will be on the school's terms, not theirs and their psyches will undoubtedly be messed up by the Steiner philosophies (aka bunkum).

The mind boggles that Northern Ireland Education Boards will pay for this. Not surprising, I suppose. Muckamore is closing so I guess you could call Glencraig/Camphill the new mental hospitals - with grass.