Like Jerome Rosner, Rudolf Steiner’s approach to instruction and curriculum design emphasizes a broader education for children that reaches basic neurosensory needs, in addition to other physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. These needs exist irrespective of the child’s social or economic background, religion, or culture. Steiner saw the schools as a centre for development of self-aware and community-oriented children, and that this would ultimately lead to a stronger society.
When an otherwise healthy child struggles in school, it is almost certainly more a problem of instruction than of a ‘learning disability’. Schools emphasize technology and reading from a very early age and have largely forgotten the importance of a strong developmental foundation and structured ‘play’. Curriculum design needs to adapt to the child’s needs in order to ensure success; the child should not be expected to adapt to the classroom or traditional text-based instructional methods.
Attached is ‘The Child’s Changing Consciousness As The Basis For Pedagogical Practice’, an 8 lecture series given by Steiner. While many of the references are dated, the lectures provide a fair appreciation of foundation of the Waldorf schools, which are oriented to the ‘whole’ child, and not just the academic concerns.
Download: A child’s_Changing_Consciousness
Read about one Waldorf school that is appreciated by a very tech-savvy clientele: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=2&hp