Why Waldorf Works: From a Neuroscientific Perspective
By Dr. Regalena “Reggie” Melrose
Three foci thrill me the most, both as a parent of a Waldorf student and as an international speaker
on the topic of learning, behavior, and the brain: holism, play, and nature. An emphasis on all three is
consistent with how the brain learns best: when the whole brain is engaged at any given moment,
when its foundational neural connections have been given ample time to develop, and when it is in an
optimally aroused state.
Knowing how the brain develops is essential to understanding why these three foci are so important
to the success of any educational program.
Let us first learn some basic fundamentals of the brain.
First of all, it is “triune,” that is, it has three parts. More importantly, not all three parts are fully
developed at birth as we once believed. In fact, very little of a newborn’s brain is “online” and “ready
to go.” When the brains of newborn babies are observed with an MRI, the only part of the brain that
is lit up or active is the most primal part - the brain stem, sensing brain, or “animal brain,” as it is also
called. (Small underdeveloped parts of the auditory and visual cortices are the only exceptions.) This
primal part of the brain is responsible for our experience of arousal and stress. It kicks into high gear
and mediates our fight or flight response when needed. I like to call it the “sensory brain” because it
only speaks the language of sensations, the only language that most consistently enables our survival.
When we encounter a bear in the woods, for example, our words will not save us, but our heightened
senses do.
The second and third parts of our brain - the limbic, feeling brain and the neocortex or thinking brain,
respectively - only begin to develop after birth. This is critical new knowledge that provides a
compelling answer to the long, highly debated question of nature versus nurture. We now know that
because we only have use of a very small part of our brain at birth, the brain is literally sculpted by
the experiences we have interacting with others in the environment. It is not until 3 to 4 months of
age, when the feeling brain has become activated by experience that newborns are able to express
more than just states of distress or contentment, as it does with only the sensory brain. At this
somewhat older age, babies can share a wide range of emotions, thereby giving us a more social
baby.
The third part of the brain, the neocortex, thinking brain, begins to develop after the limbic, feeling
brain. Indications of this maturation include babbling between 6 and 9 months, a first word around
the age of 1, and 2 to 3 words strung together by the age of 2. Whereas sensations are the language
of the sensory brain and feelings are the language of the limbic brain, the neocortex speaks the
language of words and mediates all of what most educators value. For example, the neocortex
mediates impulse control, the ability to plan ahead, to organize, and to understand that a choice we
make now may continue to have consequences later. Empathy for another is mediated by the
neocortex, as are our abilities to use ration, reason, and logic. We think and analyze with our
neocortex, and of course, understand and have use of both receptive and expressive verbal language.
If you’ve heard about “right brain” versus “left brain” functioning, it will make sense to you now that
it is the neocortex that controls the functions of the left hemisphere whereas the sensing and feeling
parts of the brain control the functions of the right hemisphere. The brain operates optimally when all
its parts are equally developed, valued, and engaged. Why Waldorf works is because it does just that.
Steiner’s approach to education was a holistic one. He recognized that our senses, feelings, and
cognitions must all be actively engaged at each stage of development in order for students to
maintain, over the long term, a joy and love of learning. Waldorf educators do not make the same
mistake made by a number of other more traditional, conventional, and mainstream models of
education. Waldorf educators do not overvalue the development of the neocortex and left brain to
the exclusion of the right brain, that which senses and feels deeply. It does not focus at too young of
an age, before the brain is ready, on purely academic endeavors that attempt with rigor to engage a
part of the brain that the child has little access to, the underdeveloped neocortex. (The neocortex is
not fully developed until we are in our mid- to late twenties!) Instead, what Waldorf educators do
successfully is involve and nourish the sensing, feeling parts of the brain, those easily accessed by
young children, so that essential foundational neural connections needed for later academic learning
are solidly laid.
Let me expand: You now know that the brain develops in a hierarchical fashion from more to less
primitive, from the animal to more uniquely human. What that means is that the healthy
development of the more sophisticated neocortex DEPENDS upon the healthy development of the
feeling, limbic brain which DEPENDS upon the healthy development of the sensory brain. The problem
with today’s mainstream educational models is that they want the brain to walk before it can crawl.
Well, let’s be accurate: Most school systems today want children to RUN before they can crawl. We
encounter proud parents who say, “My child was walking at 9 months! She didn’t even need to crawl,
just up and went! Isn’t that terrific?” And what I want to say is, “No! No, that’s not terrific! Push her
to the floor! Make her crawl!” That might be an overzealous reaction, but it is grounded in sound
knowledge that every single stage of development is essential to the next, laying a neural foundation
to support what is to come. Our children need ample time and practice to “marinate in their
mastery,” of one skill or another, at each and every juncture of their development. This is not
happening in enough schools across the country today, but it is happening at Waldorf.
Take the case of play. From the very beginning of a child’s educational career at a Waldorf school, he
or she is supported to play in a variety of different fashions and settings throughout the entire school
day. Steiner knew that play is the invaluable foundation for any kind of healthy, human growth,
including academic progress. And let’s be clear about what kind of play this is. It is what Dr. David
Elkind calls “the purest form of play: the unstructured, [spontaneous], self-motivated, imaginative,
independent kind, where children initiate their own games and even invent their own rules.” This kind
of play, he warns us, is disappearing from our homes, schools, and neighborhoods at an alarming rate
with great cost to the health, well-being, and achievement of our children.
Numerous studies have shown that play at every stage of development improves IQ, social-emotional
functioning, learning, and academic performance. The findings of several studies conducted over a 4
year period found that spending one-third of the school day in physical education, art, and music
improved not only physical fitness, but attitudes toward learning, and test scores, according to Dr.
Elkind. Furthermore, when the performance of children who attended academic pre-schools was
compared to the performance of children who attended play-oriented preschools, the results showed
no advantage in reading and math achievement for the “academic children,” but did show that they
had higher levels of test anxiety, were less creative, and had more negative attitudes toward school
than did the “play children.”
This is precisely the point we are missing in today’s achievement-driven culture. We have bought into
a myth in education that “more equals more.” A formula of more time spent on academics, starting
earlier in development, with more homework, is not increasing the output of our children. It’s
decreasing it! Cutting time out for the arts, physical activity, and time in nature, so our children can
spend more time reading, writing, and doing arithmetic is not the answer. It is the culprit. Our
children are burning out and dropping out at catastrophic rates not just because more doesn’t equal
more, but also because it equals shut-down.
The brain functions its best only when in an optimum state of arousal. Our children cannot attend,
listen, process information, retain, or perform well when in an either under- or over-aroused state.
Overwhelm is what causes these states. When before the brain is ready children are exposed to and
required to participate in academics, media, technology, and organized play, such as team sports, the
premature and often prolonged stress they experience can eventually shut the system down.
Teachers all over the United States and Canada tell me they see “it” by the beginning of third grade.
In far too many of their students, they say “the light has gone out.” The joy, curiosity, and wonder
that are essential to the learning process are already dulled by too much of one thing and not
another. Whereas the mainstream educational system today focuses almost exclusively on
academics, a mostly left brain function, Waldorf educators focus more on the whole brain,
emphasizing the right hemisphere at each stage of development. Steiner could only have observed
and therefore hypothesized that this keeps our children in the optimum zone of arousal where all of
learning and adaptive behavior are possible. With current scientific findings, we now know he was
right. Tapping into the sensory gifts of the right hemisphere provides the “flow” necessary for the
marathon of achievement, not just the sprint.
Now that we’ve learned about the importance of holism and play to the learning process, let us
consider the invaluable role of nature. A given within education is the engagement of the left brain.
Learning almost always involves a verbal, analytical process. What is not a given, is the stimulation
and expression of the right brain. The functions of the right hemisphere of the brain have somehow
been deemed less important to the achievement and ultimate success of our children, at least
“success” as most define it in the U. S. Our bodies are supported to move less, our minds to race
more. Cuts have been made not only to recess and physical education, but also to creative endeavors
such as theater, music, and fine art, all of which make important contributions to the optimal
functioning of the brain, achievement, AND success no matter how you define it. What does nature
have to do with it? A whole lot, according to the neuroscience: nothing stimulates and resonates with
the right brain more powerfully, and therefore, nothing keeps us in the optimum zone of arousal
better than nature.
Remember, the optimum zone of arousal, when anxiety is neither too high nor too low, is the only
physiological state within which all of learning and adaptive behavior is possible. Nature beautifully
promotes that state. According to years of research recently compiled by Dr. Eeva Karjalainen, natural
green settings reduce stress, improve mood, reduce anger and aggression, increase overall happiness,
and even strengthen our immune system. Nature is one critical antidote to the increases in stress,
overwhelm, burnout, and dropout we are witnessing in the educational system today. Lack of
exposure to nature causes such a detrimental state to the brain, and is so pervasive today we have a
name for it: “Nature Deficit Disorder.” Dr. Karjalainen reports that “after stressful or concentrationdemanding
situations,” we do not recover nearly as well in urban settings as we do in natural ones.
When we experience nature, our blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and level of stress
hormones all decrease faster than when we are in urban settings. In children in particular, we know
that ADHD symptoms are reduced when they are given the opportunity to play in green settings.
As a mother myself, I can’t imagine a parent on earth that doesn’t want all of these benefits and more
for their children. I can’t imagine that once parents and educators know the research findings
pointing the way to optimal brain functioning, that any of us would ever agree to the kind of
educational system we have now. The alternative of Waldorf exists, and I am grateful. I urge every
parent to learn more about it and strongly consider it for their children. I am also aware, however,
that not every parent has access to a Waldorf school for financial, geographical, or other reasons. For
those parents and all of us really, I have an additional urging, that we vote, petition, write letters,
make calls, and fight however we can to ensure that the reform about to take place in the current
educational system be founded on the invaluable neuroscientific findings of the last 20 years. We
must demand changes that are backed by sound science, based on how we know the brain works
best, not just in the short-term, but for all the years to come.
Please visit www.whywaldorfworks.com; www.racetonowhere.com; www.americasangel.org;
www.drmelrose.com; and, www.waitingforsuperman.com for more information and resources.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE HAND
Jane Swain, co-director of Sophia's Hearth's training course,
"The Child and Family in the First Three Years"
This article describes some of the intricacies and the abundance of amazing stages through which infants and toddlers progress in their fine motor development, so that professionals familiar with the basic concepts of motor development can begin to recognize these movements in their work with children. I chose to use the female pronoun. I avoid giving specific ages for motor milestones, since each child will wisely progress at her own pace, and the quality of the movement is what is most important, not the timetable.
While each child develops uniquely, I am presenting an archetype of development. If the child skips a stage or two, all is not lost. All of us, at any age, have potential for further growth and development! I do not wish to support a deficit model or a fix-it mentality on the part of teachers and caregivers of infants and very young children, but rather to help them see the genius of the child at work in the unfolding of her fine motor development. I encourage professionals to concentrate on honing their observation skills for a short period of time each day.
Her position in the womb influences the newborn. It gets quite tight in the womb during the last several months so that at birth, the baby is overstretched on her backside and somewhat contracted in her arms and legs. Her shoulders are elevated toward the ears, so that it looks as if she doesn’t have much of a neck! Her hands are generally held in fists when the she is resting. Her head is rotated to either side with the neck extended. The newborn cannot keep her head in the mid-line position.
The newborn may have tremors, as myelination (sheaths around nerve fiber)* is not yet complete. Random movements of arms and legs are jerky, unsophisticated, and without voluntary control. The baby moves in undifferentiated total patterns. For example, if her arm moves out to the side with the elbow straight, the hand will usually open too, as this completes the total pattern. Similarly, when the baby nurses, occasionally the hands also perform a sucking pattern, as if the entire body is sucking. The grasp reflex is in full force; if one touches the palm of the hand, the fingers will curl. Her Moro and startle reflexes are also strong, so that if her head drops backward slightly or she hears a sudden loud noise, she will cry, her arms and fingers will extend (or open), and then flex (or close across the body) in a two-part response.
One really can’t speak about the hand without commenting on the eyes and the breathing, because these are also related. The newborn’s eyes can focus at about seven inches, which is the distance to the mother’s face when she is being held in the nursing position. The newborn is a “belly breather.” While breathing actually occurs in the chest, we see the in and out motion in the abdomen.
Time passes, and the baby is not so flexed up anymore. At rest, the arms and legs are more rolled out and a little farther away from the body, and the elbows are straighter. The arms are moving more, in a windmilling sort of motion. The hands are open more, although the grasp reflex still manifests strongly if something is placed in the palm of the hand. The baby still can’t keep her head in the mid-line position, and the neck is still extended. In fact, the baby is even more asymmetrical than she was at birth. This is when the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex influences the baby’s movements. In this reflex, if the head is turned to one side, the face-side arm and fingers straighten, and the skull-side arm and fingers flex, or curl. Now the baby begins to notice her hand and spends much time looking at it. What is this? Could this possibly be part of me? Gradually the vision and the movement become more integrated.
Time passes, and early stages of head control emerge when the baby is lying on her back and her head can come to mid-line and stay there. The baby learns to tuck her chin, instead of keeping it extended, as in the earlier months. This new head position is liberating! Now the eyes start to converge, better tracking occurs, and the baby can shift her gaze more easily between two objects. The shoulders come down lower, and the neck starts to be revealed! The hands come to the mid-line position. The grasp reflex fades; the hands are predominantly open at rest, and the very early stages of a volitional grasp are starting. The baby still can’t combine reaching out with grasping, however. Grasping is a flexion pattern, and reaching is an extension pattern. Combining the two is too complicated, but the baby can grasp at her clothes at her chest, because here the fingers and arm are both flexing.
As more time passes, the baby comes more fully into this glorious stage of symmetry and mid-line orientation, a noteworthy accomplishment. The head comes to the mid-line position for longer periods of time. The hands play together at the mid-line position, and everything goes in the mouth. The hands will also find the knees. In another few weeks they find the feet - which also go in the mouth! As the baby is playing with her knees and feet in the mid-line position, she may turn to look toward the side, and surprisingly plop over to lie fully on her side. This characteristically happens at first by accident, and then the baby learns to do it intentionally. Time passes and she will learn to roll all the way over into the prone position (on her tummy), and also from prone back onto her back.
At this time of symmetry and mid-line orientation, the baby reaches out for toys. The reflexive grasp fades as the volitional grasp comes more and more into the picture. This early volitional grasp is a primitive pattern whereby the baby grasps from the pinkie side of the hand with no involvement of the thumb (ulnar palmar grasp). She reaches with poor aim, and overshoots when she reaches. The cerebellum has not yet developed fully; it will later correct the reach in midstream and fine-tune her aim. The reach is visually directed, i.e. she must see her hand and the object. She needs vision because her sense of where her body parts are in space and what they are doing (proprioception) is far from fully developed. Spending more time bearing weight through her hands in the prone position and in crawling will help her to develop this sense of proprioception. The baby now bangs objects with a strong downward motion. She can’t yet control how hard the muscles are contracting. With all this activity of the hand, the baby begins to develop the concept of cause and effect: she purposely reproduces an interesting result that occurred initially by chance. This is a lovely example of the intimate relationship between movement and learning.
When she lies on her back and plays with toys, the baby starts to work on more complex hand skills. Transferring an object from one hand directly to the other is too hard, so she uses an interesting strategy with her mouth. She takes an object from one hand, puts it in her mouth, holds onto the object with her jaws, pulls her hand off the object, and then grasps the object with the other hand!
Once she has the capacity to roll to her tummy, the baby explores the prone position. She learns to push down into the supporting surface. It is very important to know where down is. In fact, it’s vital! Think how disturbed we feel when we lose this fundamental relationship to gravity, for example, in an earthquake or on a carnival ride. Older children who have poor balance and are fearful of movement very often have difficulty finding their orientation to the supporting surface beneath them. Initially the baby pushes down through her forearms to come up on her elbows. With time she shifts her weight onto one side in order to reach for a toy with the other arm. After a while, she pushes down and comes up onto extended arms (straight arm). In this position, she experiences deep pressure into the base of her hand, and begins to work on wrist control. On extended arms, she gradually learns to shift more onto one side in order to reach with the other arm. Soon she pivots around in both directions.
All this work in the prone position lengthens and strengthens the muscles that stabilize the shoulder blades on the rib cage. The shoulder blades can gradually hold themselves in various positions on the rib cage, depending upon where the hand is used in space. This work in the prone position also provides the brain with wonderful deep pressure and joint sensation coming from the hand and especially from the thumb side of the hand. So the baby's brain knows more accurately where her thumb is and what it is doing, which in turn promotes more coordinated use of her thumb. Now the grasp changes from the pinkie side of the hand (ulnar palmar grasp) to the thumb side of the hand (radial palmar grasp), which also has no opposition of the thumb yet. With improved proprioception, she has less need for visually directed reaching.
The grasp is voluntary now, but the baby has no concept of pressure when she grasps. She will grasp objects very tightly. This primitive pattern sometimes still remains in older school-aged children and can be observed when they grasp the pencil with excessive pressure. At this point the baby has mastered the extremes of grasping and reaching, i.e., she grasps too tightly, and she releases a toy with a fling of the entire arm (a total extension pattern.) Now she scratches at a surface - such as the crib sheet or the carpet - with her fingers, and this activity works on the midranges of grasp and release!
The baby employs her new hand skills by exploring toys and objects. She is using judgment, spatial perception and is learning about the qualities of objects. Cognitive development does indeed go ‘hand in hand’ with fine motor development.
As the baby masters rolling and uses rolling to get from one place to another, she rotates her trunk, activating the abdominal muscles. In the newborn, the ribs are initially horizontally oriented. As the abdominal muscles become more active, they pull on the ribs, and this changes the orientation of the ribs to slant downward (as in the adult ribcage). The activated abdominal muscles also stabilize the ribcage, and this alters the interplay of the breathing muscles. As a result, the baby's breathing gradually changes to a thoracic breathing pattern. We see the in and out motion of breathing now in the chest, rather than in the belly, and the baby’s lung capacity increases. She can cry louder and longer! She also has more lung capacity for babbling, and this favorably influences speech development. All this work in the horizontal position helps the baby to control her trunk, so that she has a stable base from which to control her head. Good head control contributes to coordinated eye movements, which in turn affect eye-hand coordination.
The baby becomes more and more active in the prone position. She assumes the “airplane” position with arms and legs up off the floor, and then “swims” in this position. She crawls on her belly. She comes up onto extended arms, and pushes her body backwards. During this motion, the shoulder blades glide downward on the ribcage, and the muscles and tissues are further elongated. This is an incredible transformation when one remembers how the newborn’s shoulders were elevated toward the ears.
The baby comes up into the hands and knees position and rocks. This rocking elongates the tendons at the wrist and develops wrist control. The baby plays freely on her side, on her elbow, and also up on her extended arm. Only now does she come into the sitting position on her own. She transitions through various positions, for example from sitting, to being up on her hands and knees, to lying on her side.
The baby starts to crawl, and tries a variety of crawling options. She may crawl using her arms in the normal way and bend her trunk to the side so that her legs are not really engaged. She may crawl with the same-side arm and leg moving together. And she will crawl reciprocally which involves a complicated counter-rotation in the trunk whereby the upper trunk rotates in one direction and the lower trunk rotates in the opposite direction. During all this work in the prone position and on her hands and knees, the weight of the body is transferred through the hand in various patterns. This weight transfer helps to develop the arches of the hand.
The reciprocal crawling especially, and the transitions through the various positions, shift the baby's weight through the thumb side of the hand. The shifting of weight “enlivens” the thumb; the brain receives further proprioception and deep pressure from the thumb, and now the baby begins to master thumb opposition in a variety of ways. In one pattern, the thumb pad opposes the side of the index finger (lateral pincer grasp). In another pattern, the thumb pad opposes the pad of the index (inferior pincer grasp). In a third pattern, the thumb pad opposes the pads of the index and long finger (three jaw chuck grasp). The baby now becomes very active in exploring and picking up every piece of fuzz around the house!
The crawling specifically elongates the index finger tendon, readying it for more coordinated work. The baby learns to point and poke with her index finger. She can isolate one finger from the others, rather than use the total patterns of the newborn period. The baby frequently crawls with a toy in her hand, which further stretches out the tendons of the wrist. Crawling also offers the opportunity to enhance coordination of the eyes. The baby looks from one hand to the other and back again when she crawls, in the same pattern that the eyes use for reading. The baby looks down at her hands and then across the room and back down again in the same pattern that the eyes use for copying from the black board to the paper on the desk.
At this time, the baby picks up objects of different weights. Her arm initially falls and then readjusts according to the weight of each particular object. She can release an object into a container if her wrist is stabilized on the container’s edge. She no longer needs to fling her arm or use her mouth. With more time, she releases an object in the air without needing to support the wrist.
The baby masters bear walking. She pulls herself up to a standing position, first using mostly her arms, and then increasingly using her feet. She cruises along a coffee table or other surfaces at a helpful height and then learns to walk freely. Her shoulders blades pull back with her arms out to the sides and her hands up in the air when she initially stands alone and walks freely. This helps to stabilize her in the upright position. Gradually the arms relax and come down as the child's balance improves, and the hands are freed for activity in the standing position. The toddler masters a more sophisticated form of opposition where the tip of the thumb opposes the tip of the index finger (superior pincer grasp) rather than using only the pads of the fingers.
Toddlers love to give an object to another person and then have it returned. This game celebrates the capacities of the hand. Giving and receiving are archetypal movement of the hands that she has worked so many months to master. Fine motor development continues as the child grows older, but at this point, she has achieved an incredible amount, and has laid a solid foundation for all that is yet to come.
FOOTNOTE:
I write this article out of my experience as a physical therapist, and specifically out of my postgraduate pediatric training in the neuro-developmental treatment approach, or NDT approach, as it is commonly referred to. Berta Bobath and Karel Bobath, MD, developed this approach, and I am indebted to their genius. I also gratefully acknowledge my NDT instructor, Judy Bierman. Additionally, the work of Emmi Pikler has deeply influenced me. Her work is a healing balm supporting infants and young children in the development of healthy fine motor skills. In Pikler’s approach the caregiver gives the infant generous floor time for self-initiated gross motor and fine motor movement, because the caregiver understands that the child has an innate capacity to guide this unfolding motor development, if given the time and space to do so. I also acknowledge my Spacial Dynamics training under the direction of Jaimen McMillan, and my study of sensory integration, originated by Jean Ayres.
© Jane Swain,
Sophia’s Hearth Family Center, Keene, NH
*Myelination in Development from the University of California
The human brain is not a finished organ at birth -- in fact, another 10 or 12
years are needed before even a general development is completed. Structural maturation
of individual brain regions and their connecting pathways is required for the
successful development of cognitive, motor, and sensory functions. This maturation
eventually provides for a smooth flow of neural impulses throughout the brain,
which allows for information to be integrated across the many spatially segregated
brain regions involved in these functions. The speed of neural transmission is
an important factor, and this depends not only on the junctions between nerve
cells (synapses), but also on the structural properties of the connecting fibers
(axons). Critical axon structural properties include their diameters and the thickness
of the special insulation (myelin) around many fibers. Large groups of myelinated
axons, which connect various regions in the brain, appear visibly as "white matter".
Axons of the major pathways in the human brain, such as those of the corpus callosum
(which connects the two halves of the brain) or the corticospinal tract (which
connects the brain to the spinal cord and the rest of the body), continue to develop
throughout childhood and adolescence. Postmortem studies suggest that axon diameters
and myelin sheaths undergo conspicuous growth during the first two years of life,
but may not be fully mature before adolescence or even late adulthood. The scarcity
of human brain specimens for postmortem analysis has made it difficult to draw
definite conclusions about the timetable of myelinization during childhood and
adolescence.
Our understanding of the propagation of nerve impulses represents an interesting
convergence of physics and biology. The nerve impulse is a rapid propagating wave
(approximately 1 millisecond in duration) of depolarization followed by repolarization.
In the language of physics, the neuron axon behaves as an electrical transmission
line with a transverse time-variant and voltage-dependent negative conductance
element in parallel with a high capacitance. In fact, the equations describing
the propagation of neuron action potentials derive from the classical equations
for wave propagation along electrical transmission lines developed by Maxwell
and Kelvin. As expected from these equations, the cross- sectional diameter of
an axon is an important determinant of impulse propagation velocity: the larger
the diameter, the greater the velocity of propagation. The myelin sheath that
surrounds certain types of axons is a periodically interrupted electrical insulation,
and on physical grounds it can be demonstrated that the effect of this type of
insulation, considering the known electrical properties of the axon, is a substantial
increase in pulse propagation velocity over that of a bare axon of the same diameter.
Myelinization is thus a major aspect of the workings of neural circuits.
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