I Can't Stand It

"We can view Steiner Schools not as educational establishments, but as places of spiritual midwifery."

Revealed: Midwives in probe over up to 60 baby deaths

This Might Be How The Whole "I'm Ghost" Thing Started

It begins like we're into your typical witch or werewolf story:

"Within the Anthroposophical Society, I was a member of the School of Spiritual Science — that is to say, I was included in the special category of Anthroposophists having access to higher occult truths that are withheld from regular members of the Anthroposophical Society. I participated in esoteric lessons, which is to say I participated in the secret cult of the School of Spiritual Science. This cult also held meetings even within the school premises of Steiner Verrières-le-Buisson. 

Today, with hindsight, it is clear to me that what led me to become an active and prominent member of this sectarian organization began with my enrollment in a Waldorf school at the age of nine years. The rest of my course in life was only the logical result of the indoctrination I had been subjected to. 

I. An Insidious Indoctrination 

1. Hiding Anthroposophy in the Subjects Taught   

Based on my experience as a former student, a teacher at my old school, and an Anthroposophist, I would like to describe the subtlety of indoctrination that students in Waldorf schools are subjected to. In fact, its chief characteristic is its nonidentifiable form,..."

Oooh - See the problem?

If only the "chief characteristic" coulda been it's obvious educational abilities and attributes: 

Mighta beena winna for the GZA or the RZA to promote.

As it stands, tonight, I'm gonna go howl hippie anthems at the Moon:

"So close - so close, and yet so faaaar,..."

 

Update: NewAge Patient-Centered Care (Which Doctor?)

Wow - when a High Court in INDIA is saying to take action against quacks, and America's aren't, the gods (if there were such things) must be crazy. The best we can hope for, here, are class action lawsuits against the "snake oil" of homepathy - and damn it, we'd better be happy about it because (even with thousands of out of work lawyers supposedly looking for income) it's all we're going to get.

Over in England, Prince Charles's alternative medicine foundation was 'brought down by fraud,' and that's no laughing matter, while there's also a new comic book about "science, skepticism, evidence and woo" which has to be. I mean it just HAS to be, right?

I told you about the Australian college that rejected a chair based on Rudolf Steiner's ridiculous theories of "healing," but completely forgot to tell you about the Canadian dentist who got busted claiming he could cure cancer using "alternative" treatment techniques.

How he slipped through, I have no idea.

And everybody's heard about the Chinese human baby flesh pills, which didn't really faze me, because I've become so used to people making the most horrendous excuses for every gruesome human excess - like that $141.55 a bottle face cream made from the foreskin of baby boys that Oprah and Barbara Walters use - I'd already started wondering, a looong time ago, if grinding up babies into pills would even get a reaction from the rest of these ignorant, cold-hearted, self-deluded monsters.

 Now I know,... 

And Who Ever Suggested "College Costs Too Much"?

You'll have to click-through and read the rest of the article yourself, because after reading this first sentence, I can't stop laughing long enough to deal with posting anything more:

A university has decided against a controversial proposal to establish a chair in a brand of alternative medicine that advocates mistletoe as a cure for cancer.

Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!! [Pointing] Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!! Whoo-yeah, boy. 

It was a "tough call," I'm sure - like ending last year's unicorn hunt! 

Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!! 

 ROTFLMAO!!!!!!

 

Go Into The NewAge (And You Get The Medieval)

"Measles remains a public health problem in Europe, and there are 'serious doubts' that it can be eliminated by 2010 as health officials had hoped, according to a new report in The Lancet.

...Vaccination rates are lower in families rated 'hard to reach' by the authorities and in schools that practice homeopathy and the medical philosophy of the 19th- and early-20th-century theorist Rudolf Steiner."

-- Donald G. McNeil, on the latest discouraging (and totally backwards) news from the world of NewAge belief, in The New York Times.

San Francisco Is An Occult Base Of Operations

"Dr. Adrienne Huber, Australian educator and psychologist, has been appointed as an international supporting advisor for the San Francisco-based world movement People for Legal and Nonsectarian Schools, PLANS, which was organized in late 1995 by former Steiner/Waldorf parents, teachers, students, administrators and trustees, and their expert support base. This group is actively investigating the Waldorf schools, originally known as Steiner schools. Rudolf Steiner (left) was a Nazi-era mystic who came up against the whole movement, threatened by the party, and fled. He embraced Anthroposophy, an occult religion that now both guides and inspires Waldorf teachers.

Waldorf education is very secretive in nature. There is virtually no hard information about what goes on in Steiner classrooms or on the effects it has on children’s learning. Parents learn little if anything about the curriculum, but I have seen it in operation in Finland, and it’s really woo-woo. The students are taught about spirits that inhabit rocks and trees, astrology, and every variety of occult lore. The Waldorf's two-year teacher training program is simply inadequate and farcical.

The first year of their training is an Anthroposophical seminary program, the study of Steiner's occult philosophy as revealed in his books “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment,” and “Reincarnation and Karma” and “Occult Science.” Go to www.steinerbooks.org to see just how nutty this man was – and realize that parents actually put these people in charge of their children’s education! "

-- From the James Randi Educational Foundation Swift

"In his `anthroposophical medicine', it is quite clear that Steiner has drawn together parts of Alchemy, Occultism, Hippocratic notions of the 4 Temperaments and Humours and large parts of Herbalism and Homoeopathy. He also adds oriental notions like karma, rebirth, subtle body and chakras derived directly from Mrs Besant's Theosophy. He also adds to his system a Jungian sort of rumination and analogical thinking about essence and morphology, which presumably came primarily from Goethe's `Naturphilosophie' or from Paracelsus. More likely, both influences are admixed."

-- Peter Morrell, an obvious fan, writing on Steiner and Homeopathy