I attended Steiner from year 4. I attended the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School from year 7 onwards.

I found Steiner is wonderful for a certain kind of alternative, "free-spirit" child. Steiner schools advertise themselves as letting children be their unique, individual selves, but this only applies to a certain kind of child.

As a very introverted and difficult teenager, I was treated quite roughly by the MRSS - my year 7 teacher told my parents I was very difficult because I am "hard to pigeon-hole"...

I was consistently berated for being different from the other students, and blamed for being excluded and ostracized by the other kids.

This was especially true on school camps - which were an endless nightmare of being separated from my small group of friends and told to include myself better with the people in my year level.

On an educational level, Steiner was incredibly limiting - I would have loved the opportunity to take law classes, or philosophy, and don't even get me started on the anti-computer/modern technology view of the MRSS. Computers and the internet are a necessary evil of the modern world and Steiner schools need to come on board.

In any case, I was sent to a Steiner school as I was an argumentative and critically thinking child, and my parents thought Steiner would suit me better than the normal schooling system - guess they were wrong, although, from the way Steiner is advertised, I don't blame them for this.

If you are an alternative family with earthy, "free-spirit" children, then Steiner is for you.