Cohousing-L Mailing List: Quite meals and children

[Racheli Gai (racheli]

Thanks, Danny.  I had similar thoughts/feelings reading Deborah's
description below.
It seems to me that it's almost unavoidable that in cohousing 
communities
needs around meals will vary, and that it's a good idea to consider 
allowing
different types of meals to happen, so that most people have a chance 
to find
their niche.

I found out in my community (Sonora Cohousing, Tucson) that efforts to
organize alternatives to the "Common Meals" have caused a certain level 
of
friction and resentment: Anything that's not open to all has been seen 
by at least
by some people in the community as exclusive or elitist.  Yet, the 
common meals
are exclusive (in effect, if not in intent), since by choosing to have 
them
a certain way they leave out those for whom the format doesn't work.
Examples: Our common meals are not organic, something which is important
for me;  They are mostly quite large, and I feel much more at ease in 
smaller
groups (part of it is noise, but part of it is how people connect when 
there are
fewer).  I'm sure other people can conjure up other examples.

Racheli.






> Deborah Mensch wrote:
>
> > What distinguished the community in our conversation was the 
> > homogeneity
> > of values related to child-rearing in that community. (Several 
> > families
> > there have kids who attend a local Waldorf school, which implies a
> > likely constellation of shared values.) When a community forms around
> > the kinds of values the Petaluma community has, and which Lia 
> > describes,
> > a lot of positive community influence on the children is possible in 
> > the
> > areas covered by the shared values.
>
> Hi,
>
> It's probably useful to remember that Waldorf practices are highly
> coercive and indeed uniform. When Steiner invented the 'method' in 
> 1919 he
> was on a roll, engineering his own ideals of what childhood development
> should be. It is probably beyond the scope of this listserve (cohousing
> being the topic) but is important that folks don't get the wrong
> impression that a quiet, civil meal for adults is a reasonable or 
> healthy
> situation for children.
>
> Do reexamine your values on this one.
>
> Danny
> Baltimore CoHousing
>
> newamericanschoolhouse.com
> freeschoolpreschool.org
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