Geometric Form Drawing: A Perceptual-Motor Approach to Preventive Remediation (The Steiner Approach)
learning without experiential involvement in a foreign element in Steiner education. Art, for example, permeates the curriculum as a medium of expression in all subject areas. Since young children have an imaginative (nonabstract) consciousness and their thinking is pictorial (concrete operational), every effort is made to present the subject matter pictorially. RATIONALE FOR FORM DRAWING Since the primary scnool child is an active emotional being, form drawing plays an important part in the teaching of reading. In the Steiner schools form drawing precedes learning to write, and writing precedes learning to read. Steiner’s educational process is from movement to rest, from the active to the passive, from the psychomotor to the cognitive. The introduction to writing and reading proceeds as follows: The teacher, for example, wishes to introduce the letter W. She begins by telling a fairy tale about a fisherman and describes vividly the movements of the seas and the boats in the waves. She gestures and makes drawings of the shapes of waves, indicating their hollow and wavy forms (Baravalle, 1942). Then the children pronounce the words &dquo;water and waves.&dquo; She illustrates how the initial sounds are written through a simplified drawing of a wave. The children make the wavy motion in the air with both hands, then run (trace) the form or wave drawn on the floor by moving their whole body and by arm gesture. Then the movement or form is condensed into a drawing which is simplified until it becomes the conventional sign or letter He. After a sufficient number of letters are learned in this manner, they are transformed into words and sentences. The children copy the letters and sentences in their notebooks, which they profusely and carefully illustrate in bright colors (no textbooks are used in the Steiner Schools; children make their own copy book on each subject). Their art work is mature; just as children have an IQ, they also possess an AQ-artistic quotient. Through this approach, the learning process begins with gross activity (movement and gesture), which is then gradually transformed and reduced from the whole body to the hands, through the affective domain, and thence to thoughts and concepts. This coordination of motor movement and mind-or, more accurately, the control of mind over motor movement-is the basis of Steiner’s perceptual-motor development program. Certain form-drawing exercises (freehand) are recommended for each age level, according to the children’s development and maturity (Frohlich, 1965). Steiner believed that cognitively controlled motor activities stimulate and awaken the child’s thinking and increase his concentration span. The child learns through a cognitive style that is concrete and compatible with his development. Steiner’s theory of dynamic form drawing is shown in Table 1. The correlation of geometric patterns to age