Why do Steiner students stay with the same teacher for years?
According to Steiner, between the ages of seven and fourteen, children learn best through acceptance and emulation of authority, just as in their earlier years they learned through imitation. In primary school, particularly in the lower grades, the child is just beginning to expand his or her experience beyond home and family. The class becomes a type of family as well, with its own authority figure the teacher in a role analogous to parent. With this approach, the students and teachers come to know each other very well, and the teacher is able to find over the years the best ways of helping individual children in their schooling. The class teacher also becomes like an additional family member for most of the families in his/her class. Its worth noting that this approach is the norm in the one teacher country schools. (Not that many exist these days).
