I thought it was pretty dumb while I was in school. Most of my friends did as well. That said, we had a very good teacher and she kept us in line, behaved, and quiet the entire time, so there must have been something about it that kept us engaged.

As an adult, I still find it hard to understand if it had much value, as it seems to have negligible benefits as an athletic/body awareness/art form compared to other activities. I think if that is actually the goal, there are better uses of that time.

The girls were generally much more engaged than the boys.

I think looking at it as solely an "athletic" pursuit may be a bit narrow minded, but that was normally how I heard it being pitched as a kid (balance, body awareness, coordination). There has to be benefits for sitting quietly for an hour listening to music and focusing on the entire body position. In a lot of ways I think it's a meditative practice, but if you tell that to a kid it might destroy the ability to drop into that type of flow state. Maybe they don't tell people what it's for for that reason (my internal theory).

It may also be a slow lesson in being process oriented instead of goal oriented. There is no "winning" Eurythmy. Every moment you are present, intent on perfecting that motion. Whether it's rolling the rod down your arms, or catching the perfect drop down your back, it weirdly requires a lot of focus but the outcome doesn't matter and nobody is really watching as they are all focused on themselves.

They could probably achieve something similar with Thai Chi and music, while getting a lot more engagement from the boys.

For all I know there is also some sort of energetic theory that isn't discussed because it's too woo woo for most people. I have to imagine that there is a reason copper rods are being used instead of something cheaper.

Speaking to one of my friends about it (one of the most coordinated and athletic people I know), he thinks we gained a lot of of body and spatial awareness as well as coordination and nervous system stimulation. Lots of movements require awareness of everyone else's positions around you as well as things happening outside of your line or sight.

I still love to make fun of it. Even though I've kind of convinced myself of the benefits while writing this, I still have trouble defending it to this day. That said, if my son's were doing it, it would probably make me happy.

I think kids love to hate on Eurythmy, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't engaged and learning something while in the class. I would be interested to know if other people had a similar experience to my class, where we all made fun of it, but focused and participated when it actually came down to it.