My mother died in 1953 and my father’s second wife was a German woman whose family was deeply committed to anthroposophy, the world system that had been devised and promoted by the Austrian-born seer and philosopher Rudolf Steiner. Our family was Quaker, my parents had joined the Society of Friends just after the Second World War, and by the time my step mother came along I was away at a Quaker boarding school, then university, and off to Canada in 1962. Thus I never really got much exposure to anthroposophy; but in the 1960s my father gave up his job as a bursar at a Friends’ school and went to become bursar at a large Steiner School, or as they are known, Waldorf School, where he remained until he retired (and died shortly thereafter) in the early 1990s.
I should say that in the 1980s, then a single parent, when I went on sabbatical in England my kids lived with my father and stepmother and went to his school for a year. They were then teenagers and they enjoyed the experience. For them, there was not a lot of difference from a regular school, although with perhaps more emphasis on the arts and on foreign languages, and a number of rather strange festivals involving bonfires, which I think they found a bit mystifying but fun all the same.
I say this as a preliminary to my discovery that Waldorf education—it is thus named after a rich tobacco manufacturer who, just after the First World War, asked Steiner to start a school for the children of his workers—seems to be undergoing explosive growth. Apparently in 1980 there were worldwide 200 schools. Today, in 2010, there are a thousand schools! My suspicion is that this is reflected in other Steiner-influenced activities, for instance so-called biodynamic agriculture. I should say that in some countries there is state support for Steiner education, including in some parts of the USA. (Some of Steiner’s followers started a religion, the Christian Community, reflecting his beliefs, but anthroposophy—thinking of itself as a philosophy-cum-science—has always kept itself separate from this.)
Why is this growth happening? I am writing a book on Gaia, the claim that the earth is an organism, and have been led fairly naturally to Steiner because the interfusion of life with matter is a central part of his world picture. So for the first time I have been digging a little into what he believed and how this related to his philosophy of education. He had some very, very strange ideas indeed. He claimed to have insights into the spiritual world, one which is apparently very densely populated. There are for a start all sorts of beings on the planets and the sun, concerned with our welfare down here. There are various ages through which humankind has gone, including a spell in Atlantis. There were two Jesuses, and it was Lazarus who wrote the Gospel according to St. John. And there is reincarnation. Apparently I was a woman the last time around and will be again the next time.
There are related oddities. Early in his adult life, Steiner edited Goethe’s scientific works, and as a consequence anthroposophists are into rather creepy pastel water colors based on Goethe’s anti-Newtonian theory of color. But here I don’t want to badmouth Steiner and his followers as such. I think there was (and still is) a huge commitment to getting things right and in living a full and worthwhile life. To Steiner’s great credit, the Nazis loathed him, suggesting that he was a Jew (or, even worse, a Jesuit), and closed everything down as soon as they got to power. Steiner himself was very concerned about the education of people with developmental issues and today there are Camphill Communities inspired by his teaching, where mentally handicapped adults can live together in a meaningful atmosphere.
But there is no question that the educational philosophy of Waldorf schools reflects a lot of Steiner’s basic thinking. The human apparently is a bit like an artichoke, with a central soul surrounded by layers. The outer layer seems to be the physical body. This is the matter side to humans and is what is left and decomposes after we die. Then there is the etheric body, which seems to be brute life, something we share with plants and which dominates up to the age of seven, when the second teeth come along. Following is the astral body, consciousness, something shared with animals and holding sway until about 14 and adolescence. Finally, the Ego, which is self consciousness and is that which reincarnates.
(As one English-born, I was sorry to find that animals do not have Egos and hence do not reincarnate. None of your Rupert Brooke heaven for fish, I am afraid –
And under that Almighty Fin,
The littlest fish may enter in.
Oh! never fly conceals a hook,
Fish say, in the Eternal Brook,…)
Waldorf education is explicitly molded in the light of this picture of human nature. So for instance there is a positive disinclination to start a child reading before seven. Unlike most schools—especially private schools for the middle classes—there is no frenetic use of alphabet cards as soon as a kid can focus, worrying that without such a start for life refusal of entry into Harvard is practically guaranteed. Teachers rather tell fairy stories and kids act them out and paint them and that sort of thing. There is also eurythmy, a dance form invented by Steiner and his second wife. All children have to do it. This seems to involve a lot of prancing around a stage in bare feet, dressed in flowing garments that seem to have been borrowed from a production of a Wagner opera. It is not an incidental add on, like chess club or cheerleading. It is something that expresses the “art of the soul” and is very much intended to be part of our karmic development or training.
Basically, my first question is, has the world started to take Steiner’s visions seriously. Are my fellow Americans—actually, in large part the Californians—now buying into angels on the moon and reincarnation? Or is there attitude, somewhat like mine, that it doesn’t seem too harmful and is balanced by the obvious dedication of the schools to the wellbeing of their children? I can put up with a bit of daft dancing around the stage for the sake of people who really worry and care about their charges. My second question is whether any educational philosophy for children really matters? What is important is that a school has one, whether it be Steiner-inspired, or pragmatism, or something based on training for Italian slum kids. Without being entirely cynical, so long as a philosophy does not do positive harm (and I am to be frank still not sure about Steiner and early reading) what really counts is that teachers are inspired. Looking back, I think the Quaker high school I went to was nothing like as good as it should have been. It aspired to being a minor public school, rather than something governed through and through by the Quaker ethos. And this was reflected in the atmosphere. We were certainly trained to jump through examination hoops, but caring about us as rounded people was not the first priority.
Judging by past experience, having read this post an awful lot of people are now going to jump all over me, claiming that I don’t care about teachers in public schools and that sort of thing. Actually that is not true. I am dedicated to public education and my kids down here in Tallahassee have all attended the local schools. I am certain philosophical theories of education play significant roles for many schools and teachers. It is just that I want an answer to the five-fold jump in Waldorf education in the past 30 years. That doesn’t seem to me to be obvious given the beliefs of Rudolph Steiner.
9 Responses to Waldorf Education
benb8119 - June 29, 2010 at 12:51 pm
I think it has to do with the sense that education for children has really missed the boat. I sent my oldest to public school and watched him stagnate and be taught to the test. He was miserable and I thought he was at serious risk of depresseion. Second child went to Montessori school. I am not convinced by the logic of the curriculum though some parts make sense (encourage a child to work and help around the house–with both parents working this seems to be a dying art–chores! Household help! Responsibility to your family and community. Some of the parents are totally committed to Montessori, some are like me–browsed a bit and thought that the environment was positive, kid comes home happy and works well at grade level, life is good–why get into philosophy? My son’s private school has lots of kids who have entered from the Waldorf School. A friend sent her daughter to Waldorf. The friend does, maybe, buy into some of Steiner’s beliefs–not angels on the moon, but some of it. The parents at my son’s school were looking for a place that didn’t make their kids intellectually or emotionally miserable. Take Kindergarten, when I went it was half a day long, we played with dolls, blocks, and trucks. We learned to hang up our coats in the cubbies, to pull out our chairs and put them back under our desks. We learned to have reading time with the teacher reading a story (and never tried to teach us to read), we learned the ABC song and other common songs, we had recess outside unless it was raining (then we did exercises in the classroom), we learned to pass out milk and graham crackers, to wipe our desks, to line up, and not to hurt each other. My elderly teacher was a saint and she had a class cat that let us dress it and drive it in the doll carriage, all in public school. My son sat at tables, had a cranky elderly teacher, had no recess, class was full day, and gym class was once a week. He could read already, like I could, but was punished for looking out the window when the teacher was working on teaching students to read from a big book. He was allowed to play with blocks if he had colored in his shapes and equivalences work sheet, and done two other assignments. After lunch, he got to watch TV! No wonderful story time, no sweet teacher reading an interesting story. Painting, coloring interesting things, looking at birds’ nests never happened. A fair amount of classroom time each day was spent in waiting for the teacher to deal with aggression in the classroom. Not the experience I wanted for him. He came home exhausted, with a frayed temper. I used to go to a park right after school each day so that all his energy that built to explosion levels at school could be vented. That is why lots of parents go to Waldorf, in my opinion. It isn’t about spirituality–it is about seeking a quality of life relevant to the family who goes there.
winslow - June 29, 2010 at 1:38 pm
I attended a Waldorf school most of my life (in fact I graduated from the one where your dad was the bursar, and my parents were good friends with him), and when I had children I was appalled to discover that not ALL education was premised on the idea that 1) balance in learning is essential (meaning physical, artistic, academic activities augment each other), 2) caring for each other and the earth is as important as learning the date of the Battle of Hastings, and 3) graduating students who are free from dogma or prejudice, in other words free-thinking human beings, able to make wise, compassionate, firm decisions in their lives, is the purpose of education. So I quickly moved to a place where my children could attend a Waldorf school. Your cursory discussion of Rudolf Steiner’s cosmology is not really relevant to the essential nature of Waldorf Education, which is for teachers to educate children so that they are free to become themselves, and to think for themselves. The curriculum is extraordinarily rich, academically thorough, and there are many qualities which more and more educational systems are discovering work tremendously well (like, for example, ‘looping’ – staying with the same teacher for more than one year at a time). Frankly, most cosmologies, in my view, are pretty nutty. Virgin births? Water into wine? Are these things really stranger than two Christs? Who cares what people believe in the privacy of their own homes? Don’t we simply want ALL children educated with reverence for who they are, and what they can become, and most of all, when they are grown, for them not to be at the mercy of media-moguls,close-minded scientists,unscrupulous politicians (just a few examples) and to know how to seek out and sort out the truth for themselves.
simo1234 - June 30, 2010 at 6:52 am
My older son spent his first 11 years of education at a Waldorf school, and my younger son is just poised to leave his Steiner school after fifth grade. We are leaving because of a glaring weakness in Waldorf education, at least as it as practiced at this school: no focus on the individual student. Waldorf education sees children in collective terms, which is good for encouraging a non-competitive atmosphere, but is not good if your child happens to be an outlier who needs some special attention (and I am not necessarily talking about remedial education, but also special ed for the gifted and talented crowd). In his case, staying with the same teacher year after year has lost its appeal, as it is clear that this teacher has no particular interest in giving my son the additional challenges and opportunities that he needs to grow and shine. On a more general level, Waldorf education badly needs to grow itself. Your comparison of eurythmy to a Wagnerian opera is apt–and how many children do you know who would enjoy or appreciate Wagner? The concept of doing dance as a soul-enhancing exercise is a good one, but eurythmy needs to be reinvented for the 21st century. I also find the egalitarian structure of our school, with a teachers’ council as the only authority, invites stagnation and complacency among the teachers. There is a lot to like about Waldorf education–the early childhood program is outstanding, and I happen to love those watercolors, I don’t find them creepy in the least! But you’d think, with all this interest and parental support that you’re documenting, there would be more energy around discussing ways to grow the Steiner approach for the times we live in. Of course I am not suggesting every Waldorf classroom get a computer–far from it! I love the no-media policy. But in my experience, the curriculum could be far more open to the contemporary world than it is, especially once kids get to middle school.As for the angels on the moon, the jury is still out on that. I have read quite a bit of Steiner and it is indeed hard to follow. But his basic belief that there is a spiritual and energetic plane of existence, that we are more than our material bodies, I don’t find hard to believe at all. I’m happy to have teachers who pay attention to the children’s spiritual selves, as long as their concern doesn’t become rigid and dogmatic. This seems to be entirely a question of the individual teacher. I was lucky with my older son’s teacher; unlucky with my younger son’s teacher. Perhaps the next step for your inquiry would be to look into how Waldorf teachers self-select–who they are, and how they are trained.Thanks for bringing up this topic!
hstmaurice - June 30, 2010 at 7:43 am
As a university-based teacher educator, I have observed teachers in Waldorf schools, religious schools and many public schools. The better schools, and better teachers in them, depend on practical wisdom and adapt their pedagogies to children and their communities. Any educator who claims to have a universal theory or method, as Steiner did, is doomed to fail some of the time. Absolutism collapses eventually. For all the good that Steiner promoted, his approach seems flawed by Hegelian idealism and the ensuing arrogance. Instead of absolutism, experimentalism seems to be the best way to educate. John Dewey is the only educator who comes closest to explaining that idea. Good education, he said, is life itself: a plurality of possibilities, mediated democratically and pragmatically as living beings work out problems together in communities. Dewey and Seiner were contemporaries who never met, as far as we know. Jacque Ensign imagined a conversation between them in his article, “A conversation between John Dewey and Rudolf Steiner” (1996, retrieved at http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/mit2008/Fall06handouts/DeweySteiner.pdf ),
what4 - June 30, 2010 at 10:22 am
Waldorf schools teach solid academic content in an atmosphere of order, art, and a kind of sweetness. When our kids were young, there was no Waldorf school nearby, but we visited several in other locations, talked to many people, and had a study group on Steiner and adapted some Waldorf methods for local alternative schools. Anthroposophy does not seem to be a direct part of Waldorf schools, even though they may be in some way based on its conclusions. Instead, we found that the Waldorf schools did something of real value — they preserved, protected, and celebrated innocence. They did this by teaching the youngest children through ritual, story, myth, art, music, and movement — giving them an effective precognitive foundation on which to base their future development of thinking. Thus they avoided the epidemic of too-much-cognition-too-soon that drives a lot of bright little kids into their heads, when they need to be in their bodies and feelings, doing and making things. The Waldorf schools were careful to expose students only to material that was appropriate to their level of development. This simple orientation goes against much of today’s world — where innocence is frequently violated by exposing young children to violence and sexuality and adult situations. There will be a time for that, later, but meanwhile, young children have the ability to prepare for such situations — through myth and art and music. Myths are pretty brutal, but that brutality is contained inside the magic, where it becomes available to children as they mature to the point of understanding it. There was a sweetness about the Waldorf schools that was profound. Also, unlike at many alternative schools, Waldorf students learned discipline, focus, they learned to be neat and clean up after themselves, they learned to be polite and considerate. The children also learned math and science and literature. They wrote a lot. They created things. The schools we observed were good at handling the wild energy of little boys — they gave them things to DO. For example, they paired up high-energy boys so they could pace each other. The boys were not penalized for being boys, but they gradually learned discipline and respect and self-control. Or so it seemed to us. Post-WWII attitudes toward Germans have obscured our perception of what is good in the culture that produced Bach, Beethoven, Goethe — and Steiner. But that wonderful tradition of German cultural development shined out in these schools — an appreciation for the arts of mind and feeling. It’s the same impulse toward self-directed learning that you find in the Goethe Institutes around the world. Of course, not all the parents learned kindness as well as the children did, but it’s typical of alternative schools to attract some contrarian parents. Along with some outright nuts. But where is this not true?Regular schools could learn a lot from the Waldorf schools — and without any of the angels or energies of Anthroposophy.
11191210 - June 30, 2010 at 12:37 pm
I also was at a Friends School about the time this writer was. We had an exchange program with a Rudolph Steiner school in Germany! But I understand what Ruse means about Friends School being less focussed on values then. I am delighted to see that the Friends schools I attended then have moved to a focus on social awareness and activism, and the Friends School which my daughter attended was started with that goal. The nearby Waldorf school and the Friends school are probably the closest in educational philosophy in town.
mmcknight - June 30, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Commenter #2 does a far better job of describing the principles that are the basis of Waldorf education than the author does. Michael Ruse seems to have picked all the most unusual things he could find out about Steiner and compiled them, saying with extreme bias “why is this nut so popular?” In fact,though Ruse claims to “have been digging a little into what [Steiner] believed and how this related to his philosophy of education,” he hardly discusses that philosophy at all, except, again, to pick several oddities and present them as the entirety of Waldorf education. How disappointing.
what4 - July 1, 2010 at 9:16 pm
I’ve discovered why some people become addicted to anthroposophy: Reading Steiner releases waldorphins.
celocant - July 14, 2010 at 7:18 pm
Waldorf schools are growing in number due to increasing demand for the type of education they offer. It’s not from any growing interest in Rudolf Steiner. My kids attended one. Steiner’s a strange one but the education he designed is very good. He realized that kids need to move, create, play, and engage their senses, affections and imagination in order to learn and “own” knowledge in any meaningful way. The schools assume a priority to how children develop into interested and disciplined learners, and for that reason “sooner is not always better”.But perhaps the main reason they’re growing is because they’re increasingly looked upon as one of the more sane and humane educational options still available, at least in the US. A growing number of parents are appalled with the focus on testing, the competiveness, the stress even five and six year olds must endure, the diminishing of art and music, disappearing recesses, and other child “unfriendly” qualities increasingly common in schools.