LESSON BOOKS
Science and Art at Waldorf
At many Waldorf schools, an important activity is the creation, by the students, of "lesson books."
In effect, the kids create this own textbooks, usually by scrupulously following their teachers' instructions.
Ordinary textbooks are often excluded from class, since they would not reflect the Waldorf worldview.
I was once asked if I still have any of the lesson books I created as a Waldorf student.
I don’t. But the question inspired me to write the following short essay.
As I’ve argued elsewhere, Rudolf Steiner was fundamentally an enemy of science, so Waldorf schools typically downplay science as much as they can. Here’s one small illustration. I'll tell you what I remember about my science lesson books. [1]
Physics and chemistry classes at my Waldorf school generally consisted of the teacher standing behind a table and performing some sort of “scientific” operation (pouring contents of beaker A into test tube B, then stirring, then...). Our job was to watch carefully and then write a report telling what he had done. We had to follow a strict format: “Objective: To create a green cloud of stink. Procedure: 1) Pour contents of beaker A into test tube B, 2) Stir, 3) Add pinch of... Conclusion: Pouring A into B, stirring, and adding a pinch of X creates a green cloud of stink.”
During our freshman year, the teacher would explain what he was doing as he went along. All we had to do, really, was write down his words. By our senior year, he was largely silent, expecting us to figure things out for ourselves. (Yes, he was the same — and sole — teacher handling these subjects. He taught every physics and chemistry course to each class of students throughout my eleven years at Waldorf.)
Importantly, we were required to draw the apparatus used in each “experiment.” Each day's submission was graded. The grades depended on: a) a more or less accurate description of the “experiment” the teacher performed; b) legible handwriting; and c) the drawing. The latter often seemed to have greatest importance, having a major influence on our grades. The teacher was not to be drawn; nor the results of any procedure (a cloud of green stink...). The drawings basically showed the apparatus as arranged by the teacher on his work bench.
We used soft colored pencils for the drawings. A friend and I got into a competition, drawing more and more extreme views: Apparatus seen from far above, or far below, popping off the page, or receding into the far distance. The teacher often commented on our drawings, leaving most other components of our reports unmentioned. (He wrote extremely neat, tiny penciled comments in the margins of the reports. “Great drawing,” “Best I’ve seen,” “Good,” “See me” (uh-oh).)
At the end of the course, we would compile all our reports, in the correct order, and create a class lesson book — our reports and drawings, with perhaps a little additional commentary or transitional material tossed in. Designing the title page for each workbook was crucial. Whether the class was physics or chemistry, I always wrote the title of the course in huge, billowing letters (“CHEMISTRY,” in bilious green, let's say,) and then, filling most of the page, I generally drew the orange/red/purple mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. I don’t recall whether I knew why I chose this motif, except that it always seemed to assure a good grade. Looking back, however, I think I was suggesting my horror of science and all its works. In any event, the teacher almost always picked out my notebook, along with some others, to be put on display as examples of what he wanted. He kept these A+ lesson books lined up on a side table in the science classroom. [2]
I’d like to step far back, now, from the lovely pictures I drew of test tubes, beakers, and nuclear explosions — I want to consider why the creation of pictures of all sorts looms so large in Waldorf education. I’ll let you decide how much, if at all, I’m changing the subject.
Rudolf Steiner often spoke to Waldorf teachers about the extraordinary, almost magical importance of pictures in helping children to grasp reality. (Bear in mind that for him, reality involved reincarnation, weird ideas about human nature and physiology, and occult concepts of the spirit realm.) Steiner especially stressed “living pictures,” by which he meant pictures that are imbued with spiritual force. When children are shown living pictures, they participate in magic. When children create their own living pictures, they perform magic.
The following quotation comes from a lecture Steiner delivered to Waldorf teachers. (If parts of the quotation seem incomprehensible, don’t worry: It isn’t you, it’s Steiner):
“If you bring children as many living pictures as possible, if you educate them by speaking in pictures, then you sow the seed for a continuous retention of oxygen, for continuous development, because you direct the children toward the future, toward life after death. When we teach, in a certain sense we again take up the activities we experienced before birth. We must see that thinking is a pictorial activity which is based on what we experienced before birth. Spiritual forces acted upon us so that a pictorial activity was sown in us which continues after birth. When we present pictures to children in teaching, we begin to take up this cosmic activity again ... [E]ducation is a continuation of supersensible activity before birth....” [3]
What is this all about? Forget the wackiness about oxygen and its how it helps prepare for life after death. (Breathing is a good idea, of course — but life after death is a more dubious proposition. Bear in mind, Steiner wasn’t talking about going to heaven. He was talking about an extremely long series of future lives, alternating between the physical universe and the spirit realm: reincarnation.)
Steiner tells Waldorf teachers that they and their students carry within themselves information gleaned from their lives before birth. This information comes to them due to the activities they performed during their lives before birth. “Spiritual forces acted upon us so that a pictorial activity was sown in us which continues after birth.”
The word “activity” is important. Steiner taught that humans gather information best by performing actions — physical actions and spiritual “actions.” Waldorf teachers were active in their spiritual lives before their most recent physical births, and this pre-birth activity enabled them to internalize pictures of the spirit realm. The same goes for students. Teachers can summon up their internalized spiritual knowledge through the creation of living pictures. The same goes for students. The pretty pictures created by Waldorf students are not primarily works of art: They are intended to be mechanisms for the manifestation of occult “truth.” (The children and their parents are usually not told this. For some of Steiner’s own words on the subject, see the book ART AS SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY [4].)
Thinking itself is, according to Steiner, a pictorial activity. What he means is that by using the imagination, one can summon up pictures infused with what one experienced in life before birth. Steiner devalued rational thought (see my essay, “Thinking Cap”) as well as the rational investigation of phenomena (see my essay “Steiner’s ‘Science’”). True thinking, for him, is clairvoyance. Children in Waldorf schools are led toward developing clairvoyance by being trained to use their imaginations to “understand” reality. (The children and their parents are usually not explicitly told any of this. The children are simply guided into various activities that are meant to have occult value. Questions are discouraged. Explanations are not given.)
“Education is a continuation of supersensible activity before birth....” That’s Steiner’s intention, boiled down to its basics. “Supersensible” stuff is invisible, inaudible, untouchable... It is stuff that we cannot confirm using our real senses — it can be apprehended only through clairvoyance. Waldorf education is geared toward such stuff, stuff that almost certainly doesn’t exist, at least not in the weird forms Steiner imagined. And the profoundly antiscientific nature of Waldorf schooling is revealed here. Science deals with things that can be seen, heard, touched — and measured, and examined, and subjected to objective tests. In other words, science deals with reality, which is what Waldorf schools generally disdain.
Steiner's system depends on clairvoyance rather than ordinary sight and logical reasoning. But clairvoyance doesn’t exist, which means that — to put this mildly — Steiner’s educational program has limited value.
Still, there is such a thing as being seduced by vague imaginings of a misty, pastel-colored spirit realm. Children led in that direction may become sadly lost. By the same token, time spent preparing for nonexistent future lives is time lost — potentially, it is lives wasted.
The pictures students create in science classes are, presumably, the farthest removed from spiritualistic truth, since science is so wrongheaded. But you might ask yourself whether any pictures could actually fulfill the purpose Steiner assigns to them. If you believe in reincarnation and magic, you might want to send your children to a Waldorf school. If you are a bit skeptical, you might want to hold back.
— Roger Rawlings
These drawings are not work I did as a student —
they are reconstructions. Above you see
what I remember as a typical lesson book cover
I would have created in 12th grade.
The image — more recognizable in those days —
is supposed to be an above-ground nuclear blast.
(Perhaps my work would have been neater than this,
but everything would have been freehand.
The shadowed lettering wowed everyone.)
Below you see a reconstruction of the sort
of picture I drew for science classes.
Such work more or less assured me good grades
whether or not I learned much science.
[R.R., 2009.]
I don't have any of my old lesson books.
But here are samples of drawings created by young
Waldorf students as part of their classwork.
I don't know whether these come literally from lesson books.
Here is a scene in nature.
Note the roots — the lesson may have been botany:
And here is a Waldorf's student's
exposition of how we arrive on Earth:
Here we see the archangel
Michael killing the dragon:
ENDNOTES
[1] Waldorf schools often use few, if any, textbooks. One reason is that mainstream texts would introduce ideas foreign to the occult philosophy underlying Waldorf education. Another reason is that students are diverted, at Waldorfs, into “artistic” endeavors that are meant to have spiritualistic effects. (See my essay “Magical Arts” at this Web site.) The Waldorf approach often entails having students create their own, handwritten lesson books. Generally, these consist of text and pictures copied from the chalkboard — that is, copied verbatim from the teachers. But sometimes a bit of individual creativity is allowed. The following is from a newspaper account published in February, 2009. I will withhold the name of the school and administrator in question:
“At [X] Waldorf School, all forms of the arts are completely integrated with every aspect of the curriculum, in line with Waldorf methodology, which emphasizes arts and the ‘inner life.’
“Art, music, handwork and woodwork are all part of a child's daily school experience at Waldorf.
“For example, students create their own main lesson books in all the academic subjects.
“If the topic is chemistry, they study the subject in a broad way that includes history, literature and biographies of chemists in addition to the laboratory science itself.
“‘Out of that, they create their main lesson book. They hand write and illustrate it, and that is one way that visual arts is worked into chemistry,’ says [Y], school administrator.” [Calgary Herald, Feb. 12, 2009.]
There can be advantages to this approach, but there may also be clear disadvantages. The Waldorf school in question, here, may be excellent — I don’t know anything about the school beyond what the newspaper reports. But there are elements in the report that may cause concern. For Rudolf Steiner, the “inner life” is subjective spiritualism, based on clairvoyance. He emphasized art, as I have already mentioned, for occult, not aesthetic, reasons. And he de-emphasized science. Consider how much hard science a student may learn if s/he spends “science” study time reading “history, literature and biographies” and then creating a hand-lettered report, complete with time-consuming illustrations. How much time is spent actually studying science or working in a science lab?
[2] Students taking science classes at a Waldorf school may be diverted in many ways from acquiring real scientific knowledge. At my school, we students spent an inordinate amount of time illustrating procedures performed by the teacher. We never designed our own experiments nor sought to apply the scientific method in pursuit of independent science projects.
Students at other Waldorfs may perform construction projects instead of experiments. For example, physics students may recreate obsolete electrical contraptions. Here’s an excerpt from a recent news story. I will omit the name of the Waldorf school involved: “High school students at [X] Waldorf School took real pleasure in completing physics projects, designing a Wimhurst machine, DC motors and Van de Graaff generators.” [phoenixvillenews.com, Jan. 23, 2009.] Wimhurst machines are generators invented during the 1880s; Van de Graaff generators date from the 1930s. Building such devices may give students some appreciation of electricity, but it would not convey twenty-first century scientific information.
According to a spokesperson, “‘At [X] Waldorf School, students are provided experiences that strengthen and reinforce their own inclination to experiment, explore and question. Students often communicate how science is perceived as fun.’” [Ibid.] Recreating old-fashioned gizmos may well be fun, but it would hardly produce the creativity needed for real science, which is the exploration of the unknown. It is in no way a form of experimentation or scientific research. It is a diversion.
[3] Rudolf Steiner, THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE, Foundations of Waldorf Education (Anthroposophic Press, 1996), p. 62.
[4] Rudolf Steiner, ART AS SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY (Anthroposophic Press, 1998).
