WHO GETS HURT

Waldorf Students at Risk

by Roger Rawlings

Addendum by Margaret Sachs

In order for a child to get the full Waldorf treatment — to pass through the entire covert Anthroposophical training Rudolf Steiner laid out — s/he would have to attend a true-blue Waldorf school from the earliest grades right on through high school. A corollary is that "ideally" a Waldorf class should remain essentially intact from beginning to end, with few students dropping out and very few new students entering the class after its original formation. Thus, most students would run the complete Waldorf gauntlet, and teachers would know what sorts of children they were dealing with and how much spiritual “progress” the class — jointly and individually — had made, year by year. In reality, however, this ideal is rarely attained. The attrition rates at Waldorfs seem to be pretty high, and — presumably because the schools need the tuition income — additional students are frequently admitted.

Let's take my Waldorf class as an example. I have photos of my class taken at various stages in its evolution. The earliest photo I own shows my class in second grade, which was my first year at the school. There were 21 of us in the class that year. By eighth grade, only 11 of us remained — nearly a 48% decline — although thanks to the addition of new students, our overall class size had risen to 27. By our senior year, a slight further erosion left nine of us from second grade — a total drop of nearly 62%. Turning this around: Only about a third of the graduating students had been at Waldorf since second grade. Significantly, of these nine, more than half had parents who worked for or with the school in some capacity at some time: Most of these families had made a deep commitment to the school.*

Bear in mind, this is an incomplete summation of the class's history — I have photographs for just five of my eleven years at Waldorf, and none for the years before I enrolled. To gain deeper insight, we should begin with the initial enrollment in kindergarten and tabulate all the kids who came and went each year thereafter until the awarding of diplomas at high school commencement. According to the sketchy class history printed in our yearbook, only three of the graduating seniors — a small handful — made the long journey from the class's earliest beginnings to its final scattering. Informative. But consider how much this does not tell us. How many kids joined and then left the class during the years for which I have no record? How long, on average, did kids who arrived after second grade stay at the school? Did any of my classmates leave but then rejoin us after an absence of a few months or years? Much of the texture of my class’s passage through Waldorf has receded into the dim past. Still, the overall pattern is clear. There was a heavy turnover in the class, with only a minority of students sticking it out long-term.

Another unknown: I cannot state the reasons various parents had for pulling their kids out of Waldorf. Some, I'm sure, grew disenchanted as they gradually learned — however imperfectly — about the school’s occult purposes. But in other instances, the reasons may have been quite different: The family moved away, or a student simply didn't get along with her/his Waldorf classmates, and so forth.

All of this bears on the effect a Waldorf school may have on its students. The paradigm is complex. I knew some students who stayed only a year or two, and in retrospect I’d guess that most of these were largely unaffected by the school. But some who came and left quickly, or who arrived late (I’d define this as seventh grade or later) appeared to be significantly marked. It stands to reason that a spiritually yearning student who spends only a brief time at a Waldorf school might move quickly into the pathways of mysticism.

The picture for us long-termers is similarly jumbled. The effects of the school were acute for some of us, although in differing ways. Some struggled with the consequences of Waldorf indoctrination for years after graduation. I count myself in this group. But other longtime students did not struggle. Some emerged embracing Waldorf’s occult mission (although their knowledge of that mission had to be imperfect, since Steiner’s doctrines were never clearly explained to students or their parents). A third group of kids who stayed at Waldorf as long as I did or longer seemed to come through more or less unscathed. I believe these students included those who came from families, churches, synagogues, or other non-Anthroposophic backgrounds that equipped them with faiths or sets of allegiance that counterbalanced the spiritualistic training that Waldorf intended to give us. 

One subset of students seemed to be especially well-equipped to resist the Waldorf agenda. Jewish students — especially those who perceived the semi-Christian nature of the curriculum — often succeeded in fending off the school’s occultism. Some were, to greater or lesser degrees, rebels (within the narrow confines of rebellion that Waldorf permitted before expelling a student). But even here, superficial categorization breaks down. I knew one Jewish student who went on to become a teacher in the Waldorf system, although s/he had been a pronounced rebel at one stage during high school.

Overall, my experiences, observations, and reading lead me to believe that it is rare for a Waldorf school — even one that is profoundly committed to Steiner's doctrines — to completely achieve its covert objectives with a large percentage of its students. But even partial "success" by a Waldorf can be seriously injurious to a significant number of students. I think we should all rejoice that Waldorfs fail as often as they do.

Would a Waldorf or Steiner school fail with your child? By no means are all Waldorf faculty members well versed in Rudolf Steiner’s doctrines. Yet they follow an educational scheme set up by Steiner for the explicit purpose of immersing students in an Anthroposophical atmosphere. So, the question becomes, which is more dangerous? Waldorf teachers who know full well what they are doing, or Waldorf teachers who don’t understand the effects their methods may have on children? The latter might be, in effect, innocently playing with a loaded gun — the gun can still go off.

If you are a parent considering a Waldorf school for your child — or if you already have a child in a Waldorf school — everything may boil down to a singled pointed question: Do you want to take that gamble that the school will fail with your child?

— Roger Rawlings

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* These numbers are the best I can produce, after gazing at old class photos and trying to determine which grade level is represented in each. If I’m off by a year, here or there, or if my math is a bit wobbly (a lifelong hindrance), the general outlines of the class’s history are as I’ve indicated. In rough terms: Only about half of us from second grade stayed all the way through high school graduation. Students who joined the class before second grade saw an even greater loss of old classmates than I did.

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AFTERWORD

The following passages, adapted from my essay “Unenlightened”, deal with the issues discussed above.

To quote one of Steiner’s adherents: Teachers can lead children along the correct developmental path by helping them to preserve, as much as possible, the “dream-like yet intensely real awareness of spiritual worlds” that children innately possess. [1] This nearly unconscious psychic power is a component of the “whole child” as described in Steiner's teachings. 

Steiner set forth various interesting tenets concerning children’s faculties, their growth (e.g., the three seven-year-long stages of childhood development), and their temperaments (phlegmatic, melancholic, etc.: the ancient concept of humours [2]). A child attending a full-fledged Waldorf school will be educated in accordance with Steiner’s dubious theory of human nature. The effects on the child may be profound.

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The effects of Waldorf’s educational program gradually accumulated in our [i.e., the students’] heads and hearts. After I had been at the school only a few years, the notion of trying to see the world clearly had lost almost all meaning for me. Everything seemed to me symbolic rather than concrete — although what the symbols stood for was vague. Nothing was what it seemed — it was something else. It’s hard to remember now precisely how I was led to this attitude. But a booklet written by our headmaster, John Fentress Gardner, throws light on the world view that Waldorf encouraged. [3] In the booklet, Mr. Gardner discusses “the art of education developed in Waldorf Schools.” [4] The booklet includes such statements as the following: “Is not the contrast between mountain and sea a cause as well as an image of deep contrasts in the moral experience of mankind? Mountains define, but by the same act they also divide. They teach integrity, but may go further to instill antipathy.” [5] The language is more elevated than any that our teachers would have used with us, but the message is very familiar to me: Nothing is simply what it is. A mountain isn’t just a mass of granite, it is a lesson, an image bearing on our moral experience. Later in the booklet, Mr. Gardner writes, “Understandably, many teachers today [at conventional secular schools] do not recognize that the world-content has something to give, through completely experienced thought, to every power of the human soul. Their training has not led them to appreciate that within each of its facts the apparent world conceals many levels of truth....” [6] Properly trained teachers at Waldorf schools don’t make that mistake: They always direct attention away from the “apparent world” to the many concealed “levels of truth” in order to empower the human soul. They have their eyes on what lies beyond — real or otherwise.

We should pause over the phrase “completely experienced thought.” For Steiner and his followers, the truest thinking is not rational cognition or brainwork, which they deem dry and un-heartfelt. An “experienced” thought is felt — it is thought tempered by imagination — it is more akin to emotion than to cool, rational conceptualizing, and it often leads to complication or even mystification rather than to clarity. This is the sort of thinking promoted by Anthroposophy. Ask yourself whether it is what you want for your children. What we see around us isn’t what it is, exactly — there are layers upon layers of hidden deeps. The Anthroposophical solution is to feel one’s way past appearances by opening outwards through imagination or clairvoyance (in Anthroposophy, these terms are sometimes synonymous). According to Steiner: “Essentially, people today have no inkling of how people looked out into the universe in ancient times when human beings still possessed an instinctive clairvoyance ... If we want to be fully human, however, we must struggle to regain a view of the cosmos that moves toward Imagination again....” [7]

One implication of the foregoing is that Waldorf schools would find little benefit in openly teaching their students Anthroposophical doctrines, even if the students were old enough to comprehend them and there were no other incentives for the faculty to keep mum. Memorizing doctrines is brainwork, which does not help us (and possibly may hinder us) in our efforts to become “fully human.” [8]

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Painting by a Waldorf student.

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The following passage from my essay “Thinking Cap” is also relevant here. 

For Anthroposophists, “the capacities which are natural to” children include an innate consciousness of the spirit realm. An important goal of Waldorf instruction is to preserve this consciousness, which in part means protecting children from the adverse effects of rational thought. “The capacity for abstract hypothesis” is a fairly accurate description of rationality — and it is what Anthroposophists reject. Another way of putting this is that Waldorf schools try to retard, as much as possible, the growing-up process in their pupils.  “Childhood is commonly regarded as a time of steadily expanding consciousness ... Yet in Steiner’s view, the very opposite is the case: childhood is a time of contracting consciousness ... [The child] loses his dream-like perception of the creative world of spiritual powers which is hidden behind the phenomena of the senses. This is ... the world of creative archetypes and spiritual hierarchies.

“In mastering the world of physical perception the child encounters difficulties in that he first has to overcome a dream-like yet intensely real awareness of spiritual worlds. This awareness fades quickly in early childhood, but fragments of it live on in the child for a much longer time than most people imagine. 

“...In a Waldorf school, therefore, one of the tasks of the teachers is to keep the children young. [9]

Think about the implications of keeping children young as opposed to helping them to mature, especially mentally. Ask yourself whether intellect can truly be developed under the tutelage of teachers who agree with Steiner that “[T]he brain and nerve system have nothing at all to do with actual cognition....” [10] Contemplate whether an education aiming at intuitive/imaginative/clairvoyant “thought” is likely to equip individuals for life in the real world.

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ADDENDUM

One thing to be taken into consideration when deciding whether or not to keep a child in Waldorf is the racism issue. I had no idea that Anthroposophy was based on racist beliefs during the many years my children were in a Waldorf school. I also did not know that the movement was tainted by Steiner's anti-Semitic teachings and the Holocaust denials made by some Anthroposophists. Had my husband and I discovered any of this while my children were at the school, we would have removed them without much delay. For me, to do otherwise would be like voting for George Wallace when he was a segregationist or applauding a speech given by Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Another thing you might want to consider is that many parents have concerns about safety and hygiene issues at Waldorf schools. At our Waldorf school, it was apparent to me that teachers were woefully ignorant in this area. A friend's son fell from a tree at school. He lay on his back, in pain. A teacher came over and scooped him up in her arms, completely unaware that moving a person who is lying on the ground after a fall could cause permanent paralysis. On a camping trip, teachers forced two girls to pick up other people's soiled toilet paper with their bare hands. They were ignorant of first aid rules that adults who supervise children on camping trips are supposed to know — in this case, that latex gloves must always be worn when touching anything involving other people's bodily fluids because they could  transmit HIV or other dangerous infections. Another parent reported that on a badly organized field trip, chaperones failed to keep all children in view. Some of those children, exhausted from having to hike too far, hitchhiked in strangers' cars. I have heard many other stories like these.

Then there's the issue of pedophiles. They are everywhere and are by no means peculiar to Waldorf schools. The problem at our school was that there were several incidents and the teachers failed to obey the laws that protect children from abuse. Recently, the Sydney Morning Herald published a story about the sexual grooming of students by male and female teachers at an Australian Waldorf school and allegations of emotional and physical abuse. I don't think there's evidence that pedophilia is prevalent in Waldorf schools. I do think, however, that parents might need to establish what the faculty's attitude is toward abuse of students by Waldorf teachers, other Anthroposophists, and Anthroposophists' family members.

I think many Waldorf teachers are reasonably kind and sensible about issues of child safety and child abuse. Knowing what I know about Waldorf schools at this point, however, safety issues alone would prevent me from entrusting any child to their care.

Of course, no one can tell you what to do. You are in an extremely difficult position. In an ideal world, I would say get your child out of there as fast as you can. The reality of your situation might make that too difficult. If you decide to stay for the rest of the year, I don't believe any harm to your child would be irreparable, especially since you are aware of what needs to be done to counteract the weak academics and the subtle brainwashing your child would be subjected to. I would, however, recommend doing a safety assessment, checking the classrooms and play areas for potential dangers and finding out what first aid training the teachers have.

I hope you can find some relief in having learned the truth about Waldorf now rather than several years down the road. Best of luck to you. 

— Margaret

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Waldorf teachers would certainly claim — with complete justice —

that their intentions are good. They think they inhabit a world of 

supernal truth and beauty, and they want to lead their students toward it.

This is all well and good — if the world they inhabit is real.

That world may, however, be a mediaeval fantasy.

(The mediaeval period is of great interest to many Anthroposophists.)

Truth and beauty may not always be coextensive. 

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The Anthroposophical universe is not unlike a mediaeval castle:

a system of concentric rings, outer inferiority gradually building

to inner supremacy. Steiner’s vision of human evolution is

the same: movement from the outside to the ultimate inside.

It is, perhaps, an attractive vision. Whether it gets us beyond

medieval thinking may be another question.

The Middle Ages are also known as the Dark Ages.

(The peasants — i.e., most people — lived outside the walls;

the King and Queen huddled in the castle.)

[Both images from http://www.fromoldbooks.org/]

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ENDNOTES

[1] A.C. Harwood, PORTRAIT OF A WALDORF SCHOOL (New York: The Myrin Institute Inc., 1956), p. 15.

A.C. Harwood had a long career as a Waldorf educator and lecturer. He died in 1975.

[2] See, e.g., Mark Grant, “Steiner and the Humours: The Survival of Ancient Greek Science,” THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Mar. 1999), pp. 56-70.

[3] John Fentress Gardner, THE EXPERIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE (The Myrin Institute, 1962).

[4] Ibid., p. 5.

[5] Ibid., p. 19

[6] Ibid., p. 26.

Mr. Gardner later expanded his booklet, adding chapters. The latest edition of the resulting book is still available — under a different title — from its publisher: EDUCATION IN SEARCH OF THE SPIRIT (Anthroposophic Press, 1996).

[7] Rudolf Steiner, ART AS SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY, p. 256.

My former headmaster occasionally gave somewhat less guarded descriptions of the work done by teachers at Waldorf schools. For example: “[T]o develop in their students ... the intuitive faculties, alongside and as a balance for the intellectual. This is being done through the new art of education [created] by Rudolf Steiner, and drawn upon since by Waldorf schools throughout the world....” [Sylvester M. Morley, CAN THE RED MAN HELP THE WHITE MAN? (The Myrin Institute, 1970), addendum by John Fentress Gardner, p. 115.] Remember the term “intuitive faculties” when pondering Steiner’s doctrines on imagination, cognition during sleep and dreaming, clairvoyance, etc. These intertwined alternatives to rational thought are integral to the Anthroposophical faith.

A concise explanation of what Waldorfers mean by educating “the heart and the hands, as well as the head” is the following: “Steiner viewed human beings as consisting of three spheres of activity — the head, the heart, and the will — that manifest through thoughts, feelings and physical actions. To educate children to be complete and balanced human beings, we must attend to the needs of all three aspects of a child’s being. From the Waldorf perspective, attaining knowledge is one purpose of the learning process, but just as important — and perhaps even more important — is to educate the heart and the will of the child, so that knowledge is joined with reverence and action.” [Lawrence Williams, Ed.D., OAK MEADOW AND WALDORF — see oakmeadow.com/resources.]

Note that at Waldorfs, educating hearts and wills is at least as important as — and may be “even more important” than — imparting knowledge. This deviates significantly from a conventional definition of education.

[8] Anthroposophists claim that intellect is not neglected at Waldorf schools, it is simply nurtured in a different way. “In spite of — or rather, because of — the attention paid to the realms of feeling and will, thinking receives a stronger development in a Waldorf school than elsewhere.” [PORTRAIT OF A WALDORF SCHOOL, p. 24.] This brings us back to a decisive concern about Waldorf education: the kind of “thinking” that is taught.

According to Steiner, children pass through three stages of development, which he said recapitulate stages of human evolution. [See. e.g., Earl J. Ogletree, “Rudolf Steiner: Unknown Educator,” THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL JOURNAL, Vol. 74, No. 6. (Mar., 1974), p. 347.] The stages are described this way by A.C. Harwood: “During the first seven years a child approaches his environment through the activity of his will. What he sees he must manipulate.” [PORTRAIT OF A WALDORF SCHOOL, p. 17.] During the second seven years, "the inward life of feeling" is paramount. [Ibid., p. 18.] The third seven-year period finally produces the dawning of "intellectual thought." [Ibid., p. 24.]

The claim that Waldorfs foster the intellect is, at best, moot. Waldorf-style “intellectual thought” is intended to be moderated by the faculties of intuition and/or imagination and/or clairvoyance. Taught that logic (i.e., methodical reasoning) is insufficient, the Waldorf student is directed toward “spiritual experience” that is notionally “self-evident” (i.e., no proof required). It is questionable whether this is genuine thinking at all or merely a form of wishfulness: “To what extent will [a child’s] thinking become purely logical and colorless, unenriched by imagination, uninformed by experience? ... More than ever, therefore, should the attempt be made with our adolescents to preserve from the earlier stage of childhood those capacities which are natural to it, and to unite them with the new gift of intellectual thought. For this means to transform thought from what it is at present — the capacity for abstract hypothesis — into the capacity for self-evident spiritual experience.” [Ibid., pp. 23-24.]

Ask yourself whether an education aiming at such a form of “thought” is likely to equip individuals for life in the real world. Weigh it against the values discussed by Garry Wills as quoted at the beginning of this essay. In brief: Should we teach our children to live rationally in the real world or to have unsubstantiated intuitions of unseen worlds?

 

[9] A.C. Harwood, PORTRAIT OF A WALDORF SCHOOL (The Myrin Institute Inc, 1956), pp. 15-16.

[10] Rudolf Steiner, THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1996), p. 60.