One goal Waldorf teachers often set for themselves is instilling a sense of reverence in their students. Reverence may be admirable, but whether anyone can implant it in another is doubtful. It is fundamentally a religious sentiment. Secular people may admire something; they may honor or respect something. But reverence is, generally speaking, an attitude of devotion — which is one reason members of the clergy are often referred to as Reverends. Reverence is an attitude that arises naturally from a full heart or soul. When Waldorf teachers attempt to instruct children in reverence, they are undertaking a religious mission, acting as self-appointed Anthroposophical missionaries.  Even if their motives are pure, they may inflict real harm. [1]

I’ll tell you a little about my own experiences. As I may have mentioned before, I attended a Waldorf school from second grade through 12th grade. For many years after graduating, I struggled with my extremely low opinion of myself. Much of the problem arose because I almost never felt the things I'd been taught I was supposed to feel. I enjoyed sunsets and rainbows, but they didn't fill me with transcendent joy. I liked morning mists, but they didn't elevate my consciousness enough to let me perceive dancing elves and fairies. I enjoyed classical music, but it didn't transport me in any literal way into the supersensible realm... [2]

Waldorf schooling may be well-meaning, but because it is fundamentally divorced from reality, it imposes unrealistic expectations and hopes on its victims. I know some Waldorf graduates, faculty members, and staff who responded to the sort of problem I confronted by fervently working themselves up into simulations of joy, transcendence, etc. — but the effort was plainly artificial and the results were plainly false, a process of self-deception, as many of these people ultimately realized. [3]

The central problem is that if one can only be satisfied by delights and states of being that are unavailable in the real world, one must either transition into a fantasy world (which, clinically, means becoming to some degree insane) or live disappointed and thwarted in the real world. Either course means throwing away the chance of living fully and happily here and now, in the real world, in what is — as far as we can know — the one and only life we will get.

These days, I am no longer religious. But at one stage of my recovery from Waldorf I found wisdom in Buddhism and other eastern faiths. Simple but profound concepts such as: This Is It. Be Here Now. This is existential authenticity; it is being whole. One irony of the Waldorf approach is that the Waldorf conception of the "whole child" includes so many unreal elements: multiple unreal senses, unreal bodies, etc. Aiming for Waldorf "wholeness" means being always incomplete. [4] 

Nowadays sunsets, rainbows, and all the other beauties of life are genuinely joyous to me, in a wholly down-to-earth manner. On the Internet, I sometimes use the handles “downfromfog” and “nonlevitating” because this is what I finally learned to do: come down out of the Waldorf fog, stop yearning for levitation or transcendence, and begin living. (Good ol' me.)

It is both unnecessary and, indeed, immoral to launch children into the world burdened by expectations and yearnings that cannot be fulfilled. It means creating artificial but very deep problems that can take decades to resolve. It is wrong.

II. 

Parents have a hard time coming to the realization that a Waldorf school can damage their children. The schools usually are pretty, bright artwork is on display everywhere, there are cute gnomes in some classrooms, lovely festivals are celebrated — it is hard to realize that such a school can be damaging. Yet this is precisely the realization parents need to reach, the sooner the better.

Young kids are the most impressionable, so the danger of slipping away from reality may start in the earliest grades. If, when children are very young, their concepts of reality and unreality are deeply scrambled, they may sink farther and farther into unreality the longer they attend a Waldorf school. The impressions created early in life can be reinforced over the years, and what may have seemed charming or even normal in childhood — preferring fantasy to reality — may become a profound dilemma later on.

This is the context for understanding Steiner when he said to Waldorf teachers: “Given the difficult, disorderly, and chaotic conditions of our time, it might almost be preferable from a moral viewpoint if children could be taken into one’s care soon after birth.” [5] If they follow Steiner's directions, Waldorf teachers consider themselves to have messianic purpose. [6] Their intentions may be good: They want to shepherd the little children to the Truth, which is Anthroposophy. If need be (and it often is needed) they will do this without the parents' permission or knowledge. [7] In this sense, they attempt something similar to what Steiner suggested, removing kids from their parents' care and putting the kids under their own more esoterically "correct" care. They think they possess divine secrets that the rest of us lack, secrets that would damage us if we stumbled on them, since out souls have not been properly prepared. [8]

They mean well, and yet because they are deluded — operating in a fantasy universe of elves and giants and multiple gods and secret cosmic scripts and gnostic reinterpretations of divine texts [9] — they can injure children in ways that may last a lifetime. The damage is greatest not when a Waldorf school fails, but when it succeeds: If Waldorf teachers pull a child into their fantasy universe, they are luring her/him into a kind of insanity, by which I mean removal from clear-eyed existence in the real world.

One of my sisters attended a Waldorf school from kindergarten all the way through high school. She got the whole Waldorf treatment. She tells me that when she and her old schoolmates discuss Waldorf now, they all say that they felt they were in a fog the whole time they attended the school. This is the state Waldorf attempts to inculcate: mental blurring (Steiner denigrated the brain, intellect, and virtually all knowledge offered by an source other than himself). [10] Waldorf schools see education in the conventional sciences and humanities as a purely secondary goal. Their primary goal is indoctrinating the kids (subtly, indirectly) in Anthroposophy.

The Anthroposophical universe is itself a fog, because it is unreal; and the fog at Waldorf schools is even deeper because, usually, the teachers do not explain Anthroposophical doctrines to the kids, they just slip them in subliminally. A student who gets this treatment may, possibly, be able to fight her/his way to clear-mindedness after graduation. But the effort to do this is not easy, not every affected Waldorf graduate succeeds at it, and in fact not every affected Waldorf graduate even realizes that it can or should be done. Waldorf alumni in the latter category will go through life as mystics, to one degree or another; and some of them will begin studying Steiner's works and become full-fledged Anthroposophists.

After I graduated from Waldorf, I was not an Anthroposophist (at least not consciously), but I had deeply instilled Anthroposophical attitudes. I yearned for spiritual blessing, I craved transcendence, I found little or no beauty in physical reality, I was a mystic, a romantic — and, as I’ve said, I ached with a sense of my own inadequacy: I had been trained to need forms of fulfillment that do not, actually, exist. As a result, I felt empty — I couldn't have what I sought. Other religions can point their young in these same directions, of course; and one can argue that seeking spiritual blessing is wise and good. But the only blessings that are true, that are not curses in disguise, are blessings that flow from reality, from the real universe. A blessing from a pack of lies and/or delusions is no blessing — it is a wound, a burden, a curse. Perhaps major religions such as Christianity or Hinduism confer real blessings; Anthroposophy surely does not.

Some Waldorf graduates come away feeling that the school did confer blessings. And most Anthroposophists must feel, I infer, that their faith (or "spiritual science") blesses them. I would be happy for them if I thought they were not fooling themselves. Perhaps they are not. Perhaps the universe is as Steiner described it; perhaps spiritual science is the wave of the future; perhaps true blessings do flow from Waldorf schools. Since I am not omniscient, I have to acknowledge these possibilities. But the odds are extremely long. Science and reason provide little or no basis for accepting Steiner's teachings. Steiner was clearly wrong about a lot, and with the passing years and the accumulation of more and more scientific knowledge about the universe, his teachings become more and more discredited. Anthroposophy does not stand the test of time. It can survive only in the minds of people who reject actual knowledge, opting for occultism instead. [11]

While I was still a Waldorf student, I sometimes thought that I really could feel as I was supposed to feel. A victim of quiet, occult brainwashing over many years, I sometimes thought I could enter the trancelike, brain-suppressed, glorious, spiritualized state that Waldorfs aim to inculcate. I had a heightened imagination, I was inspired (I was conspicuous, even in a Waldorf school, for being deeply, outspokenly religious), I was intuitive like crazy. [12] I was such a wholesome prospective Anthroposophist that the headmaster at our school took me under his wing, grooming me to be a real Anthropop, even an Anthropop leader. I can see how, very easily, I could have gone all the way, done as he wished — and perhaps today I would running a Waldorf school somewhere.

But, somehow, I had within me a tiny, saving sliver of rationality. Somehow I knew, even as I experienced the "elevated" state I was meant to experience — deep down, I knew it was false. I knew that all of us who tried to enter that state were pushing ourselves, hypnotizing ourselves, lying to ourselves. The human capacity for self-deception is immense, and somehow I understood this danger, ever so slightly, even when I was most deeply sunk in Waldorf's fog. That tiny sliver of rationality saved me — although at the time it caused me great pain. As I approached graduation, my occultist faith was already receding and I experienced the "joy" of elevated, transcendent self-deception less and less. Still, it took me many, many years to truly get my feet on the ground.

I should hasten to add that my personal, subjective experience is no basis for action by anyone else. Indeed, I try not to use it as a basis for my own actions. When I write about Steiner and Waldorf, I take care to document my work, quoting Steiner, other Anthroposophists, and many non-Anthroposophical scholars. My experiences as a Waldorf student and, later, as a Waldorf survivor, gave me the impetus to begin my investigations into Waldorfworld, but I do not ask anyone to reach any conclusions about Steiner, Anthroposophy, or Waldorf based on my personal experiences. An Anthroposophist could argue that my experiences were unique, they show my spiritual inadequacy, and indeed they may indicate that I am demonic and/or subhuman.

Perhaps this hypothetical Anthroposophical critic is right about me — I’ll leave that for you to decide. All I’ll say in my own defense is that in my essays about Waldorf schools and Anthroposophy, I have done my level best to tell the absolute truth. I have tried to shine a bright light into darkness, in order to help students and parents who are involved in — or who are thinking of becoming involved in — Waldorf schools. If I have helped anyone at all, even a little, then I am content.

— Roger Rawlings

This is a rather conventional, saccharine image of fairy folk.

Some Waldorf teachers and students would find it a fair representation

of at least one part of their take on reality. But some others would reject it utterly.

The Waldorf universe is populated by innumerable,

invisible beings, large and small, high and low.

Steiner's teachings on such beings are sophisticated and complex.

Whether his teachings make sense

.— whether such being exist at all, in any form —

is a question that may merit careful consideration.

But in any event, you should realize that in some way, in some sense,

Steiner and his followers accept the existence of realms and beings

for which rational man and modern science find absolutely no evidence.

[http://www.fromoldbooks.org/]

The Waldorf universe is a structured, orderly, hierarchical

place filled with magic, astrological powers, and mythological beings.

Perhaps images like this don't do it justice —

Waterfall Vibrations —

a striking image that, so far as I know,

has no direct connection with Waldorf schools.

But Anthroposophists and Waldorf teachers

are likely to find spiritualistic vibrations in such pictures.

[Shari Weinsheimer.]

ENDNOTES

[1] On the Waldorf effort to instill reverence and related emotions, see, e.g., http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorf-critics/message/10550 . Many Waldorf schools have the students recite a prayer (written by Steiner) that includes the words “In sunlight shining clear/ I reverence, O God,/ The strength of humankind ... From Thee come light and strength,/ To Thee rise love and thanks.”” This is just one indication of the Waldorf religious mission.

The Waldorf denial of their self-appointed mission can be found, e.g., in “Waldorf schools are non-sectarian [sic] and non-denominational [sic]. They educate all children, regardless of their cultural or religious backgrounds. The pedagogical method is comprehensive, and, as part of its task, seeks to bring about recognition and understanding of all the world cultures and religions. Waldorf schools are not part of any church. They espouse no particular religious doctrine but are based on a belief that there is a spiritual dimension to the human being and to all of life.” [www.awsna.org , Frequently Asked Questions, Are Waldorf Schools Religious? [I last checked this on Oct. 28, 2006.]

On the question of whether Anthroposophy is a religion, see the aptly titled essay “Is Anthroposophy a Religion?”

[2] Steiner taught that elves, gnomes, giants, dwarfs and all manner of mythical beings really exist. See, e.g., my essay “Neutered Nature” and the collection of quotations I've titled "Steiner Static". On the magical powers of the arts — and the effects they are supposed to have — see “Magical Arts”.

[3] The headmaster at our school devoted most of his life to Anthroposophy. But toward the end of his life, his faith wavered — he, too, had not found the gifts Anthroposophy promised. He did not renounce Anthroposophy, but he gravitated instead toward charismatic Christianity: See John Fentress Gardner, TWO PATHS TO THE SPIRIT: Charismatic Christianity and Anthroposophy (Golden Stone Press, 1990).

[4] See, e.g.,  “Waldorf’s Purpose”, a section of my essay "Unenlightened".

[5] Rudolf Steiner, WALDORF EDUCATION AND ANTHROPOSOPHY, Vol. 2 (Anthroposophic Press, 1996), p. 69.

[6] Steiner said this to the teachers at the first Waldorf school: “Among the faculty, we must certainly carry within us the knowledge that we are not here for our own sakes, but to carry out the divine cosmic plan. We should always remember that when we do something, we are actually carrying out the intentions of the gods, that we are, in a certain sense, the means by which that streaming down from above will go out into the world.” [FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, p. 55.]

[7] Waldorf schools can be extremely secretive. See my essay “Secrets”. 

[8] For information about occult initiation, leading to mystery wisdom ordinary people don’t possess, see “Inside Scoop” here at Waldorf Watch.

[9] I discuss these matters in various essays on this site. Please see the Index and Table of Contents.

[10] For Steiner’s views on the brain, see, e.g., my essay  “Thinking Cap”. Thumbnail: Waldorf schools try to minimize use of the brain. Teaching kids too much information (knowledge: the goal of a real education) would strain their memories and cause health problems. Likewise, allowing kids to think hard (learning to use one's brain: another goal of a real education) would be bad, especially before the age of 14. Underlying reality: A school that aims at occultist indoctrination naturally would want to minimize knowledge and thought.

[11] To see how wrong Steiner often was, see my essay “Steiner’s Blunders”. For information on “spiritual science,” see “Steiner’s ‘Science’”.

[12] Imagination, inspiration, and intuition are three stages of spiritual consciousness, according to Steiner. In practice at Waldorf schools, these words are proxies for clairvoyance. See, e.g., my essay “Rankings”.