Q. My child attends a Waldorf school. Why isn't s/he being taught to read?
A. One of the more controversial elements of Waldorf education is the decision to postpone instruction in reading, spelling, and arithmetic until children reach their seventh birthdays. Many justifications are offered for this practice, but the fundamental reasons Waldorf schools follow this procedure stem from Rudolf Steiner's mystical visions. He taught that until children reach age seven and lose their baby teeth, they are in a dreamy stage of development that keeps them connected to the spirit realm. This changes at age seven when the "etheric body" incarnates, Steiner said. Until then, tampering with the children's minds — such as by teaching them to read — can harm the children spiritually.
Understanding Waldorf precepts can be challenging. Steiner said rational education, teaching young children to use their brains, can be harmful. All it will accomplish, he said, is sending the kids back to developmental stages they completed before birth on Earth.
"You will injure children if you educate them rationally because you will then utilize their will in something they have already completed — namely, life before birth." — Rudolf Steiner, THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE, Foundations of Waldorf Education I, p. 62.
Stimulating children to use their brains is given low priority in Waldorf schools. The brain, you see, is a dull organ that actually does not produce thoughts.
◊ "Within the brain there is absolutely no thought." — Rudolf Steiner, WONDERS OF THE WORLD (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1983), p. 119.
◊ ”[T]he brain and nerve system have nothing at all to do with actual cognition.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE (SteinerBooks, 1996), p. 60.
You might wonder what organs we think with, if not the brain. Well, for young children, Steiner said, thinking is done with the teeth.
"[T]he child develops teeth not only for the sake of eating and speaking, but for quite a different purpose as well. Strange as it sounds to-day, the child develops teeth for the purpose of thinking ... The forces that press the teeth out from the jaw are the same forces that [in the young child] bring thought to the surface from the dim, sleeping and dreaming life of childhood." — Rudolf Steiner, EDUCATION (Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 1943), lecture 4, GA 307.
Why do Waldorf schools postpone intellectual instruction in, for example, reading? Believe it or not, the answer lies in the sort of beliefs you see in these statements by the founder of Waldorf education.
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To delve further into these matters, see
and "Incarnation."