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WALDORF / STEINER 

NEWS ARCHIVE

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December, 2012.

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This site supplements Waldorf Watch.

To go to Waldorf Watch itself, please click here:

Waldorf Watch.

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The news items below are presented in reverse chronological order — newest first, oldest last.

Please excuse a certain amount of repetition in the contents of this archive. Items that now appear close together on the screen may have originally been separated by intervals of several days.

Many of the items in this archive generalize about Waldorf schools, describing them as Rudolf Steiner and leading Waldorf representatives have said they should be and as evidence shows they often are today. Not all Waldorf schools, Waldorf charter schools, and Waldorf-inspired schools conform to this model precisely. To evaluate an individual school, you should carefully examine its stated purposes, its practices (which may or may not be consistent with its stated purposes), and the composition of its faculty.

— Roger Rawlings

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From a discussion at The Ethereal Kiosk [http://zooey.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/en-fraga/#comment-22228]:

Thank you very much for your very kind comment, Pam!

You write: ‘… I have to say that what ultimately made the decision for me NOT to pursue Waldorf/Steiner for my daughter were the voices raised in support of the education — on this blog and elsewhere.’

I believe you’re not alone in this reaction. At least not among those who already feel doubt. I think that the infamous waldorf discussions on Mumsnet — a huge parenting forum in the UK — had an impact on what lots of people thought not because of what critics said but because of what waldorf defenders said and did. There’s a certain irony to this. And the [Steiner] movement, worried about parents taking their children from waldorf schools (parents who were probably already doubting the education), chose to hire one person whose actions might have played a part in parents’ decisions, albeit inadvertently.

(The "one person" mentioned is Sune Nordwall, who devotes much of his time to roaming the Internet, defending Waldorf education and Anthroposophy. In at least some instances, he adopts pseudonyms or operates as a "troll". Some of the names he has used are Thebee, Tizian, Excalibur, and Mycroft. [See, e.g., "Coming Undone" — R.R.])

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Bullying can be a serious problem at Waldorf schools. [See “Slaps”.] Waldorf teachers are sometimes inclined to allow bullying among the students, seeing it as an expression of karma. A renewed discussion of this issue has been inspired by a video made by Eugene Schwartz, a prominent supporter of Waldorf education. In the video, Schwartz downplays parents’ concerns about bullying — he compares fights among children to the cute tussles of young kittens. 

Here are excerpts from replies posted at the waldorf-critics list [e.g., http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorf-critics/message/25496]:

• Just when we thought Waldorf couldn't make a stupider video ... Here, Eugene Schwartz mocks a parent's complaints about bullying: http://player.vimeo.com/video/56109384.

• The kind of situation he mockingly describes fits very well with how I remember waldorf. I suppose ignorance is bliss, for waldorf teachers. I expected more from Eugene Schwartz though. He's neither dumb nor humourless.

• I've only just seen this and given what I've read from Schwartz before I'm very surprised ... If this is a joke then it acknowledges that these are real issues which the faculty do not take seriously and simply brush aside in the interests of letting karma guide development.

If it's *not* a joke then it acknowledges that these are real issues which the faculty do not take seriously and simply brush aside in the interests of letting karma guide development.

Eugene, really?? Have you lost your mind?

• I think you've hit the nail on the head. This video was in VERY poor taste... it really doesn't matter what the intent was. For parents whose children were victims of bullying in Waldorf (and by "victims" I include those who were encouraged by their teachers to bully others), this is extremely insensitive.  Waldorf and bullying have become synonymous — it's nothing to joke about.

I can only assume this wasn't a joke... it was a DEMONSTRATION. Schwartz actually believed that by demonstrating to parents how when kittens 'appear' to be bullying each other, they are just learning the skills they need to survive in the real world.

• The best thing I can think of to say is that perhaps it was an inside joke that was not meant to be released and somehow got out anyway. I can easily imagine the faculty and little core group of anthrozealots at our school laughing over this, but recognizing that it wasn't for the eyes of certain parents (i.e., those with bullying complaints).

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From The Tablet, December 26, 2012 [http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/120073/booster-shot-for-jewish-values]:

Last week, we got an email, two printed letters, and  a phone call from Josie’s public school, all informing us that unless she got a tetanus booster in the next six days, she would not be allowed to attend classes ... Compare this...to what goes on in private schools ... They often allow kids to opt out of vaccines entirely. (Forty-eight states allow religious exemptions from vaccines, and 18 allow 'philosophical' exemptions.) A recent survey found that at one Waldorf school in the Bay Area, 84 percent of students were unvaccinated. There have been increasing numbers of major measles outbreaks around the world ... Measles cases in the United Kingdom have risen by a factor of 10 since 2010, and rates of measles and rubella in the United States are skyrocketing. 

Response:

Waldorf schools do not usually have official anti-vaccination policies, but they are usually wary of vaccination. Rudolf Steiner warned that black magicians and other evildoers work to create medicines that deaden people to all things spiritual: 

"Endeavors to achieve this will be made by bringing out remedies to be administered by inoculation ... [O]nly these inoculations will influence the human body in a way that will make it refuse to give a home to the spiritual inclinations of the soul.” — Rudolf Steiner, SECRET BROTHERHOODS (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2004), pp. 90-91.

[For more on the Waldorf take on medicine, see "Steiner's Quackery".]

— R.R.

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The following is from a review of a new Anthroposophical publication

 that is unusually forthright about Rudolf Steiner’s racial teachings.

The book, RASSISMUS UND GESCHICHTSMETAPHYSIK, by Ansgar Martins, 

is in German (Frankfort: Info3, 2012). The review, by Peter Staudenmaier, is in English. 

[http://waldorfblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/staudenmaier-rezension/]

Ansgar Martins has written a perceptive and provocative book about a topic many prefer to avoid: Rudolf Steiner’s racial teachings, a perennial bone of contention between anthroposophists and their critics. It is a sober and discerning account, by far the best to appear from an anthroposophist publisher, and a noteworthy contribution to the historical literature on Steiner and his movement. The book’s approach is nuanced, complex, and sophisticated, taking heed of the contrasting motifs in Steiner’s thinking about nation and race, what Martins aptly terms “Steiner’s wavering between universalism, individualism, cultural chauvinism, and racist stereotypes” (143). His method combines critique and empathetic comprehension: The task, as Martins sees it, is “to identify the ambivalent strands in [Steiner’s] thinking, and to understand how Steiner came to make racist statements, without forfeiting a critical perspective.” (141)

...Martins quotes dozens of texts and lectures in which Steiner spelled out his racial views, providing admirably clear explanations of the details of Steiner’s claims about racial evolution: External racial characteristics reflect internal spiritual qualities; different racial groups represent different levels of spiritual development; some racial groups carry evolutionary progress forward, while other racial groups are degenerating and devolving; the “white race” (or “Aryan race” or “Caucasian race” or “European peoples”) are “normal” and “the race of the future,” in contrast to the “colored races”; and the fundamental hierarchy of “lower races” and “higher races” as an expression of spiritual regression or advance. These themes, running throughout Steiner’s published work, are given vivid and informed treatment....

Some of the conclusions are bound to be disconcerting even for more open-minded anthroposophists. Martins notes the apologetic tendency of the vaunted ‘Dutch report’ on anthroposophical race doctrines and observes that its focus on legal issues is not especially helpful from a historical perspective (17). He carefully reviews “the full spectrum of antisemitic clichés” in Steiner’s work (29). He is justly harsh on the threadbare rationalizations for Steiner’s racial teachings put forward by prominent anthroposophists like Lorenzo Ravagli, editor of the flagship journal of Waldorf education...

The core of the book is a detailed reconstruction of Steiner’s evolving racial views from his theosophical period onward and his efforts to build these ideas into his overarching system of esoteric teachings. Martins offers a number of insightful interpretive hypotheses. He draws connections, for example, between Steiner’s depiction of the white race as representing the balanced and harmonious contrast to the black and yellow races, who had developed the ‘I’ either too weakly or too strongly, and Steiner’s model of Christ as the balanced and harmonious contrast to Ahriman and Lucifer....

Martins’ book tries to get to the bottom of the central paradox in Steiner’s thinking about race, its combination of racist and universalist strands, its contrasting biological and spiritual poles, simultaneously opposed to one another and intertwined around one another. If the book does not entirely succeed, the fault lies not with Martins’ analysis but with the irreducible contradictions in Steiner’s thought...

...Throughout the book Martins devotes considerable attention to the anti-Jewish strands in Steiner’s thought and the way they intersected with his racial doctrines. But he does not examine Steiner’s repeated invocations of the antisemitic myth of Ahasver, passages which are important to Steiner’s overarching racial theories. And while Martins quotes extensively from Steiner’s 1911 book on The Apocalypse of St. John, he does not cite the passages about a coming “War of All against All” and the emergence of a “race of good” and a contrasting “race of evil.”

More striking, in his discussion of Steiner’s 1915 lecture on “the mission of white humankind” Martins does not quote Steiner’s insistence that “the transition from the fifth cultural epoch to the sixth cultural epoch cannot happen in any other way than as a violent battle of white humankind against colored humankind” (Steiner, Die geistigen Hintergründe des Ersten Weltkrieges, 38). These facets of Steiner’s racial teachings merit attention not least because they represent a sharp counterpoint to the model of a gradual disappearance of racial difference....

Martins has undertaken the demanding job of appraising Steiner’s contentious and sometimes rebarbative views on race in a fair and historically responsible manner. His study stands as a rebuke to anthroposophists who continue to ignore this sizeable portion of their own past and its ongoing repercussions in the present. It also offers challenging but fruitful lessons for critics of anthroposophy tempted to simplify Steiner’s teachings on a volatile theme, lessons that can make a difference to historical evaluation of Steiner and his ideas and the activities of his followers. The intricate relationship between the racist features and the cosmopolitan features of Steiner’s esoteric system defies easy elucidation, but it is not hopelessly inscrutable or eternally enigmatic. This book demonstrates that it is possible to make historical sense of what Steiner taught about race and why it matters.

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At the Ethereal Kiosk, Alicia Hamberg has posted a summary and critique of a dissertation about Waldorf education.

WALDORF CRITICS AND WALDORF PROPONENTS (ON DAISY’S DISSERTATION)

December 22, 2012 · by alicia hamberg · in annat, waldorf

Daisy Powell, whom most of you know from before, graduated as a Steiner teacher from the (now closed) course at Plymouth University earlier this year. (She was also seen in the recent BBC program.) Her dissertation was written about a topic that might interest waldorf enthusiasts and critics alike; its title: Can the Steiner Waldorf schools movement break out of its niche by engaging with its critics? I hope Daisy can still get a teaching job after asking such a question! Presupposing that waldorf is a niche phenomenon? Suggesting that critics of waldorf education might actually have something to say? That what critics say is not just unfair and hatred and bitterness and so on? Well, it is, I guess, brave.

To read more, see http://zooey.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/waldorf-critics-and-waldorf-proponents-on-daisys-dissertation/

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Currently at the waldorf-critics list: a discussion asking whether Waldorf schools have a right to exist [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorf-critics/message/25446]. One comment:

...Of course they have a right to exist. Even the most ardent activists re: church/state separation don't generally hold that private religious schools don't have a right to EXIST. The issues in the United States are as follows:

1) To stay in compliance with church/state separation, mandated by the US constitution, the public schools should not promote a particular religion. A school run by and according to the tenets of a particular religious movement is not an appropriate public school. The public schools are for families of all faiths, and there are hundreds of different faiths in this country (not to mention increasing numbers of people with no faith). For these reasons the public schools must be completely neutral [with regard to] religion.

2) The private schools are legally totally entitled to promote religion, but they have an ethical responsibility to fully and proactively inform prospective families of their religious agenda prior to enrollment. [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorf-critics/message/25447]

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A topsy-turvy spoof, worthy of W. S. Gilbert, has appeared at The Quackometer [http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2012/12/steiner-schools-critisise-mainstream-schools-stance-on-father-christmas.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=steiner-schools-critisise-mainstream-schools-stance-on-father-christmas]

Let nothing you dismay.

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Here is a news item from the state of Florida, USA:

Gov. Rick Scott wants testing for students getting tax credit scholarships

By Elisabeth Parker, Times Staff Writer

In Print: Thursday, December 13, 2012

[http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/testing/gov-rick-scott-wants-testing-for-students-getting-tax-credit-scholarships/1265916]

TAMPA — Gov. Rick Scott wants students who use tax-credit scholarships to attend private schools to take the same standardized tests as their peers in public schools, stirring a backlash from some private schools.

Scott said Wednesday night that he plans to include these private-school students in Common Core State Standards tests...

While some private schools like to rank students statewide, others call the tests a waste.

Barbara Bedingfield, founding director of Suncoast Waldorf School in Palm Harbor, dislikes the idea of teaching to the tests.

"It's like planting a plant and pulling it up out of the ground repeatedly to see how it's doing," she said. "Of course it's not going to thrive."

Twenty-one of the 108 students at her school are on the scholarships and currently take national tests required to get the funds. They don't prepare for the test, Bedingfield said...

Dawna Nifong, director of the American Montessori Academy in Pinellas Park, doesn't mind state testing if reasonably priced.

"I think private schools should be held accountable," she said....

Response:

There are good arguments to be made both for and against standardized tests. Waldorf schools often have their own reasons to oppose such tests. Fundamentally, Waldorf schools do not place priority on giving their students a good education, as this term is usually understood. Their focus is occult and spiritual. [See, e.g., “Here’s the Answer” and “Spiritual Agenda”.] Largely for this reason, Waldorf schools may not hold students to high academic standards. [See “Academic Standards at Waldorf”.]

Waldorf representatives, speaking in public, usually do not reveal the real Waldorf agenda. But sometimes we can find more or less candid statements in Anthroposophical publications. Here are a few. This is what Waldorf schooling really aims at:

• “Waldorf education strives to create a place in which the highest beings [i.e., the gods], including the Christ, can find their home....” [Anthroposophist Joan Almon, WHAT IS A WALDORF KINDERGARTEN? (SteinerBooks, 2007), p. 53.]

• "[W]hat we have to do in education is a continuation of what higher beings [i.e., the gods] have done ... [O]ur work with young people is a continuation of what higher beings have done before birth." [Rudolf Steiner, THE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE (Anthroposophic Press, 1996), p. 37.] 

• “A Waldorf school is more than just another independent school that provides a developmental education. It is an organization that seeks to allow the spiritual impulses of our time to manifest on earth in order to transform society ... Steiner described the founding of [the first] Waldorf School as a ceremony within the Cosmic Order ... [T]he founding of every subsequent Waldorf school also has cosmic significance ... [W]e may celebrate the founding of a Waldorf school because it strives to bring the soul-spiritual into the realm of human life.” [Waldorf teacher Roberto Trostli, “On Heaven as It Is in Heaven”, Research Bulletin, Vol. 16 (Waldorf Research Institute), Fall 2011, pp. 21-24.]

• “The task of education conceived in the spiritual sense is to bring the Soul-Spirit [i.e., the combined soul and spirit] into harmony with the Life-Body [i.e., the etheric body, the first of our three invisible bodies]." [Rudolf Steiner, STUDY OF MAN (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2004), pp. 19-20.]

• “This is precisely the task of school. If it is a true school, it should bring to unfoldment...what [the child] has brought with him from spiritual worlds into this physical life on earth.” [Rudolf Steiner, KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS , Vol. 1 (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972), lecture 5, GA 235. ] 

• “[T]he purpose of [Waldorf] education is to help the individual fulfill his karma.” [Waldorf teacher Roy Wilkinson, THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF STEINER EDUCATION (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1996), p. 52.] 

• “[Waldorf] education is essentially grounded on the recognition of the child as a spiritual being, with a varying number of incarnations behind him ... [I]t is [the faculty's] task to help the child to make use of his body, to help his soul-spiritual forces to find expression through it, rather than regarding it as their duty to cram him with information....” [Anthroposophist Stewart C. Easton, MAN AND WORLD IN THE LIGHT OF ANTHROPOSOPHY (Anthroposophic Press, 1989), pp. 388-389.] 

• "The reason many [Waldorf] schools exist is because of the Anthroposophy, period. It's not because of the children. It's because a group of Anthroposophists have it in their minds to promote Anthroposophy in the world ... Educating children is secondary in these schools" [Former Waldorf teacher "Baandje". See "Ex-Teacher 7".] 

• “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...are actually carrying out the intentions of the gods ... [W]e are, in a certain sense, the means by which that streaming down from above will go out into the world.” [Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 55.] 

• “In the child we have before us a being who has only recently left the divine world. In due course, still at a tender age, he comes to school and it is the teacher’s task to help guide him into earthly existence. The teacher is therefore performing a priestly office.” [Rudolf Steiner, THE ESSENTIALS OF EDUCATION (Anthroposophic Press, 1997), p. 23.]

• "Waldorf education is a form of practical anthroposophy...." [Waldorf teacher Keith Francis, THE EDUCATION OF A WALDORF TEACHER (iUniverse, 2004), p. xii.] 

Waldorf schools are on a messianic mission in service to their religion, Anthroposophy. This — not conveying information about the real world to their students — is their purpose. [See "Mission".] The schools attempt to cooperate with the gods, seeking to apply Anthroposophy so that the students can incarnate properly and fulfill their karmas. Educating the students in any normal sense is, at best, a secondary goal.

Whether the results of standardized tests reflect real educational attainment is debatable, of course. Such tests may well be over-emphasized in most schools today in the USA. Waldorf's aversion to such tests may consequently seem be commendable. But we should not praise Waldorf education unless we understand — and approve of — its real nature.

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Arguing that Waldorf schools generally conceal their real agenda, a participant in the discussion at The Ethereal Kiosk has proposed the following an accurate Waldorf self-description, the sort of truthful mission statement a Waldorf school should post:

[W]hat would I prefer the schools say about themselves which, as a prospective parent, I would like to have read? I’ll have a go at that. Here’s what my ideal fictional Steiner school would say on its home page:

“The Puddleton Steiner school bases its teaching methods on the indications of Rudolf Steiner, the spiritual leader of the Anthroposophical movement. Every detail of the school, from the colour of the walls to the delivery of lessons, is informed by Steiner’s ideas and traditional Anthroposophical culture.

"We believe that the most effective approach to education engages and develops a child’s mind, body and soul. The Anthroposophical understanding of these three aspects of the human being leads to a model of child development that advocates a delay in reading and more traditional intellectual pursuits until a child is 7 years old. Adolescents develop their critical and logical thinking ability around the age of 14. The curriculum of our school reflects these stages.

"We maintain links with the wider Anthroposophical community. Besides the traditional subjects, Eurythmy is an important and compulsory lesson. A dance form that aims to translate the spoken word into movement, it also has spiritual significance and can be used in a curative, therapeutic way in case of medical or learning difficulties. The school employs an Anthroposophical doctor who can advise on the use of Eurythmy and other complementary therapies in these cases. The school maintains a bio-dynamic garden where students grow their vegetables following Steiner’s agricultural indications. Some members of staff belong to the Anthroposophical Society and we regularly invite speakers to give talks on Anthroposophical subjects to parents.”

That’s just 3 paragraphs. It wouldn’t necessarily have scared me off immediately but would have given me plenty of food of thought and directions to read up on....[http://zooey.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/hollowed-traditions/#comment-21822]

Response:

To illustrate how Waldorf schools generally avoid mentioning Anthroposophy and its doctrines — i.e., the thinking that undergirds virtually all their activities and purposes — the writer created a web crawler "to index the home pages of all 34 Steiner schools in the UK plus the SWSF home page and all the pages you can get to one click away from the home pages. I generated a word cloud where the size of each word represents the total frequency it occurs." [http://zooey.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/word-cloud/] (SWSF is the Steiner-Waldorf Schools Fellowship.) Here is the result:

[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4096634/Steiner%20wordles/steiner_1000.pdf]

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The name "Steiner" is prominent, which might seem to indicate at least a minimal level of disclosure — but in the UK, Waldorf schools are called Steiner or Steiner-Waldorf schools, so the schools can't avoid naming their founder. But do the schools honestly explain who Steiner was and what he preached? Clearly not. If they did so — if, in other words, the schools forthrightly explained the real nature of Waldorf education — the cloud would be filled with terms such as "Anthroposophy," "karma," "reincarnation," "etheric body," "astral body", "nature spirits," "planetary conditions," "astrology," "gods," "Sun God," "Lucifer,' "Ahriman," "spiritual evolution", and the like. Steiner's teachings about all of these topics are fundamental to Anthroposophical belief, upon which Waldorf pedagogy is based. Unless these are explained, the purposes of Waldorf education are left unexplained.

[For background, see, e.g., "Spiritual Agenda", "Secrets", "Oh Humanity", "Curriculum", "Incarnation", and "Eurythmy".]

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An interview with historian Peter Staudenmaier has appeared at Swans. For many Anthroposophists, Staudenmaier is a reviled figure — he has written extensively about ties between Anthroposophy and fascism. [http://swans.com/library/art18/barker122.html#author] Here is a very brief excerpt:

An Interview with Peter Staudenmaier

by Michael Barker

(Swans - December 3, 2012)   Peter Staudenmaier is a professor of modern German history at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the coauthor (with Janet Biehl) of Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience (AK Press 1995). In 2010 he was awarded a Ph.D. from Cornell University for a thesis titled "Between Occultism and Fascism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race and Nation in Germany and Italy, 1900-1945." This interview was carried out by e-mail in June 2012...

[Staudenmaier]: Any outside scholar who studies anthroposophy encounters strong opposition from parts of the anthroposophist movement. A large part of the reason why I continued researching anthroposophy's history had to do with this sort of opposition; I initially thought the article I was asked to write back in 1999 would be a one-time piece, and then I'd return to other topics. But the article provoked such an indignant response among anthroposophists that I went back to the sources to see if I had missed something, and the further I dug into this history the more I found. Anthroposophists routinely claim that scholars who examine their movement have distorted Steiner's ideas and misrepresented his teachings and falsified his true message and so forth ... Many of my replies to anthroposophists involve dispelling longstanding myths about the history of anthroposophy, myths which have become firmly established within the anthroposophical milieu and form a significant obstacle to anthroposophist understanding of their own past.

Michael Barker, who interviewed Staudenmaier, has also written about Anthroposophy vis-a-vis fascism. His work draws heavily from Staudenmaier's:

Fascism and Anthroposophy

Part I of II

 by Michael Barker

 [http://swans.com/library/art18/barker115.html]

"[A]nthroposophy has become renowned in different parts of the world for its efforts on behalf of alternative education, holistic health care, organic farming and natural foods, environmental consciousness, and innovative forms of spiritual expression, among other causes." (p.viii) 

"The effort to blame Nazism on shadowy occult machinations is as wide of the mark as the effort to portray occultists as blameless victims of Nazism." (p.523)

(Swans - October 8, 2012)  "Seen in one light, the application of various anthroposophical principles to everyday life has led to many positive achievements, achievements that should not blind Anthroposophy's proponents to their less than commendable past. Therefore, understanding the full implications of the entwinement of authoritarian politics with the history of occultism is vital if we are to comprehend why, in the past, so many anthroposophists connected their spiritual future to fascism. Good intentions are never enough, and Peter Staudenmaier's study, Between Occultism and Fascism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race and Nation in Germany and Italy, 1900-1945, 'reveals the limits of a spiritual renewal approach to individual and social change, and of an unpolitical conception of new ways of life, even with the loftiest of aspirations'"...

Waldorf Watch Response:

For whatever it may be worth, I would like to reiterate my view that Anthroposophy has not led to positive achievements. It is occult nonsense that produces little or nothing of real value. Anthroposophical medicine, for instance, is dangerous quackery. Anthroposophical agriculture is entwined in astrology and other hocus-pocus. Anthroposophical education — that is, Waldorf schooling — suffers from the multitudinous flaws and shortcomings detailed here at Waldorf Watch. — R.R.

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The accuracy of Wikipedia articles about Waldorf education has long been in dispute. Concerted efforts by Waldorf proponents have given the articles a pro-Waldorf bias. Here is a message from the Waldorf Critics discussion list [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorf-critics/message/25436] posted on December 11, 2012. (The message is, in part, ironic — the writer had made strenuous efforts in the past to set Wikipedia right on Waldorf issues.) 

"The owner of the Wikipedia articles on Waldorf, Harlan Gilbert, has apparently been discovered to have a conflict of interest — being a Waldorf teacher and all. I wonder why nobody mentioned it before?"

A link provided in message 25436 takes us to a Wikipedia page that displays the following:

Talk:Waldorf education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The two key passages are these:

1.

The Arbitration Committee has placed this article on probation. Editors of this are expected to remove all original research and other unverifiable information, including all controversial information sourced in Anthroposophy related publications. It is anticipated that this process may result in deletion or merger of some articles due to failure of verification by third party peer reviewed sources. If it is found, upon review by the Arbitration Committee, that any of the principals in this arbitration continue to edit in an inappropriate and disruptive way editing restrictions may be imposed. Review may be at the initiative of any member of the Arbitration Committee on their own motion or upon petition by any user to them. For further information see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education, and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education/Review. For the arbitration committee, Thatcher131 23:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC).

2.

A Wikipedia contributor, Hgilbert (talk · contribs), may be personally or professionally connected to the subject of the article. This user's editing has included contributions to this article. Relevant guidelines include Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, Wikipedia:Autobiography, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. (For background see here in relation to criteria here.)

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Christmas is coming. As you search for gifts to bestow on friends and family, you might consider books such as the following, available through Waldorf Books [http://www.waldorfbooks.com/]. 

You will be spreading knowledge of such components of Waldorf belief as karma, reincarnation, providence, nature spirits (including gnomes), spirit worlds, the goddess Isis Sophia, planetary spheres, spiritual evolution, astrosophy and astrology, Atlantis, mystery knowledge, magic, gods and angels (and demons), Rosicrucianism, occult science, occult development, sense-free perception (i.e., clairvoyance), racial migrations, the shared souls of nations and races, and so on. 

This is December, 2012. The twenty-first century. And today, in the twenty-first century, ancient superstition and fallacy remain dominant in the Waldorf belief system, Anthroposophy. Such is the thinking that undergirds Waldorf schooling. 

Today. In the twenty-first century. 

If you are interested in Waldorf schooling, you should acquaint yourself with such matters. 

Happy holidays.

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From the Ethereal Kiosk [http://zooey.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/video-advertisement-starring-former-students/]:

VIDEO ADVERTISEMENT STARRING FORMER STUDENTS

DECEMBER 5, 2012 · BY ALICIA HAMBERG · IN ANNAT

I’m certain that these comments, made by former students in this video, were not written by those former students. In fact, I’m strongly suspicious that they were all written by some crook in charge of waldorf’s public image, and that the former students were enlisted to read them out in front of the camera. Not because the comments are positive towards waldorf; I would expect that. No, there’s something else. There’s something in the way they use language, in how they talk and in how they present their opinions and what words and expressions they choose for the purpose.... 

Response:

Current and former Waldorf students often speak well of their schools. After all, the schools make strenuous efforts to woo, coddle, and charm their students — in the hope that the kids will be attracted toward the Waldorf worldview, Anthroposophy. [See, e.g., "Mistreating Kids Lovingly".] 

The ultimate purpose of Waldorf schools is to bring children to the brink of Anthroposophy, so that later, as adults, they may choose to study Rudolf Steiner and become full-fledged followers of the great man. [See, e.g., "Here's the Answer".]

The surprising thing, really, is that despite the Waldorf charm offensive, so many children and their parents have dreadful Waldorf experiences. [See, e.g., "Cautionary Tales".]

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Also from the Ethereal Kiosk:

FRENCH ANTHROPOSOPHISTS DETERMINED

TO PROCEED WITH THEIR LEGAL FOLLY

December 5, 2012 · by alicia hamberg · in anthroposophic movement

The Steiner Waldorf School Federation in France is not backing down from its legal claims against Grégoire Perra, a former waldorf student, anthroposophist and Steiner school teacher. They are pursuing the proper course of action… proper, for a cult: they’re suing to protect themselves from a reputation as a cult. One could have hoped that, in order to spare themselves embarrassment, they would have realized that this is a genuinely bad idea, and that they would have backed off voluntarily, once they had given it some more thought. Even if they win, they lose. The desire to deprive people of their right to speak their minds — about their beliefs, their experiences or whatever they wish to — is unfortunately characteristic for a cultish mindset, and it is clear that anthroposophy in France is exactly the cult it claims not to be. 

To read more, go to http://zooey.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/french-anthroposophists-determined-to-proceed-with-their-legal-folly/.

To read Grégoire Perra's essay "The Anthroposophical Indoctrination of Students in Steiner-Waldorf Schools", see "He Went to Waldorf". 

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Rudolf Steiner's defenders sometimes claim that he said very little about race. But Steiner's critics sometimes say that his racial theories were central to his work. Which is it?

Here's a quick and dirty way to get at least a feel for the answer. Today — December 5, 2012 — I did a Google Book Search. I asked for the titles of books attributed to Rudolf Steiner in which the word "races" appears. I got about 4,060 hits.*

Now, bear several points in mind. There is a lot of overlap on the list. And simply mentioning race does not make one a racist. And some discussions of race may avoid the word, referring instead to peoples, or nations, or Aryans, or Negroes, or Jews, etc. (Thus, other searches for other terms would produce other hits, albeit probably with overlap.)

And some hits shown below are off the subject, or may seem to be — such as hits for "human race" (although books that refer to the human race may also contain references to human races...) And some discussions of race may be meritorious, as when one says "I denounce racism."

So, the following is just indicative. It proves little — except that Steiner obviously did speak and write quite a lot about race(s). Sometimes he discussed races in ways we may applaud, but sometimes he discussed races in ways that must seem to us today abhorrent.

(Four thousand hits is a bit much, so I will merely reproduce specimens from the first few pages of hits. Go to Google Book Search, if you like — http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search — and conduct your own searches.)

* Anthroposophical publishers have mixed and matched passages from Steiner's books and lectures in multiple, overlapping collections and translations and editions, in many languages. Steiner never wrote 4,060 books. He did, however, deliver thousands of lectures while penning multiple books. [See "What a Guy".] The total number of references he made to race(s) is probably somewhere in the hundreds, not thousands. But he spoke and wrote about race(s) quite a lot, and that's the simple point I am making here. 

About 4,060 results (0.12 seconds)

SEARCH RESULTS

                                  Investigations In Occultism - Page 138

Let's call that enough, shall we? It's just a taste, just an indication... About 50 hits. Google says there are 4,000+ more — which is clearly misleading. Let's just say there are more. 

To dig into the substance of Steiner's racial teachings, see, e.g., "Steiner's Racism".

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Here are excerpts from a message posted by historian Peter Staudenmaier on December 4 at the Waldorf Critics discussion list [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/waldorf-critics/message/25416]:

"How can a Negro or an utterly barbaric savage become civilised?"

Last month I was contacted about several indignant emails by an anthroposophist ... He is outraged because he thinks I made up Steiner's sentence "How can a Negro or an utterly barbaric savage become civilised?" Our outraged anthroposophist somehow convinced himself that I added in the reference to "Negroes" myself and thus falsified Steiner's text. It is a classic instance of anthroposophist unfamiliarity with their own teachings.

...Among other things, our outraged anthroposophist writes: "The original text from the lecture does not contain these words. This is a typical misrepresentation coming from Staudenmaier with respect to Steiner's descriptions of spiritual evolution."

Alas, our outraged anthroposophist did not check the "original text from the lecture" and thus fell for a very obvious error. Because these sorts of errors are common in the anthroposophical milieu, it may be worth looking at this instance in detail.

Steiner did in fact write the sentence "How can a Negro or an utterly barbaric savage become civilised?" I did not add any words to it. I didn't even translate it. I took it directly from the authorized translation published decades ago by the Anthroposophical Publishing Company in London. Their translation is correct. The original German text reads "Wie kann ein Schwarzer, wie kann ein barbarischer Wilder kultiviert werden": Rudolf Steiner, Blut ist ein ganz besonderer Saft (Berlin: Theosophische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1907), p. 7.

Our outraged anthroposophist, however, did not consult the original text and did not consult the authorized translation: Rudolf Steiner, THE OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD (London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1912). Instead, he relied on the version of the text posted at the online Rudolf Steiner e-library. There the passage reads as follows:

"This problem is that of colonization, which crops up wherever civilized races come into contact with the uncivilized: namely — To what extent are uncivilized peoples capable of becoming civilized? How can an utterly barbaric savage become civilized? And in what way ought we to deal with them?"

Interested readers can find the full text of this version here: http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19061025p01.html

The version of Steiner's text posted at the e-library has been bowdlerized. Steiner's reference to "Negroes" has simply been removed, surreptitiously, with no notice to the reader. This practice is by no means unusual in anthroposophist translations of Steiner's work; several of Steiner's more noteworthy statements about race have been silently excised from the English publications. That is how the original passage escaped our outraged anthroposophist's attention, and that is how he managed to conclude that I had doctored the text. He didn't realize his fellow anthroposophists had doctored it for him. 

Waldorf Watch Response:

To help adjudicate the matter, I have made photocopies of the relevant passage in two editions of THE OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD that I happen to own. The disputed sentence occurs near the middle of this page:

Rudolf Steiner, THE OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD

(Health Research, 1972), p. 13.

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And the disputed sentence — in a different translation yielding slightly different wording — occurs near the top of this page: 

Rudolf Steiner, THE OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD

(Rudolf Steiner Press, 1967), p. 10.

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A literal translation of the original German as quoted by Staudenmaier ("Wie kann ein Schwarzer, wie kann ein barbarischer Wilder kultiviert werden...") would be "How can a black man, how can a barbaric savage be made civilized...."

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Waldorf schools are often centers of contagion, arguably because "Anthroposophical medicine" is practiced in and around them. [See "Steiner's Quackery".] The problem, of course, is not confined to Waldorf schools in the English-speaking world. Thus, the following has appeared this month on a blog in France:

Les Écoles Steiner-Waldorf propagent la rougeole

vendredi 27 février 2009

Ce n’est pas la première fois qu’une Ecole Steiner est associée à une épidémie de rougeole. Il y avait déjà eu deux cas en 2008, à Muttenz (BL) et à Confignon (GE).

Plus de 60 personnes liées à l’établissement de Crissier (VD) ont attrapé ou sont suspectées d’avoir attrapé la maladie.

[http://gregoireperra.wordpress.com/]

Rough translation:

Waldorf Schools Spread Measles

Friday, February 27, 2009

This is not the first time that a Steiner School has been associated with a measles epidemic. There had already been two cases in 2008, Muttenz (BL) and Confignon (GE).

More than 60 people linked to the establishment in Crissier (VD) contracted or are suspected of contracting the disease.

An item posted recently on a blog in the USA puts the matter in context:

Highland Hall Tops Anti-Vaccine List [http://thewaldorfreview.blogspot.com/]

Parents who send their children to private schools in California [USA] are much more likely to opt out of immunizations than their public school counterparts, an Associated Press analysis has found, and not even the recent re-emergence of whooping cough has halted the downward trajectory of vaccinations among these students.

The state surveys all schools with at least 10 kindergartners to determine how many have all the recommended immunizations. The AP analyzed that data and found the percentage of children in private schools who forego some or all vaccinations is more than two times greater than in public schools.

More troubling to public health officials is that the rate of children entering private schools without all of their shots jumped by 10 percent last year, while the opt-out figures held steady in public schools for the first time since 2004.

Public health officials believe that an immunization rate of at least 90 percent in all communities, including schools, is critical to minimizing the potential for a disease outbreak. About 15 percent of the 1,650 private schools surveyed by the state failed to reach that threshold, compared with 5 percent of public schools.

There were 110 private schools statewide where more than half the kindergartners skipped some or all of their shots, according to AP's analysis, with Highland Hall Waldorf School in Northridge — where 84 percent opted out — topping the list.

...[The issue has] prompted the Legislature to approve a bill requiring parents to discuss vaccinations with a pediatricians or a school nurse before they can opt out....

State Assemblyman Richard Pan, a pediatrician, who sponsored the bill, said he believes private school parents are more apt to mistakenly believe that the vaccinations themselves could be more dangerous than the diseases.

"In private school, these are people who have money, who are upper middle-class, and they are going on the Internet and seeing information and misinformation," said Pan, D-Sacramento.

Increasing immunization rates for this population is critical to controlling the outbreak of diseases, he said. "Have you ever seen a child cough themselves to death? It's not pleasant," he said.

Those who choose not to vaccinate their children see the legislation as meddlesome and unnecessary.

...Melani Gold Friedman, president of the parent association at Highland Hall Waldorf School, is concerned with what the legislation means for families who normally consult with acupuncturists, holistic healers or other alternative practitioners.

"The bill has an assumption that everyone's seeing one particular kind of doctor, but the people who are opting out, chances are they're not seeing that kind of doctor," she said. 

For previous reports about Waldorf schools and health care for children, see, e.g., "November, 2011" and "May, 2011". (There have been several others. Use the "Search this site" option, above.) 

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