"Myths are not ‘thought out’ or invented, but are the expressions of a profound primeval wisdom acquired by spiritual vision. In ancient times there was consciousness of the fact that at a still earlier epoch man had embraced the whole world in his feeling, and this is expressed in the Myths. The ‘clair-sentience’...was the last remnant of an original...clairvoyance.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE EAST IN THE LIGHT OF THE WEST (Rudolf Steiner Pub. Co., 1940), lecture 7, GA 113. 

For more about the study of 

Bible stories, myths, and

other spiritually meaningful tales 

in Waldorf classes, see, e.g.,

"Old Testament"

"Fairy Tales"

"The Gods"

"Sneaking It In"

"Three (Occult) Classics"

The following is a bit pedantic and dry,

but please cast your eye over it.

Some important matters are revealed.

PUNCTURING PUNCTUATION

"In a teacher's meeting on 3 July 1923 [at the first Waldorf school] Steiner pointed out that the pupils of Class 9 were not using any punctuation marks. He then proceeded to give some very revealing guidance for the teaching of punctuation." — Waldorf teacher E. A. Karl Stockmeyer, RUDOLF STEINER'S CURRICULUM FOR STEINER-WALDORF SCHOOLS (Floris Books, 2015), p. 69.

You might be startled to learn that ninth graders in a Waldorf school, many of whom had presumably received the benefits of Waldorf education for at least a few years, apparently knew little or nothing about punctuation.

In fact, how to teach the students punctuation was raised as an issue during a prior faculty meeting at the school. Here is a brief summary:

May 25, 1923:

A teacher: "I think we need to teach the children a little about the technique of writing ... They have poor punctuation."

Dr. Steiner: "It will not be easy to find a reasonable way to teach punctuation to children. We need to look into this question further, including the reasons for punctuation. This is a question we need to examine pedagogically ... There does not appear to be any natural way of justifying punctuation." — FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1996), p. 629.

July 3, 1923: 

Dr. Steiner: “The main problem now is that if the children go to their [externally administered] final examinations with the punctuation they now know, it could be very bad. They use no punctuation at all in the 9b class. Teaching them punctuation depends upon discussing the structure of a sentence in an interesting way. That is something you can do well in the course of teaching them literature ... You can teach the use of commas when you first show the children that they need to enclose every relative clause within commas ... From there, you can go on to show how elements of thought developed in language, and thus arrive at the semicolon, which is simply a stronger comma and indicates a greater break... [Etc.]  You can discuss the artistic structure of a sentence with the children in an unpedantic way. You can give them a feeling for what a sentence is ...  [P]oetics...is completely missing [from the class work]. You are not taking it into account at all. I have noticed that the children have no feeling for metaphor. ... If you first get the children used to enclosing relative clauses with commas, then everything else will fall into place.” — FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, pp. 645-648.

This is all fairly stunning. The students in question were young teenagers. They should have learned basic punctuation long before this. Yet at the original Waldorf school, students in class 9b apparently were unable to punctuate (or they felt no need to do so — their teacher apparently did not require it). And notice that Steiner's comments may have applied beyond the limits of class 9b. Steiner responded to the situation in 9b not by correcting a single, negligent teacher; he addressed the entire faculty, giving them basic guidance concerning punctuation. He took up the question of punctuation as if for the first time — "It will not be easy to find a reasonable way to teach punctuation to children." We may infer that little or no instruction in punctuation had occurred at the school previously, or at least the subject had not commanded much attention previously. Notice this, too: Steiner indicated that the deficiencies in the students' writing skills was even broader than the somewhat technical issue of punctuation — "Poetics...was completely missing." The kids knew little or nothing about metaphoric language. The instruction they had received in the use of their native language was faulty in more than one way.

To his credit, Steiner tried to find corrective measures. (Unfortunately, he seems to have done so largely to avoid the bad publicity that would result if the illiteracy of Waldorf students became known publicly — "The main problem now is that if the children go to their final examinations with the punctuation they now know, it could be very bad." The exams in question were conducted outside the school by public officials. Waldorf students doing poorly in such exams exposed the failings of Waldorf education. This was "the main problem." Steiner was always sensitive to public relations and the need to put up a good front. [See, e.g., "Secrets".]) Whether Steiner's corrective measures would prove effective is, perhaps, doubtful. There is nothing particularly innovative in the suggestions Steiner made, and the overriding reality is that starting instruction in punctuation so late in the students' schooling means trying to undo damage that had accumulated over many years.

The Waldorf faculty would certainly have been derelict if they allowed students to pass through sixth, seventh, and eighth grades without learning punctuation. Indeed, by the standards set at the first Waldorf school, children should be taught "complete punctuation" before the end of fifth grade. [See "The Waldorf Curriculum".] We can, to some extent, excuse the teachers Steiner was addressing if we recollect that their school had been established only a few years earlier, in 1919. Thus, the most senior students at the first Waldorf school received their early educations elsewhere. If those students came to Waldorf knowing little about punctuation, then the primary blame lies with the schools they attended previously. Still, once they enrolled at Waldorf, these students should have been brought up to the appropriate grade level as soon as was practical. But clearly, for some kids, in some portions of the curriculum, this did not happen. Slice it any way you like, it is scandalous for ninth graders not to have been taught how to punctuate.

Part of the problem, surely, can be traced to the general anti-intellectual atmosphere in Waldorf education [see, e.g., "Thinking Cap"], and part can be ascribed to the low academic standards that are often set [see "Academic Standards at Waldorf"]. In addition, the poor qualifications of Waldorf teachers may have a significant impact. The Waldorf system ensures that many Waldorf teachers are unqualified to teach at least some of the subjects they are required to teach. [See "The Waldorf Curriculum" and "Teacher Training".] The result is that students in Waldorf schools often lag behind their peers in other schools. Thus, for instance, one mother who removed her daughter from a Waldorf school, transferring the child to a public school, has reported this: 

"Walking around the public school classroom on parents' night, looking at the children's work, said it all. The children had written essays that were easy to follow, even with the occasional mistake here and there. Our daughter's essays were incomprehensible. She had made brave attempts to write words, guessing at the letters involved, but not succeeding in spelling a single word correctly. The other children's work was the result of four years of public education. Our daughter's was the result of four years of Waldorf 'education.'" [See "Our Experience".] 

In this instance, the child was in fourth grade, not ninth, and the deficiency was spelling, not punctuation. But the effect is the same. Imagine a ninth grader's essay that has "no punctuation at all" — or no correct punctuation. Like the unfortunate fourth grader's essay, the ninth grader's work would reflect an educational system that had abysmally failed that student. And, in fact, we have evidence that even today, Waldorf high schoolers often produce distinctly flawed written work. The following report comes from Waldorf teacher Keith Francis, who presided over the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City: 

“I have attended countless [Waldorf] open houses ... I have seen scores of [student] notebooks, copied and illustrated with enormous care and devotion and riddled with all kinds of errors, placed where parents and visitors are most likely to see them. I can assure you that I am not exaggerating.” 

Francis puts the blame, primarily, on the Waldorf practice of having students copy, verbatim and uncritically, passages written by their teachers. 

“Copying is the curse of the Waldorf Schools. There is altogether too much of it, and it is not confined to the elementary school. In high school, where there is much less excuse for it, it still goes on." [See "His Education".] 

Students should not be criticized for reproducing errors (factual, historical, grammatical...) committed by their teachers, surely. But the key point, here, is that Waldorf teachers have themselves committed the errors Francis cites, and they effectively teach their students that such errors are not wrong at all but are correct. They miseducate their students, in other words.  

Shockingly, there are persistent questions about the teaching of basic skills at Waldorf schools. Is there a "reasonable way to teach punctuation"? Is there any "natural way of justifying punctuation"? Must students be able to write coherently? Is there any reason to give kids basic academic instruction at all? Waldorf schools often place their emphasis elsewhere, not on education per se.  Waldorf schools generally seek to influence students' hearts and souls fully as much as their minds — if not more than their minds. According to a widely used Waldorf motto, the schools spread their attention to "heads, hearts, and hands." [See "Holistic Education".] To the extent that emphasis is placed on hearts and hands, it is shifted away from heads. Brainwork — what people usually call education — is deemphasized.

Steiner wanted Waldorf students to know enough about punctuation to avoid embarrassing the school when taking final examinations administered by education authorities. But, then again, he disavowed giving students a sufficiently sound academic education to prepare them for such final examinations. On February 5, 1924 — months after making the statements we saw above — Steiner said this in a Waldorf faculty meeting:

"The question of final examinations is purely a question of opportunity. It is a question of whether we dare tell those who come to us that we will not prepare them for the final examination at all...." — FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER, p. 712.

Shockingly, concerns about basic academics — down to the level of teaching kids how to punctuate — are central to an objective assessment of Waldorf education. Waldorf schools surely do not provide a legitimate alternative to public education if they fail their students at the most basic level, which means providing instruction in the "3 R's": reading, writing, and arithmetic. Ninth graders who cannot punctuate are functionally illiterate. Their schools have failed them.

— R.R.

  [Waldorfesque art by a Waldorf alum. 

R.R.]

LESSONS OF HISTORY

Belief in clairvoyance pervades all parts of the Waldorf curriculum.

This is from the description of a Waldorf teacher's guide, written by a Waldorf teacher and published by the Rudolf Steiner College Press. The subject is history. The subtext is clairvoyance. 

"The History curriculum for fifth and sixth grades in a Waldorf school follows the thread of development of cultures through Ancient India, Persia, Egypt and Chaldea, Greece, and Rome. This provides a picture of the changing human consciousness from ancient clairvoyance to the loss of spiritual vision and, with it, the awakening of independent ego awareness and materialism. The teacher is guided to a deeper understanding of the spiritual significance of mythologies and great epics, and shows how the ancient world points the way to the future." — Description of TEACHING HISTORY, Vol. 1 (Rudolf Steiner College Press, 2000), posted at the site for the Rudolf Steiner College Book Store (last confirmed 4/6/2019).

Students taught history in this way are being fed Anthroposophy, "the way to the future". 

Waldorf schools claim they do not teach their students Anthroposophy. Yet Anthroposophy is slipped into Waldorf education in many ways.

“In early civilizations the mass of people lived in a child-like state and were guided and directed by personalities who in some respects were more mature, i.e., the priests and kings. These in turn were guides by spiritual beings — gods — and were what is known as ‘initiates,’ by which is meant that they had direct experience of a supersensible world.” — Waldorf educator Roy Wilkinson, TEACHING HISTORY, Vol. 1. (Rudolf Steiner College Press, 2000), p. 4.

This summarizes a portion of humanity’s evolution as described by Rudolf Steiner. Steiner’s account hinges on the concept of occult knowledge — secret knowledge of the spirit realm possessed by only a few “mature” human beings, aka initiates. Many ancient societies were indeed built upon such ideas, which have largely been set aside in the modern world. But such ideas live on in the Waldorf belief system, which accepts them as objectively revealed Truth. 

◊ Note that the description is polytheistic — “gods.” The Waldorf belief system recognizes many gods. 

◊ “Initiation” is a basic term in occult spiritual traditions. People who rise in the ranks of spiritualists become “initiated” — they are admitted to the inner circle. Steiner described himself as such an initiate, and many Waldorf teachers believe that they, too, have been initiated. 

◊ In Waldorf belief, the “direct experience” of initiates is the use of clairvoyance. Steiner taught that people used to have a natural, primeval form of clairvoyance that modern humans have lost. But he said that “initiates” like himself have attained a perfected form of clairvoyance. 

◊ According to Steiner, the “supersensible world” is actually several worlds — spiritual worlds that we cannot perceive with our senses (they are above our senses, they are super-sensible), but that we can perceive through clairvoyance.

If Waldorf teachers believe such things, but keep these beliefs to themselves, then indeed they may refrain from teaching the students Anthroposophical tenets. But when Waldorf teachers convey such notions to their students, openly or indirectly, they are teaching the kids Anthroposophy, not history.

“We can, therefore, trace historically the development of humanity from a period when the soul had an instinctive connection with the spiritual, through a time when there were intermediaries in the for of priests, to the present almost wholly materialistic civilization.”  — Roy Wilkinson, TEACHING HISTORY, Vol. 1, p. 5. 

Steiner taught that we happen to live in a period when the things he said are not recognized as being self-evidently true. But he said occult truths were obvious to people in the past and they will become obvious to people again in the future. When Waldorf students are given such ideas, they are being taught Anthroposophy. 

"[T]he Greeks were the first people in the world to think in the way we now understand the word. There were earlier periods in the course of human evolution when human beings did not experience thought in the way they do today. They experienced pictures or images and the legacy of these pictures is to be found in the mythologies."  — Waldorf educator Roy Wilkinson, TEACHING HISTORY, Vol. 1 (Rudolf Steiner College Press, 2000), pp. 4-5.

This is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Waldorf belief system. Modern rational thought is a new phenomenon. It has value, and we need it in order to keep evolving higher and higher. But it is also an extremely limited tool, one that can tell us about the physical world but not about the higher, spiritual worlds. To know the spirit worlds, we need to use a "higher" form of consciousness, clairvoyance. Rudolf Steiner claimed to be clairvoyant, and many of his followers (including Waldorf school teachers) think they are clairvoyant. This is delusion, and it is therefore worrisome — people who are deluded hardly qualify as reliable leaders or teachers. 

The essence of clairvoyance is seeing images. In Waldorf schools, the emphasis on imagination derives from a belief in the truthfulness of the mental pictures that come to one through conscious or unconscious clairvoyance. Belief in such images is bunk, but it is basic to the Waldorf approach. A more accurate term for mystic or otherworldly images that arise in the mind and that one accepts as truth is hallucination.

For more on clairvoyance and Waldorf education, see "Clairvoyance" and "The Waldorf Teacher's Consciousness".

WALDORF POETRY

Much of the literature studied in Waldorf schools in unobjectionable; indeed, it usually includes great literary classics. But other works are included in the curriculum despite their lack of literary merit. Examples can be found in such volumes as THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY (Living Arts Books, 2012), edited by Waldorf teacher David Kennedy.

This anthology includes works by Shakespeare, Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, and other great poets. But it also features works by people who are not poets at all — people whose only qualification is that they are Anthroposophists. Thus., the book includes "poems" by such Anthroposophists as Dorothy Harrer, Eugene Schwartz, A. C. Harwood, Eileen Hutchins, and (who else?) Rudolf Steiner.

The poems by these authors are generally doggerel having a distinctly esoteric tilt. Their overall import is to introduce Waldorf students to Anthroposophical beliefs.

Here are a few excerpts.

"St. George"

by Eugene Schwartz

("For Michaelmas")

"...Oh St. George, Come! Advance!

'Gainst the Dragon to fight...*

St. George battled the beast

Till the rays of the sun

As it rose in the east

Showed our knight to have won!"

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 106.]

* In Anthroposophy, Michael is a warrior god 

fighting on behalf of the Sun God, Christ, 

to protect and strengthen humanity. 

Michael's chief foe is the great demon Ahriman, 

symbolized as a dragon. 

St. George, a pious knight and dragon-slayer, 

is Michael's representative on Earth.

"The Sun Is in My Heart"

by A. C. Harwood

"The Sun* is in my heart,

He warms me with his power,

And wakens, wakens life and love

In bird and beast and flower,

In bird and beast and flower...."

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 44.]

* In Anthroposophy, the Sun is the 

original abode of Christ, the Sun God. 

[See "Sun God".]

Waldorf students are taught many poems, 

hymns, and prayers centering on the Sun.

"A Sun Like Thee"

by Eileen Hutchins

"May our eyes shine

With light like thine,

May our hearts know

Thy warming glow,

May our hands give

Such strength to live,

That we may be

A sun like thee."

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 45.]

"At the Ringing of the Bells"

by Rudolf Steiner

"To wonder at beauty,

Stand guard over truth,

Look up to the noble,

Resolve on the good:

This leadeth man truly

To purpose in living...."

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 256.]

"Ancient Persia"

by Dorothy Harrer

"In the flaming fire we worship thee,

Master of Wisdom,

Lord of Light,

AHURA-MAZDA...

From the regions of the North.

From the regions of the South,

Forth rushed Ahriman the deadly,

And the demons of darkness...." *

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 174.]

* Waldorf students study many world religions, 

which may be laudable, 

but such study in Waldorf schools

usually stresses Anthroposophical beliefs.

In Anthroposophy, Ahura Mazda is the Sun God, Christ, 

as perceived by the ancient Persians.

Steiner also taught that Ahriman, the devil in Persian belief, 

is one of the arch-demons who fight against 

proper human evolution.

"Number Rhyme"

by Joan Marcus

"We dance around the fir tree

in every kind of weather,

Twelve little gnomes dancing together.*

We dance around the fir tree

in every kind of weather,

Twelve little gnomes dancing together."

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 291.]

* Parents are often charmed by the gnome images 

and figurines found in Waldorf classrooms.

They should realize that, in Anthroposophical belief, 

gnomes really exist: They are "nature spirits" 

or "elemental beings" who live within the Earth.

"Coming Forth into the Day"

by Dorothy Harrer

"Homage to thee, O Ra, at thy tremendous rising!

Thou risest! Thou shinest! the heavens are rolled aside!

Thou art the King of Gods, thou art the All-comprising,

From thee we come, in thee are deified." *

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 175.]

* In Anthroposophy, any prayer to the Sun 

is a prayer to Christ, the Sun God.

Anthroposophists believe that Ra, the ancient Egyptian 

god of the Sun, is Christ as recognized 

by the ancient Egyptians. We should also be note 

that Anthroposophy is a polytheistic faith, 

so phrases like "King of Gods" are meant literally.

"Five Verses for Michaelmas" *

Unattributed

"Sword of Micha-el brightly gleaming,

Down to earth its light is streaming;—

May we see its shining rays

In winter's darkest days.

"St. Micha-el, brave and bright

Who loves to live in the light,

The fierce foe to fight...."

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 105.]

* Michaelmas is the mass of St. Michael, whom 

Anthroposophists revere as the Archangel of the Sun.

"St Michael and anthroposophy are connected in a special way ... 

Michael inspires all human beings who wish to 

connect the human spirit with the spirit of the cosmos. 

Anthroposophy is also called the School of Michael. 

Rudolf Steiner sought to establish a new 

festival of Michaelmas, at the end of September...." 

— Waldorf teacher Henk van Oort, ANTHROPOSOPHY A-Z 

(Rudolf Steiner Press, Sophia Books, 2011), p. 78.

"The Forging of Thor's Hammer"

by S. M. Ryan

"Blow bellows, blow,

Set the sparks aglow!

...Thunderer Thor*

Needs weapons of War!"

[THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY, p. 167.]

* Thor is the Norse god of thunder. Norse myths 

are heavily emphasized in Waldorf education

because Rudolf Steiner said that these myths present 

a correct description of human spiritual evolution.

Studying Norse myths, in Waldorf schools, 

is tantamount to studying Anthroposophy.

Numerous other poems by Anthroposophists, as well as poems that can be interpreted as supporting Anthroposophy, are spread throughout THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY.

Waldorf students who are immersed in such stuff are undeniably, if circuitously, introduced to Anthroposophical perspectives and attitudes. Far more than most of their parents probably intended, they are led toward the labyrinths of Rudolf Steiner's occultism.

The cover of THE WALDORF BOOK OF POETRY shows a lance-wielding Michael flying among seven stars, slaying a dragon above a peaceful, church-centered earthly community.

To explore some of the Anthroposophical doctrines hidden in this book's poems, see, e.g., "Michael", "Sun God", "Ahriman", "Astrology", "Polytheism", "The Gods", "Neutered Nature", and "Was He Christian?" 

THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE 

“[T]he conscious and the unconscious are interwoven in the marvelous being [i.e., a god] called the genius of language that expresses itself through the totality of a folk, tribe, or people.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE (Anthroposophic Press, 1995), p. 34.

Steiner taught that each people has its own genius, its own folk soul — its own presiding god. To understand a people and its language, you must attend to that people’s folk soul. Peoples evolve in parallel with the evolution of their gods.

“[Y]ou can follow language changes by noting how they shine through the accompanying changes in the feelings and perceptions of the folk soul.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE, p. 65.

Comprehending a language properly means separating out any words, etc., that do not come from a people’s folk soul.

“[I]f we want to study the character of the German language proper…foreign words must be lifted off, because they do not express what comes out of the German folk soul.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE, p. 19.

THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE

Observations for Teachers

Foundations of Waldorf Education VII

(Anthroposophic Press, 1995)

“So will I turn my heart and mind

Towards the soul

And spirit of words.

"In love for them

I will then feel myself

Complete and whole.”

 — Rudolf Steiner, THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE, p. 7.

According to Steiner, folk souls are gods two levels higher than humanity. They are also known by such names as "spirits of fire" and "archangels."

"In the soul of a nation there lives and weaves what we call a fire-spirit or an Archangel; he regulates, so to speak, the relation between separate men and the nation or race as a whole." — Rudolf Steiner, THE SPIRITUAL HIERARCHIES (Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1928), lecture 6, GA 110.

[See "Polytheism" and "Embedded Racism".]

"Archangel — spiritual being belonging to the third hierarchy [the lowest grouping of gods]. An archangel can serve as a national spirit, inspiring a whole nation with all its characteristics such as language ... Expressions such as 'folk-soul' and 'folk-spirit' indicate the same spiritual being." — Waldorf teacher Henk von Oort, ANTHROPOSOPHY A-Z (Sophia Books, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2011), pp. 8-9.

In the Afterword to THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE, Anthroposophist Adam Makkai makes a valiant effort to defend Steiner's many erroneous statements about language.

"The present book will be understandable in a general way to readers familiar with anthroposophy. They will read it as an extension of what they know of anthroposophy, the folk soul, and certain principles of Waldorf education. Such readers may be suspicious of the technical remarks that I, a linguist-anthroposophist, must make to bring anthroposophy into an equilibrium with linguistics. I can promise, however, that whatever footnotes or minor corrections I may have to add to Steiner’s thought these do not detract in any way from the value of his insights....

"To someone familiar with the field of linguistics and unfamiliar with anthroposophy, on the other hand, some of Rudolf Steiner’s remarks may ring as strange half-truths ... [T]he non-anthroposophist linguist will not know what to make of concepts like that of the folk soul, the ether body, the 'Genius of Language,' or the underlying assumption of 'thinking-feeling-willing' and the idea that the written word is dead in comparison to spoken language.... 

"Yet modern linguists would not be unanimous in their bewilderment upon reading Steiner and some may feel more upset (or threatened) by some of Steiner’s statements than by others." — THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE, pp. 97-98.

Modern linguists would not be unanimous in rejecting Steiner, perhaps; but they would come close to unanimity. Thus, for instance, Steiner's statements about clairvoyance and elemental beings (such as gnomes) would be likely to elicit near-universal head-scratching, if not utter scorn.

"On that early step of human development when the gender of words was being formed, there still existed a primitive clairvoyance; a living, spiritual quality was perceived within things. Der Sonne ‘sun’, masculine and die Mond ‘moon’, feminine which later were reversed to die Sonne and der Mond [in modern German "sun" is feminine, "moon" is masculine] could never have come about in the older Indo-European languages had the elemental beings living in the sun and moon not been experienced as brothers and sisters. In antiquity the sun was felt to be the brother, the moon the sister. Today in German it has been turned around. The day was perceived as the son and the night as the daughter of the giant Norwi. This definitely originates from primitive clairvoyant vision." — Rudolf Steiner, THE GENIUS OF LANGUAGE, p. 77.

Folks souls, ether bodies, the "genius" of language, thinking-feeling-willing, clairvoyance, elemental beings — Steiner's teachings about language are fatally infected with esoteric fantasies, falsehoods, delusions. His teachings about language cannot stand up under rational scrutiny, no matter how hard his faithful adherents may try to rationalize them. They are, simply put, wrong.

[To delve into these various matters, see the entries in The Brief Waldorf / Steiner Encyclopedia for "folks soul", "etheric body", etc.]

PARABLES

Here are two statements in which Steiner extols the use of parables in Waldorf education:

1.

“It is of vast importance for the child that he should receive the secrets of Nature in parables, before they are brought before his soul in the form of ‘natural laws’ and the like. An example may serve to make this clear. Let us imagine that we want to tell a child of the immortality of the soul, of the coming forth of the soul from the body. The way to do this is to use a comparison, such for example as the comparison of the butterfly coming forth from the chrysalis. As the butterfly soars up from the chrysalis, so after death the soul of man from the house of the body. No man will rightly grasp the fact in intellectual concepts, who has not first received it in such a picture. By such a parable, we speak not merely to the intellect but to the feeling of the child, to all his soul. A child who has experienced this, will approach the subject with an altogether different mood of soul, when later it is taught him in the form of intellectual concepts. It is indeed a very serious matter for any man, if he was not first enabled to approach the problems of existence with his feeling. Thus it is essential that the educator have at his disposal parables for all the laws of Nature and secrets of the World.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE EDUCATION OF THE CHILD IN THE LIGHT OF ANTHROPOSOPHY (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1965), GA 304.

For commentary on this quotation, see "Quoting The Founder on the Education of the Child", September 7, 2018.

2.

“[A]s a result of the spirit which came into the Waldorf School, certain parents who would otherwise not have sent their children to any religion lesson requested us to carry the teaching of morality on into the sphere of religion. It thus became necessary for us to give a special religious instruction from the standpoint of Anthroposophy. We do not even in these Anthroposophical religion lessons teach Anthroposophy, rather we endeavour to find those symbols and parables in nature which lead towards religion. And we endeavour to bring the Gospel to the children in the manner in which it must be comprehended by a spiritual understanding of religion, etc. If anyone thinks the Waldorf School is a school for Anthroposophy it shows he has no understanding either of Waldorf School pedagogy or of Anthroposophy.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE SPIRITUAL GROUND OF EDUCATION (Anthroposophical Publishing Co., 1947) lecture 8, GA 305.

Steiner was often disingenuous. The process he describes here is, clearly, an enactment of the Waldorf intention to lead students toward Anthroposophy. The parables used in these lessons certainly do "teach Anthroposophy" — they convey a comprehension of reality that is wholly Anthroposophical.

The parables, images, or lessons in general that Waldorf teachers bring to their students should represent the deeply held Anthroposophical concepts carried in the Waldorf teachers' hearts, Steiner indicated.

“Imagine that we wanted to convey a simple religious concept — for instance, the immortality of the human soul — to a class of young children ... A Waldorf teacher, an anthroposophically oriented spiritual researcher, would not feel, ‘I am the intelligent adult who makes up a story for the children’s benefit,’ but rather: ‘The eternal beings and powers [i.e., the gods], acting as the spiritual in nature, have placed before my eyes a picture of the immortal human soul, objectively, in the form of the emerging butterfly. Believing in the truth of this picture with every fibre of my being, and bringing it to my pupils through my own conviction, I will awaken in them a truly religious concept.’” — Rudolf Steiner, WALDORF EDUCATION AND ANTHROPOSOPHY (Anthroposophic Press, 1995), Vol. 1, pp. 49-50. 

Note the title of this book. Waldorf education is inextricably linked to Anthroposophy. And the true Waldorf teacher, devoted to the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, is a true Anthroposophical believer. S/he believes "in the truth of this picture with every fibre of [her/his] being."

This is what Steiner meant when he said the following to teachers at the first Waldorf school:

“As teachers in the Waldorf School, you will need to find your way more deeply into the insight of the spirit and to find a way of putting all compromises aside ... As Waldorf teachers, we must be true anthroposophists in the deepest sense of the word in our innermost feeling.” — Rudolf Steiner, FACULTY MEETINGS WITH RUDOLF STEINER (Anthroposophic Press, 1998), p. 118.

The purpose, ultimately, is to bring Anthroposophy to the students — or to bring the students to Anthroposophy.

[See "Indoctrination", "Sneaking It In", 

"Spiritual Agenda", "Spiritual Syllabus", 

etc.]