The First Person
"Anecdotal evidence is based on individual accounts,
rather than on reliable research or statistics, and so may not be valid."
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/anecdotal-evidence,
2/6/2022
Some of the information you find at Waldorf Watch may be described as anecdotal [1]: The site contains numerous individual accounts in which people report what happened to them, or to their children, or to other individuals, at Waldorf schools. You should not uncritically accept any such accounts.
Let's start with the strongest sort of anecdotes — first-person accounts, including eyewitness reports (I tell you what happened to me or what I saw with my own eyes). Such accounts may seem powerful, but they cannot be accepted as absolute proof of anything. First-person accounts (I tell you about an episode in my own life) are often wobbly. Maybe I misundertsood the experience I underwent; or maybe my memory is bad; or maybe I am lying. Likewise, eyewitness accounts (I tell you what I saw someone else do or experience) can be flat-out wrong. Maybe I misinterpreted what I thought I saw; or maybe I no longer recall important parts of the story; or maybe I am lying. Firtshand accounts and eyewitness testimony can be compelling; they may lead to the discovery of the truth. But such narratives are often unreliable. You need to be cautious about accepting such accounts without further substantiation.
If firsthand reports are doubtful, secondhand and thirdhand reports are far worse. If I tell you about something that happened to me, you probably should give my statement at least provisional consideration. Unless you know me to be a liar or otherwise undependable, you probably should assume that I might just possibly know what I am talking about. On the other hand, if I tell you what somebody else told me — or if I (person #1) tell you what somebody else (person #2) said that yet another person (person #3) told her — well, you see the problem. We would be slipping into the realm of gossip. We could not be sure that person #3 was telling the truth, and we couldn't know for sure that person #2 really understood person #3, and so forth. The possibilities for misunderstandings and misinformation bloom and multiply the further we are removed from the origin of an account. Bits of gossip are extremely unreliable, even if they originate in truth (that is, even if person #3 was speaking truthfully).
Another problem with anecdotes is that they may reflect unique, unrepresentative events — they may not provide a good basis for forming opinions. If I tell you that I bought a certain type of car last year, and the damned thing has been nothing but a headache for me — it has broken down over and over — this may alert you to check around carefully before buying the same kind of car. But you should not reach your decision, to buy or not, based solely on my experience. Maybe I got a lemon. Maybe 99.9% of that brand of car are extremely reliable and fault-free. Do your homework. Gather much more information than my small, sad story. Don't blindly trust my anecdote.
There's a flip side to all this, however. Dismissing first-person accounts as anecdotes may be unfair or prejudicial [2]. The experiences people undergo in life can be profound, and passing along the lessons learned from such experiences can be an act of great kindness. Sometimes when people tell about their personal experiences, they are pouring out their hearts and conveying extremely important life lessons. We should listen, for politeness and decency, if nothing else. But sometimes there is indeed something else. Sometimes there is truth. We would be foolish to reject out of hand the first-person accounts that friends and other well-intentioned individuals give us. Listening to these informants may save us from making serious mistakes. As always, we should not base our decisions on a single unsubstantiated personal story. But we should not reject all such stories as necessarily worthless. Sometimes, these stories may be extremely valuable. (You might look again at the definition at the head of this item. Anecdotal evidence may not be valid; but then again, on occasion, it may.)
This brings us to the issue of substantiation or confirmation. If a friend, speaking with evident sincerity, tells you a cautionary tale, how can you judge the truth of that tale? There are many ways. You can check with other people who, your friend said, also underwent the same events or at least observed those events. Also, you can look for objective evidence, including physical evidence. And you can apply the rules of logic to weigh the plausibility of your friend's account. You can read up on the subjects your friend raised (if she was complaining about a Waldorf school, for instance, you can read articles and books about Waldorf education). You can study the pronouncements various experts have offered, pro and con. You can check testimony given by individuals who evidently had similar experiences elsewhere (in other Waldorf schools, near or far, in the same decade or in the past). You can consult reporters and educational officials. You can talk to Waldorf teachers and parents and students. You can do all these things and more. You can educate yourself.
Note that your investigation will almost surely involve hearing more first-person accounts. You might hope to avoid this. You might hope to find a magisterial, scholarly, objective study that will answer all your questions conclusively, beyond all doubt [3]. But life is not usually as neat as that. There may not be any such magisterial study available covering the questions you want answered. You may need to reach your conclusions based on something less than perfect, all-encompassing, utterly unarguable information. In the real world, you may need to weigh one side against the other, gathering information and opinions from a wide range of sources. You may need to hunt for evidence rather than expecting perfect answers to fall into your lap. And this almost surely means you will have to consider a lot of evidence that is offered by people based on their first-person experiences.
The question becomes, then, when can you trust firsthand accounts? There's no simple way to decide. But here is one guideline. If you hear a single story that paints a particular picture of something (e.g., a single "anecdotal" first-person account of serious problems in a particular Waldorf school), you probably should listen and consider, but you probably should not accept this story in and of itself. But what if you later hear three more similar accounts, about that particular Waldorf school or about other Waldorf schools? Or what if you hear five more accounts, or ten, or twenty...? At some point, these "anecdotes" may start to command respectful consideration — they may cease to appear as disconnected oddities. You may start to perceive patterns. And the more such accounts you gather (thirty accounts, forty...), the more you may come to conclude that the emerging patterns are difficult, if not impossible, to disregard. The patterns may not show you what always happens in Waldorf schools, or even what usually happens. But they may show what can happen in these schools — what, in fact, happens all too often in these schools.
So the "anecdotes" you find here at Waldorf Watch — reports by former Waldorf students, and parents, and teachers — may sway you, especially if this large array of personal accounts is consistent with the other sorts of evidence you have gathered. Such evidence should almost certainly include Rudolf Steiner's statements about Waldorf schools; and statements made by Steiner's followers, especially those who teach in Waldorf schools; and assessments made by scholars; and reports in the news media; and all the other sorts of information I have alluded to. This is the wide array of information I have assembled here at Waldorf Watch for your consideration. It is a large and varied assemblage, and going through it all may take you a good deal of time. But if you evaluate it carefully — weighing each piece of evidence separately, and weighing the total accumulation taken as a whole — I am confident the process will help steer you to the truth.
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For more tips on how to look for the truth about Waldorf education, see the section "Figuring It Out" on the page "Waldorf Now".
Endnotes
[1] For purposes of this discussion, I am treating the word "anecdote" more or less as defined, for instance, in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary: "[a] short account of a particular incident or event, especially of an interesting or amusing nature." For our discussion, I would add several clarifications. If an account is merely amusing, it is probably worthless as evidence. We should smile and move on. But accounts that are genuinely interesting — those that convey information or ideas that seem serious — these need to be examined with an open mind. And we should draw distinctions between first-person accounts, second-person accounts, third-person accounts, and so on. All of these types of narrative may be considered anecdotal, but they have different weights. A first-person account may carry a degree of authority, especially if you find the person involved to be generally reliable. Second- and third-person accounts (and so on) carry far less power — we are too far removed from the scene. Every anecdote (including every first-person account) needs to be treated with a degree of skepticism; we should always seek further substantiation. But some anecdotes may command more respectful consideration than others.
[2] E.g., the New Oxford American Dictionary defines "anecdote" as "an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay." If you accept this definition, then you should be loath to call anybody's firsthand testimony an "anecdote." You would be rejecting the testimony out of hand, and in the process you may be insulting the person giving the testimony. Remember, firsthand testimony is sometimes given in complete good faith. And sometimes it is true. You need to consider it and evaluate it in the light of any other, perhaps more convincing evidence you have gathered.
[3] Such a study of Waldorf schools, meant to accurately characterize the schools and their effects on students, would be difficult to undertake. The researchers should begin by acquainting themselves thoroughly with the underlying Waldorf belief system, Anthroposophy. They would then need to spread out across the world, visiting and inspecting in depth a wide range of schools situated in a large number of countries where different languages are spoken. (There are about 1,250 Waldorf schools in the world, in over 70 countries, as of early 2022.) Presumably a large number of researchers would need to be engaged. The greatest challenge might well be securing cooperation from all of the schools, given the longstanding Waldorf penchant for secrecy. [See "Secrets".]
— Roger Rawlings
[R.R.]