This is an article written for a Minnesota newspaper, Minnesota Parent. PLANS provided resource materials for this article. She sent it in three parts, as shown below. This article was eventually trashed due to pressure from the Waldorf community. I include her story as it unfolded. -- Debra Snell, PLANS President
My first visit to the Minnesota Waldorf School is a pleasant experience. Located on a busy thoroughfare near Rosedale, the inside of the school is a comfortable contrast to the chaos of the street. All the classrooms branch off of a sunny yellow-tiled hallway that holds a handful of small wooden tables topped with flower arrangements. In the fourth grade classroom there's lots of light and wood: long green curtains filter in the sun to I tour the school's gorgeous garden where herbs, and vegetables are planted, tended to, harvested, and in some cases, even prepared and eaten by the schoolchildren. Not only is the school a pleasant visual experience -- it feels good, smells good and sounds good too. Although the hallway is filled with children, there's no jostling or arguing. The children sing as they walk, voices loud and strong, arms swinging.
This is all part of the Waldorf philosophy where singing is just as important as science. At these expensive, private schools, learning isn't relegated to the head, but involves all the senses. Education isn't about memorizing statistics or charting graphs, it's about learning to think for one's self. Waldorf teachers are devoted to nurturing all aspects of an individual child: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. As an increasingly popular private school alternative, a Waldorf education promises to "call forth" enthusiasm for learning and work, respect for the world, and healthy self-awareness. Though I am here to critiique Waldorf schools, the staff is helpful, friendly and kind. What parent wouldn't want to send their kid to such a place?
But wait. Critics of Waldorf schools paint a less serene picture of these schools and I get a glimpse of this one at my final visit. After another friendly and productive meeting with Waldorf staff, I am given a letter outlining the inaccuracies in, and sensationalistic bent of, an early draft of this article. Initially, I appreciate their input; after all, I shared my work with them for that purpose. But the letter is copied to the Minnesota News Council, the professional organization overseeing journalist conduct. This body has the power to censure, to help break a professional reputation of magazine and writer. They agree to hold off on such a letter until the article is complete but I am thoroughly intimidated and consider not writing at all. What's the intent here, I wonder? A real zeal to promote outstanding journalism or something a bit more menacing -- a nudge, or even a threat, to make my critique a little tamer or abandon the project altogether?
It is this sort of heavy-handed measure that leads former Waldorf parent and founder of PLANS (People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools) Dan Dugan to call the Waldorf community "cult-like," maintaining that the "schools use deliberate deception about their purpose and organization to attract the children of outsiders." The California based PLANS' mission is to prevent any public funding of Waldorf schools and to educate people about what they see as the religious, racist, and scientifically unsound nature of these schools. Concerns over Waldorf schools take on a special significance because, according to a 1996 issue of Church & State, "[d]isputes over funding Waldorf schools account for the largest number of charter controversies." This issue brushed Minnesota, where in 1994 the St. Cloud School Board task force studied the veracity of a publicly funded Waldorf school, ultimately rejecting the idea.
Prepare now for a journey into the world of Waldorf and the surrounding debate, where a Waldorf school is either educational heaven or horror, depending upon who you ask. Be forewarned: our journey will present analysis-- interpretation, even! After a description of Waldorf schools and anthroposophy, you'll find an argument outlining some of the problems with the schools and their relationship to anthroposophy.
So, what exactly is a Waldorf school? What's anthroposophy? The best introduction to the controversy is to turn to the energetic thinker who started this whole converation, Rudolf Steiner.
Founder of the first Waldorf School in Germany in 1919, Steiner was an Austrian scholar who concerned himself with the sort of philosophical questions that leave the layperson reeling: what does it mean to be human? what is consciousness? what are the moral implications of what we think? His answers to these questions, and many more, are worked out in the many books he wrote and the 6,000 plus lectures he gave. He called his process for studying humanity anthroposophy : anthropos is Greek for human and sophia, for wisdom. Anthroposophy, something we'll delve into a bit later, is the philosophy that underlies Waldorf schools.
In 1919, Steiner was asked by factory owner Emil Molt to start a school for chidlren of his employees. A popular lecturer, Steiner had a large, attentive audience for his views on education and soon, schools based on insights and methods of anthroposophy were spreading throughout Europe. Today, there are over 400 Waldorf Schools in 23 countries. There are approximately 80 schools in the United States, including three in Minnesota: The Minnesota Waldorf School in Roseville, City of Lakes Waldorf School, and Watershed High School in Minneapolis. Minnesota is also home to nine Waldorf preschools and countless home schools where parents adapt Waldorf Education methods to their own needs.
What makes Waldorf methods so popular is the philosophy's respect for children, and emphasis on creating well-rounded people through use of art, music, and physical movement, as well as more traditional intellectual activities. A child attending a Waldorf school will have the same teacher from the first through eighth grades, meaning that another caring adult will spend countless hours with that student and come to know him or her in a way not possible in the traditional school setting. The curriculum and school day are structured to reflect the developmental needs of children.
This is where it gets tricky, because those developmental needs are defined primarily by knowledge taken from anthroposophy. While Minnesota Waldorf School administrator Sian Owen-Cruise states that the developmental processes outlined within Waldorf are supported by some traditional theories of child development, at the core they rely on Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical theories.
Steiner's extensive lifework can hardly be summarized in any single article, but here's a brief synopsis of how some of his theories work in a Waldorf school. Steiner identified three main stages of development from birth to twenty-one. The first is from birth until the "change of teeth," the time around seven when permanent teeth come in. During this stage, children learn largely through imitation; key developmental tasks are to foster a child's will (italics) and to show the child that the world is a good place. In Steiner's work, to will is to desire, to want to make things happen -- physically and metaphorically. Will is associated with the limbs and metabolic system.
The second stage of development runs from the change of teeth until sexual maturity and teaches a child through imagination, developing the feeling (in italics) aspect of the self, and demonstrating the world as a beautiful place. Feeling is identified with the heart and lungs. The third phase, from sexual maturity to twenty-one, focuses on thinking (italics) and deciding for one's self what "truth" is. During this phase, the adolescent's task is to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed as an adult. Thinking is linked to the brain and nervous system.
Some key trilogies support Waldorf pedagogy: willing, feeling, and thinking are functions of the soul and need to be nurtured in appropriate sequence. Goodness, beauty and truth are qualities surrounding the student, again, emphasized in order. Hand, heart, and head receive equal attention. All of these things build carefully on one another and intertwine to strengthen certain qualities at exactly the right time. If nurtured appropriately, the end result will be a healthy young adult who has access to the capacities of Intuition, Inspiration, and Imagination. Steiner spend a lot of time plotting out the nature of Intuition, Inspiration, and Imagination and for him, these words have more meaning -- are richer and denser -- than the ones we use in the course of a conversation. The best way to get a handle on what Steiner might mean by Intuition, Inspiration, and Imagination is that these capacities allow us to create and understand things that seem inexplicable, like great works of art or moments of spiritual understanding.
A typical day at a Waldorf school begins with a two hour main lesson. Students study one main lessons subject -- a physics project or history lesson, for example -- for three or four weeks, immersing themselves in the topic. Teachers present the information verbally. Students create their own textbooks, reframing the lesson under the direction of the teacher through drawing or writing. After the main lesson, the classes move on to a variety of other tasks: playing musical instruments, painting, learning German or French, knitting, gardening, and eurythmy-- a dancelike physical expression of how the soul may experience things like color and sound.
A Waldorf education is organic. Through observing and thinking, children learn about the world -- and themselves -- from the bottom up; they are encouraged to uncover, and respect, the fundamental essence of the world they study and the people in it. An eight-grader learning about computers, for example, would never be plopped down in front of a monitor and shown basic commands. Instead, a Waldorf approach might be: what are computers? how do they work? where did they originate and what are their social implications?
First-graders would see the evolution of a tiny seedling into an edible plant which they might prepare and share with classmates. The earth's seasons are studied and celebrated. Festivals mark the year and are celebrated by the school community. Life in a Waldorf school appears loving and joyful. The earth and people on it are celebrated as part of an innterconnected, living system. The end result, says Minnesota Waldorf School Enrollment Coordinator Kim Skobba, is respectful, well-rounded children who have a sense of personal and social integrity -- qualities she wants for her own children attend the school.
In 1994, the apparent success of Waldorf Education led a group of St. Cloud parents to explore starting a charter school in their city. This path to public funding had already been traveled elsewhere. The Urban Waldorf Program is based in Milwaukee and Sacramento is home to the John Morse Waldorf Methods Magnet Elementary School. In St. Cloud, after examining the issue, the Waldorf Public School Task Force issued a recommendation expressing "deep concern relative to the separation of Waldorf pedagogy and its philosophical roots of Anthroposophy. . . (which) virtually destroys the viability of establishing a successful Waldorf Program in this district."
Critics argue that while Waldorf schools claim to be non-sectarian, they are inseparable from anthroposophy,which is actually a religion. Other charges leveled against the schools is that they're inherently racist, and the curriculum is unsound at best, ridiculous and dangerous at worst. Let's outline each of these charges, starting with Anthroposophy as a religion.
Every Waldorf educator echoes AWSNA's Dave Alsop, who says, "Anthroposophy is never taught at a Waldorf school." An official at AWSNA describes anthroposophy as practiced by an adult as distinct from Waldorf pedagogy. But the methods used by, and philsophy behind, the schools are anthroposophical. Unfortunately, there's no handy guide outlining it's basic tenets since Steiner spent decades writing books and giving lectures that together define anthroposophy. What follows is a layperson's tour and the interested reader is encouraged to pursue the topic further.
Anthroposophy has two layers. First, it can be defined as a philosophy that encompasses all of Rudolf Steiner's thinking and second, it's defined by anthroposophists themselves as a way of life, a framework for understanding the world. As a way of life, anthroposophy calls for each of us to live fully and to think for ourselves. Remember those earlier trilogies? An anthroposophist who attended to all those qualities would be free from doctrine or dogma. Free to tap into what's transformative within each of us: capacities to move beyond our perceived limitations and allow us to know in a way that's hard to define. This knowing is what a writer means when she says that a story simply "came.". It's how someone paints that masterpiece or writes a musical score or finds a cure for AIDS. It's also the kind of knowing that allows us to say, "I just knew it," when we describe falling in love. It's using the whole self in a highly conscious way to understand. This version is appealing and liberatory.
But it's that first interpretation getting anthroposophy into trouble, the one that includes Rudolf Steiner, who said lots of wacky and even disturbing things. Where does one draw the line between Steiner's "wacky" work and his philosophy that outlines the anthroposophy described above? Of course, anthroposophists will emphasize that each of us must come to our own conclusions about Steiner. But, even this call to think for one's self is Steiner's call and we're swimming in an anthroposophical circle of "I'm being critical and selective regarding Steiner because Steiner said to be." To be an anthroposophist--no matter how selective of and critical -- is to be someone who is following the tenets of Rudolf Steiner.
And in his body of work, Steiner argues that the spiritual world exists. It's as real as this newspaper and fully awakened capacities of Intuition, Inspiration, and Imagination will allow us to experience and study this world just as we might anything in the physical world. In fact, the spiritual world must be studied. As long as humanity is overlooking this part of reality, the knowledge we're producing falls short. Theories in physics, history or an analysis of art are only jobs part done until we as species and individual are able to know spiritually. We can see the spiritual world. All we have to do, in the simplest sense, is to learn how to observe it. This is related to the emphasis on observation and the importance of sensory experience in Waldorf schools. Children learn through all their senses, engage in exercises (like Eurythmy and painting) that are contemplative and meditative. These are early steps toward developing Intuition, Imagination and Inspiration, the capacities enabling us to experience the spiritual world. While this might not be too big of a stretch for people inclined to believe in a spiritual life, Steiner's cosmology gets a bit murkier as we plod on.
Drawing from Christianity, Hinduism, and Zorastrianism (an ancient Persian religion), Steiner created a complex system featuring a sun god, reincarnation, and battles between the forces of light and darkness. Dugan sums up Steiner's doctrine as a mix of different religions fit into "the geocentric cosomology of medieval Europe, where humanity is positioned in a cosmic hierarchy below nine classes of supernatural beings. The occultist doctrine of correspondences, expressed in the formula 'as above, so below,' is the unifying principle. Seven planets correspond to seven epochs of history, twelve constellations of the zodiac to parts of the body, four elements to human temperaments, and so on, in elaborate detail. These magical correspondences describe the universe as one living spiritual web of being."
According to Dugan, "There are three levels of religious confession in Anthroposophy. On the surface they will tell you it's a non-sectarian philsophy. The next level down, in a majority Christian culture, they'll tell you it's based in non-sectarian Christianity. On the third, intimate level, it's a sect of occultism." PLANS maintains that Steiner's "mystical world is deeply pessimistic. He foretold, among other things, the reincarnation of the dark god Ahriman early in the 21st century." Lucifer, who represents light, is a key firgure in this religious world.
Trigger words like Lucifer and occult constitute solid attention-getting strategy, and PLANS is adept at getting it's anti-Waldorf message out. In a Free Inquiry article, the group interpreted one drawing of a dancer in a Waldorf school as "a depiction of a sign for the sun god, the swastika." At first glance, dancer to swastika seems like a big stretch and the sort of thing that makes AWSNA's Agaf Dancy ask why PLANS creates a dark side to Waldorf that actually doesn't exist. But ask PLANS members and they will tell you that the Waldorf community is counting on us limiting our vision to that first glance-- scratch the surface and you'll find a disturbing doctrine.
One St. Paul couple who explored the possibility of a Waldorf education for their daughters, definitely felt the schools' emphasis on spirituality was certainly "dogmatic." The parents, who prefer not to be identified, noted that Waldorf might be right for other people, but for them enrolling their kids was akin to "joining a church." It's this line between anthroposphy and religion that helped lead the St. Cloud Task Force to reject the idea of a charter school in their district, feeling that the debate between seperation of church and state would continually emerge.
Members of the Waldorf community themselves are equally opposed to public funding, once again echoing a Steiner sentiment. Quoted by Rob Boston in Church & State is Steiner's assertion that he doesn't " believe that a free school could be founded with state subsidies, which in themselves imply supervision by inspectors from the educational authorities." Steiner advocated a social structure called "TheThreefold Social Organism" that kept clear demarcations between education and government. In 1996, AWSNA issued a position statement noting that Waldorf is a trademark name and "reserved for independent schools which meet the membership standards established by AWSNA." The only two public schools in country, mentioned earlier in this article, were established before AWSNA took this position. In a phone interview, Dave Alsop reflected Waldorf's commitment to children when he said that the association tries to be helpful as possible to people interested in Waldorf pedagogy--a pedagogy Waldorf folks see as a soul-saving educational alternative. But is Waldorf Education really a good alternative? Arguing that it isn't, we'll return to that problematic definition of anthroposophy, the one that includes the prolific Steiner and look at the question of racism.
Throughout his work, dozens of anti-Semetic and generally racist statements appear. In Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy, he wrote that "the representative people for the development of the conscious soul, hence for what matters particularly in our age, is the Anglo-saxon." In an oft-quoted paragraph from Health and Illness, Steiner writes "If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will beomc increasingly dense. . . [b]londe hair actually bestows intelligence . . . [b]rown and dark-haired people drive the substances into their eyes and hair that the fair people retain in their brains." The "organization" of white people "predispose" them towards developing the soul. "The mixing of different bloods obscured the ancient wisdom more and more," he writes in The Gospel of St. John and Its Relation to Other Gospels. He argues that "we're still involved in this process of deterioration." Steiner has written that if Lucifer and Ahriman (another evil figure) hadn't interfered and "preserved older racial forms" the "perfect, beautiful type of human being" featured in ancient Greek artwork would have developed.
Point out Steiner's racism to Minnesota Waldorf School administrator Sian Owen-Cruise and she won't disagree, noting that many influential people in Steiner's time were quite public with opinions that today we recognize as racist. "Remember the historical context in which he was writing. We do not agree with him, but it's important to remember that he was the product of a particular era." Owen-Cruise points out a more important point of the discussion of racism and anthropsophy. She argues that blindly accepting Steiner's positions on race is exactly the opposite of what anthroposophy calls for. Anthroposophy, she explains, is a constantly evolving method for living and knowing -- not a stagnant doctrine. Instead of adhering to someone else's -- even Steiner's -- racial views, an anthroposophist would use all methods available in order to carefully examine those views and make his or her own conclusions.
As for the complaint that Waldorf schools serve mostly white students Owen-Cruise feels strongly that this problem is more about the socio-economic status of people of color than it is about the Waldorf philosophy. These schools are expensive. Tuition for a third-grader at City of Lakes school is $5,956; parents of a half-time kindegarten student at Minnesota Waldorf School pay $4,175. "The economic structure of society," she says, is such that an expensive private education is out of the question for many people. Owen-Cruise also points out that "in order to even consider non-public education, most families must have a history that makes this an option." Children of color constitute about 10% of the population at Roseville's Minnesota Waldorf School, a statistic pretty consistent with most suburban public schools. More significantly, Owen-Cruise maintains, is the school's commitment to establishingeconomic diversity. This year, 32% of students receive tuition assistance.
Even if a Waldorf school were free Genni Goschke still wouldn't send her son, who is bi-racial. The curriculcum, Goshke says, is "one giant Nordic myth," referring to the school's use of European fairy tales, fables, and myths as a key part of the curriculum. Joseph Campbell's work, among others, is used to guide teacher intrepretations of these tales and the task is to draw out archetypal truths for students.
The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, published by the Rudolf Steiner College Press is inarguably dominated by European tales. The author offers "helpful hints" that intrepret tales like "The Golden Goose" and "Little Red Riding Hood." In the latter, the wolf represents the "dark forces of materialism" and the little girl "the ego-conscious soul." It's not dinner when the rescued Red Riding Hood breaks bread with her Grandmother, it's holy communion. Nordic myths with a spiritual twist?
Minnesota Waldorf School teacher David Maier points out that he teaches a book of African folk tales and that the curriculum takes from a diverse range of peoples. Teacher Mary Lou Bala says that "children are given the best from each culture." She goes on to explain that the myths or tales are selected for their ability to reflect certain standards back to the children. Her colleague Marjorie Maier notes that the stories from around the world all "hold goodness children can see in themselves." A Waldorf handout written by Henry Barnes gives us a glimpse of the stories' use when he describes them as speaking "truth in parables and pictures."
Who's truth? Goodness, beauty and truth are cornerstones of Waldorf, but these qualities are arguably defined by culture. Who's culture? Definitions by writers like Joseph Campbell reflect a decidedly white European orientation. In his own work, Steiner tosses lots of appreciative nods to the ancient Greeks. For Steiner, Eurocentric ideals of goodness, beauty and truth become universal ideals. What's "good" in the U.S. might not be in other parts of the globe and beauty, as we all know, is in the eye of the beholder. A certain reverence toward Greek culture abounds in the Western world. However, in Steiner's work, reverence seems less benign when it's coupled with Steiner's writings on race, particularly those that privilege the "great Aryan Race."
Let's look at that final charge, that the curriculm in Waldorf schools is unsound. The big bad wolf as the dark force of materialism? That's just the beginning. A major complaint of Waldorf critic's is that the science taught at the schools is simply incorrect.
Let's start with a word from Steiner to see how his understanding of science helped shape his educational theories. In A Modern Art of Education he's describing blood corpuscles in the human body. "Until about the twenty-first year, the nature of these blood corpuscles is such that their gravity preponderates. From the twenty-first year onwards, the being of man receives an upward impulse from below . . . From the twenty-first year he sets the sole of his foot on earth otherwise than he did before. This, indeed, is not known to-day but is a fact of fundamental importance for the understanding of the human being so far as education is concerned."
Before age twenty-one, a person is "strongly subject to earthly gravity," something one struggles with until age twenty-one when the upward surge occurs. The streams of forces through the human body are "an anthroposophical truth of great significance--fundamentally significant, indeed, for the whole of education." He then goes on talk more about these forces in the context of the three main phases of development outlined earlier in this article.
So gravity works differently on my toddler than on me and this is significant to education? Not only is this unsound science, but it also makes one wonder whether Steiner's scientific theories can ever really be seperated from his educational ones. Sian Owen-Cruise argues that Waldorf schools are selective about Steiner's work; just as Aristotelian logic may be taught, but not Aristotelian science. But the distinction doesn't seem so clear cut. As a Waldorf information sheet states, at their schools, "teaching is regarded as an art as well as a science." A Waldorf school may choose not to "teach" Steiner's science but their teaching methods and philosophies are Steiner's science.
Steiner's more explicitly scientific theories, like his work on evolution, are another major point of contention between Waldorf critics and the schools. In Steiner's theory of evolution, humans didn't evolve from animals. It's sort of the other way around: animals represent cast off human soul forces. According to a memo written by Christina Dyer, General Consul for the San Diego Unified School District, Steiner's analysis of evolution is among his theories "which may be criticized as scientifically unsustainable." Folks at the Minnesota Waldorf School defer the question of evolution because it's a topic reserved for high school and their school serves kindegarten through eighth grade. When asked how evolution is taught at Minneapolis Watershed High School, teacher Johanna Garcia says that "all" theories of evolution are taught and that students are free to come to their own conclusions about them.
But are students at Waldorf schools truly encouraged to think for themselves? After all, anthroposophists insist that the philosophy fundamentally requires critical thinking. Yet independent thinking appears to be discouraged in Audrey McAllen's book, Sleep, An Unobserved Element in Education, a text used in a training school for Waldorf teachers. McAllen outlines a painting exercise in which the "colour sequence works as a cleansing re-orientation of soul." She presents meticulous instruction for teachers: what colors should be used and how, stroking paintbrush from left to right, etc. When a "vermillion wash" enters the scene, McAllen instructs teachers that, "[n]othing is said about the quality of the vermillion red or its effect on the soul" to the student. Within the sytem of anthroposophy, the color has symbolic significance and the entire exercise is ripe wipe with meaning, but the student is guided unaware of this. McAllen maps out a precise picture of communication between student and teacher showing how to precisely steer the student toward a desired outcome.
Ron Miller, founder of (put in italics) Holistic Education Review is also a satisfied parent of a Waldorf student. Nonethless, he wonders in AWSNA's Renewal "whether [Waldorf teachers] could nourish him even more by not choreographing his every move and expecting quite so much imitation and recitation." A Waldorf teacher, he notes, is "solidly in command of students' attention, moment after moment, after moment; children have little opportunity to engage in independent activites or conversations; younger children, in particular are not encouraged to question the teacher but to imitate what he or she models." In the example from Sleep, we see an activity that certainly doesn't promote independent thinking; in fact, the exercise's success relies upon the teacher carefully orchestrating the student. More significantly, exactly what elements of anthroposophy underlie a Waldorf activity that requires imitation and recitation?
Waldorf schools are neatly structured. Subjects are introduced during the appropriate developmental time for the student, the times marked by the entrance of permanent teeth and sexual maturity, as outlined earlier in this article. Teachers are a strong classroom force, interpretors of information, role model and more. Daily activities and curriculum are designed to draw out specific qualities in the student at exactly the right time. According to Waldorf Education, this all encompassing system helps the student grow into a healthy adult, free of doctrine or dogma, capable of thinking for one's self. But is such a tightly wound system the best path towards independent thinking? Is critical thinking truly encouraged in an educational system that chooses not to teach students about anthroposophy as a distinct subject but instead, teaches anthroposophy silently by immersing the student in it?
Waldorf educators state clearly that anthroposophy does not equate Waldorf. There's a national Anthroposophic Society that exists seperately from Waldorf schools. There are anthroposphic movements in agriculture, economics, and medicine. Owen-Cruise uses this analogy to explain the relationship between anthroposophy and Waldorf. Just as Christianity can be traced to our court system as the overaching philosophy that guides our impulses, so can anthroposophy be traced to Waldorf Schools.
It sounds good but the analogy doesn't work when carried further. Lawyers and judges aren't training specifically in "Christianity," but Waldorf teachers are trained in anthroposophy.
A quick run through the 1998-99 Rudolf Steiner College catalog may help shed further light on this. A college that trains teachers, including Waldorf teachers, their mission statement says that the college was "founded on the spiritual scienctific work of Rudolf Steiner" and has as "a major focus the preparation and certification of teachers for vocatoiins in Waldorf education." Some course options? "Destiny and Thresholds of the United States," "Karma and Reincarnation," "Threefold Social Order," These titles reflect anthroposphical concepts. A teacher seeking admission to some specialization programs must have completed the college's Foundation Year or "evaluated equivalent study of Anthroposophy and the arts."
What did Steiner say about the relationship of anthroposophy and Waldorf? In A Modern Art of Education he calls Waldorf a school for humanity, " an educational institution arising on a social basis, that seeks to found the whole spirit and method of its teaching upon Anthroposophy. It was not in the remotest a question, however, of founding an 'anthroposophical' school." Spirit and method are founded on anthroposophy, but it's not an anthroposophical school? Anthroposophy gets even more evasive when Steiner says that it can "at all times efface itself" and is "able to institute a school on universal-human principles." Anthroposophy disappears once again and instead we have universal human principles in it's place.
So, anthroposophy is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Look for it carefully and it disappears, like the air we breathe -- invisible, always present, and fundamental for life. What definition of Anthroposophy do we use when we look at a Waldorf school -- the one that includes the totality of Steiner's anthroposophical writings or the one that appears to be a liberatory, spiritual approach to life? Can a definitive distinction be made between these definitions? Are these schools so wary of critique because of these very questions? Head to the library, browse the internet and call your local Waldorf school. Gather the facts about anthroposophy and Waldorf. And, in the spirit of anthroposophy, draw your own conclusions.
November 24, 1998
Dan and Debra,
Just wanted to update you on the Waldorf article here in Minnesota. Looks like the Waldorf folks have mobilized effectively. My editor has been bombarded with phone calls from Waldorf parents and administrators; it appears the parents of all students in the two Waldorf schools locally have received letters about the impending publication of an article and a section of the article I shared with Waldorf administrators has been copied many, many times and widely distributed -- including to the Minnesota News Council and parents of Waldorf kids.
Minnesota Parent has decided not to print the article in it's January issue. The magazine's lawyers have gone through it with a fine tooth comb and recommended lots of editing (that I haven't yet seen) since they feel a lawsuit is a realistic possibility. My editor and I spoke about this today; until then I was unaware of what was happening. The editor's going to take the weekend to think about what to do next -- should we publish an article at all? should it be more pro and con? do we write about this process? etc.
In the meantime, she's (editor) sending a copy of the article to a magazine called City Pages, which is one of the largest local magazines. Minnesota Parent has a readership of about 120,000 -- I'd imagine City Pages is double or triple that. The City Pages and Minnesota Parent are owned by the same publishing company and she feels maybe that CP is more likely to take on the controversy and to write about the Waldorf community's response to the article, etc.
To say I'm disheartened is an enormous understatement. While we're deciding what to do, I have the editor's permission to shop the story to other places, so I'm going to make a few phone calls and see if we can't get this out somewhere, somehow. I am simply sickened by this and hope I can find a venue to get this story out -- especially to people in Minnesota where the debate has never surfaced to the extent it has in California. I also don't want to water it down it all since I think I've barely scratched the surface of the troubles with these schools as it is. Frankly, at this point I don't care if they sue, I'm so angry.
Mary