Introduction

Abstract

This chapter begins by describing how the first Waldorf school came about in Stuttgart in 1919, and the intentions behind it. The development of this alternative educational impulse into a worldwide movement is described shortly. In mainstream media today, Rudolf Steiner’s ideas in general, as well as in education, are often presented as controversial, because being perceived as un- or anti-scientific, mythological, or even racist. The misunderstandings behind these allegations are pointed out. The similarities and differences between Waldorf education and progressivism, or Reformpädagogik, are shortly discussed. Some reasons for the relative lack of academic research on Waldorf education are pointed out, and some examples of the reception of Steiner’s educational and philosophical ideas are given. Finally, there is an overview of the following chapters of the book.

1.1 The Waldorf School Movement: Facts and Fiction

The first Waldorf school started in 1919 in Stuttgart. It came about because the owner of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Emil Molt, asked Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925)—at that time the leader of the Anthroposophical Society (AS)—about advice for starting a school for the children of the workers in his factory.¹ Molt had realised that the German school system at that time would provide no future possibilities for these children. Higher education was costly and segregated. Girls and boys went to separate schools, and the different social classes never met in a common education. Steiner’s ideas for education were different and radical for his time, and Molt wished to contribute to their realisation. Negotiations were started with the social democratic government of Württemberg, who seemed not to mind that a capitalist wished to pay for a comprehensive school for children of all social classes. In the autumn of 1919, the school started with 256 children enrolled. About 75% of them were children of the employees of the factory, and the rest came primarily from anthroposophical families in Stuttgart. Seven years later, the school had over a thousand students and was one of the largest in Stuttgart (Ullrich 2008). In the UK, the first Waldorf or Steiner school was the Michael Hall school in East Sussex, established in 1925, as a result of Rudolf Steiner’s lecture tour on education in England in 1922. Other countries, in which at least one Waldorf school was established already in the 1920s or 1930s, are Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, USA and Argentine.

In 1939, the number of German Waldorf schools had grown to 25.² After the end of WW2, there was a boom of new schools in Germany, and the number increased from 6 in 1945 to 209 in 2008, encompassing more than 80,000 students (Randoll 2010). But the worldwide expansion of Waldorf education really took off in the latter decades of the twentieth century. In 1980, the number of schools in the world was less than 300; in 1990, it was 600; and in 2015, it was over a thousand.³ In the same period, the number of countries harbouring Waldorf schools doubled from about 20–40 between 1980 and 1990, and in 2015, the number had grown to nearly 70. At present, there are Waldorf schools not only in Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world, but also in Africa, Asia and South America. In addition, there are the Waldorf Kindergartens or preschools, also in all parts of the world. Waldorf education is certainly a worldwide educational movement.

From its very start, Steiner made it clear that the school was not intended for a particular class of people, or ethnic group. It was to be a school for boys and girls being educated together for 12 years (an uncommon thing in those days) and for children of all social classes. There was to be no hierarchical distinctions between teachers, gender based or otherwise, and it was not to be a school only for the children of members of the anthroposophical movement, nor was it to teach the anthroposophical worldview. It was to be directed towards that which is universally human in all people, regardless of ethnicity, class, religion or gender. It was to be a school for humanity, a Menschheitsschule (Steiner 1986 [GA 307], p. 15).⁴

In present times, such ideas and intentions are often looked upon with sceptical eyes. Can anyone claim to know what is ‘universally human’? Isn’t the very idea of a universal human essence just a social construction, arising out of different social, cultural and ideological conditions, and therefore, by its very nature, not universal at all, but relative and contingent? Furthermore, looking at the students of Waldorf schools almost all over the world, the majority come from well-educated middle-class families, and many of the parents are members of the Anthroposophical Society or adhere to specific spiritual views and values. It may appear to be a school for ‘some’, not for all people (see Chap. 7).

When Waldorf schools are reported on in media, it is nowadays often done with a comment to the effect that the underlying ideas are controversial. This often refers to commonly perceived or alleged aspects of Steiner’s thought, such as that it is unscientific and ‘mythical’ and that it contains racist views. Regarding the first point, Steiner’s thinking is certainly not scientific in the mainstream sense of the term, but ‘science’ is a human or social construction. Since Kuhn (1977), we know that there are historical shifts in the paradigms of science; therefore, one can hardly claim that the nature of science is ‘given’ by some objective, non-human authority, natural or otherwise. Nor would the possible consensus of all scientists about the nature of science constitute anything but a historical contingency. Steiner himself argued that the knowledge of the world and of the human being that he presented in his anthroposophy is a spiritual science and that the underlying research is as rigorous and objective as natural science. It differs only in the means and methods used and in the underlying epistemological principles. A comprehensive presentation of Steiner’s reasoning in this respect, and its relation to modern philosophies of science and knowledge, is given by Majorek (2002, 2010, 2015), who even argues that Steiner’s criteria for objectivity are stricter and more demanding than those commonly applied in mainstream science.

As for racism, Steiner is not the only pre-Nazi ‘great thinker’ who—rightly or not—has been accused of harbouring such ideas. It is also a well-known fact that talking and writing about the differences between races was not as sensitive an issue then, as it is today. Steiner did say things about specific racial differences (most of them found in transcribed lectures), but he never consistently maintained the universal supremacy of the white, Caucasian race, nor did he argue that other races should be denied human rights (cf. Rose 2013; Dahlin 2014). In a few cases, however, the accusations of racism led to the formation of commissions with the task of investigating their validity. One such commission was appointed in the Netherlands because of the appearance of media publications about Steiner’s supposedly racial doctrine. Some people feared that this might influence the teaching in Waldorf schools. The commission’s extensive study was published in 2000 and concluded that of the discussed 245 quotes from Steiner, 16 were of such nature that as isolated statements, they would violate the present-day well-developed and highly sensitive Dutch law on discrimination. In the conclusion, the commission writes:

The number of pages with statements that can be experienced as discriminatory today is less than 0.05% of the 89,000 pages of Rudolf Steiner’s collected works. Anthroposophy and social Darwinism are diametrically opposed to each other. Suggestions that racism is inherent in Anthroposophy, or that conceptually Steiner helped prepare the way for the holocaust, have been proven categorically incorrect. The Commission has the distinct impression that, compared with other nineteenth and pre-World War II twentieth-century authors, such as Hegel or Albert Schweitzer, Rudolf Steiner has become the victim of ‘selective indignation’.⁵

A few words directly quoted from one of Steiner’s lectures may prove the point:

[A] person who today speaks about the ideal of race, nation or tribe, he speaks of degenerating impulses of humanity […] because through nothing will humanity bring itself more into decay, than if the ideals of races, nations and blood were to continue. (Steiner 1999 [GA 177], p. 220; my transl.)

Calling Waldorf schools, or their underlying ideas, controversial may also hint at the Waldorf movement as being sectarian in nature. The reason for this would be that many of its students come from families with a so-called anthroposophical lifestyle. This involves for instance the prohibition for children to watch TV; a general resistance to media technology; the preference for clothes of pure wool and for bio-dynamically grown food products; and the resistance to vaccinations for child diseases. However, if this is perceived as controversial, it is mostly because it seems odd and not in line with the ‘modern way of life’. Recent research even hints at the possibility that this alternative lifestyle is healthier for children, protecting them from the development of allergies, at least up to five years of age (Swarz 2014). As for watching TV, it has been found that the so-called mirror neurons are much less activated in watching media pictures than by being in the presence of real persons (Speck 2009, p. 141). By looking a lot on media pictures of human beings speaking and acting, the brain may develop the habit of seeing other people while less or no simultaneous activation of mirror neurons occurs, thereby reducing the neurological basis for empathy and communication (for a general discussion of research indicating harmful effects of TV on children, see Sigman 2007; Christakis 2009).

1.2 Steiner and Progressivism

Ideas for educational reform have been presented from time to time in Western history since Plato. In the modern era, J.A. Comenius (1592–1670), J. Rousseau (1712–1778) and J.H. Pestalozzi (1746–1827) count as prominent heralds of new educational ideas and practices. One central notion common to these thinkers was that education must be based on an understanding of child nature as different from that of adults. The Romantic idea of childhood added a further emphasis on this idea (Ullrich 1999, p. 107f; Dahlin 2013a). Another central notion was the important role of education as a force for social change. These views were taken up and further developed towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, giving rise to a movement for educational reform called progressivism in Anglo-Saxon countries and Reformpädagogik in Germany (Scheibe 1971). It had various manifestations both in Europe and the in USA.⁶ As part of civil society, it was inspired by different personalities with different points of view; nevertheless, there were some common overriding themes. One was the criticism of mainstream education as too intellectualistic and not considering the whole human being (Pestalozzi’s ‘head, heart and hand’). Another was the disregard of the needs and interests of the child, and the lack of understanding of children’s development. Schools were criticised for being disciplinary institutions based on formal authority and punishments, and forms of instruction for being one-sidedly frontal with children as mere passive receivers (Scheibe 1971; Skiera 2003).

On a surface level, Steiner shared most of these ideas, the one possible exception being that he put teachers in the centre of the classroom. But he demanded that they be enthusiastic and inspiring for their children, giving full reign to imaginative and aesthetic forms of (re-)presentation. Steiner also considered education as a force for social change (more about this in Chap. 7). Nevertheless, he was critical of most forms of Reformpädaogik, because they did not have a deep enough understanding of the nature of the human being and children’s development. In other words, they lacked a spiritual educational anthropology, which, for Steiner, was the sine qua non of all education. Therefore, even if the Waldorf school can be seen as part of the general movement for educational (and social) reform from a superficial point of view, when looking more carefully at the conceptual foundations of its practices, it is something quite unique.

1.3 Research on Waldorf Education and the Reception of Steiner’s Educational and Philosophical Ideas

There is a great amount of secondary literature on Waldorf education, which often have an ‘immanent hermeneutic’ approach to Steiner’s educational texts and lectures. But systematic empirical research on Waldorf education is relatively scarce, considering that Waldorf schools have existed for many decades in many different parts of the world. There are several reasons for this. One probable reason is that the foundations of Waldorf education are commonly perceived as unscientific, as noted above. Many academic researchers therefore hesitate to get involved in studies of Waldorf schools, because it may hamper their future career. Another reason is that within the Waldorf education movement itself, there are—or have been until recently—very few people with a proficient research competence in the field of educational science (Randoll 2010).

As for the secondary literature, its immanent hermeneutics unfortunately often results in a kind of discourse that addresses itself to those who are already in tune with the underlying ways of thinking. As Gidley (2010) remarks, many of these texts appear anachronistic to academics and mainstream teachers and so become an obstacle to mutual understanding and dialogue. In 2008, the Rudolf Steiner Schools Association of Australia therefore funded a research project to investigate the relationships between Steiner pedagogy and related twenty-first century academic discourses; see Gidley (2010) for a report on this project.⁷

Other difficulties that partly overlap with those already mentioned are described by Wiehl (2015, p. 244). For one thing, teachers in Waldorf schools look primarily to Steiner’s practical recommendations regarding content and teaching methods. These tend to become a tradition handed over orally and in curriculum and syllabus plans, without contact with and relating to mainstream educational research and practice. Another reason is that there is still no basic, systematic, academic work accounting for the theoretical grounds of Waldorf education in an open, unprejudiced and impartial way, relating it to other streams of educational thought and practice. A third reason is that part of the foundations of Waldorf education are the research methods of anthroposophy, the understanding of which also need philosophical, epistemological and spiritual research. Attempts at introducing these to the general public usually meet with rejection due to the differences in worldviews.

The few academic researchers that do study and discuss Steiner’s educational ideas or Waldorf schools often do so on the basis of their own preconceptions about anthroposophy or other matters. An obvious example is Prange (2000), who sets out to demonstrate that Waldorf schools are nothing but schools for producing future anthroposophists. Another, less extreme example is Helsper et al. (2007), who see the idea of authority in Waldorf education as a reflexive demodernisation (reflexiver Entmodernisierung) and Waldorf schools as pedagogical anti-worlds (pädagogische Gegenwelten) within the framework of antinomies of modernisation (Modernisierungs-antinomien). Examples of the latter are demands of autonomy and of self-discipline aimed towards the development of competencies and capacities in ever earlier ages, or the plurality of lifestyles and possible biographical trajectories, and the freedom to choose among them. Such a perspective may to some extent explain why people choose to put their children in Waldorf schools, but it does not capture the basic intentions and ideas of Waldorf education.

A third example is Ullrich (1994), who on UNESCO’s initiative investigated Waldorf education and tried to place it within the context of academic educational theories and perspectives. Ullrich found, however, that Steiner’s educational thinking cannot be placed within any established academic field or discipline. It is not ethical–philosophical (like Kant or Herbart), nor sociological (like Dürkheim), nor is it empirical–psychological (like Piaget). His conclusion is that Waldorf educational discourse is derived from anthroposophical ‘neo-mythology’ and that it is not conceptual but mainly metaphorical character. In addition, however, he notes that Waldorf schools are pedagogically innovative and that former Waldorf students are often successful in their lives (more about this is Chap. 7). This he considers as somewhat surprising, as he perceives the basic principles as rigid and dogmatic. Regarding Waldorf education, there seems to be a paradox of acceptance of practice while being ignorant of the underlying theory, Ullrich notes (but isn’t this paradox rather common in modern techno-based society?). In more recent works, Ullrich (2008, 2015) gives more extensive accounts of Waldorf education—including its epistemological and philosophical grounds—and more differentiated and sympathetic judgments of its ideas and practices. Still, however, he misrepresents or misinterprets important aspects of Steiner’s philosophical thinking and holds on to his previous conclusion that Steiner’s educational psychology is prescientific and anachronistic. But it would lead too far to go into this issue here; for a discussion of Ullrich’s misapprehensions, see Schmelzer (2016) and Dahlin (2013b).

Critics like Ullrich and others often portray Steiner as authoritarian in his knowledge claims and see this as the cause for a certain resistance among Waldorf teachers to further research and development. The Waldorf school movement is therefore viewed as antidemocratic, as if holding on to a Platonic ideal of Philosopher-Kings. In his lectures to teachers and for members of the Anthroposophical Society (AS), Steiner used expressions like ‘As spiritual science has demonstrated…’ or ‘As we know from supersensory research…’. Perhaps this is a justifiable way of talking in such situations, but one could wish that he had used more moderate expressions. On the other hand, Steiner probably counted on the intelligence of his listeners that they would understand the position from which he spoke. This position is not dogmatic in the usual sense, because Steiner had a strongly developed Sprachskepsis (cf. Kiersch 2010). He was acutely aware of the hazards involved in translating his spiritual insights into ordinary language, which—as he often remarked—is not created for speaking about phenomena of the spiritual world, but only about mundane facts. Ullrich’s remark on the metaphorical character of Steiner’s discourse is therefore relevant, but one must realise that even ordinary language is to a large extent metaphorical, except that we have become so used to the metaphors that we take them literally. To express one’s understanding of spiritual facts requires that language itself becomes alive, imaginative and plastic. The same goes for thinking and the concepts that are used. In a dogmatic stance, however, words themselves are taken as literal and absolute truths. This was not Steiner’s stance. Even though he never spoke or wrote something he did not consider true, he never wanted to influence the judgement of his listeners. In other words, his attitude was something like ‘this is what I have recognised as the facts of the case; it is not the words I use but what they point to that is essential; whether you believe it or not, and what conclusions you draw, is up to you’.

However, not all academic studies of Waldorf education start with a critical or sceptical approach. Some are more open minded and even sympathetic.⁸ A few examples are Oberski (2006), who studies how Waldorf students ‘learn to think’, and Oberski (2011) who focus on Steiner’s concept of freedom as a basis for spiritual education. Nielsen (2006) reports an ethnographic study of an Australian Waldorf class, with a special focus on the role of imagination in teaching. The work of Nobel (1996) focuses on the concept of art and the role of artistic practices in Waldorf education, pointing to its roots in the ideas of Goethe and Schiller. Finally, there is the evaluative study of English Waldorf schools by Woods et al. (2005; see also Ashley 2009), which I will discuss more extensively in Chap. 7. In that chapter, I will also present other empirical studies of an evaluative nature.

In addition to the above, there are many master and Ph.D. theses, as well as other small-scale studies, from different parts of the world, dealing with Waldorf schools and their ideational foundations. It is, however, impossible to give a comprehensive overview of all these works here.⁹

Although marginal, an academic interest in Waldorf education and its underlying ideas has existed for quite some time, probably because Waldorf schools have been a visible part of society and from time to time have been negotiating with state educational authorities for many decades. Things are different when it comes to Steiner’s philosophical works. Here, the academic interest is rather recent, but shows signs of growing. One reason for this may be the emergence of post-structural philosophy and deconstructionism. Post-structural philosophy can be characterised as a kind of thinking that is utterly sensitive to what lies beyond the horizons of the known and the knowable, but which also constantly disrupts attempts to capture reality in precise definitions and conceptual systems. Thus, Pattison (2005) finds an interesting dialogical potential between post-structural philosophy, on the one hand, and Steiner’s philosophy, on the other hand. Post-structuralists tend to see the transcendence of philosophy as leading to ‘acts of unknowing’ beyond the limits of language and cognition, whereas for Steiner such experiences are often the stirrings of new or hidden cognitive capacities (ibid., p. xv). For instance, for Levinas (1999), ethics is the primary philosophy, not ontology or metaphysics (which is the classical view). Ethics, according to Levinas, involves the recognition of the impossibility to know the Other, my fellow human being. The Other is beyond knowledge, beyond our conceptions. Rudolf Steiner, on the other hand, said that we must learn to understand the real person behind the ghost-like conceptions of human nature that natural science tends to give us. To do this, we need to develop new organs of perception, organs whose potentiality for development lies dormant in all of us. The development of these organs can be speeded up by certain exercises and ways of life, but it also to some extent takes place naturally and spontaneously in the process of human history. Steiner’s educational thinking can be taken as a way to prepare for this future development of human consciousness (cf. Gidley 2009). However, it is possible to see the stirrings of such developments within various present cultural expressions, of which post-structural philosophy may be one example. Examples of English and German works on Steiner’s philosophy, critical as well as sympathetic, are Welburn (2004), Schickler (2005), Sijmons (2008), Dahlin (2009), Traub (2011), Sparby (2016) and Eftestøl (2013).

1.4 About This Book and the Following Chapters

Steiner’s written works and transcribed lectures are published as his collected works (Gesamtausgabe, GA) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag in Dornach, Switzerland. The GA contains 354 volumes (I use the expression ‘GA’ in deference to the fact that it is a publication in German). The volumes on education comprise GA 293–311, consisting of about 3800 pages, but Steiner occasionally touches on educational issues in other parts of the GA also.¹⁰ Even if the same or similar themes are often repeated in these texts, they are also taken up from different points of view or contextualised in various ways. It is obviously impossible to give a comprehensive account of all this material in a small book like this. The difficulty is illustrated by the recent, very diligent work of Angelika Wiehl (2015), who titles her work a propedeutic to the teaching methods of Waldorf education—and the book contains over 250 pages of very dense text.

The following chapters will deal with what in my view are the essential aspects of Waldorf education, including a very short sketch of part of Steiner’s biography in Chap. 2 and examples of evaluative empirical research in Chap. 7. I try to consider Steiner’s childhood, youth and early adulthood from an educational point of view, noting the various influences that—probably—informed his educational thinking. Chapter 3 takes up important themes of his philosophical work, themes that are also relevant for education. Chapter 4 goes into the ideas of anthroposophy, focusing on the anthroposophical understanding of human nature and development, especially that of children. Some people want to make a clear distinction between Steiner’s philosophical and anthroposophical works, claiming that there is an essential difference between them (for inst. Zander 2011). Others, including Steiner himself (Steiner 1989b [GA 13], pp. 343–344),¹¹ maintain that there is an underlying continuity, even if the discourses of the two categories are very different in terms of concepts and linguistic expressions (Prokofieff 2006; Skagen 2015).¹² The latter is also my own view; therefore, I see no problem in dealing with both his philosophical and his anthroposophical ideas. Chapter 5 presents some basic principles for the Waldorf school curriculum, general ones as well as more specific, directed to particular school subjects, or age periods. The term ‘curriculum’ is taken in a wide sense, as that which Waldorf students are supposed to ‘go through’ experientially during their time in school. Chapter 6 gives an account of Steiner’s social philosophy, which he formulated and tried to spread after WW1, as a solution to ‘the social question’, that is, the need for social reform that was especially urgent for post-war Germany. When his ideas for social renewal did not get the hearing that Steiner hoped for, the Waldorf school movement became—at least partly—another line of work for social change. Chapter 7, finally, tries to answer the question whether, or to what extent, Waldorf education ‘delivers’. As with all evaluations of educational systems and methods, this question is harder to answer than most people think, among other things because it is a question of values, not only of facts.

A note on the references to Steiner’s works may be needed. As noted above, Steiner’s books and lectures have been published as his collected works in German. These are the volumes I have used for references in almost all cases. However, the books that Steiner wrote himself, and some of his most important lecture series, have also been translated into English (and other languages). When referring to a central work of Steiner, I have therefore added a reference to an English edition in a footnote. In a few cases, however, it was necessary to refer to English publications that do not contain information on which GA’s they are based. I have also often included a reference to the page number, even if there is no direct quote. This is because Steiner’s lectures deal with many different issues, and some of them are mentioned just in passing, which makes it hard to find the relevant text if one does not have the page number.¹³