Articles on waldorf education

That question refers to the Waldorf impulse here in Montana, as the impulse is quite large and thriving in other parts of the country and world. The first school in Stuttgart, Germany nearly 100 years ago, however, was in a similar mind frame then as it seems this area is now. After years of destruction by World War I, the people of Europe closely felt, because they lived it, the horrors of war in their own back yard. The destruction was visible all around them, the losses in their families deeply felt, the economic hardship as close and as palpable as the hunger pangs in the belly. My own grandfather fought in that war as a US soldier, was shot and gassed in trench warfare in France, lost a lung, and nearly died before the age of 19 years old. Today in our valley, while hardly a post-war environment, still, we see the yellow ribbons, the plaques and displays of support for our troops, and yes even some memorials for the recent combat activity in which our country is currently embroiled. The ubiquitous TV screen now found just about everywhere we go shows us constant reminders of the current destruction caused by war and other disasters. The current economic downtrend also reminds us of our fragility.

Many people flocked to Rudolf Steiner’s post-WWI lectures, in which he attempted to awaken them to idea of the underlying social chaos accompanying the war’s end. At least one among them, the director of the Waldorf factory, was able to hear Steiner’s call for moving our attention away from the preoccupation with fear of death and instead focus on the other end of life, birth.

The subsequent founding of the first Waldorf school in 1919 was based on Steiner’s philosophy that the basic task of education, indeed of all social renewal, was to overcome human self-interest, or egoism, and at the heart of this self-interest was the preoccupation with death. He contended that the best training for teachers and parents (who are also children’s teachers) was their own honest struggle for self-transformation. He also urged to view the task of the parent and the teacher as a moral spiritual task, learning how to continue the work of higher spiritual beings, done before birth, within the life of the children we have to raise and teach. The struggle for self-transformation can be reworded more simply: parents and teachers each must BE the person you wish your child(ren) to become. The view of the task of education can be better understood with the following excerpt from Steiner’s first lecture to the Waldorf faculty as part of their teacher training for opening the first Waldorf school:

“Although we can physically see children only after their birth, we need to be aware that birth is only a continuation. We do not want to only look at what the human being experiences after death, that is, at the spiritual continuation of the physical. We want to be aware that physical existence is a continuation of the spiritual, and that what we have to do in education is a continuation of what higher beings have done without our assistance. Our form of educating can have the correct attitude only when we are aware that our work with young people is a continuation of what higher beings have done before birth.”
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by Martha Sadler

The following article was published in The Independent of Santa Barbara, California in April 30th, 1992. While some things have changed since it was printed, Martha Sadler's report is still accurate and reflects much of the essence of Waldorf education, seen from an outsider's view.

In a vague way, Waldorf School has been familiar to me for a long time. My editor's daughter, Elizabeth, entered Waldorf kindergarten at the age of five, and at times when my editor was unable to find her car keys I have driven her to pick up Elizabeth, who is now in the sixth grade, and more recently, her little brother Justin, who is now in kindergarten.

Since our editor's idea of on-site child care is having employees' kids and their friends take over the newspaper's conference room, my colleagues and I have had a front-row view of many Waldorf children. We have been treated to impromptu string concerts, and to their singing as they frolicked up and down the hallways, and have occasionally become the targets of their raffle-ticket selling drives. I even willingly attended a couple of their plays.
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In this article written for Teacher Magazine in 1995, David Ruenzel describes Pine Hill Waldorf School in New Hampshire. He describes the holistic nature of this Waldorf school, talks with teachers and students, and provides a comprehensive picture of the nature of Waldorf educations.

In American education, the notion of developing the "whole person" has been around forever. This is why our schools have long encouraged students to do everything from excel in math and play in the band to climb ropes and sing in musicals. At the Pine Hill Waldorf School in Wilton, N.H., however, the idea of educating the whole person hasn't led to an exhaustive string of extracurricular activities but is instead seamlessly integrated into every aspect of daily practice. Everyone at Pine Hill does most everything well--from playing the recorder to freehand drawing of geometric patterns--and all with a sort of contemplative reserve that seems, in its absence of competitive striving, almost un-American.
"A Waldorf education is like a toolbox for life," one Pine Hill teacher told me. Another Waldorf teacher who is also a Pine Hill alumnus said, "Confidence is the greatest gift my schooling gave me. Once you find your way into something, be it pottery or auto mechanics, you feel like you can find your way into anything else because you've learned that everything is interrelated, even if it appears otherwise."
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What, really, are the results of a Waldorf (Rudolf Steiner) education? One may feel that the brochures make Waldorf look excellent, and that the goal of "Education Towards Freedom" is very sound. One may be impressed by the enthusiasm and commitment of teachers in a Steiner school, and admire both the academic and artistic work of the students. But it is good to hear from people outside the Waldorf movement, who have worked together with---or in some other way have had experience of---Waldorf graduates and who have an objective professional basis for judging whether this form of education really accomplishes its goals. The following three short articles, coming from California, New York, and Europe, respectively, offer just this kind of professional and objective evaluation.

THE WALDORF GRADE SCHOOL
James Shipman History Department, Marin Academy San Rafael, California

Explanatory Note: The Marin Waldorf School ends at Eighth Grade. A number of its graduates have gone on to the Marin Academy---not a Waldorf school---for their secondary education.

What I like about the Waldorf School is, quite simply, its graduates. As a high school teacher at Marin Academy, I have seen a number of students who come from your program, and I can say that in all cases they have been remarkable, bright, energetic and involved.
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Is our educational system contributing to attentional and learning difficulties in our children?

Dr. Susan Johnson, MD, FAAP, a Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrician, writes her opinion on teaching children how to read and write before first grade.

I have great concerns about teaching preschool and kindergarten children to read and write. Developmentally and neurologically it doesn’t make sense. There is a developmental progression of sensory-motor skills that a young child needs to master in the first 7 years of life. Despite what we think, learning is not “all from our head”. It is the movements of our body in utero, through infancy and childhood, and even adulthood that form the neural pathways in our mind that we later use to read, write, spell, do math, and think in an imaginative and creative way. I see countless numbers of children in my practice who have been diagnosed with “ADD” or “learning disabilities” that miraculously improve when they are taken out of an “academic” kindergarten or given an extra year in a developmental kindergarten that emphasizes movement and the integration of their sensory-motor systems.
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by Arthur M. Pittis

To appreciate fully how and when reading is taught in Waldorf Schools, one must first understand the purpose of the entire curriculum. Rudolf Steiner hoped that Waldorf schools would serve as centers for the reawakening of spiritual life. The curriculum and pedagogy would serve as practical tools for this task by directly countering the hardening and narrowing forces of materialism in modern life. One of the focuses of this work was to develop in children faculties of imaginative thinking capable of inspiring them in their adult lifes to morally purposeful deeds. Waldorf education was seen as no less than a seed for the future.
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