In this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education ‘Brainstorm’ section, a writer puzzles over the reason for the amazing growth of Waldorf schools around the world. Because of its founder’s, Rudolf Steiner’s, unorthodox beliefs, he can’t understand why anyone would attend a Waldorf school.
I’m always delighted when Waldorf Education is discussed in mainstream journals, since it so rarely is, but I was deeply disappointed in this particular article, which did not address any of the educative methods that Waldorf schools use and that are rapidly being absorbed into mainstream education, nor the philosophy behind the education. So I was moved to write this letter in response:
“I attended a Waldorf school most of my life, and when I had children I was appalled to discover that not ALL education was premised on the idea that 1) balance in learning is essential (meaning physical, artistic, academic activities augment each other), 2) caring for each other and the earth is as important as learning the date of the Battle of Hastings, and 3) graduating students who are free from dogma or prejudice, in other words free-thinking human beings, able to make wise, compassionate, firm decisions in their lives, is the purpose of education. So I quickly moved to a place where my children could attend a Waldorf school.
Your cursory discussion of Rudolf Steiner’s cosmology is not really relevant to the essential nature of Waldorf Education, which is for teachers to educate children so that they are free to become themselves, and to think for themselves. The curriculum is extraordinarily rich, academically thorough, and there are many qualities which more and more educational systems are discovering work tremendously well (like, for example, ‘looping’ – staying with the same teacher for more than one year at a time).
Who cares which cosmology people believe in, in the privacy of their own homes? Don’t we simply want ALL children educated with reverence for who they are, and what they can become, and most of all, when they are grown, for them not to be at the mercy of media-moguls,close-minded scientists,unscrupulous politicians (just a few examples) and to know how to seek out and sort out the truth for themselves.”