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Waldorf education

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Waldorf education, sometimes called Steiner education, is a world-wide movement based on an educational philosophy first formulated by Austrian Rudolf Steiner and which grew out of his religion, Anthroposophy.

Waldorf education is practiced in Waldorf schools, homeschools, and special education environments. There are now over 900 Waldorf schools throughout the world including Europe, North & South America, Africa, Australia, and Japan.

Description

Waldorf education is based strictly on Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophic educational model. Waldorf schools employ a curriculum that focuses on the developmental stages of childhood. In general, there are three larger phases: early childhood, when learning is experiential and sensory; the middle, elementary school years, when learning is imaginative and aided by creative, and especially by artistic activity; and adolescence, when learning can be supported by abstractions and intellectual rigor. Inside these three larger phases, many smaller stages of development can be defined.

The education addresses subjects on three levels:

  • the head or the Intellect. The education claims to teach the student to think for themselves.
  • the Heart. The education's stated aim is to instill a sense of feeling and spirit.
  • the Hands. Waldorf schools work to involve arts and crafts, everything from painting to coppersmithing.

Though the emphasis in the early years is clearly on learning through doing (hands), in the middle phase on learning through feeling (heart) and in the middle and high school years on learning through understanding (head), all of these aspects are included in appropriate ways throughout the school years. This has social consequences as well; because of all the diverse subjects offered in a Waldorf school (two foreign languages, crafts, painting, drawing, singing and instrumental music, mathematics, language and literature, nature studies and natural science), each student must exercise a wide variety of intellectual and artistic skills. The broad curriculum thus encourages a social environment of cooperation and mutual appreciation.

Often there is an attempt to integrate these three elements into the teaching of all subjects. A conscious effort to build a sense of community and environmental responsibility is fostered at every level, including parents, teachers/staff, students, and alumni. Movement, sport and drama are employed throughout; in fact, a type of body movement called eurythmy is taught to every age group.

Further, Waldorf education makes no sharp division between theoretical and practical subjects, the arts and logic subjects like math. Steiner repeatedly emphasized the unification of the three subjects of art, spirituality, and science, since he believed these had a common root in the human expression of culture, as stated in his The Arts and Their Mission lecture from 1923.

Waldorf Schools are co-educational, and predominantly comprehensive. Most are run co-operatively and are self-administered. Some public schools incorporate Waldorf education principles into their curriculum. In the United States this has been difficult because: "Steiner's concept is very spiritual in nature which public education cannot totally embrace because of current law. Nevertheless, after making some modifications, a public school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is using the concept with good results." (Weary, 2000, p. 4) Similarly in both Australia and New Zealand some schools have successfully integrated with the state-funded school system, with some adaptation for state-prescribed curricula. Most have no school uniform.

The schooling is divided into 3 stages (see Pedagogy below) of Kindergarten (early years to 7), Middle (Elementary) school (7 to 14 ) and Upper (High) school (14 to 19).

Pedagogy

Steiner developed a 3-stage pedagogical model of child development that is utilised in Waldorf education. His description preceded but in some respects is analogous to the three stages of conceptual development observed and described by psychologist Jean Piaget in the 1960s. Steiner's approach, however, views a child's physical, emotional, and cognitive development as expressions of the process of incarnation of an immortal soul in its gradual embodiment in the human body which will be its temporary earthly vehicle. Childhood thus includes but three of the seven-year cycles of development that define human biography.

Stage 1: birth to age 7

The child at this early stage learns through imitation and example, so it is best to surround him with the goodness of the world and caring adults to emulate. Waldorf teachers work to support the amazing physical and spiritual growth the child experiences at this time.

Emphasis is placed on traditional household activities such as cooking, fingerknitting, helping with household duties, storytelling, rhyming, and movement games. Children are not taught specific academic subjects at this time, including reading and writing, and are sheltered from the media and even stories which include violence.

At approximately age seven, it is believed that the initial physical growth stage of the child is completed. Two signals that this stage is complete are the ability to reach over his head to touch the opposite ear, and the change of the teeth. As reprinted from the Foundations of Human Experience, Lecture 9: "...when their change of teeth is complete, it reflects the conclusion of the development of the head".

Stage 2: age 7 to puberty

Academic instruction is integrated with arts, spirituality, craft, and physical activity. As Steiner stated in The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, "...the child should be laying up in his memory the treasures of thought on which mankind has pondered...".

The curriculum is highly challenging, structured, and creative. In Waldorf schools, one teacher often aims to stay with a class as it advances from its first year all the way through to year eight, teaching the main subject lessons. Specialist teachers are utilized for subjects such as foreign languages, handwork and crafts, eurythmy, games and gymnastics, and so on.

In the middle school years of seven and eight, some schools employ specialist teachers for mathematics, science, and/or literature as well. These are seen as transitional years when the pupils still need the support of a central teacher, but also the in-depth education possible only through more specialized support teachers. The approach to teaching these years is changing rapidly in Waldorf schools, and the combination of teachers employed in different schools for the academic subjects in the middle school runs the gamut from a central teacher teaching all of these to only using specialist teachers.

Stage 3: after puberty

The child is helped to begin a guided, but independent search for truth in himself and the world around him. As stated in Education for Adolescents (1922), "The capacity for forming judgments is blossoming at this time and should be directed toward world-interrelationships in every field." Idealism is central to these years, and the education constantly directs pupils to motivating impulses that can stimulate their enthusiasm. It is claimed a combination of highly analytic thinking with idealism is cultivated.

Instead of having one main teacher who teaches most subjects, the students in high school have many specialist teachers. They begin to grasp concepts and analyze the facts and knowledge they learned in the earlier stages. All students continue to take courses in art, music, and crafts on top of the full range of sciences, mathematics, language and literature, and history normal to most academically-oriented schools.

Teacher education

Specialist Waldorf education teaching colleges are in operation throughout the world. The course of study normally includes methodologies of teaching, academic training in specialized disciplines, artistic development, and familiarity with child development (especially as researched by Steiner and later Waldorf educators). It also generally aims to develop an understanding of the inner, or spiritual, basis of teaching; of the human being as composed of spirit, soul and body; and that an individual human being reincarnates in a series of lives. The latter implies that children bring certain gifts and challenges with them from previous Earth experiences, and have chosen a future destiny to develop in this life — a destiny which can be supported through the environment of family and school. This spiritual background is intended to enhance teachers' professional, personal and inner development. It is not intended to flow into the actual content taught to children.

Rudolf Steiner's philosophy and developmental psychology are normally central courses at any Waldorf teaching college. Further specialized courses may draw on the huge body of research since Steiner's day, possibly including work by (in alphabetical order, and without any pretense at comprehensiveness): George Adams, Hermann von Baravalle, Lawrence Edwards, Erich Gabert, Michaela Glöckler, Freya Jaffke, Dennis Klocek, Henning Köhler, Ernst Kranich, Georg Kuhlewind, Audrey McAllen, Martin Rawson, Wolfgang Schad, Ernst Schubert, Jörgen Smit and Olive Whicher. For elementary educators, artistic work will include painting, blackboard drawing, sculpture, singing, recorder playing, speech and drama work and movement (eurythmy and/or gymnastics). Practica in schools vary in length and will include opportunities for observation and for trial teaching.

Much of the education of any Waldorf teacher happens after graduation from teaching college, however, including through further seminars (such as those run by the national associations of Waldorf teachers) as well as the extensive publications on the subject (see the list of publishers below). The monthly magazine Erziehungskunst publishes the latest Waldorf research from Germany; to give an idea of the extensiveness of the source material now available — at least in German —, a collection of the best articles on elementary education from this magazine's 66-year history (Zum Unterricht des Klassenlehrers an der Waldorfschule) included more than one hundred authors and ran to more than a thousand pages. The English language source material is also extensive, and there are English language research magazines in several countries.

Wider social purpose

Besides seeking to foster creative development of the "whole child," Steiner also started the Waldorf movement in order to help fulfill a social purpose: that education, while remaining fully accessible and available to all regardless of economic background, should eventually cease to be controlled by the State, and should instead come to depend on the free choices of families and teachers freely developing a highly pluralistic and diverse range of schools and educational options.

Steiner held that where the State administered education, culture was crippled in its ability to impartially distinguish good from bad in state action and in economic life. Without the capacity to make impartial, independently-based critiques, i.e., critiques not controlled by the state and economic interests, society would proceed relatively blindly. He also held that educators whose methods and work were determined by the State often had their competencies and creativity greatly weakened through the lack of full self-responsibility and independence.

Social health, he believed, required education to be a matter of freedom and pluralism, such that teachers and parents should be permitted to make a thousand different educational flowers bloom, and then all families should be enabled to choose freely from the highly diverse and spontaneously evolving range of options. At the same time Steiner was flexible and pragmatic, and understood that compromises with the State would have to be made, and that even in an ideal system a few legal restrictions (such as health and safety laws), provided they were kept to a minimum, would be necessary and justified.

History

Waldorf education was developed by Rudolf Steiner as an attempt to establish a school system that would facilitate the inclusive, broadly based, balanced development of children. Though he had written a book on education, The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, twelve years before, his first opportunity to open such a school came in 1919 in response to a request by Emil Molt, the owner and managing director of the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company in Stuttgart, Germany. The name Waldorf thus comes from the factory which hosted the first school.

Steiner insisted upon four conditions before opening:

  1. that the school be open to all children;
  2. that it be coeducational;
  3. that it be a unified twelve-year school;
  4. that the teachers, those individuals actually in contact with the children, have primary control over the pedagogy of the school, with a minimum of interference from the state or from economic sources.

The first year the school was a company school and all teachers were listed as workers at Waldorf Astoria, but starting the second year the school became separate and independent.

Within a few years, many other Waldorf schools modeled on the Stuttgart school opened in other cities. Most of the European schools were closed down by the Nazis but after World War II were reopened. Today (2005) there are over 900 independent Waldorf schools worldwide, including over 150 in the United States, and 31 in the UK and Ireland. There is also a large homeschooling movement utilizing Waldorf pedagogy and methods.

In the United States there is a growing Waldorf charter school movement. Many public school teachers have brought aspects of Waldorf education into their classrooms, as well. In Europe, especially in Switzerland, there is much more integration of the Waldorf approach and public education than in the USA.

Steiner's educational philosophy is continually being developed further. Journals of note publishing such material include the Erziehungskunst, the organ of the German Association of Waldorf Schools, the Research Bulletin of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America and Paideia, the journal of the Steiner-Waldorf Schools Fellowship in Britain.

Critical debate surrounding the Waldorf teaching method

Waldorf education does not begin teaching reading and academics until approximately age 6-7. Critics claim that a "window" of intellectual opportunity is lost.

Studies in England have shown that, in fact, Waldorf pupils' reading skills tend to lag behind state-educated pupils in the first few grades, but they also show that by 5th grade (11 years of age) the Waldorf pupils have caught up and thereafter are ahead of children of the same age who are educated in state schools. Research by Piaget and others also supports the view that early academic learning actually interferes with the development in early childhood of faculties that will enhance later learning capacity. They maintain that the literacy-building techniques Waldorf schools use during early childhood—storytelling, music and singing, games, speech, and movement exercises—help to nourish imagination and a love of language which will be carried long after the child learns to read. It is worth noting that Finland, which sends its children to school at a comparable or later age, is one of the most literate societies in the world.

While the spiritual foundation of Waldorf education may not be intended to explicitly flow into the actual material taught in the classroom, this may be difficult to avoid and occurs implicitly. In a survey of 234 Waldorf schools in 31 countries, 59% of teachers were Anthroposophists, 57% felt that the goal of Waldorf education is to "change society", and 70% of respondents thought that "...Waldorf education influenced students to be open to the spiritual world and Anthroposophy" (Ogletree, 1998, pp.1-2). This does not imply that Waldorf schools teach Anthroposophy to students, but that students are exposed to particular Anthroposophical values and spirituality.

The pressure group PLANS argues that Waldorf education are covert religious schools and has challenged the public funding of the schools in court cases arguing that they violate the First Amendment in the United States constitution

This debate on the religious nature of Waldorf education was settled in a case brought to the Federal District Court of California. The Court decided in favour of the Waldorf schools, ruling that the plaintiffs had not brought a single piece of admissible evidence to support the contentions that either Anthroposophy or Waldorf Education is religious in character. For an expert witness' testimony in the case, see here.

Waldorf schools appreciate the spiritual origin of the human being, which many interpret to be religious. Virtually all world religions are included in the curriculum as mythologies or in the study of historical cultures. No particular religion is universally emphasized, but the schools often attempt to bring the local religious beliefs and practices alive inside of the school, as well; in Israel, this occurs through Jewish festivals, in Europe generally through Christian festivals, in Egypt, through Muslim festivals, and so on. The increasingly multi-cultural nature of many societies is transforming the ways these festivals can take place; this is perhaps especially true of the schools in the United States. In a genuine Waldorf school, though teachers will have studied Anthroposophy, Steiner's spiritual philosophy and world-view, this philosophy is not explicitly taught to pupils; the schools are becoming increasingly professional in this regard.

In 2005, a UK government-funded study praised the schools' ability to develop students through closer human relationships rather than relying purely on tests, but reported that the state sector could provide guidance to Steiner schools in teacher training and management skills.

  1. (David Elkind: Early Childhood Education: Developmental or Academic)

External links

Waldorf Resources

Further Discussion and Reviews of Waldorf Schools

Homeschooling

Special Education

  • Camphill Communities Intentional communities of people with disabilities that recognize the potential, dignity, spiritual integrity, and contributions of each individual.

Teacher training programs

Finding a Waldorf School

List of Waldorf Schools

Criticism of the Steiner approach

Sources

Primary sources

Note: all of Steiner's lectures on Waldorf education are available in PDF form at this research site

  • Steiner, Rudolf: The Foundations of Human Experience, ISBN 0880103922 - these lectures were given to the teachers just before the opening of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart in 1919.
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Practical Advice to Teachers , ISBN 0880104678 - also held in Stuttgart in 1919.
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Discussions with Teachers, ISBN 0880104082
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Education As a Force for Social Change, ISBN 0880104112
  • Steiner, Rudolf: The Spirit of the Waldorf School, ISBN 0880103949
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Lectures and Addresses to Children, Parents, and Teachers, 1919–1924, ISBN 0880104333
  • Steiner, Rudolf: The Genius of Language: Observations for Teachers, ISBN 0880103868
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner: 1919–1924, ISBN 0880104589
  • Steiner, Rudolf: The renewal of education through the science of the spirit - these lectures were held in Basel in 1920, ISBN 0880104554
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Education for Adolescents, ISBN 0880104058
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Soul Economy: Body, Soul, and Spirit in Waldorf Education, ISBN 0880105178
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 1, ISBN 0880103876
  • Steiner, Rudolf: Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 2, ISBN 0880103884
  • Steiner, Rudolf: The Spiritual Ground of Education, ISBN 0880105135
  • Steiner, Rudolf: The Child's Changing Consciousness: As the Basis of Pedagogical Practice, ISBN 0880104104
  • Steiner, Rudolf: A Modern Art of Education, ISBN 0880105119

Secondary sources

  • Astley, K. and P. Jackson (2000): "Doubts on Spirituality: interpreting Waldorf ritual" in International Journal of Childrens Spirituality, Vol.5 Iss.2 pp.221 -227
  • Bärtges, C. and Lyons, N.: Educating as an Art, NY 2003
  • Blunt, Richard: Waldorf Education. Theory and Practice, Novalis Press, Cape Town 1995.
  • Edwards, Carolyn Pope (2002): "Three Approaches from Europe: Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia" in Early Childhood Research & Practice, Volume 4, No. 1
  • Gilbert, Harlan: At the Source: the Incarnation of the Child and the Development of a Modern Pedagogy, Association of Waldorf Schools of North America, Fair Oaks 2005.
  • Gloeckler, Michaela: A Healing Education, Rudolf Steiner College Press, Fair Oaks, 1989.
  • Harwood, A. C.: The Recovery of Man in Childhood
  • ____________ . : The Way of A Child
  • Koepke, Hermann: Encountering the Self, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY 1989
  • McDermott, R., Henry, M.E. and Dillard, C.B. (1996): "Waldorf education in an inner-city public school." in The Urban Review, Vol. 28, pp. 119-40
  • Nicholson, D.W. (2000)"Layers of Experience: forms of representation in a Waldorf school classroom" in Journal of Curriculum Studies, Vol. 32, Iss. 4
  • Oberman, Ida, Ph.D (1999) Fidelity and flexibility in Waldorf education, 1919-1998 (Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation) Stanford University
  • Ogletree, E.J. (1998): International Survey of the Status of Waldorf Schools. Education Resources Information Center (Link:
  • Ogletree, E.J. (1997): Waldorf Education: Theory of Child Development and Teaching Methods. Education Resources Information Center (Link:)
  • Ogletree, E.J. (1996): The Comparative Status of the Creative Thinking Ability of Waldorf Education Students: A Survey Education Resources Information Center (Link
  • Okumoto, Yoko, M.A. (1999): An alternative possibility of identity development: A discussion of Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf Education (Master of Arts Thesis) McGill University (Canada)
  • Ruenzel, David (2001): "The spirit of Waldorf education" in Education Week, Vol.20 Iss. 41 pp. 38 -45
  • Uhrmacher, P. B. (1995): "Uncommon schooling: a historical look at Rudolf Steiner, anthroposophy, and Waldorf education." in Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 25, pp. 381-406
  • Weary, B.F. (2000): Perceptions of looping addressing the academic and social needs of children: Waldorf education and public schools (Doctor of Education Dissertation) Temple University
  • Wilkinson, R. (1996): The Spiritual Basis of Steiner Education. London: Sophia Books

(Note: this is only a partial listing of the secondary sources available)

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