The Class of 2033: Waldorf at War
by Eugene Schwartz
This article originally appeared in the Summer, 2024 issue of New View.
Between 1906 and 1911 Rudolf Steiner gave
numerous lectures concerning The Education of
the Child, any one of which might have served
as the template for a fledgling school. These lectures
did not prove actionable, and Steiner did not speak
specifically about the education of the child for the next
eight years. In those years, however, Steiner brought
the teaching of repeated earth lives as the means by
which, over time, each human being would develop
new capacities. Along with this, he brought a Western
perspective on ‘karma’, whereby willed actions made
by each person had consequences and always needed
addressing, in this life or another one, as part and parcel
of human development.
Also central to the picture of human development
unfolded by Steiner in those years was his
characterization of ‘four bodies’: the physical body,
an etheric body, which contains the forces that imbue
us with life here on earth (streaming from the etheric/
life realm); an astral body or soul, with its feelings and
passions; and the Ego, the kernel, the essential self, of
each human being. Surrounding and informing all this
was Steiner’s experience and understanding of spiritual
beings far more developed than us who ranged up to the
Creative Source that can be called ‘God’.
In many ways this was a confirmation of the
experience of Dionysius The Areopagite (who flourished
in the 1st century AD). He was mentioned in the Bible
(Acts 17:34) and was converted to Christianity by Paul
at Athens. Later he described nine levels of spiritual
beings, grouped into three orders, or levels:
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones
Dominions, Virtues, Powers
Principalities (Archai), Archangels, Angels
Steiner spoke and wrote at length about the activity and
influence of these various hierarchical beings in human
existence.
One of Steiner’s revelations about life after death and
life before birth is that it constitutes a centuries’ long
education. The disincarnate soul has lessons to learn
from the spiritual Hierarchies, and the spiritual world
has much to learn from the experiences of those who
have lived in earthly bodies. Steiner actually never
stopped lecturing about education, per se, but he did
take a long pause concerning childhood pedagogy.
Why?
Perhaps he recognized that this juvenile pedagogical
seed was serotinous, like that of a giant sequoia tree,
requiring an intense trial by fire before it could germinate.
The next seven years were to provide much in the way
of fire: the Great War, the influenza epidemic, and aerial
and chemical weapons that attacked the environment
as well as the opposing armies. By the decade’s
end, cries for self-determination and decolonization
exacerbated the post-war political instability of Europe
and its colonies, while the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919 (a
name coined to acknowledge the blood that was shed
in the US) witnessed race riots in thirty-six American
cities. It was out of this world-transforming fire that
the dormant seeds of Steiner’s educational lectures
could awaken, and the first Waldorf school could open
its doors. It was at this time that Steiner was asked by
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, one of his closest students, what it
would take to help the ancient Initiates to reincarnate
in our time, to which Steiner replied succinctly,
“Education and nutrition.” Pfeiffer would soon help to
found Biodynamic Agriculture to accompany Waldorf
education in the spiritual regeneration of the postwar
world.
In 2020, midway though the Waldorf school
movement’s celebration of its first one hundred years,
history seemed to repeat itself. Another worldwide
epidemic began to spread and new calls for racial
justice and violent backlash exploded in the United
States. Europe was soon to experience its worst war in
decades, while renewed cries for decolonization and
parallel immigration issues led to political instability
across the continent. With social justice, public health,
and cultural conditions reflecting the turmoil of 1919,
we should not be surprised that there would be calls for
a new stage of Waldorf’s development: a rejuvenation,
a rebirth, a renewal – and questions would rightfully be
asked about the relevance, structure, and content of the
Waldorf curriculum itself.
I want to explore the ramifications of this “second
stage” of Waldorf education in relation to Steiner’s
intentions for the first hundred years and with a look
at the special importance of the fourteen years 2019 to
2033 – five of which have already passed – and their
impact on the future of Waldorf education.
New View 4Although, in the course of a century, Waldorf
education has garnered interest and gained a measure of
respect for its “slow learning” and child-based approach,
its artistry, and the centrality of the relationship that
develops between families and teachers, little is said
about the inner aspects of the Waldorf approach. This is
especially true in regard to the eight grade school years
(ages 6-7, to 13-14), during which Steiner had indicated
that one teacher (the “Class Teacher”) should remain
with a class and teach the main academic subjects,
even those with which s/he was not comfortable. The
twenty-first century has witnessed a tendency to shorten
this relationship, reducing the class teacher’s time with
the class to five years in many schools, and bringing in
specialists to teach maths, lab sciences, language, arts
and other subjects. Although these modifications have
received little attention, I would contend that they are
diminishing the quality of Waldorf education.
Much of what I will share in this article is founded in
Steiner’s spiritual understanding of the spiritual beings
that attend all of us.
The Waldorf primary school day begins when the
teacher meets the child at the classroom door, shakes his
or her hand and speaks words of welcome. The hands
raised and lowered at the child’s heart level leads to
an awakening and enlivening of the child’s rhythmical
system. We may say that with this the child’s angel,
living in the etheric body, is awakened and meets the
teacher as well. Once the children are settled at their
desks, a candle is lit and a verse spoken, so that the day
begins with a ritual. The angels become aware of one
another’s presence, readying the children to take one
another’s hands and form a circle. For the next fifteen
to twenty minutes, they engage in recitation, song, and
movement. This prepares the children to learn together,
and it also serves as an invitation to the archangels, the
guardians of groups and communities who live in the
slumbering astral bodies of the children, to engage with
the class.
At this point in the main lesson the individual
children and their guardian angels become members
of a group, overseen by its archangel. Their rhythmic
system is active, their limbs have been engaged, and
they are now ready for the “head-centered” segment of
the morning. In the primary grades the class teacher will
likely begin with a story that the child has learned by
heart; in later grades expository material, e.g., science,
or mathematics, will also be presented now. In grade
one the first words the children hear at this moment are
very likely to be, “Once upon a time . . .”
What does that phrase, ‘Once upon a time’, really
mean? Perhaps it may be best understood as, ‘Once
upon a Time Spirit,’ or in Steiner’s terminology, ‘Once
upon an archai’. The story the teacher is about to tell
has been carried over the ages upon the wings of a Time
Spirit and it has stood the test of time. The phrase ‘Once
upon a time’ summons a new spirit being, an archai, to
the classroom, and that being may gently fan the nascent
flame of the child’s ego, which will not fully come into
its own until decades have passed. The archai work over
long spans of time, and the teacher recognizes that the
fruits of what she, or he, brings in the primary school
stories, e.g. fairy tales, fables, and Hebrew Scriptures,
will lie dormant in the child’s consciousness and only
reveal their wisdom in years to come.
Waldorf class teachers will attest that being
responsible to teach a multiplicity of subjects over
the course of one grade is demanding, and having to
memorize the content of hundreds of lessons over the
course of eight years is challenging. Most teachers
acknowledge that it is those very demands that make
Waldorf pedagogy a vitalizing and renewing force
in their own lives that provides the opportunity for a
meaningful self-education. The Waldorf curriculum
brings knowledge to life in students and teachers alike.
The mutual experience of knowledge is a salient
feature of the Waldorf school, but it is not unique.
Devoted teachers in any school system also have the
opportunity to make such a learning experience possible.
What is unique to Waldorf alone is a third stream of
learning, less evident than the first two, but of supreme
importance. Waldorf stands alone in possessing a
curriculum so designed that the classroom can be the
setting for the simultaneous education of the child, the
teacher, and the hierarchical beings who are present as
well.
In a lecture cycle concerning the inner realities of
modern spiritual life, Steiner stated emphatically that
“Certain thoughts can only be grasped by the
supersensible hierarchies if men grasp them here in
earthly existence. The gods only think certain thoughts,
if they live in human bodies. These thoughts must be
carried into the spiritual world through the gate of
death. Only then can they be active.”
Throughout his lectures on life after death, Steiner
revealed that not only were disincarnate human beings
learning from the Hierarchies how to form their next
life in accordance with karmic necessity, but that the
hierarchical beings were themselves learning what it
was like to live in a physical body on the earth – an
experience that would never be granted to them.
In this respect, Steiner created a curriculum and a
method of presenting its contents to children that, for
the first time in earthly evolution, deeply interests and
engages the Hierarchies as well as the students physically
present in the classroom. Every class teacher is meant to
have the freedom to interpret and enliven the subjects,
all of which prepare the children for their adulthood,
but many of which at the same time recapitulate the
students’ experiences in previous lives. Spiritual beings
who have only been observers of these events in the
distant past may now learn from the children’s reactions
New View 5to and artistic representations of the legacy of earthly
cultures and at least vicariously participate in what it
means to be a human being on earth. These relationships
and interpenetrating activities make clear that Steiner’s
many pre-Waldorf lectures on reincarnation and karma
were also about education.
Using a phrase of Steiner’s, we may view this as
a ‘reverse ritual’, in which the fire of the children’s
enthusiasm and the power of their enlightenment as
they encounter the Waldorf curriculum serve as the
pedagogical nectar and ambrosia that nourishes the
gods. A Waldorf classroom may become a modern
temple in which the spiritual world embarks upon
a new relationship with humanity. Nothing I have
just described may be taken for granted, and much
depends on the inner life of the teacher and the support
she or he receives from colleagues and the school.
The love the teacher bears for the students and their
parents, the devotion to the Waldorf curriculum and its
anthroposophical foundations, and the commitment to
inner development, are the sine qua non for the interest
of the spiritual Hierarchies in human endeavors to be
fostered in the Waldorf curriculum.
Although Waldorf parents are mostly unaware of the
interrelationship of the higher worlds and their child’s
classroom, they are very aware when this relationship is
not being cultivated by the teacher. For example, when
the teacher is not consciously meeting the children’s
angels as they enter the classroom, parents will begin to
raise concerns about Safety. In our time, and particularly
in the US, there is no shortage of threats to children’s
well-being, but the presence of the students’ angels –
their guardian angels – creates a “safe space” that is
palpable and reassuring to families. If an archangel
is not invoked through daily songs, recitation, and
movement, and especially if festivals like Michaelmas
and Advent are celebrated reluctantly or not at all,
parents will likely be complaining that there are social
problems like bullying and cliques that tend to come
under the umbrella of Inclusion. And when there is no
consciousness of the presence of the archai in the life of
the class, parents will feel that “the time is out of joint,”
and that the school is still living in 1919, and an archaic
Colonialism permeates the curriculum.
After many decades of slow growth, the North
American Waldorf movement rapidly expanded in
the last third of the twentieth century. The social
foments and enthusiasm for “New Age” spirituality
that characterized the 1960s provided the openness for
alternative education that suggested Waldorf was an
idea whose time had come. Most significant was the
possibility of receiving a Waldorf teacher training in
the English language, which was due to the pioneering
efforts of Francis Edmunds in the UK and Werner Glas
and Rene Querido in the US. Their remarkable and
inspiring efforts made it possible for Emerson College
New View 6
(Sussex, England), The Waldorf Institute (Detroit,
USA), and Rudolf Steiner College (Fair Oaks, USA) to
meet the idealistic strivings of the post-war generation
with anthroposophical clarity and passion.
The climate of the times and the caliber of the
teacher trainings made it possible for the presence of
helpful spiritual beings to be made manifest in the
North American school movement. As a well-travelled
Waldorf class teacher and consultant to schools across
the continent in the 1980s, I can attest to the vitality
that Waldorf schools evinced and the impact they
made on their communities. Underlying this was the
fact that most of the teachers in most of these schools
either considered themselves anthroposophists or were
sympathetic to Steiner’s ideas. In addition, many of these
schools were administered not by a dean or principal
but rather by the faculty itself. The College of Teachers
or Collegium had the task of nurturing the spiritual core
of the school as well as making major decisions, while
the class teachers, committed to remaining with their
class for eight years, brought a continuity of experience
that bridged the school’s past and future. It was they
who had the particular responsibility of creating a
classroom in which, over the course of those eight
years, a relationship with angels, archangels, and archai
would be fostered.
Another factor supporting the rapid growth
of Waldorf schools in the US was their status as
‘independent’, i.e. private schools. Most laws and
regulations affecting schools in the US are at the state
level, which allows for a more diversified approach to
pedagogical methods and philosophies than would a
centralized federal system. Most states are respectful
of private and home schools, and they are more likely
to be tolerated rather than closely regulated. In the late
1980s and early 90s, however, the educational renewal
that Waldorf methodology embodied drew the attention
of public-school educators. The fact that independent
Waldorf schools charged tuition and tended to serve
predominantly upper-middle-class families was always
a sore point for some teachers, and the possibility of
tuition-free state-funded schools that would be open to
all children, intrigued them.
In 1992 the state of California passed the Charter
Schools Act, which gave teachers and parents the
autonomy to create state funded schools to meet the
specific needs of their communities. Rudolf Steiner
College in Fair Oaks was active in encouraging both
charter initiatives and public-school districts to found
‘Waldorf-inspired’ or ‘Waldorf-methods’ institutions
and throughout the 1990s many other states opened
the way for charters. These early charter schools were
initially staffed by trained and experienced Waldorf
teachers. They relished the opportunity to reach
otherwise underserved families and communities, and
they regarded the standardized tests and state schoolRudolf Steiner’s Cosmic Verses from 1915
– a journey in eurythmy, speech and music
Macrocosmic
Dances –
the unfolding universe
A Project Group of the Eurythmy Association of the United Kingdom
● 4th August Michael Hall Theatre, Forest Row R18 5JA
● 28th September The Wool Barn, Ruskin Mill Trust, Nailsworth GL6 0EQ
● 26th/27th October Ringwood Waldorf School, Ringwood, BH24 2NN
● 16th/17th November Camphill Community Mourne Grange, Kilkeel BT34 4EX
In addition to performances, a lecture, workshop and demonstration may be held.
For further details please contact: cosmicverses@eurythmyassociation.uk
inspectors as annoyances, but not obstructions, to the
establishment of genuine Waldorf schools in the public
domain.
I served as a consultant and mentor to many of these
early Waldorf charters and in the early years of the
twenty-first century I directed two documentaries in
which charters figured prominently. I was impressed
by the teachers’ dedication to the anthroposophical
foundations of their educational approach and to
the efforts made by their administrators, who were
themselves almost all former Waldorf teachers, to
support their faculties’ spiritual strivings. However,
year-by-year, as the founding teachers and parents
moved on or retired, it became more difficult to replace
them with younger teachers and families who had the
same degree of interest in, no less commitment to,
Steiner’s guiding principles.
This was especially evident among the schools’ new
administrators and principals, many of whom came
with experience solely in the public-school world, and
most of whom had no wish to immerse themselves in
Waldorf pedagogy. Some schools had retained, perhaps
through force of habit, a College of Teachers, but the
public school system gave such a group purely advisory
power, and many administrators, whose word was law
in the school, didn’t want any advice. By the end of the
first decade of the twenty-first century, while what the
charters offered was still head-and-shoulders above the
quality of mainstream public education, many of the
schools were moving from being Waldorf-Inspired to
Waldorf-Methods to what can only be termed Waldorf-
Style.
In spite of their diminishing pedagogical quality and
the spiritual vacuum imposed by administrators and the
leadership of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education,
many Waldorf charter schools have thrived and continue
to draw far more students than their independent peers.
Since charter schools receive government moneys for
teacher training, Waldorf training centers compete
to draw these well-funded faculty members to their
New View 7programs. Some of this competition involves making
Waldorf more amenable to public school teachers by
simplifying Waldorf content and methods and modifying
the Waldorf curriculum in big and small ways. Charter
teachers have been instructed by their own association
to avoid spending their training grants on anything that
smacks of religion or spirituality, so they are likely
to hear less and less about Anthroposophy with each
succeeding year. This means that independent school
teachers, who study at the same institutes, will also hear
little about the Waldorf curriculum and its foundations
and will likely learn next to nothing about the angels,
archangels, and archai who are waiting outside the
teachers’ classrooms, ready for the school year to begin.
There is a particular irony to this downgrading of the
spiritual dimensions of Waldorf trainings, ostensibly
to suit the requirements of publicly funded teachers.
When a war was fought in medieval Europe, only the
noblemen and their knights were wealthy enough to
afford the horses, armor, and weaponry necessary to
contend with the enemy. Their serfs, sworn to follow
their lord into battle, had only their work clothes and
whatever pitchfork or sharpened spade they could
retrieve from the barn. Compared to their well-equipped
masters, they were as naked as newborn babies – infants
– in warfare, and so were known as ‘the infantry’. A
great many of them perished on the battlefield.
While some parents choose Waldorf charters because
they know and support the underlying philosophy, many
more come with children who are struggling in their
local public school and want a setting with kind teachers
who respect and help even the most challenged students.
That is to say, Waldorf charter schools are likely to have
a much higher percentage of special needs children than
independent schools – and yet charter school educators
are not supposed to even entertain the idea that there are
spiritual beings standing ready to help their class. In this
regard, the charter school teachers are the infantry of the
Waldorf movement, unarmed, unhorsed, and unable to
meet the very needs for which the charters were created.
Although the training institutes and the public Waldorf
schools are culpable for the dilution of the US Waldorf
movement, the independent schools and their faculties
have also played a significant role. Their greatest
misjudgment had its roots in a late 1980s springtime
meeting (I happened to be attending, as mentor) in a
strong and healthy school in the western United States. A
popular and beloved class teacher, about to enter grade six
for the first time in the fall, announced that her antipathy
to maths and science had led her to refuse to teach those
subjects to her class in grades six, seven, and eight.
A capable maths and science teacher was found who
saved the day – that day, anyway. The school’s panicky
and short-term solution was soon to lead to a fateful
conversation about the fact that some people are great
with primary school children, while others seemed to be
New View 8
born to teach middle schools. And that conversation, in
turn, led to the school’s decision to abolish the institution
of the Steiner-inspired eight-year class teacher and
replace it with a teacher going from grade one to five
and a group (not an individual) of specialists, gifted in
working with challenging middle-schoolers, to teach
grades six, seven, and eight (11/12-13/14 year olds)
Shortly thereafter, this change was memorialized in the
school’s class teacher contracts, and even the occasional
go-getter who wanted to take all eight grades could not
do so. In an alarming demonstration of the conformity
that has become endemic in the Waldorf movement, by
the late 1990s scores of independent Waldorf schools
in the US had adopted the same policy, with only a few
schools leaving open the possibility that there might be a
rare educator who was capable of making an eight-year
commitment. The training institutes, always sensitive to
the way the wind blows, made no efforts to help schools
understand the centrality of the eight-year cycle but
merely changed their presentation of the upper grades
to reflect the schools’ choice, and not Steiner’s insights.
That marked the beginning of a phenomenon that I
have called “The Incredible Shrinking Class Teacher.”
Although it is never discussed anymore, it is the second-
most unfortunate decision that American Waldorf
schools have made in their history (I will come to the
most unfortunate decision shortly). We have already
explored the class teacher as one who spans the worlds
of the child, the parents, and the Hierarchies active in
the classroom. When Steiner founded the “Daughter
Movements” (of which Waldorf education was the first,
followed by new directions in agriculture, medicine,
religious renewal and so on) his hope was that human
vocations could become paths of initiation, ‘on the job’
awakenings to the goals of the spiritual world.
State authorities gave their approval to the school’s
formation and assumed its students would be factory
workers’ children. That, in turn, would mean that
those students would enter a factory apprenticeship
after graduation, making the Waldorf school their only
formal education. Because of this assumption, Steiner’s
original seven-year cycle had to be expanded to eight
years. This slightly longer cycle gave the class teacher
the opportunity to participate in his students’ experience
of their expansion into their etheric and astral bodies
and the foreshadowing of their ‘I.’ In his 1922 lectures
to young people, Steiner said, “Every human being is
a teacher, but he is sleeping and must be awakened…
[The teacher] does not depend on the giving out of
knowledge but on activating the individuality of the
soul, [and depends] upon the pre-earthly existence. Then
it is really the child who educates himself through us.”1
Here again, we see the profound connection Steiner
made between our educational experiences between
death and rebirth and their pedagogical ramifications in
the Waldorf classroom.In his very last education lectures, Steiner formulated
what he called the First Pedagogical Law, indicating
the necessity for the teacher to strive to develop a soul
member that is one stage ahead of what the child is
incorporating. Truncating the teacher’s years with her
class provides no opportunity for her ego to interact with
the children’s astral bodies, an encounter that no group
of ‘upper grades specialists’ can equal. Less visible, but
no less tragic, is that the class teacher’s relationship with
those visiting scholars – angels, archangels, and archai
– is cut short, never to reach its celebratory culmination.
An initiation that is abbreviated can have a deleterious
effect on the neophyte’s soul life, and it should come
as no surprise that over the past few years alarming
numbers of Waldorf teachers complain of depression,
anxiety, and alienation from their colleagues. As
Alexander Pope put it, “A little learning is a dang’rous
thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”
The diminished stature and role of the individual
class teacher and the class teachers as a group in
schools set the scene for three unexpected challenges
to the Waldorf movement that appeared, as if by divine
vengeance, halfway through the 2019-2020 school year.
That year, of course, was meant to be devoted to the
celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of
the first Waldorf school. The event that served as the
springboard for much of this was the Covid epidemic.
The first challenge was the governmental order that all
schools in the US, private as well as public, were to close.
Given the importance of the face-to-face encounter of
teacher and students, and the daily encounters of students
with one another, many teachers and parents judged
such a measure to be antithetical to the very existence
of a Waldorf school. Their objections were quickly
squelched by the Association of Waldorf Schools of
North America (AWSNA), whose legal counsel gave
the irrevocable order to schools: “Comply.” Once again,
conformity trumped deliberation and initiative.
The second challenge arose as closure of the schools
invariably led to the snap decision that Waldorf teachers
would have to instruct their students via ‘distance
learning’, utilizing the same Internet and the devices
they had been prohibiting and proselytizing against for
decades. Thousands of Waldorf families nationwide had
even signed contracts with their school or their child’s
teacher promising to restrict or prohibit their child’s
exposure to electronic media. Most Waldorf teachers
had a weekend, at most, to learn how to ‘distance teach’,
while many Waldorf students were to have their very first
exposure to the Internet by order of their Waldorf school.
The effusive praise that teachers received from AWSNA
and the Alliance, which regaled them as “heroes” who
decisively stepped into the pandemic fray, did little to
counter the educators’ realization that whatever their
Google-based classes and Zoom meetings might be
achieving, it was not Waldorf education.
The third challenge led to what can only be termed
the worst decision concerning Waldorf education in
North America. The underlying circumstances were
what amounted to a recapitulation of the 1919 Red
Summer, the race riots that erupted throughout the US.
This time around, the brutal murder of a black man by
the police, occurring in the midst of the social isolation
and chaos marking a nation’s response to Covid, ignited
protests and counter-protests, cries for social justice and
hateful backlash. Once again, America’s conscience
was being awakened, and the recurrent recognition of
injustices suffered by people of color arose in the media
and on the streets.
Thousands of American institutions – corporations
and not-for-profits, banks and small businesses,
public and private schools alike, immediately issued
statements opposing racism and pledged to do their
part in hiring people of color and examining their own
principles and policies to work towards equality. Many
of these institutions quickly brought in consultants
trained in a philosophy and methodology concerned
with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). And not
to be on the wrong side of history (and to conform to
what many other private schools were doing) AWSNA
took the exceptional step of making a formal statement
about current events, and even taking what was soon
to be considered a ‘political’ stand. Here is an excerpt
from the statement posted on AWSNA’s website in the
summer of 2020:
“… we take seriously our responsibility to bear
witness to what is happening in the world, to center
the voices of color in racial justice work, to change
the course of inequities, and to identify and break
down structural racism in all forms where it exists,
particularly in Waldorf education.
Waldorf education espouses principles of respect for
human dignity. Any narratives or indications made
by Rudolf Steiner that are in contradiction to these
principles are not the basis for Waldorf education and
we unequivocally denounce such statements.
We know that we have far to go as an association and as
individuals in our understanding of racial oppression
and social justice… ”
Although the Waldorf movement and other Daughter
movements and, indeed, the anthroposophical movement
itself, have had their share of internal battles and name-
calling, never before has any endeavor or institution
founded or inspired by Rudolf Steiner denounced
him. The fact that this denunciation occurred while
schools were closed and teachers were isolated from
one another, communicating via glitchy Zoom sessions,
made it possible for the denunciation, momentous as it
was, to be presented as an executive decision and not
subject to any discussion or deliberation.
New View 9Objections were certainly raised, but I probably
don’t have to tell readers that most member schools
conformed and immediately posted their own
denunciatory statements and reprinted and/or linked
their site to AWSNA’s denunciation. As Beverly
Amico, one of the AWSNA leaders responsible for the
posted statement, explained in an online interview:
“But I’m going to go ahead and speak a little bit more
about the – particularly around the relationship to
Rudolf Steiner.
‘AWSNA has denounced certain narratives made by
Rudolf Steiner that are in contradiction to Waldorf
education, which teaches and instills a respect for
human dignity’– that’s how it’s written in our quote.
So I don’t want to dismiss the fact that Rudolf
Steiner is no doubt an integral important part of
our organizations and our schools’ histories, and
certainly our worldview. And I think that I can speak
for our schools, hopefully that we really hold the
profound and positive aspects of this heritage, but
at the same time, the executive team believes that
we must also take the responsibility for the aspects
of this heritage that are deeply challenging. Rudolf
Steiner gave about 6,000 lectures and offered many
ideas which support equity and justice… . But he
also shared ideas that we believe are harmful and
reflect misguided assertions regarding race and
ethnicity. I just want to close and start going back
to what Laura said. And it’s part of our evolution.
We need to evolve in order to address this. And we
believe that denouncing certain aspects of those
ideas is consistent with anthroposophical thought
and the grappling with the paradox, any paradox,
will only strengthen our work for the future.”
Amico tells us Steiner “shared ideas that we
believe are harmful and reflect misguided assertions
regarding race and ethnicity.” Her explanation is not
very articulate and it is significant that she believes that
Steiner’s “harmful” ideas reflect the fact that he was
“misguided.” Misguided by whom? Steiner made it
clear throughout his books and lectures that he strove
for guidance only from the most progressive and light-
filled beings, who were themselves guided by the Christ
being. If Christ “misguided” Steiner, Amico might have
at least suggested someone who could have provided
Steiner with helpful guidance.
As the result of meetings and discussions occurring
after the fact, the inflammatory statement was modified
and Steiner’s name was removed, but the deed had been
done. A Pandora’s box was opened, and teachers and
parents who had long struggled to understand Steiner or
develop the soul forces needed to follow his path now
had their time in the sun. They felt free to campaign
on behalf of prohibiting studies of Steiner’s books,
curtailing the celebration of the Christian festivals,
New View 10
disallowing the mention of angels and essentially
turning their ‘Waldorf’ school into anything but.
Among the fallen in this contemporary cultural war
was Homer’s Odyssey, followed by the German epics
Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Goethe’s
Faust, all of which have been replaced by such
twentieth-century Black literature as Richard Wright’s
Black Boy and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The
story of the decisions that led to these radical changes
is compellingly told by Green Meadow Waldorf High
School teacher Defne Caldwell, herself a Green Meadow
alumna, in the article ‘To Make Room for Black Lives,
Homer Stands Aside’, (Spring/Summer 2021 Waldorf
Research Bulletin). It is not coincidental that the three
retired epics were all mentioned by Steiner in many
contexts, but especially because they were narratives
about ancient and modern initiation, and all three
revealed the ways in which human beings interacted
with the spiritual world for good and ill. It should
be noted that Defne Caldwell’s high school English
teacher, David Sloan, with whom she studied Parzifal,
now gives a course on the epic, online, from his home in
Maine, hundreds of miles from his old school. Perhaps
this image of the Curriculum in Exile foreshadows the
future of the Waldorf movement.
Although the denunciation furore has diminished
over these four years, it continues to simmer. The
destructive forces unleashed, and spiritual shadows
cast by AWSNA’s inane and shortsighted efforts to
appear relevant and woke, will have their own karmic
consequences for years to come. We will very likely
need triage, not just training, to heal the wounds.
Let’s return to Steiner’s words to Ehrenfried Pfeiffer
concerning the central importance of education and
nutrition for the spiritual health of our time. We know that
breads made from biodynamic grain are far superior to
the de-natured and highly processed grains used in most
commercial breads. Adding insult to injury, commercial
bakers aim to compensate for their grains’ nutritional
emptiness by adding synthetic vitamins and minerals
and claiming that the finished loaf offers even more
nourishment than its unprocessed equivalent. It is not
far fetched to compare a contemporary Waldorf school
that ignores its spiritual foundations and processes the
curriculum to remove anything remotely “Steinerized”
from that loaf of commercial bread. To make it appear
nutritious, just add vitamins D, E, and I, and minerals L,
G, B, T, Q, and so on. Now the school will meet every
child’s needs. Education as Nutrition – stones instead of
bread.
The denunciation of Steiner for his “racist”
statements was the clarion call for a juggernaut of harsh
reexaminations of Waldorf education and its unprocessed
curriculum. Did the curriculum’s Euro-centric origins
need to be “decolonized”? Did its spiritual foundations
cry out to be “dehierarchized”? Did it, in short, need
to be thoroughly de-Steinerized? The insightful Blackwriter James Baldwin once said, “Urban renewal means
Negro removal.” Would the sudden clamor for “Waldorf
Renewal” mean, in turn, Steiner removal? A proxy war
on Steiner is in full swing, and every American Waldorf
school is fair game.
Although one of the most common criticisms leveled
at the Waldorf curriculum by American teachers is that
it is Eurocentric, it is interesting that the most influential
proponents of curricular reform are based in Europe.
Although the reformers are not officially affiliated,
the video series Alanus Hochschule Fachbereich
Bildungswissenshaft (Alanus University Department
of Educational Science) is revelatory in its compelling
presentations of curricular concerns on the part of
several educators. The uniformity of their critiques
and the lack of dissension in their ranks suggests a
‘brain trust’, in the style of the Manhattan Project (an
endeavor described in the ‘Plutonium Man’ article and
the ‘Oppenheimer’ film review in New View issue 109,
Autumn 2023). And their labors may be destined to
have the same effect on modern Waldorf education as
the Manhattan Project had on modern warfare.
One of the leading figures in these discussions about
the insufficiency of the current Waldorf Curriculum is
Martyn Rawson. His qualifications to take a fresh look
at Steiner’s pedagogy are impeccable; indeed, his book,
The Tasks and Content of the Steiner/Waldorf Curriculum
(2014) was the most authoritative presentation of the
subject. A Waldorf practitioner for nearly fifty years, he
remains a classroom teacher, lectures internationally,
and acts as a bridge linking Waldorf schools to myriad
local, state, EU, and UN educational authorities. Since
2020 his calls for a fresh look at the Waldorf curriculum
have become more forceful and he has had an especially
powerful impact through numerous Working Papers and
online videos. In January of 2024 he was co-presenter
of a workshop at the Sunbridge Institute (in New York)
on “Decolonizing the Waldorf Curriculum”, the first of
its kind in the United States.
At the conclusion of a Zoom presentation, Rawson
was asked how his many proposed curricular changes
might affect a teacher’s relationship to Anthroposophy.
He responded by stating that a contemporary Waldorf
teacher should be held responsible only for the study
and understanding of those lectures given to teachers
by Steiner between 1919 and 1925. This implies that
Waldorf teachers need not know anything about
anthroposophical research involving the Hierarchies,
world evolution, the cultural epochs, the development
of human consciousness, life after death, reincarnation
and karma… the list goes on. However, given the
racial, social, and gender struggles that are swirling in
today’s classroom, insights gained from all of Steiner’s
foundational work are needed now, more than ever.
As a Waldorf spokesperson who often addresses
groups and individuals who are empowered to censure
or close schools, Rawson has developed the vocabulary,
diagrams, and metaphors that help make Steiner’s
pedagogy acceptable to mainstream universities
and governments. Such academic terminology and
diagrammatic images may represent the Letter of
Waldorf education, but not its Spirit; they can only lead
to the dynamics of Waldorf methodology calcifying into
the mechanics of a Waldorf technique. The relationship
that the Waldorf teacher builds with students and their
parents over the course of years, the tribulations and
triumphs encountered in preparing for new subjects and
ever-new grades, and above all, the love that permeates
every aspect of the Waldorf experience are found
nowhere in this Working Paper. It would be so much
better if the intellectual energy, technical expertise,
and financial support that makes these curricular
deconstruction efforts possible were channeled into
fostering the deepening of the Waldorf curriculum that
we already have, and inspiring Waldorf teachers to re-
engage with its anthroposophical foundations.
Although they pulled back from their harsh statements
about Steiner’s racism, the leaders of AWSNA have
doubled down on their own efforts to eviscerate the
Waldorf curriculum. It is almost impossible for an
American Waldorf teacher to join a grades preparation
course that does not have a major DEI component; one
training institute even devotes every afternoon in its
summer grades preparations courses to “decolonizing.”
And AWSNA plans to add an eighth “Core Principle”
to the seven principles with which a school seeking
accreditation must comply. The proposed statement
reads:
“Waldorf schools honor and embrace human
diversity and dignity. Waldorf schools pursue a
path of human dignity, social justice, and equity in
organizational, leadership, and pedagogical realms.
Recognizing this path is one of spiritual, moral,
and educational importance, schools celebrate
the diversity of humankind. Schools are engaged
in understanding and addressing the current and
historical contexts of marginalization. These
endeavors are rooted in Waldorf education’s founding
vision, which included addressing contemporary
social struggles within the context of the life of the
school.”
Given the passivity (and conformity) of the US
Waldorf movement, it is very likely that this proposal
will be approved. [Stop Press: Just before going to
press with this issue of New View it was confirmed that
this AWSNA proposal requiring active participation in
DEI as the 8th “Principle” underlying accreditation,
was accepted by the delegates. Only one delegate did
not vote for it. -Ed.]
A great deal of what is active in schools as DEI
was created and perpetuated by individuals with no
understanding or experience of Waldorf education.
New View 11Given the struggles faced by American schools
in maintaining high standards of teaching and in
understanding and applying the unique methodologies
of Waldorf pedagogy, this new ‘principle’ is less of a
guide than a distraction at best, and at worst, destruction.
I would propose a ninth Principle to counterbalance,
and perhaps moderate, the one-sidedness of the AWSNA
proposal:
“The unfolding of Waldorf Education coincided with
Rudolf Steiner’s initiative for the Threefold Social
Order. Thus, Waldorf schools commit to deepen
their understanding of the spheres of human rights,
associative economics, and the free spiritual life
in all aspects of the school, recognizing that these
impulses are of world transformative significance.
Schools are encouraged to address their own efforts
towards threefolding.”
AWSNA is notorious for its sanguinity concerning
the causes it espouses one year and abandons the next.
I advise young teachers who are suffering under the
constraints of their school’s DEI committee that they
should be patient and wait it out until AWSNA and its
member schools find a new cause for outrage. AWSNA’s
crusades have certainly come and gone, but, in these
post-denunciation years, the course of events has been
rapid and even brutal, effecting changes that strike at
the very heart of Waldorf education. In addition, the
efforts to transmogrify the curriculum come at a time
that is likely to be crucial for the further development of
Steiner’s pedagogical impulse — or for its decline.
As we approach the 100th anniversary of Rudolf
Steiner’s death in March 1925, it is only to be expected
that he and the hosts who accompany him in the spiritual
world will no longer provide the guidance and support
that has made possible the very existence of Waldorf
schools, worldwide, in our materialistic and destructive
age. The sort of attacks on Waldorf education that I have
enumerated here are harbingers of the challenges that will
increase as Steiner’s direct connection with the schools
diminishes over the next decades. The bifurcation of
the celebratory school year 2019 – 2020 by the Covid
epidemic and the rapid compliance of Waldorf schools to
edicts contradicting all of the values they had espoused
for a century was indicative of what the future may hold.
At the 1919 conclusion of World War I, as the peace
negotiations were slowly getting underway, there was
a punitive blockade of Germany by the Allies. One
result of this brutal edict was that millions of German
children became malnourished. This included many
of the students in the first Waldorf school, which
opened its doors nine months before the Versailles
Peace Conference began. Recognizing how many in
the Waldorf community were suffering from hunger,
Eugen Kolisko, the first Waldorf school doctor, created
a soup kitchen in the school (as a former tavern, it had
New View 12
suitable facilities) so that children could have at least
one good meal a day. He recognized, to paraphrase
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), “Erst kommt das Fressen,
dann das Lernen.” (First comes eating, then learning.)
And, as with so much that has transpired since the 100th
anniversary of Waldorf education, history repeats itself.
We, too, are in the midst of a blockade, but one that
is self-imposed by the leadership of American Waldorf
schools, and it is denying nourishment to the spiritual
beings that have united themselves with the Waldorf
movement. If they are not nourished by spiritually
striving teachers, those hierarchical beings cannot,
in turn, bring spiritual nurturance to the classroom.
Although Waldorf school children may be eating plenty
of food, much of it even organic, in the depths of their
souls they are malnourished. We see the symptoms in
the restlessness, insecurity, and intractable behavior that
appear so often in today’s Waldorf classroom. Steiner’s
words to Ehrenfried Pfeiffer concerning Education and
Nutrition as the pillars through which a reincarnating
initiate must enter life ring true, now more than ever.
This is not to say that all is lost. There are a handful of
independent schools and charter schools that continue
to cultivate Steiner’s methodology and curriculum,
nourishing spiritual beings who in turn help the school’s
students to slowly incarnate and take up their destinies
with determination and joy. There are anthroposophical
study groups of teachers, parents, and community
members that function outside of the school with the
hope that their efforts may embrace and deepen the
school’s life. And there are growing numbers of parents
who are withdrawing their children from schools they
no longer perceive as Waldorf and forming their own
community schools, often inviting disaffected teachers
to join them and bring Anthroposophy to life in a
modest, but vitalized setting.
The face of Waldorf education, which has become so
corporate and diluted over the past decades, may in time
assume a more monastic character, composed of many
small schools functioning independently or in tandem
with biodynamic farms, anthroposophical medical
centers, and Christian Community chapels. Such a
homeopathic distribution of Waldorf education will be
a vast improvement over the dilution that is prevalent
today.
And, for the larger schools, there is always
the possibility of withdrawing from AWSNA,
(‘WithdrAWSNA’) and the creation of a new association
of Waldorf schools intended to foster their independence
and spiritual freedom.
The Class of 2033
I have stated above that our time is crucial for the
advancement of the Waldorf impulse, or we may just
as easily witness its rapid decline. I want to conclude
this article by providing one more perspective on an
important crossing point.Grade One
2025 – 2026
Fairy Tales Nature Stories 2025: 100th
Anniversary of
Rudolf Steiner’s
death
Grade Two
2026 – 2027
Legends of Good
People, Saints
Fables
Grade Three
2027 – 2028
The Hebrew Scriptures Farming
Shelter
Fabric
Grade Four
2028 – 2029
Norse Mythology Zoology
Grade Five
2029 – 2030
Ancient Cultures:
India, Persia,
Mesopotamia/Babylon,
Egypt, Greece
Botany 2030: 2000th
Anniversary of the
Baptism of Jesus in
the Jordan River
Grade Six
2030 – 2031
Ancient Rome,
including the birth of
Christianity
Early Middle Ages
Mineralogy
Astronomy
Laboratory Science
Physics
Grade Seven
2031 – 2032
Late Middle Ages to
the Renaissance
Human Physiology
Chemistry
Physics
Grade Eight
2032 – 2033
Reformation
Birth of Modern
Science
Age of Revolution
Modern World
Independent Project
Human Anatomy
Physics
Chemistry
2033: 2000th
Anniversary of the
Crucifixion and
Resurrection of Jesus
Christ
The Grades and their subjects for ease of reference for the reader
As I have already noted, the centenary of Steiner’s
death will be commemorated in March of 2025. This
happens to be the month in which most Waldorf schools
in the Northern Hemisphere are soliciting applications
and beginning the lengthy process of determining which
individuals will be invited to join, or continue, as faculty
members in the next school year. The faculty meetings
in early days of spring are fraught with destiny. And
nowhere is this destiny felt more powerfully than in the
choice of the class teacher who will take on the rising
first grade and (ideally) remain with the children and the
school for the next eight years. The teacher chosen in
this spring’s deliberations will begin with first graders
in the autumn of 2025 and graduate them from grade
eight in the late spring of 2033.
For those readers unfamiliar with the Waldorf
curriculum, here is a list of the narratives that the
class teacher shares with her students and the sciences
introduced to her class in the eight years they are
together. There will be many other subjects, of course,
but the literary/historical and science content sets the
tone of the year and speaks most directly to the child’s
unfolding consciousness and path of incarnation.
2025 – 2026 Grade One: Fairy Tales and Nature
Stories
2026 – 2027 Grade Two: “Legends of Good People”
– Saints, and Fables
2027 – 2028 Grade Three: The Hebrew Scriptures
2028 – 2029 Grade Four: Norse Mythology. Natural
Science is introduced through Zoology
2029 – 2030 Grade Five: Ancient Cultures of India,
Persia, Mesopotamia/Babylon, Egypt, Greece. Botany
is the Natural Science.
2030 – 2031 Grade Six: Ancient Rome, including
the birth of Christianity. The Early Middle Ages.
Mineralogy and Astronomy are the natural sciences.
Laboratory science is introduced through Physics.
2031 – 2032 Grade Seven: From the late Middle Ages
to the Renaissance. Human Physiology is the natural
science and Chemistry joins Physics as the laboratory
sciences.
2032 – 2033 Grade Eight: The Reformation, the
Birth of Modern Science, the Age of Revolutions, the
modern world, are among the historical themes covered.
Human Anatomy is the natural science, and Physics and
Chemistry continue as the laboratory sciences. Students
choose an independent project they will complete by the
year’s end.
Although there are any number of contingencies that
we may expect in our chaotic world, I want to point out
that in the course of the eight-year time span described
above, there will be three anniversaries that will affect,
however subtly or even invisibly, the life and learning
of this particular Waldorf class:
New View 132025: 100th Anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death
2030: 2000th Anniversary of the Baptism of Jesus in
the Jordan River
2033: 2000th Anniversary of the Crucifixion and
Resurrection of Jesus Christ
If we examine the chronological correspondences
between these two lists – without forcing it! – we find
some remarkable harmonies between these significant
commemorations and what the Waldorf curriculum
offers the children at each successive stage. For
example, having gone broadly and deeply in grades
three, four, and five into the mythologies and the arts and
architecture of ancient pre-Christian civilizations, out
of themselves children recognize the correspondences
between many of the ancient gods and also sense their
imperfections and moral shortcomings.
In Grade Six, as emperors claim divinity while
evincing moral bankruptcy, Jesus of Nazareth, who is
taught as an historical figure only, clears the air and
reasserts the moral prerogatives of human beings. This
is the grade in which students begin to distinguish
themselves from what is hereditary and are likely to
encounter their individual karma.
The Seventh Grade year, which transpires during the
2000th anniversary of Christ’s active ministry, exposes
students to the artistry of masters like Giotto, Leonardo,
Michelangelo, and Raphael, creators of many of the most
powerful depictions of the life of Jesus, his parents, and
his disciples. The anonymity of so much medieval art
now gives way to the strongly individualized character
of painters and sculptors who are named, who have
personalities, and who have their own distinctive styles.
This is the grade in which students begin to recreate
themselves and to look for new adults in their life – a
teacher, a pastor, a team coach (or a media influencer) to
guide them to their next step.
Grade Eight casts some shadows on the luminous
prospects of Grade Seven, but also demonstrates the
world-transformative power of the single human being.
Luther reforms the Church, Copernicus and Galileo
make the sun stand still, and Danton overthrows the
monarchies that held sway for millennia. Again and
again, those who dare to speak out and assert the
centrality of the individual being, are put to death,
bringing a crucifixion mood to the eighth grade
classroom. Although never quite dispelled, it becomes
clear that even when its leaders perish, the spirit of
revolution – the spirit of freedom, the harbinger of the
human ego, lives on. A sensitive eighth grader may very
well be undergoing the ‘death’ of her childhood and
is grateful for the presence of her class teacher whose
memory stretches further back and far more objectively
to that eighth grader’s early years. In the hands of a
capable class teacher, the curricular content, the class
play, and even – especially – the final class trip serve
to reawaken the students’ relationship with their angel,
New View 14
with their archangelic group, and with the archai who
leads them to ask, “Who am I?” And “Why am I alive at
this time?”
As I have mentioned earlier in this article, the 100th
anniversary of the death of a figure like Steiner is of
monumental importance to the Waldorf movement.
Given the increasing lifespans of our time, there
are people alive today who were alive at the time of
Steiner’s death in 1925, and there are newborn babies
among us who will be alive to mark the two-hundredth
anniversary in 2125. Nonetheless, for most of us this
anniversary will be a “once in a lifetime” event.
The same cannot be said about the “once-in-a-
millennium anniversaries” involving Jesus – or can it?
One of Steiner’s revelations concerning reincarnation
was that most souls need a period of one thousand years
between their death and their rebirth. An earthly life,
though relatively short in the scheme of things, is of
such importance to the spiritual world that we need a
five hundred years’ education from the Hierarchies to
fathom the cosmic dimensions of our karmic debt and
another five hundred years to form the body that will
be our instrument for making all that we have learned
actionable.
There is every possibility that many people who will
be alive on the earth between 2030 and 2033 (including
many of you, dear readers) were incarnated when Jesus
last walked the earth and very likely in the Middle Ages,
as well. We can only imagine the significance of these
anniversaries to such souls, whose karma may be deeply
linked to the life, death, and resurrection of that unique
being. And we can see that the Waldorf curriculum
can be understood as seamlessly interwoven with
those dates, and – without any preaching or parochial
commemoration of those ‘Christian’ events – capable
of touching and awakening those souls from their
millennial slumber. The fast-approaching eight-year
span of 2025 to 2033 may be Waldorf’s raison d’etre
and potentially the springboard for the revivification of
the Waldorf movement. Or it may make us recognize
that Waldorf education has served its purpose and must
be supplanted by a pedagogy that will meet the needs of
the millennia to come.
Eugene Schwartz lives in Hereford Township,
Pennsylvania, USA. He is a former class teacher and
serves as a mentor and consultant to schools worldwide.
His courses and free resources may be accessed at:
iwaldorf.net.
Endnotes
1. Rudolf Steiner, The Younger Generation: Educational
and Spiritual Impulses in the Twentieth Century, Spring
Valley, NY. Anthroposophic Press, 1967, pp. 144-145.
by Eugene Schwartz
This article originally appeared in the Summer, 2024 issue of New View.
Between 1906 and 1911 Rudolf Steiner gave
numerous lectures concerning The Education of
the Child, any one of which might have served
as the template for a fledgling school. These lectures
did not prove actionable, and Steiner did not speak
specifically about the education of the child for the next
eight years. In those years, however, Steiner brought
the teaching of repeated earth lives as the means by
which, over time, each human being would develop
new capacities. Along with this, he brought a Western
perspective on ‘karma’, whereby willed actions made
by each person had consequences and always needed
addressing, in this life or another one, as part and parcel
of human development.
Also central to the picture of human development
unfolded by Steiner in those years was his
characterization of ‘four bodies’: the physical body,
an etheric body, which contains the forces that imbue
us with life here on earth (streaming from the etheric/
life realm); an astral body or soul, with its feelings and
passions; and the Ego, the kernel, the essential self, of
each human being. Surrounding and informing all this
was Steiner’s experience and understanding of spiritual
beings far more developed than us who ranged up to the
Creative Source that can be called ‘God’.
In many ways this was a confirmation of the
experience of Dionysius The Areopagite (who flourished
in the 1st century AD). He was mentioned in the Bible
(Acts 17:34) and was converted to Christianity by Paul
at Athens. Later he described nine levels of spiritual
beings, grouped into three orders, or levels:
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones
Dominions, Virtues, Powers
Principalities (Archai), Archangels, Angels
Steiner spoke and wrote at length about the activity and
influence of these various hierarchical beings in human
existence.
One of Steiner’s revelations about life after death and
life before birth is that it constitutes a centuries’ long
education. The disincarnate soul has lessons to learn
from the spiritual Hierarchies, and the spiritual world
has much to learn from the experiences of those who
have lived in earthly bodies. Steiner actually never
stopped lecturing about education, per se, but he did
take a long pause concerning childhood pedagogy.
Why?
Perhaps he recognized that this juvenile pedagogical
seed was serotinous, like that of a giant sequoia tree,
requiring an intense trial by fire before it could germinate.
The next seven years were to provide much in the way
of fire: the Great War, the influenza epidemic, and aerial
and chemical weapons that attacked the environment
as well as the opposing armies. By the decade’s
end, cries for self-determination and decolonization
exacerbated the post-war political instability of Europe
and its colonies, while the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919 (a
name coined to acknowledge the blood that was shed
in the US) witnessed race riots in thirty-six American
cities. It was out of this world-transforming fire that
the dormant seeds of Steiner’s educational lectures
could awaken, and the first Waldorf school could open
its doors. It was at this time that Steiner was asked by
Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, one of his closest students, what it
would take to help the ancient Initiates to reincarnate
in our time, to which Steiner replied succinctly,
“Education and nutrition.” Pfeiffer would soon help to
found Biodynamic Agriculture to accompany Waldorf
education in the spiritual regeneration of the postwar
world.
In 2020, midway though the Waldorf school
movement’s celebration of its first one hundred years,
history seemed to repeat itself. Another worldwide
epidemic began to spread and new calls for racial
justice and violent backlash exploded in the United
States. Europe was soon to experience its worst war in
decades, while renewed cries for decolonization and
parallel immigration issues led to political instability
across the continent. With social justice, public health,
and cultural conditions reflecting the turmoil of 1919,
we should not be surprised that there would be calls for
a new stage of Waldorf’s development: a rejuvenation,
a rebirth, a renewal – and questions would rightfully be
asked about the relevance, structure, and content of the
Waldorf curriculum itself.
I want to explore the ramifications of this “second
stage” of Waldorf education in relation to Steiner’s
intentions for the first hundred years and with a look
at the special importance of the fourteen years 2019 to
2033 – five of which have already passed – and their
impact on the future of Waldorf education.
New View 4Although, in the course of a century, Waldorf
education has garnered interest and gained a measure of
respect for its “slow learning” and child-based approach,
its artistry, and the centrality of the relationship that
develops between families and teachers, little is said
about the inner aspects of the Waldorf approach. This is
especially true in regard to the eight grade school years
(ages 6-7, to 13-14), during which Steiner had indicated
that one teacher (the “Class Teacher”) should remain
with a class and teach the main academic subjects,
even those with which s/he was not comfortable. The
twenty-first century has witnessed a tendency to shorten
this relationship, reducing the class teacher’s time with
the class to five years in many schools, and bringing in
specialists to teach maths, lab sciences, language, arts
and other subjects. Although these modifications have
received little attention, I would contend that they are
diminishing the quality of Waldorf education.
Much of what I will share in this article is founded in
Steiner’s spiritual understanding of the spiritual beings
that attend all of us.
The Waldorf primary school day begins when the
teacher meets the child at the classroom door, shakes his
or her hand and speaks words of welcome. The hands
raised and lowered at the child’s heart level leads to
an awakening and enlivening of the child’s rhythmical
system. We may say that with this the child’s angel,
living in the etheric body, is awakened and meets the
teacher as well. Once the children are settled at their
desks, a candle is lit and a verse spoken, so that the day
begins with a ritual. The angels become aware of one
another’s presence, readying the children to take one
another’s hands and form a circle. For the next fifteen
to twenty minutes, they engage in recitation, song, and
movement. This prepares the children to learn together,
and it also serves as an invitation to the archangels, the
guardians of groups and communities who live in the
slumbering astral bodies of the children, to engage with
the class.
At this point in the main lesson the individual
children and their guardian angels become members
of a group, overseen by its archangel. Their rhythmic
system is active, their limbs have been engaged, and
they are now ready for the “head-centered” segment of
the morning. In the primary grades the class teacher will
likely begin with a story that the child has learned by
heart; in later grades expository material, e.g., science,
or mathematics, will also be presented now. In grade
one the first words the children hear at this moment are
very likely to be, “Once upon a time . . .”
What does that phrase, ‘Once upon a time’, really
mean? Perhaps it may be best understood as, ‘Once
upon a Time Spirit,’ or in Steiner’s terminology, ‘Once
upon an archai’. The story the teacher is about to tell
has been carried over the ages upon the wings of a Time
Spirit and it has stood the test of time. The phrase ‘Once
upon a time’ summons a new spirit being, an archai, to
the classroom, and that being may gently fan the nascent
flame of the child’s ego, which will not fully come into
its own until decades have passed. The archai work over
long spans of time, and the teacher recognizes that the
fruits of what she, or he, brings in the primary school
stories, e.g. fairy tales, fables, and Hebrew Scriptures,
will lie dormant in the child’s consciousness and only
reveal their wisdom in years to come.
Waldorf class teachers will attest that being
responsible to teach a multiplicity of subjects over
the course of one grade is demanding, and having to
memorize the content of hundreds of lessons over the
course of eight years is challenging. Most teachers
acknowledge that it is those very demands that make
Waldorf pedagogy a vitalizing and renewing force
in their own lives that provides the opportunity for a
meaningful self-education. The Waldorf curriculum
brings knowledge to life in students and teachers alike.
The mutual experience of knowledge is a salient
feature of the Waldorf school, but it is not unique.
Devoted teachers in any school system also have the
opportunity to make such a learning experience possible.
What is unique to Waldorf alone is a third stream of
learning, less evident than the first two, but of supreme
importance. Waldorf stands alone in possessing a
curriculum so designed that the classroom can be the
setting for the simultaneous education of the child, the
teacher, and the hierarchical beings who are present as
well.
In a lecture cycle concerning the inner realities of
modern spiritual life, Steiner stated emphatically that
“Certain thoughts can only be grasped by the
supersensible hierarchies if men grasp them here in
earthly existence. The gods only think certain thoughts,
if they live in human bodies. These thoughts must be
carried into the spiritual world through the gate of
death. Only then can they be active.”
Throughout his lectures on life after death, Steiner
revealed that not only were disincarnate human beings
learning from the Hierarchies how to form their next
life in accordance with karmic necessity, but that the
hierarchical beings were themselves learning what it
was like to live in a physical body on the earth – an
experience that would never be granted to them.
In this respect, Steiner created a curriculum and a
method of presenting its contents to children that, for
the first time in earthly evolution, deeply interests and
engages the Hierarchies as well as the students physically
present in the classroom. Every class teacher is meant to
have the freedom to interpret and enliven the subjects,
all of which prepare the children for their adulthood,
but many of which at the same time recapitulate the
students’ experiences in previous lives. Spiritual beings
who have only been observers of these events in the
distant past may now learn from the children’s reactions
New View 5to and artistic representations of the legacy of earthly
cultures and at least vicariously participate in what it
means to be a human being on earth. These relationships
and interpenetrating activities make clear that Steiner’s
many pre-Waldorf lectures on reincarnation and karma
were also about education.
Using a phrase of Steiner’s, we may view this as
a ‘reverse ritual’, in which the fire of the children’s
enthusiasm and the power of their enlightenment as
they encounter the Waldorf curriculum serve as the
pedagogical nectar and ambrosia that nourishes the
gods. A Waldorf classroom may become a modern
temple in which the spiritual world embarks upon
a new relationship with humanity. Nothing I have
just described may be taken for granted, and much
depends on the inner life of the teacher and the support
she or he receives from colleagues and the school.
The love the teacher bears for the students and their
parents, the devotion to the Waldorf curriculum and its
anthroposophical foundations, and the commitment to
inner development, are the sine qua non for the interest
of the spiritual Hierarchies in human endeavors to be
fostered in the Waldorf curriculum.
Although Waldorf parents are mostly unaware of the
interrelationship of the higher worlds and their child’s
classroom, they are very aware when this relationship is
not being cultivated by the teacher. For example, when
the teacher is not consciously meeting the children’s
angels as they enter the classroom, parents will begin to
raise concerns about Safety. In our time, and particularly
in the US, there is no shortage of threats to children’s
well-being, but the presence of the students’ angels –
their guardian angels – creates a “safe space” that is
palpable and reassuring to families. If an archangel
is not invoked through daily songs, recitation, and
movement, and especially if festivals like Michaelmas
and Advent are celebrated reluctantly or not at all,
parents will likely be complaining that there are social
problems like bullying and cliques that tend to come
under the umbrella of Inclusion. And when there is no
consciousness of the presence of the archai in the life of
the class, parents will feel that “the time is out of joint,”
and that the school is still living in 1919, and an archaic
Colonialism permeates the curriculum.
After many decades of slow growth, the North
American Waldorf movement rapidly expanded in
the last third of the twentieth century. The social
foments and enthusiasm for “New Age” spirituality
that characterized the 1960s provided the openness for
alternative education that suggested Waldorf was an
idea whose time had come. Most significant was the
possibility of receiving a Waldorf teacher training in
the English language, which was due to the pioneering
efforts of Francis Edmunds in the UK and Werner Glas
and Rene Querido in the US. Their remarkable and
inspiring efforts made it possible for Emerson College
New View 6
(Sussex, England), The Waldorf Institute (Detroit,
USA), and Rudolf Steiner College (Fair Oaks, USA) to
meet the idealistic strivings of the post-war generation
with anthroposophical clarity and passion.
The climate of the times and the caliber of the
teacher trainings made it possible for the presence of
helpful spiritual beings to be made manifest in the
North American school movement. As a well-travelled
Waldorf class teacher and consultant to schools across
the continent in the 1980s, I can attest to the vitality
that Waldorf schools evinced and the impact they
made on their communities. Underlying this was the
fact that most of the teachers in most of these schools
either considered themselves anthroposophists or were
sympathetic to Steiner’s ideas. In addition, many of these
schools were administered not by a dean or principal
but rather by the faculty itself. The College of Teachers
or Collegium had the task of nurturing the spiritual core
of the school as well as making major decisions, while
the class teachers, committed to remaining with their
class for eight years, brought a continuity of experience
that bridged the school’s past and future. It was they
who had the particular responsibility of creating a
classroom in which, over the course of those eight
years, a relationship with angels, archangels, and archai
would be fostered.
Another factor supporting the rapid growth
of Waldorf schools in the US was their status as
‘independent’, i.e. private schools. Most laws and
regulations affecting schools in the US are at the state
level, which allows for a more diversified approach to
pedagogical methods and philosophies than would a
centralized federal system. Most states are respectful
of private and home schools, and they are more likely
to be tolerated rather than closely regulated. In the late
1980s and early 90s, however, the educational renewal
that Waldorf methodology embodied drew the attention
of public-school educators. The fact that independent
Waldorf schools charged tuition and tended to serve
predominantly upper-middle-class families was always
a sore point for some teachers, and the possibility of
tuition-free state-funded schools that would be open to
all children, intrigued them.
In 1992 the state of California passed the Charter
Schools Act, which gave teachers and parents the
autonomy to create state funded schools to meet the
specific needs of their communities. Rudolf Steiner
College in Fair Oaks was active in encouraging both
charter initiatives and public-school districts to found
‘Waldorf-inspired’ or ‘Waldorf-methods’ institutions
and throughout the 1990s many other states opened
the way for charters. These early charter schools were
initially staffed by trained and experienced Waldorf
teachers. They relished the opportunity to reach
otherwise underserved families and communities, and
they regarded the standardized tests and state schoolRudolf Steiner’s Cosmic Verses from 1915
– a journey in eurythmy, speech and music
Macrocosmic
Dances –
the unfolding universe
A Project Group of the Eurythmy Association of the United Kingdom
● 4th August Michael Hall Theatre, Forest Row R18 5JA
● 28th September The Wool Barn, Ruskin Mill Trust, Nailsworth GL6 0EQ
● 26th/27th October Ringwood Waldorf School, Ringwood, BH24 2NN
● 16th/17th November Camphill Community Mourne Grange, Kilkeel BT34 4EX
In addition to performances, a lecture, workshop and demonstration may be held.
For further details please contact: cosmicverses@eurythmyassociation.uk
inspectors as annoyances, but not obstructions, to the
establishment of genuine Waldorf schools in the public
domain.
I served as a consultant and mentor to many of these
early Waldorf charters and in the early years of the
twenty-first century I directed two documentaries in
which charters figured prominently. I was impressed
by the teachers’ dedication to the anthroposophical
foundations of their educational approach and to
the efforts made by their administrators, who were
themselves almost all former Waldorf teachers, to
support their faculties’ spiritual strivings. However,
year-by-year, as the founding teachers and parents
moved on or retired, it became more difficult to replace
them with younger teachers and families who had the
same degree of interest in, no less commitment to,
Steiner’s guiding principles.
This was especially evident among the schools’ new
administrators and principals, many of whom came
with experience solely in the public-school world, and
most of whom had no wish to immerse themselves in
Waldorf pedagogy. Some schools had retained, perhaps
through force of habit, a College of Teachers, but the
public school system gave such a group purely advisory
power, and many administrators, whose word was law
in the school, didn’t want any advice. By the end of the
first decade of the twenty-first century, while what the
charters offered was still head-and-shoulders above the
quality of mainstream public education, many of the
schools were moving from being Waldorf-Inspired to
Waldorf-Methods to what can only be termed Waldorf-
Style.
In spite of their diminishing pedagogical quality and
the spiritual vacuum imposed by administrators and the
leadership of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education,
many Waldorf charter schools have thrived and continue
to draw far more students than their independent peers.
Since charter schools receive government moneys for
teacher training, Waldorf training centers compete
to draw these well-funded faculty members to their
New View 7programs. Some of this competition involves making
Waldorf more amenable to public school teachers by
simplifying Waldorf content and methods and modifying
the Waldorf curriculum in big and small ways. Charter
teachers have been instructed by their own association
to avoid spending their training grants on anything that
smacks of religion or spirituality, so they are likely
to hear less and less about Anthroposophy with each
succeeding year. This means that independent school
teachers, who study at the same institutes, will also hear
little about the Waldorf curriculum and its foundations
and will likely learn next to nothing about the angels,
archangels, and archai who are waiting outside the
teachers’ classrooms, ready for the school year to begin.
There is a particular irony to this downgrading of the
spiritual dimensions of Waldorf trainings, ostensibly
to suit the requirements of publicly funded teachers.
When a war was fought in medieval Europe, only the
noblemen and their knights were wealthy enough to
afford the horses, armor, and weaponry necessary to
contend with the enemy. Their serfs, sworn to follow
their lord into battle, had only their work clothes and
whatever pitchfork or sharpened spade they could
retrieve from the barn. Compared to their well-equipped
masters, they were as naked as newborn babies – infants
– in warfare, and so were known as ‘the infantry’. A
great many of them perished on the battlefield.
While some parents choose Waldorf charters because
they know and support the underlying philosophy, many
more come with children who are struggling in their
local public school and want a setting with kind teachers
who respect and help even the most challenged students.
That is to say, Waldorf charter schools are likely to have
a much higher percentage of special needs children than
independent schools – and yet charter school educators
are not supposed to even entertain the idea that there are
spiritual beings standing ready to help their class. In this
regard, the charter school teachers are the infantry of the
Waldorf movement, unarmed, unhorsed, and unable to
meet the very needs for which the charters were created.
Although the training institutes and the public Waldorf
schools are culpable for the dilution of the US Waldorf
movement, the independent schools and their faculties
have also played a significant role. Their greatest
misjudgment had its roots in a late 1980s springtime
meeting (I happened to be attending, as mentor) in a
strong and healthy school in the western United States. A
popular and beloved class teacher, about to enter grade six
for the first time in the fall, announced that her antipathy
to maths and science had led her to refuse to teach those
subjects to her class in grades six, seven, and eight.
A capable maths and science teacher was found who
saved the day – that day, anyway. The school’s panicky
and short-term solution was soon to lead to a fateful
conversation about the fact that some people are great
with primary school children, while others seemed to be
New View 8
born to teach middle schools. And that conversation, in
turn, led to the school’s decision to abolish the institution
of the Steiner-inspired eight-year class teacher and
replace it with a teacher going from grade one to five
and a group (not an individual) of specialists, gifted in
working with challenging middle-schoolers, to teach
grades six, seven, and eight (11/12-13/14 year olds)
Shortly thereafter, this change was memorialized in the
school’s class teacher contracts, and even the occasional
go-getter who wanted to take all eight grades could not
do so. In an alarming demonstration of the conformity
that has become endemic in the Waldorf movement, by
the late 1990s scores of independent Waldorf schools
in the US had adopted the same policy, with only a few
schools leaving open the possibility that there might be a
rare educator who was capable of making an eight-year
commitment. The training institutes, always sensitive to
the way the wind blows, made no efforts to help schools
understand the centrality of the eight-year cycle but
merely changed their presentation of the upper grades
to reflect the schools’ choice, and not Steiner’s insights.
That marked the beginning of a phenomenon that I
have called “The Incredible Shrinking Class Teacher.”
Although it is never discussed anymore, it is the second-
most unfortunate decision that American Waldorf
schools have made in their history (I will come to the
most unfortunate decision shortly). We have already
explored the class teacher as one who spans the worlds
of the child, the parents, and the Hierarchies active in
the classroom. When Steiner founded the “Daughter
Movements” (of which Waldorf education was the first,
followed by new directions in agriculture, medicine,
religious renewal and so on) his hope was that human
vocations could become paths of initiation, ‘on the job’
awakenings to the goals of the spiritual world.
State authorities gave their approval to the school’s
formation and assumed its students would be factory
workers’ children. That, in turn, would mean that
those students would enter a factory apprenticeship
after graduation, making the Waldorf school their only
formal education. Because of this assumption, Steiner’s
original seven-year cycle had to be expanded to eight
years. This slightly longer cycle gave the class teacher
the opportunity to participate in his students’ experience
of their expansion into their etheric and astral bodies
and the foreshadowing of their ‘I.’ In his 1922 lectures
to young people, Steiner said, “Every human being is
a teacher, but he is sleeping and must be awakened…
[The teacher] does not depend on the giving out of
knowledge but on activating the individuality of the
soul, [and depends] upon the pre-earthly existence. Then
it is really the child who educates himself through us.”1
Here again, we see the profound connection Steiner
made between our educational experiences between
death and rebirth and their pedagogical ramifications in
the Waldorf classroom.In his very last education lectures, Steiner formulated
what he called the First Pedagogical Law, indicating
the necessity for the teacher to strive to develop a soul
member that is one stage ahead of what the child is
incorporating. Truncating the teacher’s years with her
class provides no opportunity for her ego to interact with
the children’s astral bodies, an encounter that no group
of ‘upper grades specialists’ can equal. Less visible, but
no less tragic, is that the class teacher’s relationship with
those visiting scholars – angels, archangels, and archai
– is cut short, never to reach its celebratory culmination.
An initiation that is abbreviated can have a deleterious
effect on the neophyte’s soul life, and it should come
as no surprise that over the past few years alarming
numbers of Waldorf teachers complain of depression,
anxiety, and alienation from their colleagues. As
Alexander Pope put it, “A little learning is a dang’rous
thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”
The diminished stature and role of the individual
class teacher and the class teachers as a group in
schools set the scene for three unexpected challenges
to the Waldorf movement that appeared, as if by divine
vengeance, halfway through the 2019-2020 school year.
That year, of course, was meant to be devoted to the
celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of
the first Waldorf school. The event that served as the
springboard for much of this was the Covid epidemic.
The first challenge was the governmental order that all
schools in the US, private as well as public, were to close.
Given the importance of the face-to-face encounter of
teacher and students, and the daily encounters of students
with one another, many teachers and parents judged
such a measure to be antithetical to the very existence
of a Waldorf school. Their objections were quickly
squelched by the Association of Waldorf Schools of
North America (AWSNA), whose legal counsel gave
the irrevocable order to schools: “Comply.” Once again,
conformity trumped deliberation and initiative.
The second challenge arose as closure of the schools
invariably led to the snap decision that Waldorf teachers
would have to instruct their students via ‘distance
learning’, utilizing the same Internet and the devices
they had been prohibiting and proselytizing against for
decades. Thousands of Waldorf families nationwide had
even signed contracts with their school or their child’s
teacher promising to restrict or prohibit their child’s
exposure to electronic media. Most Waldorf teachers
had a weekend, at most, to learn how to ‘distance teach’,
while many Waldorf students were to have their very first
exposure to the Internet by order of their Waldorf school.
The effusive praise that teachers received from AWSNA
and the Alliance, which regaled them as “heroes” who
decisively stepped into the pandemic fray, did little to
counter the educators’ realization that whatever their
Google-based classes and Zoom meetings might be
achieving, it was not Waldorf education.
The third challenge led to what can only be termed
the worst decision concerning Waldorf education in
North America. The underlying circumstances were
what amounted to a recapitulation of the 1919 Red
Summer, the race riots that erupted throughout the US.
This time around, the brutal murder of a black man by
the police, occurring in the midst of the social isolation
and chaos marking a nation’s response to Covid, ignited
protests and counter-protests, cries for social justice and
hateful backlash. Once again, America’s conscience
was being awakened, and the recurrent recognition of
injustices suffered by people of color arose in the media
and on the streets.
Thousands of American institutions – corporations
and not-for-profits, banks and small businesses,
public and private schools alike, immediately issued
statements opposing racism and pledged to do their
part in hiring people of color and examining their own
principles and policies to work towards equality. Many
of these institutions quickly brought in consultants
trained in a philosophy and methodology concerned
with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). And not
to be on the wrong side of history (and to conform to
what many other private schools were doing) AWSNA
took the exceptional step of making a formal statement
about current events, and even taking what was soon
to be considered a ‘political’ stand. Here is an excerpt
from the statement posted on AWSNA’s website in the
summer of 2020:
“… we take seriously our responsibility to bear
witness to what is happening in the world, to center
the voices of color in racial justice work, to change
the course of inequities, and to identify and break
down structural racism in all forms where it exists,
particularly in Waldorf education.
Waldorf education espouses principles of respect for
human dignity. Any narratives or indications made
by Rudolf Steiner that are in contradiction to these
principles are not the basis for Waldorf education and
we unequivocally denounce such statements.
We know that we have far to go as an association and as
individuals in our understanding of racial oppression
and social justice… ”
Although the Waldorf movement and other Daughter
movements and, indeed, the anthroposophical movement
itself, have had their share of internal battles and name-
calling, never before has any endeavor or institution
founded or inspired by Rudolf Steiner denounced
him. The fact that this denunciation occurred while
schools were closed and teachers were isolated from
one another, communicating via glitchy Zoom sessions,
made it possible for the denunciation, momentous as it
was, to be presented as an executive decision and not
subject to any discussion or deliberation.
New View 9Objections were certainly raised, but I probably
don’t have to tell readers that most member schools
conformed and immediately posted their own
denunciatory statements and reprinted and/or linked
their site to AWSNA’s denunciation. As Beverly
Amico, one of the AWSNA leaders responsible for the
posted statement, explained in an online interview:
“But I’m going to go ahead and speak a little bit more
about the – particularly around the relationship to
Rudolf Steiner.
‘AWSNA has denounced certain narratives made by
Rudolf Steiner that are in contradiction to Waldorf
education, which teaches and instills a respect for
human dignity’– that’s how it’s written in our quote.
So I don’t want to dismiss the fact that Rudolf
Steiner is no doubt an integral important part of
our organizations and our schools’ histories, and
certainly our worldview. And I think that I can speak
for our schools, hopefully that we really hold the
profound and positive aspects of this heritage, but
at the same time, the executive team believes that
we must also take the responsibility for the aspects
of this heritage that are deeply challenging. Rudolf
Steiner gave about 6,000 lectures and offered many
ideas which support equity and justice… . But he
also shared ideas that we believe are harmful and
reflect misguided assertions regarding race and
ethnicity. I just want to close and start going back
to what Laura said. And it’s part of our evolution.
We need to evolve in order to address this. And we
believe that denouncing certain aspects of those
ideas is consistent with anthroposophical thought
and the grappling with the paradox, any paradox,
will only strengthen our work for the future.”
Amico tells us Steiner “shared ideas that we
believe are harmful and reflect misguided assertions
regarding race and ethnicity.” Her explanation is not
very articulate and it is significant that she believes that
Steiner’s “harmful” ideas reflect the fact that he was
“misguided.” Misguided by whom? Steiner made it
clear throughout his books and lectures that he strove
for guidance only from the most progressive and light-
filled beings, who were themselves guided by the Christ
being. If Christ “misguided” Steiner, Amico might have
at least suggested someone who could have provided
Steiner with helpful guidance.
As the result of meetings and discussions occurring
after the fact, the inflammatory statement was modified
and Steiner’s name was removed, but the deed had been
done. A Pandora’s box was opened, and teachers and
parents who had long struggled to understand Steiner or
develop the soul forces needed to follow his path now
had their time in the sun. They felt free to campaign
on behalf of prohibiting studies of Steiner’s books,
curtailing the celebration of the Christian festivals,
New View 10
disallowing the mention of angels and essentially
turning their ‘Waldorf’ school into anything but.
Among the fallen in this contemporary cultural war
was Homer’s Odyssey, followed by the German epics
Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Goethe’s
Faust, all of which have been replaced by such
twentieth-century Black literature as Richard Wright’s
Black Boy and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The
story of the decisions that led to these radical changes
is compellingly told by Green Meadow Waldorf High
School teacher Defne Caldwell, herself a Green Meadow
alumna, in the article ‘To Make Room for Black Lives,
Homer Stands Aside’, (Spring/Summer 2021 Waldorf
Research Bulletin). It is not coincidental that the three
retired epics were all mentioned by Steiner in many
contexts, but especially because they were narratives
about ancient and modern initiation, and all three
revealed the ways in which human beings interacted
with the spiritual world for good and ill. It should
be noted that Defne Caldwell’s high school English
teacher, David Sloan, with whom she studied Parzifal,
now gives a course on the epic, online, from his home in
Maine, hundreds of miles from his old school. Perhaps
this image of the Curriculum in Exile foreshadows the
future of the Waldorf movement.
Although the denunciation furore has diminished
over these four years, it continues to simmer. The
destructive forces unleashed, and spiritual shadows
cast by AWSNA’s inane and shortsighted efforts to
appear relevant and woke, will have their own karmic
consequences for years to come. We will very likely
need triage, not just training, to heal the wounds.
Let’s return to Steiner’s words to Ehrenfried Pfeiffer
concerning the central importance of education and
nutrition for the spiritual health of our time. We know that
breads made from biodynamic grain are far superior to
the de-natured and highly processed grains used in most
commercial breads. Adding insult to injury, commercial
bakers aim to compensate for their grains’ nutritional
emptiness by adding synthetic vitamins and minerals
and claiming that the finished loaf offers even more
nourishment than its unprocessed equivalent. It is not
far fetched to compare a contemporary Waldorf school
that ignores its spiritual foundations and processes the
curriculum to remove anything remotely “Steinerized”
from that loaf of commercial bread. To make it appear
nutritious, just add vitamins D, E, and I, and minerals L,
G, B, T, Q, and so on. Now the school will meet every
child’s needs. Education as Nutrition – stones instead of
bread.
The denunciation of Steiner for his “racist”
statements was the clarion call for a juggernaut of harsh
reexaminations of Waldorf education and its unprocessed
curriculum. Did the curriculum’s Euro-centric origins
need to be “decolonized”? Did its spiritual foundations
cry out to be “dehierarchized”? Did it, in short, need
to be thoroughly de-Steinerized? The insightful Blackwriter James Baldwin once said, “Urban renewal means
Negro removal.” Would the sudden clamor for “Waldorf
Renewal” mean, in turn, Steiner removal? A proxy war
on Steiner is in full swing, and every American Waldorf
school is fair game.
Although one of the most common criticisms leveled
at the Waldorf curriculum by American teachers is that
it is Eurocentric, it is interesting that the most influential
proponents of curricular reform are based in Europe.
Although the reformers are not officially affiliated,
the video series Alanus Hochschule Fachbereich
Bildungswissenshaft (Alanus University Department
of Educational Science) is revelatory in its compelling
presentations of curricular concerns on the part of
several educators. The uniformity of their critiques
and the lack of dissension in their ranks suggests a
‘brain trust’, in the style of the Manhattan Project (an
endeavor described in the ‘Plutonium Man’ article and
the ‘Oppenheimer’ film review in New View issue 109,
Autumn 2023). And their labors may be destined to
have the same effect on modern Waldorf education as
the Manhattan Project had on modern warfare.
One of the leading figures in these discussions about
the insufficiency of the current Waldorf Curriculum is
Martyn Rawson. His qualifications to take a fresh look
at Steiner’s pedagogy are impeccable; indeed, his book,
The Tasks and Content of the Steiner/Waldorf Curriculum
(2014) was the most authoritative presentation of the
subject. A Waldorf practitioner for nearly fifty years, he
remains a classroom teacher, lectures internationally,
and acts as a bridge linking Waldorf schools to myriad
local, state, EU, and UN educational authorities. Since
2020 his calls for a fresh look at the Waldorf curriculum
have become more forceful and he has had an especially
powerful impact through numerous Working Papers and
online videos. In January of 2024 he was co-presenter
of a workshop at the Sunbridge Institute (in New York)
on “Decolonizing the Waldorf Curriculum”, the first of
its kind in the United States.
At the conclusion of a Zoom presentation, Rawson
was asked how his many proposed curricular changes
might affect a teacher’s relationship to Anthroposophy.
He responded by stating that a contemporary Waldorf
teacher should be held responsible only for the study
and understanding of those lectures given to teachers
by Steiner between 1919 and 1925. This implies that
Waldorf teachers need not know anything about
anthroposophical research involving the Hierarchies,
world evolution, the cultural epochs, the development
of human consciousness, life after death, reincarnation
and karma… the list goes on. However, given the
racial, social, and gender struggles that are swirling in
today’s classroom, insights gained from all of Steiner’s
foundational work are needed now, more than ever.
As a Waldorf spokesperson who often addresses
groups and individuals who are empowered to censure
or close schools, Rawson has developed the vocabulary,
diagrams, and metaphors that help make Steiner’s
pedagogy acceptable to mainstream universities
and governments. Such academic terminology and
diagrammatic images may represent the Letter of
Waldorf education, but not its Spirit; they can only lead
to the dynamics of Waldorf methodology calcifying into
the mechanics of a Waldorf technique. The relationship
that the Waldorf teacher builds with students and their
parents over the course of years, the tribulations and
triumphs encountered in preparing for new subjects and
ever-new grades, and above all, the love that permeates
every aspect of the Waldorf experience are found
nowhere in this Working Paper. It would be so much
better if the intellectual energy, technical expertise,
and financial support that makes these curricular
deconstruction efforts possible were channeled into
fostering the deepening of the Waldorf curriculum that
we already have, and inspiring Waldorf teachers to re-
engage with its anthroposophical foundations.
Although they pulled back from their harsh statements
about Steiner’s racism, the leaders of AWSNA have
doubled down on their own efforts to eviscerate the
Waldorf curriculum. It is almost impossible for an
American Waldorf teacher to join a grades preparation
course that does not have a major DEI component; one
training institute even devotes every afternoon in its
summer grades preparations courses to “decolonizing.”
And AWSNA plans to add an eighth “Core Principle”
to the seven principles with which a school seeking
accreditation must comply. The proposed statement
reads:
“Waldorf schools honor and embrace human
diversity and dignity. Waldorf schools pursue a
path of human dignity, social justice, and equity in
organizational, leadership, and pedagogical realms.
Recognizing this path is one of spiritual, moral,
and educational importance, schools celebrate
the diversity of humankind. Schools are engaged
in understanding and addressing the current and
historical contexts of marginalization. These
endeavors are rooted in Waldorf education’s founding
vision, which included addressing contemporary
social struggles within the context of the life of the
school.”
Given the passivity (and conformity) of the US
Waldorf movement, it is very likely that this proposal
will be approved. [Stop Press: Just before going to
press with this issue of New View it was confirmed that
this AWSNA proposal requiring active participation in
DEI as the 8th “Principle” underlying accreditation,
was accepted by the delegates. Only one delegate did
not vote for it. -Ed.]
A great deal of what is active in schools as DEI
was created and perpetuated by individuals with no
understanding or experience of Waldorf education.
New View 11Given the struggles faced by American schools
in maintaining high standards of teaching and in
understanding and applying the unique methodologies
of Waldorf pedagogy, this new ‘principle’ is less of a
guide than a distraction at best, and at worst, destruction.
I would propose a ninth Principle to counterbalance,
and perhaps moderate, the one-sidedness of the AWSNA
proposal:
“The unfolding of Waldorf Education coincided with
Rudolf Steiner’s initiative for the Threefold Social
Order. Thus, Waldorf schools commit to deepen
their understanding of the spheres of human rights,
associative economics, and the free spiritual life
in all aspects of the school, recognizing that these
impulses are of world transformative significance.
Schools are encouraged to address their own efforts
towards threefolding.”
AWSNA is notorious for its sanguinity concerning
the causes it espouses one year and abandons the next.
I advise young teachers who are suffering under the
constraints of their school’s DEI committee that they
should be patient and wait it out until AWSNA and its
member schools find a new cause for outrage. AWSNA’s
crusades have certainly come and gone, but, in these
post-denunciation years, the course of events has been
rapid and even brutal, effecting changes that strike at
the very heart of Waldorf education. In addition, the
efforts to transmogrify the curriculum come at a time
that is likely to be crucial for the further development of
Steiner’s pedagogical impulse — or for its decline.
As we approach the 100th anniversary of Rudolf
Steiner’s death in March 1925, it is only to be expected
that he and the hosts who accompany him in the spiritual
world will no longer provide the guidance and support
that has made possible the very existence of Waldorf
schools, worldwide, in our materialistic and destructive
age. The sort of attacks on Waldorf education that I have
enumerated here are harbingers of the challenges that will
increase as Steiner’s direct connection with the schools
diminishes over the next decades. The bifurcation of
the celebratory school year 2019 – 2020 by the Covid
epidemic and the rapid compliance of Waldorf schools to
edicts contradicting all of the values they had espoused
for a century was indicative of what the future may hold.
At the 1919 conclusion of World War I, as the peace
negotiations were slowly getting underway, there was
a punitive blockade of Germany by the Allies. One
result of this brutal edict was that millions of German
children became malnourished. This included many
of the students in the first Waldorf school, which
opened its doors nine months before the Versailles
Peace Conference began. Recognizing how many in
the Waldorf community were suffering from hunger,
Eugen Kolisko, the first Waldorf school doctor, created
a soup kitchen in the school (as a former tavern, it had
New View 12
suitable facilities) so that children could have at least
one good meal a day. He recognized, to paraphrase
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), “Erst kommt das Fressen,
dann das Lernen.” (First comes eating, then learning.)
And, as with so much that has transpired since the 100th
anniversary of Waldorf education, history repeats itself.
We, too, are in the midst of a blockade, but one that
is self-imposed by the leadership of American Waldorf
schools, and it is denying nourishment to the spiritual
beings that have united themselves with the Waldorf
movement. If they are not nourished by spiritually
striving teachers, those hierarchical beings cannot,
in turn, bring spiritual nurturance to the classroom.
Although Waldorf school children may be eating plenty
of food, much of it even organic, in the depths of their
souls they are malnourished. We see the symptoms in
the restlessness, insecurity, and intractable behavior that
appear so often in today’s Waldorf classroom. Steiner’s
words to Ehrenfried Pfeiffer concerning Education and
Nutrition as the pillars through which a reincarnating
initiate must enter life ring true, now more than ever.
This is not to say that all is lost. There are a handful of
independent schools and charter schools that continue
to cultivate Steiner’s methodology and curriculum,
nourishing spiritual beings who in turn help the school’s
students to slowly incarnate and take up their destinies
with determination and joy. There are anthroposophical
study groups of teachers, parents, and community
members that function outside of the school with the
hope that their efforts may embrace and deepen the
school’s life. And there are growing numbers of parents
who are withdrawing their children from schools they
no longer perceive as Waldorf and forming their own
community schools, often inviting disaffected teachers
to join them and bring Anthroposophy to life in a
modest, but vitalized setting.
The face of Waldorf education, which has become so
corporate and diluted over the past decades, may in time
assume a more monastic character, composed of many
small schools functioning independently or in tandem
with biodynamic farms, anthroposophical medical
centers, and Christian Community chapels. Such a
homeopathic distribution of Waldorf education will be
a vast improvement over the dilution that is prevalent
today.
And, for the larger schools, there is always
the possibility of withdrawing from AWSNA,
(‘WithdrAWSNA’) and the creation of a new association
of Waldorf schools intended to foster their independence
and spiritual freedom.
The Class of 2033
I have stated above that our time is crucial for the
advancement of the Waldorf impulse, or we may just
as easily witness its rapid decline. I want to conclude
this article by providing one more perspective on an
important crossing point.Grade One
2025 – 2026
Fairy Tales Nature Stories 2025: 100th
Anniversary of
Rudolf Steiner’s
death
Grade Two
2026 – 2027
Legends of Good
People, Saints
Fables
Grade Three
2027 – 2028
The Hebrew Scriptures Farming
Shelter
Fabric
Grade Four
2028 – 2029
Norse Mythology Zoology
Grade Five
2029 – 2030
Ancient Cultures:
India, Persia,
Mesopotamia/Babylon,
Egypt, Greece
Botany 2030: 2000th
Anniversary of the
Baptism of Jesus in
the Jordan River
Grade Six
2030 – 2031
Ancient Rome,
including the birth of
Christianity
Early Middle Ages
Mineralogy
Astronomy
Laboratory Science
Physics
Grade Seven
2031 – 2032
Late Middle Ages to
the Renaissance
Human Physiology
Chemistry
Physics
Grade Eight
2032 – 2033
Reformation
Birth of Modern
Science
Age of Revolution
Modern World
Independent Project
Human Anatomy
Physics
Chemistry
2033: 2000th
Anniversary of the
Crucifixion and
Resurrection of Jesus
Christ
The Grades and their subjects for ease of reference for the reader
As I have already noted, the centenary of Steiner’s
death will be commemorated in March of 2025. This
happens to be the month in which most Waldorf schools
in the Northern Hemisphere are soliciting applications
and beginning the lengthy process of determining which
individuals will be invited to join, or continue, as faculty
members in the next school year. The faculty meetings
in early days of spring are fraught with destiny. And
nowhere is this destiny felt more powerfully than in the
choice of the class teacher who will take on the rising
first grade and (ideally) remain with the children and the
school for the next eight years. The teacher chosen in
this spring’s deliberations will begin with first graders
in the autumn of 2025 and graduate them from grade
eight in the late spring of 2033.
For those readers unfamiliar with the Waldorf
curriculum, here is a list of the narratives that the
class teacher shares with her students and the sciences
introduced to her class in the eight years they are
together. There will be many other subjects, of course,
but the literary/historical and science content sets the
tone of the year and speaks most directly to the child’s
unfolding consciousness and path of incarnation.
2025 – 2026 Grade One: Fairy Tales and Nature
Stories
2026 – 2027 Grade Two: “Legends of Good People”
– Saints, and Fables
2027 – 2028 Grade Three: The Hebrew Scriptures
2028 – 2029 Grade Four: Norse Mythology. Natural
Science is introduced through Zoology
2029 – 2030 Grade Five: Ancient Cultures of India,
Persia, Mesopotamia/Babylon, Egypt, Greece. Botany
is the Natural Science.
2030 – 2031 Grade Six: Ancient Rome, including
the birth of Christianity. The Early Middle Ages.
Mineralogy and Astronomy are the natural sciences.
Laboratory science is introduced through Physics.
2031 – 2032 Grade Seven: From the late Middle Ages
to the Renaissance. Human Physiology is the natural
science and Chemistry joins Physics as the laboratory
sciences.
2032 – 2033 Grade Eight: The Reformation, the
Birth of Modern Science, the Age of Revolutions, the
modern world, are among the historical themes covered.
Human Anatomy is the natural science, and Physics and
Chemistry continue as the laboratory sciences. Students
choose an independent project they will complete by the
year’s end.
Although there are any number of contingencies that
we may expect in our chaotic world, I want to point out
that in the course of the eight-year time span described
above, there will be three anniversaries that will affect,
however subtly or even invisibly, the life and learning
of this particular Waldorf class:
New View 132025: 100th Anniversary of Rudolf Steiner’s death
2030: 2000th Anniversary of the Baptism of Jesus in
the Jordan River
2033: 2000th Anniversary of the Crucifixion and
Resurrection of Jesus Christ
If we examine the chronological correspondences
between these two lists – without forcing it! – we find
some remarkable harmonies between these significant
commemorations and what the Waldorf curriculum
offers the children at each successive stage. For
example, having gone broadly and deeply in grades
three, four, and five into the mythologies and the arts and
architecture of ancient pre-Christian civilizations, out
of themselves children recognize the correspondences
between many of the ancient gods and also sense their
imperfections and moral shortcomings.
In Grade Six, as emperors claim divinity while
evincing moral bankruptcy, Jesus of Nazareth, who is
taught as an historical figure only, clears the air and
reasserts the moral prerogatives of human beings. This
is the grade in which students begin to distinguish
themselves from what is hereditary and are likely to
encounter their individual karma.
The Seventh Grade year, which transpires during the
2000th anniversary of Christ’s active ministry, exposes
students to the artistry of masters like Giotto, Leonardo,
Michelangelo, and Raphael, creators of many of the most
powerful depictions of the life of Jesus, his parents, and
his disciples. The anonymity of so much medieval art
now gives way to the strongly individualized character
of painters and sculptors who are named, who have
personalities, and who have their own distinctive styles.
This is the grade in which students begin to recreate
themselves and to look for new adults in their life – a
teacher, a pastor, a team coach (or a media influencer) to
guide them to their next step.
Grade Eight casts some shadows on the luminous
prospects of Grade Seven, but also demonstrates the
world-transformative power of the single human being.
Luther reforms the Church, Copernicus and Galileo
make the sun stand still, and Danton overthrows the
monarchies that held sway for millennia. Again and
again, those who dare to speak out and assert the
centrality of the individual being, are put to death,
bringing a crucifixion mood to the eighth grade
classroom. Although never quite dispelled, it becomes
clear that even when its leaders perish, the spirit of
revolution – the spirit of freedom, the harbinger of the
human ego, lives on. A sensitive eighth grader may very
well be undergoing the ‘death’ of her childhood and
is grateful for the presence of her class teacher whose
memory stretches further back and far more objectively
to that eighth grader’s early years. In the hands of a
capable class teacher, the curricular content, the class
play, and even – especially – the final class trip serve
to reawaken the students’ relationship with their angel,
New View 14
with their archangelic group, and with the archai who
leads them to ask, “Who am I?” And “Why am I alive at
this time?”
As I have mentioned earlier in this article, the 100th
anniversary of the death of a figure like Steiner is of
monumental importance to the Waldorf movement.
Given the increasing lifespans of our time, there
are people alive today who were alive at the time of
Steiner’s death in 1925, and there are newborn babies
among us who will be alive to mark the two-hundredth
anniversary in 2125. Nonetheless, for most of us this
anniversary will be a “once in a lifetime” event.
The same cannot be said about the “once-in-a-
millennium anniversaries” involving Jesus – or can it?
One of Steiner’s revelations concerning reincarnation
was that most souls need a period of one thousand years
between their death and their rebirth. An earthly life,
though relatively short in the scheme of things, is of
such importance to the spiritual world that we need a
five hundred years’ education from the Hierarchies to
fathom the cosmic dimensions of our karmic debt and
another five hundred years to form the body that will
be our instrument for making all that we have learned
actionable.
There is every possibility that many people who will
be alive on the earth between 2030 and 2033 (including
many of you, dear readers) were incarnated when Jesus
last walked the earth and very likely in the Middle Ages,
as well. We can only imagine the significance of these
anniversaries to such souls, whose karma may be deeply
linked to the life, death, and resurrection of that unique
being. And we can see that the Waldorf curriculum
can be understood as seamlessly interwoven with
those dates, and – without any preaching or parochial
commemoration of those ‘Christian’ events – capable
of touching and awakening those souls from their
millennial slumber. The fast-approaching eight-year
span of 2025 to 2033 may be Waldorf’s raison d’etre
and potentially the springboard for the revivification of
the Waldorf movement. Or it may make us recognize
that Waldorf education has served its purpose and must
be supplanted by a pedagogy that will meet the needs of
the millennia to come.
Eugene Schwartz lives in Hereford Township,
Pennsylvania, USA. He is a former class teacher and
serves as a mentor and consultant to schools worldwide.
His courses and free resources may be accessed at:
iwaldorf.net.
Endnotes
1. Rudolf Steiner, The Younger Generation: Educational
and Spiritual Impulses in the Twentieth Century, Spring
Valley, NY. Anthroposophic Press, 1967, pp. 144-145.