PLANS loses lawsuit agains Waldorf-methods Charter Schools

I wrote an article for the Waldorf Critics Observer about PLANS' stinging defeat in US Federal court.

On September 14 th, 2005 PLANS lost its seven-year old lawsuit attempting to have public-methods Waldorf Charter schools in two California school districts declared religious schools and shut down for violating the Constitutional separation of Church and State (known as the Establishment Clause, because it reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".)

The reason for the loss? In seven years, PLANS failed to submit sufficient evidence to substantiate the contention that Anthroposophy is a religion. The trial lasted 31 minutes. The judge, the Honorable Frank C. Damrell, Jr., awarded the case to the school districts under Rule 52(c), meaning that the plaintiff, PLANS, failed to provide enough evidence to prevail. The result is that PLANS lost their lawsuit.

This is the culmination of PLANS' seven year farcical effort to have Anthroposophy declared a religion.

PLANS has blathered a lot of illogical nonsense over the years. The difference here is that in a court case, the rules of evidence are strict and fair. Under these rules, PLANS was completely unable to offer any evidence that Anthroposophy is a religion. Snell and Dugan may one day realize that the US Court system functions differently from the Internet. On the Internet you can make all sorts of wild allegations, and then insist that the people you slander bear the burden of proof in defending themselves. In court, such wild allegations must be substantiated by the person filing the suit, or they lose the case. PLANS lost.

In the final analysis,

Both the court case and the reaction by PLANS are typical. The court case revealed PLANS to be a fanatical, disorganized group with no clear arguments, and the press release following PLANS' stinging defeat showed an organization partially out of touch with reality. In actual fact, Anthroposophy is not a religion, a position that the court agreed with, based on the evidence presented. The individual members of PLANS (all 10 of them) may feel differently, but they had their day in court, and utterly failed to prove otherwise.

The real losers in this case are the children of the State of California. PLANS' baseless seven year crusade has cost taxpayers over $300,000 in legal fees, taking much-needed money away from programs that benefit students.

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 66

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 22 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

In 1995 there was a scandal in the Netherlands when it became publicly known that Dutch Waldorf schools were teaching "racial ethnography," where children learn that the "black race" has thick lips and a sense of rhythm and that the "yellow race" hides its emotions behind a permanent smile. In 1994 the Steinerite lecturer Rainer Schnurre, at one of his frequent seminars for the anthroposophist adult school in Berlin, gave a talk with the rather baffling title "Overcoming Racism and Nationalism through Rudolf Steiner." Schnurre emphasized the essential differences between races, noted the "infantile" nature of blacks, and alleged that due to immutable racial disparities "no equal and global system can be created for all people on earth" and that "because of the differences between races, sending aid to the developing world is useless." (Footnote: Schnurre quoted in ibid., p. 144)

So here again we have a misleading statement extrapolated from a basic fact. A scandal in the Netherlands broke when it became publicly known that one teacher in one Dutch Waldorf school was teaching "racial ethnography". She was fired. At the time the press attempted to determine whether this was common to all Waldorf schools, but found out that, in fact, it was not. Further, the claims that Dutch Waldorf schools might be propagating racism were promptly investigated in by the State Education Inspection Service of the Netherlands. The results of this investigation were made public on March 28th, 1995:

"The investigation into Steiner Schools in the Netherlands, carried out by the State Education Inspection Service at the request of Deputy Minister Netelenbos, conclusively proved that there is no evidence of racism in the Steiner Schools. In fact much attention is given in the schools to developing an awareness among the students so that racism is actually countered." (Joint press release of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Science, and Cultural Affairs, and the Association of Rudolf Steiner Schools in the Netherlands. Translation Detlef Hardorp )

The commission investigated all 95 Waldorf schools in the Netherlands. While it found no evidence of racism, it did uncover instances of racial stereotyping in seven of the 95 schools. The Association of Rudolf Steiner Schools in the Netherlands instituted new procedures and a curriculum review in order to ensure that racial stereotyping would not reoccur. (For a detailed description see: http://www.waldorfanswers.org/Netherlands.htm).