Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 112

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 35 of Anthroposophy and Ecofascism:

Classical Anthroposophy, with its root races and its national souls, is the "covert curriculum" of Waldorf schools. [Footnote: See Charlotte Rudolph, Waldorf-Erziehung: Wege zur VerSteinerung, Darmstadt 1987. No systematic surveys of Waldorf schooling are available. In this section I have relied chiefly on the work of former Waldorf teachers like Rudolph as well as the excellent critical study by Bierl.]* Anthroposophists themselves avow in internal forums that the idea of karma and reincarnation is the "basis of all true education." [From an international Waldorf teachers conference in 1996, cited in Bierl, p. 204.]** They believe that each class of students chooses one another and their teacher before birth. Steiner himself demanded that Waldorf schools be staffed by "teachers with a knowledge of man originating in a spiritual world.[Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Ground of Education, London 1947, p. 40.]*** Later anthroposophists express the Waldorf vision thus:

"This education is essentially grounded on the recognition of the child as a spiritual being, with a varying number of incarnations behind him, who is returning at birth into the physical world, into a body that will be slowly moulded into a usable instrument by the soul-spiritual forces he brings with him. He has chosen his parents for himself because of what they can provide for him that he needs in order to fulfill his karma, and, conversely, they too need their relationship with him in order to fulfill their own karma."[Footnote: Easton, p. 388]****

First some notes to the text. In the following days I will comment further on the text.

* I find it amazing that Mr. Peter Staudenmaier was unable to find any trace of "systematic surveys" of Waldorf schooling. Perhaps it is a question of definition, for there is not single book or series that combines every aspect of Waldorf education in one volume. However, there are two excellent surveys of the entire curriculum in English (Rawson, Martyn and Richter, Tobias, eds. The Educational Tasks and Content of the Steiner Waldorf Curriculum. Forest Row, UK: Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, 2000 and, Cradock, Stephen and Stockmeyer, Karl, eds. Rudolf Steiner's Curriculum for Waldorf Schools. 4th Revised edition. Forest Row, UK: Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, 2001.), as well as books on every aspect of Waldorf education and Waldorf Schools, from each specialized subject in the curriculum to school administration. Including books in German, the total exceeds a thousand volumes, and then there are numerous periodicals in many languages. Rather that attempt to cite them all, I will simply refer to one publisher: www.steinerbooks.com. The excuse for relying on two blatantly biased and highly inaccurate German sources is simply not credible.

** Bierl's text cites Stephan Leber as saying this in a Dornach conference of Waldorf Teachers in 1996. Bierl's cited source is a book edited by Heinz Zimmermann, titled Reincarnation und Karma in der Erziehung (Reincarnation and karma in education) published in Dornach, 1998. The fact that Anthroposophy is the basis of Waldorf education is hardly a secret; it is announced in all the schools, and every book on the subject.

*** Steiner hardly “demanded“ that Waldorf schools be staffed only by anthroposophists. Such an attitude would be fundamentally out of character for him. He simply explained that he could not have founded the first Waldorf school without the help of a group of dedicated anthroposophists. In lecture quoted by Peter Staudenmaier, given at Manchester College in Oxford, England on August 20th, 1923 at the invitation of professor (of Education) Millicent Mackenzie, Rudolf Steiner said:

"Thus I may say: when my little booklet The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy appeared [in 1909], I was speaking on education there as one who disagrees with much in modern education, who would like to see this or the other treated more fundamentally, and so on. But at the time this little book was written I should not have been able to undertake such a thing as directing the Waldorf School. For it was essential for such a task to have a college of teachers with a knowledge of man originating in the spiritual world. This knowledge of man is exceedingly hard to come by to-day; in comparison it is easy for us to study natural science. It is comparatively easy to come and see what the final member of organic evolution is. … Now in order to educate we need a human science, - and a practical human science at that – a human science that applies to every individual child. And for this we need a general human science." (Reproduced in: Rudolf Steiner. The Spiritual Ground of Education. Blauvelt, NY: Garber Communications, 1989. Page 40.)

Steiner is clearly not “demanding” that all Waldorf Schools only ever be staffed by anthroposophists. He did explicitly found Waldorf pedagogy on the Anthroposophical conception of the human being, and said as much in numerous places. Peter Staudenmaier’s liberties in paraphrasing serve to distort both the tone and the content of the passages he is citing.

**** This description by Easton is essentially correct, as strange as it may seem absent the supporting background given in earlier pages that details how karma operates in the anthroposophical understanding. I would recommend Easton's chapter on Waldorf Education, on pages 382-407 as an excellent overview of the aims of the movement. I find it odd the Peter Staudenmaier cites this paragraph without giving any indication of having read the rest chapter from which it is taken. Stranger still is the earlier claim that no comprehensive overview of Waldorf education exists when he is citing one here.