Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 124

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 38:

Anthroposophy's peculiar predilections also shape the Waldorf curriculum. There are no sports at European Waldorf schools and no jazz or popular music; these phenomena are considered to harbor demonic forces. Instead students read fairy tales, a staple of Waldorf education. Taken together with the pervasive anti-technological and anti-scientific bias, the suspicion toward rational thought, and the occasional outbreaks of racist gibberish, these factors indicate that Waldorf schooling is as questionable as the other aspects of the anthroposophist enterprise.

Continuing his tirade and litany of absurd and distorted claims against Waldorf schools, Mr. Peter Staudenmaier here presents a string of inane claims that even the simplest investigation easily disproves. For example, the statement “there are no sports at European Waldorf schools” is particularly absurd. I have walked the grounds of the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart, and there is a track, basketball courts, and a gym with equipment for volleyball and gymnastics. The students use all all these facilities, as can be observed on any school day. Numerous other Waldorf schools I have visited on three continents are similarly equipped.* While I cannot say with certainty that every last one of the hundreds of Waldorf Schools in Europe have a sports program, there is no reason to believe they do not. Further, there is nothing in the Waldorf pedagogy that could be construed to be against sports.** But there are more problems with this paragraph that I will address tomorrow.

*What is interesting from an American perspective is that there are no intermural competitive sports in the German Waldorf schools. This becomes understandable when you discover that there are no intermural competitive sports in the German public schools either. Such sports are the domain of local associations independent of the schools –like the US Little Leagues – and Waldorf students can, and do, participate just like their peers in German public schools.

**When asked about sports in the Waldorf School, Steiner responded thus (to an audience in England):

"[Question:] How should instruction in gymnastics be carried out, and should sports be taught in an English school, hockey and cricket, for example, and if so in what way?

[Steiner:] It is emphatically not the aim of the Waldorf school method to suppress these things. They have their place simply because they play a great part in English life, and the children should grow up into life. Only please do not fall prey to the illusion that there is any other meaning in it than this, namely, that we ought not to make children strangers to their world. It is an error to believe that sports are of tremendous value in development. They are not of great value in development. Their only value is as a fashion dear to the English people, but we must not make the children strangers to the world by exclusion from all popular activities. You like sport in England, so the children should be introduced to sports. One should not meet with philistine opposition what may possibly be philistine itself.

Regarding "how it should really be taught", there is very little indeed to be said. For in these things it is really more or less so that the child imitates what someone does first. And to devise special artificial methods here would be something scarcely appropriate to the subject."

Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1995. Pages 134-135.

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 123

Continuing my commentary on the 37th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

Mr. Peter Staudenmaier's further conjecture, that his ten-second investigation "suggests" that everything tens of thousands of parents over eight decades know about the school that they have chosen to send their children to is completely wrong, is the height of incompetent scholarship. Waldorf's reputation has not been won on a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. Rather, Waldorf's reputation is the result of decades of results. And the Waldorf movement is not the fastest growing pedagogical movement in the world because it abuses and mis-educates children. Almost every Waldorf school in the world (over seven hundred and counting) started as a parent initiative, and grew from the enthusiasm of parents who are deeply concerned with their children's education. If Mr. Peter Staudenmaier's allegations here were even remotely accurate there would simply be no Waldorf movement and Steiner's pedagogical indications would be a footnote in history.

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 122

Continuing my commentary on the 37th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

Mr. Peter Staudenmaier's further conjecture, that his ten-second investigation "suggests" that everything tens of thousands of parents over eight decades know about the school that they have chosen to send their children to is completely wrong, is the height of incompetent scholarship. Waldorf's reputation has not been won on a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. Rather, Waldorf's reputation is the result of decades of results. And the Waldorf movement is not the fastest growing pedagogical movement in the world because it abuses and mis-educates children. Almost every Waldorf school in the world (over seven hundred and counting) started as a parent initiative, and grew from the enthusiasm of parents who are deeply concerned with their children's education. If Mr. Peter Staudenmaier's allegations here were even remotely accurate there would simply be no Waldorf movement and Steiner's pedagogical indications would be a footnote in history.

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 121

Peter Staudenmaier writes in Paragraph 37:

Along with privileging ostensibly "spiritual" considerations over cognitive and psycho-social ones, the static uniformity of this scheme is pedagogically suspect. It also suggests that Waldorf schools' reputation for fostering a spontaneous, child-centered and individually oriented educational atmosphere is undeserved. In fact Steiner's model of instruction is downright authoritarian: he emphasized repetition and rote learning, and insisted that the teacher should be the center of the classroom and that students' role was not to judge or even discuss the teacher's pronouncements. In practice many Waldorf schools implement strict discipline, with public punishment for perceived transgressions.

In suddenly declaring Waldorf "pedagogically suspect" without ever having bothered to study it, I have to wonder where Mr. Peter Staudenmaier gained such expertise in the field of in education. I also have to wonder what comprehensive background in pedagogy informs his expert opinion on the subject. We have already seen just how little Mr. Peter Staudenmaier knows about Waldorf in his failure to use the proper term in discussing even the most basic aspects of the pedagogy. The fact that he finds Waldorf to value un-named "spiritual" considerations, supposedly over other, un-named "psycho-social"* ones is quite curious; curious in that he has evidently not undertaken even a basic study of these "spiritual" considerations. I have to wonder how he is so sure that they are wrong if he doesn't even know what they are. Nebulous references to superior "psycho-social" considerations without any elaboration or citations strikes me as the work of a writer who is putting ink to paper in the effort to make a point without actually thinking first.

* Ironic indeed is the fact that the odd construction "psycho-social" essentially says the same thing as "spiritual". "Psycho" is derived from the Greek "soul" so Peter Staudenmaier is decrying Waldorf 's ostensibly "spiritual" bent over a more mainstream "soul-social" one.

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 120

Continuing my commentary on the 36th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

In this second third of the grade school years, between the nine-year change and the eleven-year change, the child lives in the immediacy of outer impressions, but is not yet ready to comprehend cause and effect. If this is presented, it can be repeated back, but not yet really grasped, not really understood. This is possible only after the eleven-year change. It is then that mechanistic sciences such as physics can be introduced.* These, too, should be introduced in the context of ordinary life. Minerals are found in the earth, not just in boxes and photographs. They are found in specific geographic regions, and for specific reasons. Levers are used in ordinary life, and can be introduced with concrete examples.

Thus is the Waldorf pedagogy shaped by the characteristics of the changing consciousness of the child in its development through the school years. The exact ages may differ in individual children, but the pattern remains universal. I could go on and write an entire book on the subject, and indeed, several such books have been written. It is a pity that Mr. Peter Staudenmaier could not avail himself to such a book before considering himself expertly informed on the subject of Waldorf education.

* Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1995. Pages 37-39.

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 119

Continuing my commentary on the 36th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

In the pedagogy of the Waldorf School, this nine-year change has a number of important implications. Because the outer world is now separate, it can be observed and investigated, taken back into the inner world via the senses. This should be done in a way that maintains the integrity, the wholeness, and unity of the outer world. For example, plants should be studied in the context of soil ecology and their native ecosystem, and not as a piece of green matter of a given shape, brought in to the classroom for inspection.* This is just one of many examples of how Steiner's theoretical stages of child development are tied to practical pedagogical indications and shape the curriculum of Waldorf Schools.

* Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1995. Page 48, and Rudolf Steiner, The Child's Changing Consciousness. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1988 – the entire book.

Anthroposophy and Ecofascism 118

Continuing my commentary on the 36th paragraph of Peter Staudenmaier's Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.

In addition, Rudolf Steiner has identified two further milestones in the development of children between the ages of 7 and 14, that is, between the 1 st and 8 th grade.* The first occurs around age 9 years four months, and the second around age 11 years eight months. Now it should be noted that these divisions, especially in such precision, are archetypal, that is they will almost never correspond exactly with any one particular child. In the particular child the markers of the starting and ending of the whole period in question is the age between first dentition and puberty, the actual age being of secondary importance. The first milestone comes at the end of the first third of this period, and is referred to in Waldorf circles as “the nine year change.” Prior to the nine-year change, the child lives in a consciousness that encompasses the entire immediate environment, and does not distinguish between inner and outer, between self and other. After the nine-year change, the child experiences strongly the separation of self from world. The transition is not immediate or quick, it starts even years earlier, with occasional moments of awakening, which often remain as significant memories in the child's later life, and these moments then become more frequent. After the nine year change (whether it occurs at nine years four months or much earlier or later) the process is complete, so that the separateness is now the normal state of consciousness, and the united consciousness is experienced as lost.

* See among others, Rudolf Steiner, The Roots of Education. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1997. Page 69