Category Archives: Anthroposophy

February 15, 2015 · 2:54 pm

“Every school could use these methods…”

When one surveys the history of Waldorf schools following Rudolf Steiner’s death in 1925, it’s tempting to ask oneself about his intentions and expectations for the schools movement and compare them with what has actually happened. Did Steiner want Waldorf schools to spread throughout the world? Or did he want Waldorf methods to be taken up by other schools? Or perhaps a bit of both?

Rudolf Steiner in 1923.

I’ve recently come across some very interesting statements made by Steiner on the afternoon of 28th December 1923, at a meeting of the Swiss School Association held during the Christmas Conference in Dornach:

In addition to what I took the liberty of saying at the close of the last course which I was able to hold for the Swiss teachers, I have perhaps only a few more remarks to make in connection with the difficulties of the Swiss school movement. It seems to me that things do in part indeed depend on how the educational movement connected with anthroposophy is run here in Switzerland.

The Waldorf School in Germany has remained essentially in a position of isolation. Though there have been one or two further foundations, in Hamburg, Cologne and so on, the Waldorf School in Germany, in other words in a relatively extensive area, has remained a solitary example. It will remain to be seen, therefore, whether what is to be started in England as a kind of Waldorf school*, and also the school with three classes that already exists in Holland, will also to begin with remain as solitary examples.

first waldorf school

The very first Waldorf school opened in Stuttgart, Germany in 1919.

 

Apart from everything else it has to be said that the reason why these schools are still only isolated examples, and also why it can be expected that they will remain so for a long time, is simply that the present social circumstances really do make it impossible for an attitude to come about that could lead to the financing of a larger number of such schools. Experience over the years has shown this quite clearly. And this challenges us to think carefully about the whole direction we should take with our educational movement.

This is especially necessary with regard to Switzerland. For Switzerland is pervaded by a very strong sense for everything represented by the state. And now that the Swiss school association for independent education has been founded, I do believe that the chief difficulties will arise from this Swiss sense of statehood. Even less than anywhere else will it be possible here in Switzerland to find an opening for the belief that a truly independent school could be an example for a model method of education, or that schools such as this could be founded on a larger scale. We should not allow ourselves to be under any illusion in this respect. Aversion to a system of education that is independent of the state is very great here.

Of course what Herr Gnädiger has just said is right, namely that there will be interest in how things are done in a model school.

Least of all here in Switzerland can you expect the president of the Schweizerischer Schulverein, of whom you have spoken, to have any interest in the school other than that pertaining to its status as a model. Perhaps his interest will turn out to be such that he would like to influence Swiss state schools to take up certain methodological aspects from this model school. But this seems to me to be the only aspect that can be counted on to attract interest here in Switzerland. That is why it seems to me to be important to take up these two things wherever educational associations of the kind you have mentioned are founded; and also that many such associations should be founded, more and more of them!

Another aspect is that the crux of anthroposophical education is its method. The schools apply a certain method. It is not a question of any particular political direction but purely and simply of method. It is also not a question of any particular religious creed, or of seeing anthroposophy somehow as a religious creed. It is simply a question of method.

In the discussion that followed my lecture cycle my answer to questions on this was simply that the educational method represented here can be applied anywhere, wherever there is the good will to introduce it.

If this is done on the one hand, and if on the other hand — in order to create an understanding in wider circles — it is clearly emphasized that this is the proper method and that it is being applied in a school that can serve as a model, if these two points are given the main emphasis in the programme, if it is stressed that every school could use these methods and that a model school could demonstrate how fruitful they are, and if things are worked out neatly, then I believe that something could be achieved even in Switzerland. And then on the basis of these two points educational associations ought to be founded everywhere. But it would have to be made clear to everyone that the aim was not to found as many private schools as possible to compete with the state schools. In Switzerland such a thing would be regarded as something very peculiar and it would never be understood. But there would be an understanding for a model school which could be a source of inspiration for a method of education. Progress cannot be made in any other way. It is important to present these things to people in principle again and again and wherever the opportunity arises.

I believe it would be a good thing if you could always give the greatest prominence to these two aspects. They are perfectly true, and much damage has been done to us by the constant repetition of the view that Waldorf education can only be carried out in schools apart from the main stream, whereas I have constantly repeated that the methods can be applied in any school.

* This is a reference to the Priory School, Kings Langley, started by Margaret Cross and Hannah Clark as a pioneering co-educational boarding school in 1910. Miss Cross had been so inspired by Steiner that in 1922 she decided to turn her school over to the new Waldorf methods. Steiner visited the school at least once, probably twice, the only English school he ever visited.

The Priory School, Kings Langley, as Rudolf Steiner would have seen it when he visited on 16th April 1922.

Steiner is saying that he sees the need for a few model schools, which could be a source of inspiration for his method of education and which could also be used by any school, state or private, which has the good will to introduce it. He sees an important role for national education associations to promulgate his methods, rather than the creation of more and more schools. This implies that he wanted the national associations to fly the flag for Waldorf methods, while he wanted there to be a few model schools to act as demonstration centres for these methods, that could be visited by teachers and educationists from state and other independent schools. And he could hardly be clearer in stating that anthroposophical education has nothing to do with a political direction or a religious creed but is simply a question of method.

If Steiner had lived longer, perhaps we would have seen him encourage the development of school associations in each country. He would have wanted there to be a handful of Waldorf schools in each of these countries, but they would have acted as models of excellence and research in teaching and curriculum. He would also have wanted there to be the greatest possible interaction between the model schools and the rest of the educational culture of that country. One can envisage there would have been a much greater flow of teachers between state and Waldorf schools resulting in much more dialogue and cross-pollination of methods.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see why events didn’t turn out in this way. After Steiner’s death, the tensions between members of the Vorstand in Dornach that had been held in check during his lifetime broke out; and these very public divisions in the executive split national anthroposophical societies as well. In the UK, the few Steiner Waldorf schools that were beginning to establish themselves had to do so against challenging odds. This constant struggle for everyday survival, alongside their teaching and administrative responsibilities, took up all the energies of these pioneers. Add to this a kind of isolationist mentality, arising perhaps from an almost arrogant sense of the superior virtues of their methods, and one can see how the independent Steiner Waldorf schools came to figure hardly at all as part of the national educational culture in their countries.

This is just one reason why I am pleased that we now have a number of publicly-funded Steiner academy schools, because they are already part of the pluralistic educational system of England in a way that the independent Steiner Waldorf schools have not on the whole managed to achieve. This gives hope for fruitful dialogue and exchanges with mainstream educational culture that can only benefit all parties, which was undoubtedly what Steiner had in mind. This could still happen and there are some encouraging signs of greater openness beginning to appear. As just one example, there is a link here and here to a 2-part article by Trevor Mepham, former principal of the Steiner Academy Hereford and current principal of the Steiner Academy Frome. Trevor’s article seems to me to be generous, open and non-dogmatic in its approach, as well as a gentle reminder to Steiner educators everywhere not to get too hung up on supposed principles and practice.

The Steiner Academy Hereford – the first of the new publicly-funded Steiner schools in England.

At the European level, one can also see encouraging signs of Steiner Waldorf schools opening up, for example by becoming involved with the School Education Gateway project funded by the European Union’s Erasmus +, the programme for education, training, youth and sport. Surely, the best and most effective gesture that Steiner Waldorf schools can make today is to say to colleagues in education around the world: “We have much to share and much to learn from one another. We don’t have all the answers but we would like to help develop the answers with you.”

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January 18, 2015 · 2:03 pm

Rudolf Steiner and the Chinese yam

It’s interesting to see how time and again during the life of Rudolf Steiner, a new body of knowledge was able to begin only once someone had asked him a significant question. Examples of this include:

1. In 1900, Marie von Sivers, a gifted young Russian (who was to become the future Frau Dr Steiner), came to Berlin in order to make the acquaintance of Rudolf Steiner. Soon after meeting him, she asked him a question which had preoccupied her. They came to call this the Chrysanthemum Tea moment, because the room in which they were having tea was full of those flowers. She asked Steiner if there wasn’t a need to call a new spiritual movement into life, one which would be appropriate for Europe and the West, since the Theosophical Society contained so much Eastern spirituality. Steiner replied that this would only be possible if it could arise from the depths of esoteric Christianity. Thus was born anthroposophy.

2. On April 23, 1919, after a lecture Steiner gave to the factory workers of the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Emil Molt, the company director, asked Steiner to take on the planning and leadership of a new school for the company’s workers. This led to the birth of the first ever Waldorf school.

3. In August 1923, in Penmaenmawr in Wales where Steiner was leading a summer school, Dr Ita Wegman asked him: “Would it not be possible to found a form of medicine based upon the mysteries?” This led to their collaboration in writing a book and the beginnings of anthroposophical medicine.

It seems as though an initiate can only bring something new to the world when requested to do so through an act of free will by another human being – the initiate cannot act to impose new ideas without the way being cleared by someone asking for them.

The story of the Chinese yam is another example of a significant question being asked of Steiner that led on to new research and knowledge. I’m indebted for the following account to Hannah Townsend’s review of Ralf Roessner’s book The Light Root in the Autumn 2014 issue of New View magazine (article not online).

To quote from Hannah’s review:

“Rudolf Steiner was apparently just about to depart from the gathering at Koberwitz where he had been giving the course of lectures that would lay the foundation for the development of biodynamic agriculture. This was in 1924 and the effects of humanity’s gradual slide into a one-sidedly materialistic thinking was beginning to have an effect on food. Mechanistic agricultural practices were starting to deplete produce of the cosmic forces that food should carry into the human diet if people are to be enabled to pursue their rightful spiritual development. (Food is more than solely a means of keeping our physical bodies alive, but more fundamentally a source of nourishment for human consciousness.)…

Roessner relates how, as Steiner waited for his car to arrive to take him to the train station, two of the course participants came up to him with a question. They wanted to know whether, if all the indications that he had given were followed, it would be enough to raise the quality of nutrition to give adequate spiritual nourishment for our times. The answer that Steiner gave seems to have been both surprising and direct:

‘It will not be sufficient, even in the most favourable circumstances,’ he said. ‘What should be done is to cultivate Dioscorea batatas in Europe so that it can take over from the potato as the staple diet…’ ”

Well, who could resist following up on such an intriguing story? Certainly not the anthropopper, who promptly went out and bought a copy of The Light Root by Ralf Roessner (£8.99 from Temple Lodge Publishing, ISBN 978 1 906999 63 6).

Here's what the Chinese yam (or light root) looks like when well grown.

Here’s what the Chinese yam (or light root) looks like when well grown. (Photo via Apios Institute)

It turns out that what the author calls the Light Root is a particular type of Chinese yam. The special quality of this particular yam is that it is able to incorporate within its physical substance large quantities of the light ether, of which most of our foods are nearly or completely lacking. Why does this lack of light ether matter? It matters because without the light ether it is far more difficult for us humans to become aware of ourselves in our true nature, ie as spiritual beings currently living within physical bodies. Without the light ether, materialism holds sway and people are unaware of anything other than physical, material reality. So it is possible that this plant is not only a valuable food but also something which in the future could be a decisive influence in the development of humanity. (My wife, a specialist in fertility and maternity reflexology, is convinced that the other food which contains light ether is breast milk – which, if true, is yet another reason why breast is best.)

Here of course we dive straight into controversy: what is this light ether, which most scientists, if asked, would say does not exist? Those who are familiar with Steiner’s concepts will know that he thinks in terms of a spectrum of realities, from the physical to the etheric to various gradations of the spiritual. Living organisms which have a physical body or form also have an etheric body or form, which is essentially an energy body that contains and forms the physical. It is this etheric body which maintains the physical body’s form until death.

According to Steiner, the etheric body is made up of four ethers: warmth ether, light ether, chemical/sound ether and life ether (he said that there are in fact seven ethers but only four of them are currently susceptible to investigation). Materialists won’t go along with any of this, of course. However, two researchers, Dennis Milner and Edward Smart, in their work with Kirlian-type photography, seem to have been able to detect the four ethers identified by Steiner. My friend, Dr Siegfried Trefzer, has also used Kirlian photography as a means to detect illnesses in the etheric body before they manifest in the physical body. Between them, the etheric and physical bodies contain the meridian lines and acupuncture points which create a structured and permeable web of energy that helps to maintain the health of our physical body. This level can be weakened by various factors including: electromagnetic pollution, poor diet, drug misuse, trauma, sedentary lifestyle, genetic factors etc. From all this, it is clear that the medicine of the future will have to encompass energy medicine if real progress is to be made in treating pain and disease.

I can remember staying in a boarding house at Cliftonville with my parents when I was a young boy. On the table next to ours at breakfast was a man who had an artificial leg below one knee, which was of course fascinating to me. I have never forgotten how he said that he was having pain, not where the artificial limb joined his leg, but below this – where the amputated leg had been. This phantom limb effect is another example of the etheric body. Even when the limb has been removed, sensation can be felt as if it were still there, because the etheric form of the limb is still there.

Anyway, back to Ralf Roessner’s book about the Chinese yam or, as he calls it, the “light root”, a term he has patented in Germany as “lichtwurzel”. Roessner found that he had to go to the original growing areas in China to find suitable plants, as the specimens he had got from France, Africa and America did not show anything like the expected light ether qualities. The ability to store light ether in the plant is dependent on growing the plant at a sufficient depth (the tubers need to be at least four feet deep) as tubers grown near the surface do not have the same qualities at all. In addition, it is only the male plants of the Chinese yam which have the ability to store the light ether. At harvest time, according to Roessner, these tubers have a radiance that is noticeable even to the untrained observer.

The author clearly does not expect a sympathetic hearing from materialistic science, saying at one point: “spiritual scientific research should not try to gain a place among present day natural science (on the one hand it is still in its infancy, on the other it is more the task of natural science to venture into the spiritual), it is only right to renounce any acknowledgement from natural science.”

One can see why he should be cautious – he claims that the light root was rescued from Atlantis and brought to China, that the light root is a plant which nourishes yin or what Steiner calls the Venus principle, that to describe the effect of the light root on the human being requires faculties which go beyond ordinary sense-perceptible observation. He says that the light root’s unique light ether potential is able directly to strengthen the body’s formative forces (ie the etheric body), which is thereby enabled to take up with more ‘clarity’ those cosmic formative forces which underlie all earthly growth processes. Roessner sees the light root as providing an intermediate stage between a light nutrition of the future and our current one-sidedly materialist nutrition which is becoming less and less capable of truly nourishing us.

I can see why a scientist wouldn’t want to go to Monsanto or some other large corporation to ask for a research grant to look into this. However, in a few years time, when spiritual research has done all the heavy lifting and the reality of the etheric body has been established, I can also see these same large corporations trying to patent the light root, either to suppress it or else to exploit it so that they can market food based on it as “strengthening the etheric body, lengthening your life.”

What is more, the light root does have the potential to be a popular staple food: it is apparently delicious, makes good chips, and can be used in soups, sauces, pies etc. It has the property of filling you up with a small amount, so would be good for slimmers, as well as an excellent food for people with little money. It even has a beautifying effect, bestowing smooth, silky skin and shiny, strong hair. So, yes, I can see the Monsantos or Nestles of this world spotting vast commercial opportunities further down the line.

How would you like your light root cooked? Chipped, fried, in a soup or sauce? Yam, yam!

How would you like your light root cooked? Chipped, fried, in a soup or sauce?
Yam, yam! (Photo via AliBaba.com)

In the meantime, Ralf Roessner is doing his best to promote light root products on his website (German language only). Processing the light root so as to preserve the light ether it contains has its challenges, as the magnetic field associated with electricity soaks up the light ether quality. Even the fan in a conventional oven causes damage, while microwaves completely destroy the quality of light ether. Roessner says that there is an urgent need to develop appliances such as graters, mills and mixers, where a motor can be installed away from the actual appliance. Clearly at present it is best to use the light root as a fresh food. It may be, of course that we in the West are not yet ready to swap the potato for the Chinese yam and it is therefore the role of people like Ralf Roessner and his colleagues to research and to keep the knowledge alive until that time when we begin to awaken from our deep materialistic sleep. In this, they deserve our thanks and respect for ploughing their lonely furrow on behalf of the future.

It seems significant that the light root has come out of China and that advocates of anthroposophical medicine and ancient Chinese medicine are finding more and more parallels in their approaches. Yvan Rioux, in a fascinating article in the Winter issue of New View magazine, says that: “When the Chinese tried to grasp the activity of an organ, they looked for psychic activities as well as biological processes because our internal landscape is the basis of our soul life. “ And he quotes Steiner from lectures given a century ago: “What makes consciousness possible is not the brain as a producer of consciousness but the processes of the body as a whole. These serve as a mirror reflecting the activities of the soul. The bodily organs as living body processes act as reflectors of psychic activities.1” And again: “We must know that, in spite of the fact that they are not fully penetrated by the life of consciousness, all the organs contain the source of what surges in us as our psychic life.2”

How did Steiner know all this stuff? And where are the true scientists who, even if something does not fit within their current paradigm (or especially because it does not fit within the current paradigm), will say: ”We must look into these matters and if necessary, we must develop new theories, methods and techniques to enable us to do so.” Those are subjects that the anthropopper will return to in future postings.

1 Rudolf Steiner, Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Psychology

2 Rudolf Steiner, Occult Physiology

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November 26, 2014 · 9:59 pm

Franz Kafka meets Rudolf Steiner

Mention of Franz Kafka in my previous posting has reminded me that there was in fact a meeting between Kafka and Rudolf Steiner. It happened in Prague in March 1911. Steiner was in Prague delivering a series of lectures on the subject of An Occult Physiology. Kafka had first come across Steiner at Mrs Berta Fanta’s salon on Old Town Square, a famous meeting place for intellectuals during the two-decade period before the First World War. These gatherings were attended by professors at the German university in Prague, including Albert Einstein and Christian von Ehrenfels, as well as the up-and-coming younger generation such as Kafka and Max Brod. (Einstein also met Steiner at Mrs Fanta’s salon and attended several of Steiner’s lectures held in the Café Louvre, an Art Nouveau café on Národní třída, and was apparently impressed by Steiner’s views on non-Euclidean geometry.)

Rudolf Steiner in 1911, the year he met Franz Kafka

Rudolf Steiner in 1911, the year he met Franz Kafka

Kafka attended two of Steiner’s lectures and records his reactions in what seems to be an ironical tone (or is it perhaps just an intense observation in an attempt to understand?) in his diary entries of 26th and 28th March 1911. On 26th March he comments on Steiner’s rhetorical trick of giving full weight to the views of his opponents, so that “the listener now considers any refutation to be completely impossible and is more than satisfied with a cursory description of the possibility of a defence”; Kafka then observes: “Continual looking at the palm of the extended hand. Omission of the full stop. In general, the spoken sentence starts off from the speaker with its initial capital letter, curves in its course, as far as it can, out to the audience, and returns with the full stop to the speaker. But if the full stop is omitted then the sentence, no longer held in check, falls upon the listener immediately with full force.” Kafka was to do something similar in his own works, by writing long sentences that sometimes cover an entire page. Kafka’s sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop, which gives a final meaning and focus to what has gone before.

On 28th March he comes back to Steiner in his diary, either referring to another or to the same lecture, which he proceeds to gently guy, interspersing this with comments about his neighbour in the audience:

“Dr Steiner is so very much taken up with his absent disciples. At the lecture the dead press so about him. Hunger for knowledge? But do they really need it? . . . Löwy Simon, soap dealer on Quai Moncey, Paris, got the best business advice from him . . . .The wife of the Hofrat therefore has in her notebook, How does One Achieve Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? At S. Löwy’s in Paris.”

Kafka would have been around 28 years old at this time. He seemed to find the tasks of daily existence very difficult, was often lonely and depressed and regarded himself as a perpetual outsider – a German speaker in Prague, a Jew among Christians. Although he had had encounters with some of the leading personalities of the age – apart from meeting Steiner, he had seen Nijinsky dance and had met Einstein, Rilke and Puccini – his experience of the wider world was limited. At university he studied law and then obtained jobs within first one, then another insurance company, work which he resented as it kept him away from his writing. He lived and worked within the same small area of Prague and its surroundings all his life. Despite a fervent longing to be independent, he spent the whole of his short life (he died at the age of 40, probably from starvation due to an inability to eat as a result of laryngeal tuberculosis) resenting that he was either living with his parents in what has been described as “an atmosphere of claustrophobic mutual surveillance” or else with one of his sisters. He had a strong sex drive but seems to have been unable to have satisfactory relationships with women, as he lacked the capacity for losing himself in loving another person. “For even the most intimate friend to set foot in my room,” he told his unfortunate fiancee, Felice Bauer, “fills me with terror.”

Franz Kafka with his fiancee, Felice Bauer

Franz Kafka with his fiancee, Felice Bauer

Kafka attributed his psychological difficulties to having “vigorously absorbed the negative element of the age in which I live.” He had a difficult relationship with his father, who was described by Kafka’s biographer Stanley Corngold as a “huge, selfish, overbearing businessman.” Kafka seems to have been psychic to some degree and in his diary admitted to suffering from “bouts of clairvoyance.”   A huge issue for him during this period was how to create for himself the necessary space for literature when his employment encroached upon his writing time and his family and society expected him to make a living, marry, and raise his own family. Whatever the reasons, in his writings Kafka captured like no other author before him themes such as father-son conflict, alienation, physical and psychological brutality, characters on a terrifying quest, encounters with arbitrary and unjust bureaucracy and mystical transformation.

In spite of what may have been his ironical tone in connection with Steiner’s lecture, Kafka evidently decided that Rudolf Steiner might be able to help him to find his life’s direction and made an appointment to see Steiner in his hotel room in Prague. Kafka records in his diary his impressions of this visit:

“In his room I try to show my humility, which I cannot feel, by seeking out a ridiculous place for my hat . I lay it down on a small wooden stand for lacing boots. . . Table in the middle, I sit facing the window, he on the left side of the table. . . . He begins with a few disconnected sentences. So you are Dr. Kafka? Have you been interested in theosophy long? But I push on with my prepared address: I feel that a great part of my being is striving toward theosophy, but at the same time I have the greatest fear of it. That is to say, I am afraid it will result in a new confusion which would be very bad for me, because even my present unhappiness consists only of confusion. This confusion is as follows: My happiness, my abilities, and every possibility of being useful in any way have always been in the literary field. And here I have, to be sure, experienced states (not many) which in my opinion correspond very closely to the clairvoyant states described by you, Herr Doktor, in which I completely dwelt in every idea, but also filled every idea, and in which I not only felt myself at my boundary, but at the boundary of the human in general. Only the calm of enthusiasm, which is probably characteristic of the clairvoyant, was still lacking in those states, even if not completely. I conclude this from the fact that I did not write the best of my works in those states. I cannot now devote myself completely to this literary field, as would be necessary and indeed for various reasons. Aside from my family relationships, I could not live by literature if only, to begin with, because of the slow maturing of my work and its special character; besides I am prevented also by my health and my character from devoting myself to what is, in the most favorable case, an uncertain life. I have therefore become an official in a social insurance agency. Now these two professions can never be reconciled with one another and admit a common fortune. The smallest good fortune in the one becomes a great misfortune in the other. . . . Outwardly, I fulfill my duties satisfactorily at the office, not my inner duties, however, and every unfulfilled inner duty becomes a misfortune that never leaves. And to these two never-to-be-reconciled endeavours shall I now add theosophy as a third? Will it not disturb both the others and itself be disturbed by both? . . . This is what I have come to ask you, Herr Doktor.”

It’s unfortunate for our curiosity that Kafka is so focused on himself and his problems that he doesn’t record how Steiner responded to this speech. All Kafka reports is this:

“He listened very attentively without apparently looking at me at all, entirely devoted to my words. He nodded from time to time, which he seems to consider an aid to strict concentration. At first a quiet head cold disturbed him, his nose ran, he kept working his handkerchief deep into his nose, one finger in each nostril.”

There is perhaps a little too much information in that last sentence and not enough anywhere else. There is no further mention of Steiner in the diaries, apart from one piece of advice from the same meeting: “Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier.” (“Mr. Kafka, don’t eat eggs.”)

Can we make a guess at what else Steiner had said to him? It seems probable that Steiner realised that Kafka’s life would be a short one and that in his remaining time he would need to focus as much as possible on his writing. We may surmise that Steiner told Kafka to concentrate on literature above all else.

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October 9, 2014 · 10:10 am

A few thoughts on leadership and management issues in Steiner Waldorf schools

Some years ago I ran a vision-building workshop for a Steiner school. To help me, I invited a very experienced businessman and friend, Mick Crews, not only because of his track record in similar workshops for big companies but also because he liked what he had already heard of Steiner Waldorf schools. As part of our preparations, I explained to Mick the ways in which the school sought to manage itself through the college of teachers system.   He listened very carefully and then he said: “It strikes me that, for your system to work, it requires a degree of personal integrity in the staff that you don’t find in any other walk of life”.

Steiner schools are trying to work with a model of self-governance as laid down by Rudolf Steiner in the 1920s, in which there was no head teacher and in which each teacher took a measure of responsibility for the running of the school, above and beyond their normal teaching duties. Why did Steiner advocate this system, which the schools have tried to implement ever since?

Those of us who have struggled with the challenges of running the school in the college of teachers system have always told ourselves that Steiner gave this daunting task to the schools as a kind of necessary preparation for working in a way that will increasingly come to the fore as humanity develops, that is in a non-hierarchical, consensual system that gets away from top-down, centrally-driven thinking and decision making. There’s no denying that it does have some real advantages:

  • The sense that teachers have (or are more likely to have) of professional autonomy and of shared collective responsibility for the children and the school
  • The willingness that teachers have (or should have) to take a larger view of their role beyond their immediate job description
  • The opportunity that teachers have not only to meet and discuss anything related to teaching, curriculum and the pupils but also to share their experiences, take initiatives and learn from one another

Out of these conditions arise several benefits for the school and the pupils, which would otherwise be far less likely to exist. They include:

  • Better relationships between teachers and pupils than seems to be the case in many other schools
  • Pupils, who because of the Waldorf curriculum running alongside the examination courses, tend to be well-rounded and “interesting” individuals
  • A tangible quality of warmth about the education that makes for a supportive and encouraging atmosphere within the school
  • Teachers able to work as true professionals rather than classroom managers

However, if not handled well by all concerned, the college of teachers system can also display some more difficult aspects:

  • a management approach in which everybody has nominal responsibility but only a few take active responsibility
  • lack of time, and lack of expertise in complex areas such as employment law
  • lack of individual accountability
  • lack of clarity in the role of College (is it the spiritual heart-organ of the school, a permanent teacher training academy, a school management body, or all of these and more?)

The effect of these difficulties can sometimes lead to:

  • slowness in coming to decisions
  • poor communications with other parts of the school community, eg lack of clarity for parents about whom they should approach when faced with a problem
  • poor communications with teachers who are not on College
  • weakness in overall pedagogical management and inadequate self-management by some teachers
  • inherent risk of conflict of interest when teachers set their own standards
  • slowness in responding to difficult situations which then become crises
  • slow and sometimes inappropriate or inadequate responses to the outside world’s demands;
  • occasional failures to deal effectively and quickly with under-performance of teachers or difficulties within classes
  • problems in keeping up to date with advances in teaching practice, with legislation and with what is going on in other parts of the educational world
  • inadequate pastoral care for staff

There are additional complexities in running a Steiner school which do not apply to other schooling systems, and these are to do with the way in which Steiner’s teaching encompassed not only his method of education but also its spiritual basis in anthroposophy and its socio-economic basis in “threefolding”. For reasons of concision, these complexities are not dealt with here, although perhaps I will return to them in a future posting.

In a system so dependent on the astonishing insights of one man who died in 1925, the schools movement is now, to use a phrase originated by Steve Sagarin of Great Barrington Waldorf School, like a restaurant without a chef. Sagarin asks: “How can Waldorf schools address this absence? There is no single right or appropriate model. Democratic or aristocratic, consensus decision-making or mandates, it doesn’t matter. Each school community must solve this conundrum for itself.”

A former mentor and a good friend of mine, Helen Weatherhead, a very experienced Steiner class teacher, has said to me: “It doesn’t matter which system you have in place – what really decides whether a school works well or not is the constellation of people within the staff of that school”. And of course, that’s absolutely right – well-motivated people of good will, aligned around a single purpose, will make the best of any system of school management. Here we come back to the point Mick Crews made about the required degree of personal integrity, which in my experience is only sometimes higher in Steiner schools than that found in other walks of life. But perhaps it’s because Steiner schools aspire to such high ideals, and because parents invest so much belief and hope in the education, that when things go wrong or are badly handled by the school, the disillusion and anger expressed by these parents can be overwhelming.

If one reads the Conferenzen, (the record of the teachers’ meetings with Steiner at the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart), it is clear that up until he became seriously ill in late 1924, Steiner and the teachers continued to evolve the management system in the light of difficulties that were experienced. At no point did they arrive at a definitive system and, indeed, it is ironic that up until his final illness, Steiner continued to act as a kind of visiting headmaster to whose views every one deferred.

Nearly a century after Steiner’s death we have vastly different educational and political circumstances to deal with. To mention only the most obvious, teachers’ workloads have increased, external regulations and inspections have multiplied, employment law, health and safety regulations and child protection legislation have made running a school a truly complex operation; and everyone working in a school wants to maintain a healthy work/life balance rather than spend many evenings and weekends in teachers’ meetings.

Despite all of this, most Steiner schools have persisted with the college of teachers system or variants, although it doesn’t work well in terms of managing the school in today’s circumstances. The independent Steiner schools, which have so many excellent qualities, are usually not at their best either in customer care or quality control and they are perhaps twenty or thirty years behind in their attitudes to these concepts when compared with what is happening in the other parts of the schools’ sector in the UK.

I except from this the newly founded Steiner academies, which are publicly funded and required to maintain more stringent governance than is usually the case in the independent schools. The UK government has made it a condition that there should be a principal in each of these schools who is personally accountable to them for the running of the school. It will be interesting to see in the coming years what sort of modus vivendi will evolve between the principal and the college of teachers (where there is one) in these Steiner academy schools.

The leadership and management roles of the council of trustees should also not be forgotten. Indeed, the idea that Steiner schools are run by the faculty through the college of teachers is only partially correct. It would be more accurate to say that, under current charity law, the council of trustees is responsible for everything that happens within the school and that they devolve certain of their responsibilities to the college of teachers. At the school with which I am most familiar, the trustees reserve to themselves decisions about financial, legal and regulatory matters, while devolving responsibility for all pedagogical matters to College.

I have myself been a trustee at a much smaller Steiner school of more recent creation, and it has very different problems and issues from the larger and longer-established schools. For a time, its trustees, who were mainly parents at the school, had to micro-manage everything and there was no college of teachers, although there were regular faculty meetings. The school is now moving towards a system in which the school management team (on which faculty, trustees and administration are represented) assumes more and more functions devolved from the trustees. Another Steiner school of which I’m aware has done away completely with its college of teachers and replaced it by a system of mandates and teacher-meetings. Several schools have appointed education facilitators (full-time educational administrators) whose role it is to deal with those many aspects of running a school that the teachers do not have time for in their College meetings. The Steiner Academy Hereford, the first of the new publicly-funded Steiner schools, appointed a principal and deputy principal to work alongside the college of teachers, and this is a pattern that may be repeated in schools that are currently seeking to become academies under the government’s “free schools” initiative. All of these examples serve to illustrate Sagarin’s point that each school must work out its own solutions according to its own unique situation.

This ‘unique situation’ or the exceptional autonomy of each Steiner school is also both a strength and a weakness. It’s a strength inasmuch as autonomy allows each school to develop its own character and culture to the maximum. It’s also a weakness because a wide range of autonomous individual schools makes coordinated responses to movement-wide problems very difficult. This lack of centralised authority makes it almost impossible to fix problems that individual schools have been unable to solve for themselves.

A recent conversation with Christopher Clouder has led me to question whether we might not in any case have misunderstood how Steiner’s indications for school management came about. Christopher said that he had been looking through some of the books in Steiner’s library, which is stored at the Goetheanum in Dornach. While turning the pages of a book on educational reform written by someone called Kirschlager, Christopher noticed some passages which had been heavily underscored by Steiner. They contained the same thoughts with which we are familiar in any discussion of leadership in Steiner schools: there should be no head master, the school should not be dictated to by the state, the school should be a republican academy. If these ideas were current in educational circles in Germany in the 1920s, is it possible that Steiner, rather than bringing a vital concept for the development of humanity in the future from his vast spiritual insight, was simply aligning himself with the advanced educational thinking of his time? If this really is the case, then we can surely now free ourselves from the letter of what was done in Stuttgart all those years ago and concentrate instead on translating the essence of Steiner’s intentions into the very different circumstances of today.

How easy it would be if Steiner was still around to tell us how to do things in the very changed circumstances of the 21st century! What wouldn’t we give to be able to ask Steiner for more information, for greater detail, on a whole host of issues? But we can’t – and so it is necessary for the movement to have the courage to adapt and move on in response to the needs of our times. As Steiner said to Margarita Woloschin: “One is never ready for a task, one evolves into it.”

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October 4, 2014 · 11:17 pm

Different strokes for different folks

Following my recent post on “The issue that isn’t going away – leadership and management in Steiner Waldorf schools”, there was a minor flurry of comments from some of those who are critical of Steiner Waldorf schools. I will mention here just two of them:

Mark Hayes of the Steiner’s Mirror blog said:

“I think that the common lack of effective leadership stems from the collegiate management structure which originated with Steiner himself and the first Waldorf school, of course. I also suggest that the movement’s rigidity in this respect stems from the kind of unquestioning adulation for Steiner many share, as in your final paragraph.

Having said that, I have the impression that the mandate system used in many Steiner schools was an attempt to evolve from the fully collegiate approach, though I’ve seen little evidence that it has made much difference.

Does the SWSF still have an oversight role in the UK? Can grievances not satisfactorily resolved at school level still be taken there? If not, what role does it now have?”

Well, Mark, what I would say is that all sorts of variations have been tried in order to make the college of teachers system more responsive and effective, including the mandate system – I will be saying more about this in another posting soon, which will look in some detail at leadership and management issues.

I can’t speak for others but please do not assume that I have “unquestioning adulation” for Steiner – if I did, I would have failed as someone who seeks to work with anthroposophy. My appreciation of Steiner’s greatness has arisen over years of study, not just of anthroposophy but also of other spiritually-oriented philosophies. I have found that if you try to live and work with a new idea over a period of time, you will soon discover whether it has truth for you, because something within you will resonate with it. And if it sounds fantastical and cannot be verified, either within your own being or by some other means, then you can simply dismiss it, or say: interesting, if true. I understand that not everyone will share my assessment of Steiner, nor am I asking that they should.

Re SWSF, if I recall correctly, they no longer have a “final court of appeal “ role, which in the complaints procedures of most schools is reserved for the school’s Council of Trustees. What SWSF does do is to provide a Code of Practice, which spells out both Basic and Best Practice procedures; and in recent times, it has also introduced a Quality mark, which is awarded only to those schools which have undergone a rigorous outside assessment.

Melanie Byng has tweeted to say:

“your essential problem is that very few people agree Steiner was ‘a great initiate & one of the most remarkable human beings’ etc & most of these people don’t think it’s a good idea to base an education system on the ideas of ‘a great initiate’ or clairvoyant.”

I’m sure you’re right, Melanie, that not everyone will want such a system, but then as the marketing people say: “It’s different strokes for different folks.” Some people will want Montessori, some will want Froebel, some will want their local comprehensive, and there may even be a few who will want Steiner. What’s wrong with that?

Most parents will do their due diligence in researching the school they want for their child and there is plenty about Steiner schools on the internet, both pro- and anti-. Steiner schools are also much better these days in making statements about anthroposophy on their websites and in their prospectuses, so there should be fewer and fewer parents who are unaware of it.

If I might be excused a personal example, my wife and I were very happy to choose a Steiner school for our daughter, because we had done our due diligence and we did know fairly exactly what to expect; and it has worked very well for our daughter, both socially (like most Steiner pupils you meet, she is well-rounded, engaged with life, well-socialised, articulate and independent-minded) and academically (3 A*s at A level, a first class degree, and is now doing her MA at the Courtauld Institute). There are many others like her, both academic and non-academic types, who are able to find their way into adult life as free-thinking, creative and positive members of society. I saw it every year when I was working in a Steiner school and we said goodbye at the end of Summer term to the students leaving after their A-levels. These are fine young people that give one faith in the future of humanity – and any education system that can produce such results is doing quite a lot right.

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September 27, 2014 · 11:43 am

Why some atheists like anthroposophy

“The common man is a mystic. Mysticism is only a transcendent form of common sense. Mysticism and common sense alike consist in a sense of the dominance of certain truths and tendencies which cannot be formally demonstrated or even formally named. Mysticism and common sense are like appeals to realities that we all know to be real, but which have no place in argument except as postulates.” (G K Chesterton)

Chesterton, writing in the early 20th century, clearly felt that most people have a kind of natural sense that the spiritual world exists, even though many of us have no means of rationalising why we feel that way.

Others, such as Rudolf Steiner (although some people believe he had an atheistical period in his younger days), came to characterise atheism as a kind of disability or disease.  Lecturing in 1919, Steiner said : “Only those human beings…are atheists in whose organism something is organically disturbed. To be sure, this may lie in very delicate structural conditions, but it is a fact that atheism is in reality a disease…For, if our organism is completely healthy, the harmonious functioning of its various members will bring it about that we ourselves sense our origin from the Divine – ex deo nascimur (from God we are born).”

So there you are, Richard Dawkins et al – instead of having reached your view of a godless universe through the power of your intellect, you are actually just suffering from the effects of a disturbed physical organism. 🙂

Today, in the age of the consciousness soul, there are many people who have lost their natural connection with the divine. In Steiner’s view, humanity is going through a period which started in the 15th century and won’t conclude until the 35th, in which we have gradually lost an atavistic form of clairvoyance. This is a necessary but very dangerous step in the evolution of humankind. It is necessary because as humans we have the unique privilege of developing freewill, which could only happen by entering an age in which our connection with the divine-spiritual beings and their will for our future appeared to be severed. And it is dangerous because this apparent severance from spirit existence has given the oppositional powers the opportunity they didn’t have before, which is to convince human beings through our science and technology that physical, material reality is the only reality and thus to thwart our true destiny as spiritual beings. For all of the shortcomings and difficulties caused us by this present stage, Steiner tells us that materialism remains the vehicle for the initial development of human freedom. It was the task of materialistic science to lead us away from the overwhelming dominance of theology and theocracy in human affairs, and from the unfreedom that had for so long been associated with them. And, as Steiner repeatedly asserts, it is in our relationship as spiritual beings to the physical world that the possibility for human freedom first manifests itself. Put differently, materialism for all its faults and limitations had a very important task to perform, and it needed time to complete it – and it’s still got another 250 years or so to run its course.

In the meantime, we have to find ways of coping with the difficulties of our present age. In Owen Barfield’s words, “Living in the consciousness soul man experiences isolation, loneliness, materialism, loss of faith in the spiritual world, above all, uncertainty. The soul has to make up its mind and to act in a positive way on its own unsupported initiative. And it finds great difficulty in doing so. For it is too much in the dark to be able to see any clear reason why it should, and it no longer feels the old (instinctive) promptings of the spirit within.”

I rather like these concepts and find they bring a savour and a spice to life – human reality is much more exciting and inspiring than anything in science fiction! Many other people, of course, think this is all nonsense and take up the position of agnosticism or atheism. ‘Skeptics’ (as they call themselves) can be very dismissive about anthroposophical endeavours, which are of course based upon the presumption of the reality of the spiritual world. If these skeptics are also parents in Steiner schools who feel that they have had a bad experience, or if they believe that the school has not been open with them about anthroposophy, then their anger and contempt can be awesome to behold – and in this online world, they make sure as many other people as possible get to hear about it. I’m sure schools do get things wrong from time to time and I’m certainly not trying to belittle those parents who have had less than satisfactory experiences. When you have invested such hope (and hard cash) in a school for your children, it is shattering if it then all seems to go wrong. Steiner Waldorf schools, which have such high aspirations, can cause huge anger if they turn out to have feet of clay. I shall be writing in a later posting more about this unfortunate phenomenon and some possible reasons for it.

There are other sorts of skeptic parents, for example those who regard anthroposophy as a bit of a joke but still value the education Steiner schools provide for their children. I came across a good example of this latter type on an Australian blog, Good Reason. In a post entitled: “A Rational Look at Steiner Schools”, Daniel Midgley comments on an article he has read in the magazine, Australian Rationalist. After going through the various criticisms made of Steiner schools in the article, Daniel concludes:

“If there is a saving grace for Waldorf education, it’s that, in my experience, very few of the rank and file parents believe the hype. You do get a core of Steiner believers, including the teachers, but almost no one else takes Anthroposophy seriously. Many parents roll their eyes at Eurythmy and such. The kids are usually pretty down to earth about it, too. At a recent Winter Festival, some parents were trying to foster a reverent attitude during the bonfire, but the kids were chanting “More kerosene! More kerosene!” They keep it real.

I also think that the teaching of religion is handled well, as I’ve mentioned before. Many world religions are represented, and I think this has an inoculating influence on kids. They’re more likely to fall for religion in adulthood if it hasn’t been presented to them before, and the Christian myth is presented at school along with all the other myths.

If you’re a rationalist, and you’re considering Steiner education, or if (like me) you’re already in and you’re only just becoming more of a critical thinker, it’s not impossible for it to work. My kids enjoy their school, and it’s been pretty positive. …The greatest danger from Steiner schooling is to the rationalist parent, not the child; you may go insane from exposure to crackpottery, or you may eventually bite through your tongue.”

In the Steiner school I know best, I certainly came across atheist parents who nevertheless valued the education, even if they thought some aspects of it were screwy – so I’m sure Daniel is on to something in his article.

But although it is quite easy for atheists to be dismissive of Steiner schools (even if some of them like the results), it’s not quite so easy to dismiss something as nonsense when the evidence of your own senses is telling you the exact opposite. It’s indeed an irony, given many anthropops’ ambivalent attitudes to alcohol, that biodynamically produced wine is leading the way in changing attitudes to biodynamic agriculture. Take for example this post by Cory Cartwright: “An Atheist’s Defence of Biodynamics”:

“…I do believe some biodynamic vignerons are amongst the very best in the world. I’ve drank hundreds of these wines, from wines that tout a Demeter certification on their label to wines that I didn’t know were biodynamic for years. In fact many of the producers consider marketing the wine as “bio” to be just that, marketing, so they let the wine do the talking. Despite my skepticism around some of the principal tenets and practices of Steiner’s agricultural followers, I simply don’t care if they are being used.

The resurgence in biodynamics, like modern organics, the Slow Food movement, fukuoka farming, locavores, and natural winemaking was a conscious rejection of the big industrial food supply chain that twisted our view of food, wrecked economies, and wrecked our health. The tenets of modernization, control, simplification, mass production, “big solutions.” When people saw what we had done to one of our most basic of needs they were aghast, and set out to find alternatives that would stop the pollution of both of the soil and of our bodies.

The scientific based winemaking at UC Davis and elsewhere is one that sees a straightforward path between the beginning and the end of winemaking, and deviation is dealt with as harshly as possible. Shouldn’t plant vines there? Irrigation will fix that. Weeds? Monsanto has you covered (which heavily funds UC Davis. Go Aggies!). Vines not doing so well? Chemical fertilizers. Mildew? Bring on the helicopters. Of course this is all very scientific so skepticism about the ultimate problems should be shelved for now while we continue spraying. Aren’t these the questions we should be asking when it comes to winemaking? What price are we paying for this wine when everything is tallied?

I am beginning to work with a young couple in the south of France who have 14 acres of vineyards and olives that are all farmed biodynamically. We toured their vineyards, and they showed us several planting techniques they were experimenting with, from planting density to different cover crops and mixed use vineyards. As we walked through we were struck by the difference between their vineyards and others. They had some bio-culture in their vineyards, the vines looked good, their old growth was healthy. The nearby neighbors had created a moonscape vineyard, dead, except for the vines, and even then the old growth was mostly gone despite being planted at the same time.

When we asked them about the biodynamic treatments they treated us to skeptical laughs. They said it was working, with a wave of a hand towards the vines, and even if the treatments were doing nothing, so what? Practicing biodynamics was getting them out and into the vineyards, with the plants and rocks, getting their hands dirty and teaching them to recognize things that they would never get if they were in a tractor all day, or if they simply killed off all the life.”

The whole article is well worth reading and the photos contrasting the biodynamic vineyard with the conventionally-farmed vineyard are very telling.

The anthropopper can live with being ridiculed by skeptics, as long as others are beginning to see that in applied anthroposophy there really is something rather special that works, and which holds hope for the future – and in such a mad, bad and dangerous world, we all need to believe that humanity can find ways to pull through its present crises. Anyway, as human evolution continues, and once we’re all through the age of the consciousness soul (unfortunately there’s about another 1500 years to go), I like to think that we will be discovering new and much more objective clairvoyant abilities in ourselves; and the reality of the spiritual world will be glaringly obvious to all of us, skeptics, anthropops and the common man and woman alike.

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September 16, 2014 · 2:18 pm

Karma and the Steiner Waldorf teacher

Mark Hayes of the Steiner’s Mirror blog has asked me a question: ““What role and purpose, if any, does karma have in Steiner education?”

I think it’s fair to say that Mark’s blog is not friendly towards Steiner schools and his question has a hostile intent behind it. However, it seems to me that Mark is asking a genuine question in a civil manner so I’m going to do my best to answer him.

I should state right from the outset that, although I have worked in and around Steiner schools for many years, I am not a teacher nor have I been through Steiner teacher training. What I have done, however, is spend considerable amounts of time with Steiner teachers, in teacher meetings and College of Teacher meetings. I have also helped to recruit and interview teachers (and on occasion have also had to engage in teacher disciplinary and capability panels).   My response to Mark’s question is based on my experience of what happens in a typical Steiner Waldorf school.

Rudolf Steiner considered it his main life task to increase people’s understanding of the laws of karma and reincarnation and their operation in our lives. I call them ‘laws’ because they operate as inevitably as any other law of nature such as gravity or action/reaction.

What is karma? Stated very simply, karma is the cosmic law of cause and effect. I see it as an extension of the physical law of action/reaction because it ensures that each of us receives back the exact results of our actions. The idea didn’t originate with Steiner, of course. According to Wikipedia, it has its origins in ancient India and is a key concept in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Ching Hai and others. And although most traces of it have been eliminated from exoteric Christianity, even there you can still find references to it, such as from St Paul, who said: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

So karma is not some weird, occult notion dreamed up by Steiner but is part of the belief system of millions of people across the world. It is of course closely associated with two of the other great cosmic laws, ie reincarnation or the law of rebirth; and the law of opportunity, which ensures that the reincarnating soul is drawn to the circumstances that will bring opportunities to pay off old debts and acquire the knowledge and experience that it seeks.

To come to Mark’s question: “what role and purpose, if any, does karma have in Steiner education?” Perhaps the first thing to say is that not every teacher in a Steiner school is an anthroposophist. I would guess that most class teachers are but probably not so many subject teachers. One would hope that, if they are teaching in a Steiner school, then they would at least have an interest in anthroposophy and be open to finding out more about it, but it’s not a requirement and during my time they were not asked about it at interview. I never knew for sure how many people in the school would describe themselves as anthroposophists and I never asked.

But let’s assume that the teacher is an anthroposophist and works with the notion that karma and reincarnation are active in the lives of all of us. What effect does that have on their teaching practice? From my perspective, it has the most wonderful and enlivening effect, which can be summed up in this quotation from Steiner: “Receive the children in reverence, educate them with love, send them forth in freedom.”

“Receive the children in reverence.” The teacher receives the child in trust from its parents but also with the understanding that the child was in the heavenly world until its recent birth and therefore comes, in Wordsworth’s phrase, “trailing clouds of glory.”

“Educate them with love.” The teacher will assume that there is some kind of link between his or her own karma and that of the children and that they are therefore there to learn from and to help one another.

“Send them forth in freedom.” The teacher does not seek to impart his or her own beliefs to the children but rather to teach them to think for themselves so that in their future lives they can operate as free men and women, able to fulfil their destinies.

A Steiner teacher doesn’t ask: “What do I need to teach this child so that she will get through the SATS test?” or “How can I ensure that this child’s exam results won’t drag down the school’s overall rating in the league tables?” or even “What can I teach this child so that he will become an efficient member of the workforce?” (And by no means do I blame state schoolteachers for the intolerable political pressures put upon them.) Instead, a Steiner teacher will ask something like: “What does this child need in order to develop into an effective member of society who is well balanced and happy?”

In all the teacher meetings I have attended over the years, I have never heard a teacher say anything that would seem to indicate that they know what a child’s past life had been or how its karma would unfold in the future. Indeed, unless you are a great initiate or at least a clairvoyant of prodigious insight, how could anyone make such a statement without inviting derision? If ever anything like this has happened in a Steiner school, then I condemn it as utterly inappropriate and wrong. What I have heard, on the other hand, is some really insightful discussion in child study sessions, in which teachers will focus on a particular child and share their particular experiences and observations made during lessons.

Nor do I recognise the allegation that Steiner teachers ignore incidents of bullying because of some misplaced sense that, if a child is being bullied, it must be something to do with its karma. In the schools I know about, bullying is dealt with quickly and effectively and any incidents of bullying are notified to all the teachers so that they can keep an eye open in case of any further outbreaks. If there is a Steiner teacher anywhere in the world who believes that they should not intervene in cases of bullying, they are not only very wrong but also completely misunderstand the concept of karma. In my old school any such idiocy would have led straight to a disciplinary hearing for that teacher.

Visit Steiner schools and you will find there is a friendly and relaxed relationship between teachers and pupils. There is also a notable quality of warmth that one does not always feel in other schools, where it’s all too easy for teachers to become classroom managers and for pupils to be seen as examination statistics.

All of the above will seem like nonsense and delusion to some, or to use the skeptics’ favourite imported terms, “woo” and “wibble”. (What’s wrong with our homegrown British terms of abuse, I’d like to know.)

In the UK at least, you have plenty of choice of schools and if the ideas outlined here don’t appeal to you, then please put your child in a different system. After all, as Steiner observed somewhere, belief in the spiritual realities is a matter of karma and if you don’t like these concepts, then they’re clearly not in your script for this lifetime (which you probably believe is the only one you’ve got).

As I’ve already mentioned some of the cosmic laws, I will touch here on another one – the law of balance and equilibrium. This law shows itself throughout nature in phenomena such as day and night, heat and cold, expansion and contraction, acid and alkali etc. It’s a fundamental law regarding the human mind and body because it acts as a safeguard, ensuring that extremism can only be taken so far before reaction sets in and pulls us back towards the place of balance. Over successive incarnations it causes the soul to swing between poles, for example between introversion and extroversion, until a more balanced expression of being is reached. It may cause a soul that has been fanatical in one incarnation to be just as fanatical in the opposite direction in another lifetime, so as to adjust the soul’s equilibrium. Therefore, although I’m not clairvoyant, I can predict with complete confidence that Richard Dawkins’ next life will be as an Islamic fundamentalist; that Dan Dugan will be general secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America; and that Pete Karaiskos will come back as a kindly little old lady whose characteristic phrases will be: “If you can’t say something nice, then it’s better to say nothing at all” and “Oh well, mustn’t grumble.” 🙂

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September 11, 2014 · 10:54 am

The internet, the critics and Steiner Waldorf schools

It is ironical that the internet, which is connecting people throughout the world, is also isolating us from real human interactions. An additional irony is that the isolating technology of the internet has the ability to bring together so many new groups of people online , who then tend to polarise into factions. We have Darwinists versus creationists, secular humanists versus religious believers, neo-con right versus liberal left and so on.

The internet has turned us all into self-publishing writers and that factor, combined with the near-ubiquity of Twitter, has put many of us into broadcast rather than receive mode. We are no longer good at listening to one another and prefer instead to promote our views, or the prejudices of our favoured factions, to anyone we can persuade to click on the link. Even at our most solipsistic, however, some traditional media practices remain useful, such as targeting suitable individuals or organisations for hate campaigns and going after them without mercy. Inventing heretics and then sending in the attack dogs is great sport for everyone – we can all agree on that.

Steiner Waldorf schools have certainly come in for more than their fair share of online abuse and attack. The people working in these schools, however, have tended to stand aside from such polarised online arguments, despite the critics’ best efforts to get them to rise to the bait with some truly ferocious onslaughts. Perhaps that’s because the schools’ traditional response to criticism has always been to ignore it, keep their heads down and get on with their work. I recall one critic who was amazed and frustrated that whatever she said about the schools, however extreme or libelous, never resulted in any public response.

Nonetheless, if you’re an anthroposophist and you spend any time online, you can’t help but be disturbed by some of the vehemently anti-Steiner critics out there, only too happy to pour buckets of bile and scorn over our heads.

I used to work for a Steiner school and my younger self tended to get quite upset by the sheer malice and ill will that the online critics manifested towards the education. I would dearly love to offer these critics and their readers a more balanced view, one which is based on my own, mainly positive, experience of Steiner schools. However, despite my wish for interaction and dialogue, I’ve reluctantly concluded that there is little to be gained by joining discussion with the critics. After several bruising online encounters, it became clear that many of them are really not interested in reasoned discussion. No, what they want is to destroy Steiner Waldorf education. I wish I had read the following advice from Steiner before getting involved:

“Observe the opponents, indeed in our anthroposophical circles it would be most advisable to study our opponents carefully. They renounce attacking the truths, and lay chief stress on personal attacks, personal insinuations, personal insults, personal calumnies. They think that truth cannot be touched, yet it is to be driven out of the world, and they believe that this can be done by personal defamation. The nature of such an opposition shows how well the leading opponents know how to proceed in order to gain the victory, at least for the time being.

But this is something which anthroposophists above all should know; for there are still many anthroposophists who think that something may be reached by direct discussion with the opponent…people do not hate us because we say something that is not true, but because we say the truth. And the more we succeed in proving that we say the truth, the more they will hate us.
Of course this cannot prevent us from stating the truth. But it can prevent us from being so naïve as to think that it is possible to progress by discussion.” 1

Steiner here was clearly referring to opponents who went about their business by way of ad hominem attacks, distortions and lies – the kind of behaviour, in fact, which the internet with its anonymity and distancing effect seems to encourage. Taking his advice, I won’t be getting into any more online exchanges with critics who behave in the ways he described. I might, however, respond to what seem to be genuine questions or genuine concerns, because I am interested in real discussion and dialogue – and also because I think that in the long run the critics are doing Steiner schools a favour by shining their critical spotlight on the education.

A point I have often made in talks with teachers is that our best, perhaps our only defence is to be excellent at what we do. If we are consistently providing an excellent all-round education for our pupils, then the critics will have very few arguments left. However, the weakness of the leadership and management arrangements in some of the independent Steiner schools has meant that achieving necessary change can be very difficult. I shall have more to say about this subject in a future posting but for now I will simply observe that, to the extent we are able to rise successfully to this challenge, the critics will have helped Steiner schools into becoming an accepted and valued part of the educational culture of this country – and this might even come to be reflected in what is said about us on the internet.

1 From “Knowledge Pervaded with the Experience of Love”, GA 221, Dornach, 18th February 1923

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August 30, 2014 · 4:27 pm

Am I Reasonable or Unreasonable?

One of the things that impresses me about anthroposophy is the effect it can have on certain people when they seek to apply it in practical activities. It’s as though once these individuals get a glimpse of the true nature of what it is to be a human and an understanding of the role of human beings in the larger scheme of things, it somehow frees them to go out into the world without fear and to get on with their life’s work.

Look at the people who work on biodynamic farms, for example. There they are, toiling away for often just the minimum wage, producing wonderful food bursting with flavour and full of life-force, for those of us privileged enough to be near an outlet that sells it.

Why do they do it? What motivates them to forsake the normal aspirations of society, such as being able to afford to buy their own home, have a good car and get their share of the other consumer benefits most of us take for granted? Are they being reasonable?

Perhaps it’s because they simply can’t bear what is going on in conventional agriculture right now. They want the rest of us to wake up to what is happening in mainstream farming. These are individuals who feel that they have to do right by the land, by the animals and by the plants within their care because not to do so would crush them as human beings.

Or what about co-workers in Camphill village communities, who have chosen to live and work with people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities? Could it be that they feel impelled to live and work in an environment in which each person and every aspect of the natural world is valued and respected, because not to do so would be unbearable?

Or take the group of Arab and Jewish parents who founded the Ein Bustan (literally “Spring in the Garden”) kindergarten, the first Jewish/Arab Waldorf kindergarten in Israel. These founders share a vision of a society in which Jews and Arabs live peacefully together in equality and understanding. The children (half of them Arab and half Jewish) learn and speak each other’s language and discover each other’s culture and inner world. In the midst of all the hatred and horrors of Jewish/Arab conflict, these people are doing what is the obvious and necessary thing to do, that is building bridges of understanding between the children who will grow up to become the next generation of decision-makers and opinion-formers in Israel. They are reviled and derided by many on both sides for what they do.

Compare and contrast individuals like this with, say, political activists or media commentators. Such people can talk up a storm about what needs to be done to meet this crisis or that problem. They are well known, they are wheeled out as pundits on TV and radio and online, they make a good living out of what they do, and they are above all reasonable men and women. However, their tally of contributing to actual change or improvement for their fellow human beings may be less than impressive.

Reasonable people are adaptable, sensible, can tack with the prevailing winds. The Vicar of Bray was undoubtedly a reasonable man. Unreasonable people can at times be a pain to deal with and are often seen as their own worst enemies.

Was Karl Konig, who founded Camphill, a reasonable man?

Are the Ein Bustan founders reasonable to carry on in the face of all the opposition coming their way?

Was Rudolf Steiner, as someone who has had a huge impact in fields as diverse as agriculture, architecture, the arts, economics, education, medicine, a reasonable man?

Here is a favourite quotation of mine, from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Exactly so.

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August 22, 2014 · 1:06 pm

Why am I starting this blog?

Anthroposophy, a name that is used to describe the body of knowledge and the practical fruits of Rudolf Steiner’s extraordinarily polymathic activities and teachings in the first quarter of the 20th century, is an unfortunate word. It means something like “human wisdom”. The Germans seem to have no problems in stringing together two or more words to make up these clumsy portmanteau words; but to the English speaker a word such as anthroposophy is not only awkward to pronounce but also sounds cult-like. It’s almost guaranteed to get normal human beings to walk in the opposite direction as soon as they hear it.

Steiner himself said that he would like to change the word every week but unluckily for us, he stuck with it. It is equally unfortunate that other terms used to describe Steiner’s work, such as “spiritual science” are just as bad. “Spiritual science” appears to be a particularly poor translation of the German term “geisteswissenschaft”, which could more accurately be called “the spiritual humanities” in English.

Image courtesy of RS Archive

A rare photo of Rudolf Steiner with the hint of a smile – Image courtesy of RS Archive

So if we are of the view that Steiner has a huge contribution to make in helping us to understand what it is to be a human being and how to live better lives, it’s a pity that we start off with something of a communications problem.

That’s why I was very encouraged at the 2014 summer conference of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain (ASGB) that the recently appointed general secretary, Marjatta van Boeschoten, announced that the ASGB Council was seriously considering a name change for the society. I was even more encouraged that the members present seemed to be overwhelmingly in favour of such a change and wanted the society to play a much more active, outwardly-facing role in the world. Hurrah! That’s what I’m interested in – not just talking, but doing – helping to get to grips with some of the massive problems facing us all.

But in the meantime we’re still stuck with this term “anthroposophy”. What is it? I like this pithy description from an old Norwegian acquaintance of mine, Tarjei Straume:

 “Anthroposophy is nothing but a path to the Spirit available to everyone and basically compatible with any cultural or religious background, including secular humanism. As a matter of fact, humanism is the basis, the point of departure, for the epistemology that is the backdrop of anthroposophy and therefore also its backbone.”

Yes, there’s that troublesome word again, “Spirit”. Steiner’s own description is: “Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in humans as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need.”

Steiner knew with absolute certainty that we human beings are not just physical creatures in a material world but in fact we are spiritual beings who are currently having human experiences in a physical body – and that we are subject to constant cycles of life, death and rebirth.

How does that sit with you? Do those ideas resonate somewhere inside you or do they seem to be absolute nonsense and delusion? If the latter, then why not apply to join the British Humanist Association, whose slogan is: “For The One Life We Have.”

But if you feel there may be rather more to life than just one lifetime, then you could find it worthwhile to find out more about Steiner.

This blog will reflect my own journey of discovery, my comments on the state of anthroposophy today and some hopes for the future. It will be a great pleasure and privilege to share some of all this with you.

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