Tag Archives: Steiner Waldorf schools

November 5, 2019 · 8:25 pm

A new beginning for Steiner schools in England?

I was contacted today by a journalist in Europe who wanted to speak with me about Steiner schools in England. This is what she wrote:

“Dear Jeremy,

I am a journalist working for the Franco-German tv channel ARTE, at a weekly program about European issues and challenges called Vox Pop. I am currently preparing an investigative report about Steiner Schools in Europe, and will also do a focus in England given the current situation.

I believe it started with issues at Kings Langley School… Since this school has been part of your life for a long time, I’d like to talk with you, for a background , off the record conversation. Could I call you, for example tomorrow?

Thank you

Kind regards”

This is how I replied:

“Dear _______,

Since you are offering an ‘off the record’ conversation, I’m assuming that you are hoping for highly critical remarks about Steiner schools. This is not my position at all – Steiner education is among the very best kinds of education when it is done well. The remarks on my blog about the Kings Langley school were written more in sorrow than in anger, because my view is that the school lost its way quite badly and in its failings has done a huge disservice to Steiner schools everywhere.

Having said that, the Kings Langley school also gave a good education to my daughter and to many other pupils and this should also be recorded. The situation with many of the Steiner schools in England is currently giving concern and there is an article here by Sylvie Sklan which you may find helpful in this connection:

https://www.erziehungskunst.de/en/news/news/every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining-the-future-of-steiner-schools-in-england/

I’ve not worked in a Steiner school since 2014 and doubt if anything I could say would be up to date. I hope your report will be a rounded look at the education and not just a hatchet job.

Kind regards,

Jeremy”

The article linked to above by Sylvie Sklan (a former colleague of mine on the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship executive group) is a useful summation of the situation in the English Steiner schools at this point.

The Fellowship itself is moving on – Sylvie has retired, as have Kevin and Jane Avison, and the only one of my former colleagues still in post is the excellent Janni Nicol, who does a wonderful job of representing Steiner Waldorf early years education. A new team has come in, headed up by Fran Russell, who was instrumental in creating and nurturing the Greenwich Steiner School. Here is what the most recent Fellowship newsletter has to say about the current situation in the English schools:

“Steiner Education in England continues to go through turbulent waters, although we have certainly passed one cataract now with Ofsted having completed its round of the schools, as Ofsted’s Amanda Spielman’s letter signifies. While many people will have various reactions to this, it is important to appreciate that it concludes a period of uncertainty and whether good or bad, right or wrong, justified or not –to put it simplistically- we now know where we stand.

This can be seen as a new beginning with greater things to come. Certainly, in some countries that have gone through not dissimilar phases, something much stronger has emerged. It is probably important to remind ourselves that, while teachers, schools, school leaders and trustees, the SWSF and anybody who is interested in Steiner Education, navigate the emotional currents and turmoil of this wild water we are working towards a future where Steiner Education represents an established and well-respected stream within the educational landscape.

The Fellowship has engaged with Ofsted and the DFE in recent months through meetings and conversations and we have been able to establish a useful stream of communication, enabling us to maintain exemptions, advise on inspection styles going forward and inform the regulators regarding the content and context of Steiner Education. It is clear that in this context the Fellowship is invaluable as an associative body for Steiner Schools, as the DFE and Ofsted have stated that they will not engage with individuals or individual schools.

Furthermore, the Fellowship has also been actively engaged with Avanti and the Regional Schools Commissioners in order to ensure that, as far as possible, while the re-brokering of the academies is still underway, the commitment to the Steiner Waldorf Curriculum is maintained”.

To return to Sylvie Sklan’s article, in which she refers to the taking over of 3 out of the 4 publicly funded academies by a multi-academy trust, the Avanti Schools Trust: she says that “it remains to be seen as to how authentic a school ‘inspired by Waldorf principles’ can be”.

The omens are not promising; here, for example is a report in Schools Week that says Avanti has insisted that it never intended to keep the schools Steiner.

Sylvie also refers to the Avanti Foundation which has taken over the former Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley, and which she says is separate from the Avanti Schools Trust. A report in the local newspaper Tring Today says that the new school is not being allowed to open by Ofsted as it has failed some pre-registration checks.

So it appears that the situation for Steiner schools in England continues dire. Can these schools in partnership with the new Fellowship gradually help themselves on to an upwards trajectory and away from disaster? Time will tell.

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Filed under Kings Langley, Leadership in Steiner Waldorf Schools, Ofsted, RSSKL, Steiner Waldorf schools

Tagged as Avanti, Fran Russell, Steiner Schools, Steiner Waldorf schools, Sylvie Sklan

April 10, 2016 · 4:33 pm

Jeremy Paxman and Rudolf Steiner on French language and culture

Jeremy Paxman, the BBC broadcaster who hosts University Challenge and was formerly the anchorman on the Newsnight programme, has upset French speakers by attacking their language as “useless” and saying that the French nation’s achievements are “long past”. According to Mr Paxman, learning French instead of English, especially in Francophone countries such as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, sets people back in the modern world. Paxman went on to say:

“No one is going to deny that, historically, France has enhanced civilisation. European culture would be a thin thing without Montaigne, Descartes, Debussy and Cézanne, to say nothing of the dictator’s dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte.

The problem is that it is all long past and the new world is anglophone. In the centuries-long struggle between English and French there is one victor, and to pretend otherwise is like suggesting that Johnny Hallyday is the future of pop.

The outcome of the struggle is clear: English is the language of science, technology, travel, entertainment and sport. To be a citizen of the world it is the one language that you must have.”

Jeremy Paxman – photo via The Guardian

Needless to say, Paxman’s attack has riled a great many people, not all of them French. It also reminded me of something I had read in the Conferenzen (the record of Steiner’s meetings with the teachers at the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart) so I went to look it up. Sure enough, in the meeting which took place on Wednesday 14^th February 1923, one of the participants, Dr Karutz, brought a proposal to replace the teaching of French with another language such as Russian. Rudolf Steiner responded at some length to this proposal. What he had to say would have been music to the ears of Jeremy Paxman:

“…The fact is that what France is doing today is like the last throes or the last frantic outburst of a declining nation, a nation that is fading out of earth evolution, only in history these last throes last a long time. A spiritual view of European history shows this aspect very clearly, of course. The French character is the first vanguard of decadent Rome, the declining Romanic nations of Europe…

Now this whole phenomenon of decadence in French national culture is not least visible in their language. The French language is one of those languages one can learn in Europe at present which, if I may put it like this, drives man’s soul to the very surface of his being. It would be the one in which, to put it paradoxically, it is easiest to tell lies honestly. It lends itself most easily to telling lies candidly and honestly, because it is no longer connected with man’s inner nature. It is spoken entirely on the human being’s surface.

This determines the soul attitude of both the French language and the French character. The soul bearing is such that the French language takes command of the soul. Whilst with a German person the inner configuration of the language puts the soul under the domination of the will element, the moment you speak French it has a numbing effect and takes over command. It is a language that violates the soul and therefore makes it hollow, and thus under the influence of the language, French culture hollows one out. Anyone who has a feeling for these things can always sense that in fact no soul is forthcoming in the French character, only a culture which has grown formal and rigid. The difference is this, that in French you are dependent on the language taking command over you. In French you have not got that endless freedom that you have in German, and which we ought to make use of, the freedom to put the subject in any position we like, all according to its inner significance.

It is not for pedagogical reasons that French is included in children’s education….The aim was to give French the status which Latin had had at the grammar school. They pretended that French had the same educational value as Latin. But this is not true. Latin always contains an inner logic. If you learn Latin you imbibe logic instinctively. This is not the case with French. The French language is no longer based on logic but has become mere phraseology… – and French no doubt does have a fundamentally alienating effect on the children, so that we would certainly like to see the teaching of it gradually disappearing for reasons of its innate quality. It is also quite obvious that in the future it will go.”

One can imagine Jeremy Paxman nodding his head vigorously in agreement, were he ever to read these things. To me, however, these passages show Steiner in a pretty poor light. One has to enter a caveat here about the Conferenzen transcripts, relying as they do on shorthand records, which may have been of a fragmentary nature. But whenever there was an extensive address by Steiner, as in this case, the transcripts can usually be considered as reasonably authentic. So it seems likely that these were indeed Steiner’s views on the French language and culture.

Here we encounter a difficulty which modern-day readers will come across from time to time, where they will need to decide which Steiner they are meeting. By this I mean:

Is it Steiner the great initiate?

Is it Steiner the man of his time and nation?

Is it Steiner the fallible human being who can make mistakes?

In the passages above, we are not seeing anything of Steiner the initiate, but rather Steiner as a man of his time and nation. We should remember that he was speaking less than five years after the end of the First World War, a war which Germany had lost decisively. Could it be that behind his remarks there lies a kind of anger that the Central European culture of which he himself was such an ornament, had been so overthrown and shattered; whereas the French, on the coat-tails of the British and Americans, had found themselves on the winning side. This is surely Steiner speaking from the “normal” level of consciousness rather than the sublime; it could also be Steiner the man, who sees clearly the same shortcomings in French language and culture that have been identified by Jeremy Paxman, but is expressing himself with a chauvinistic bias that undermines any objectivity that might otherwise be there.

Steiner goes on to express his view that the school will have to teach French for the time being because it is necessary for the pupils to reach examination levels in languages in a sound pedagogical way by the time they are eighteen. He says: “Taking it for granted that it is justified that our pupils have this opportunity of attaining certain educational levels, it is necessary that we plan our language lessons the way we have to. We must swallow the pill until something different arises”.

Rudolf Steiner, flanked on his right by Ita Wegman and Marie Steiner on his left.

Steiner then returns to what I can only describe as his prejudiced views:

“As a language French is deader than Latin was in the Middle Ages when it was already a dead language. In the case of Latin there was more spirit alive in it when it was ecclesiastical and dog Latin than there is in French today. It is the French temperament, their blood, that keeps their language going. The language is actually dead, and the spoken language is a corpse. This appears most strongly of all in the French poetry of the nineteenth century. No doubt about it, the soul becomes corrupted through using the French language. It gives one nothing except the possibility of a certain phraseology. And people who speak French with enthusiasm proceed to transfer this to other languages. It is also possible at the present time that the French will even ruin their own blood, the very element which has kept their language going as a corpse. That is a terrible thing the French people are doing to other people, the frightful cultural brutality of transplanting black people to Europe. It affects France itself worst of all. This has an incredibly strong effect on the blood, the race. This will substantially add to French decadence. The French nation will be weakened as a race”.

This is quite shocking stuff from Steiner and of course it is nonsense. Steiner was clearly speaking here as an Austrian of his times and as a fallible human being who makes mistakes. To describe French poetry of the nineteenth century as a corpse, which presumably includes the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarme, is simply to be absurd; one suspects that Steiner’s real problem was with the sensual and sexual elements of these poems. He would no doubt have regarded Baudelaire and Verlaine as decadent and depraved, which is rather to miss the point made by St Julian of Norwich that “sin is behovely” (useful or necessary) in our development as human beings, and that ultimately “all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” – while in the meantime, the work of these French poets is part of the patrimony of human culture in the West.

The comment on black people is grossly offensive and typical of the prejudices of his times. The man who was speaking here was not the same Steiner who could speak the following out of his higher self: “What must never be forgotten is that the proclamations to the Shepherds and to the Kings contained a message for all mankind – for the earth is common to all. In that the revelation to the shepherds was from the earth, it was a revelation that may not be differentiated according to nationality. And in that the Magi received the proclamation of the sun and heavens, this too was a revelation destined for all mankind. For when the sun has shone upon the territory of one people, it shines upon the territory of another. The heavens are common to all; the earth is common to all. The impulse of the ‘human universal’ is in very truth quickened by Christianity.”

To return to the teacher-meeting: after all this, a teacher says that French has been abolished in Bavarian state schools and Steiner comments: “If it suggests itself here (i.e. were the Bavarian decision to be repeated in Wurttemburg), we shall shed no tears over the French language. Perhaps the French teachers will say something?” One can imagine the poor French language teachers who had had to listen to this demolition of their subject and who must have felt as though they had been absolutely flattened, both in terms of self-worth and in the eyes of their colleagues, just recovering themselves sufficiently to stammer out a feeble response: “We could not do it just on the spur of the moment”.

What do French teachers in today’s Steiner Waldorf schools make of all this, I wonder? In the meantime, I note that one of the new publicly funded schools, the Steiner Academy Frome, does not teach French, nor even German, but only Spanish and Mandarin. Jeremy Paxman would no doubt approve.

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Filed under Anthroposophy, France, French language and culture, Rudolf Steiner

Tagged as Anthroposophy, Conferenzen, French language and culture, Jeremy Paxman, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Academy Frome, Steiner Waldorf schools

March 12, 2016 · 11:59 am

But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

At a time of life when most people might expect to have retired and be putting their feet up, the anthropopper (who doesn’t think that retirement is good for people), counts himself fortunate to have not one, but two part-time jobs. Despite a colleague’s cynical observation that there is no such thing as a part-time job, only part-time wages, I love both these jobs and after a long and sometimes frustrating working life, I’m delighted to have work where I feel I’m making a worthwhile contribution, in organisations that are offering hope and practical solutions for some of the world’s problems.

The first of these jobs is at Tablehurst Community Farm in Forest Row, East Sussex. While I was there the other day, I found myself having a sudden flashback to an emotion I recognised – it was how I had sometimes felt when I was a small boy at primary school in the 1950s. It came and went in seconds but I was intrigued as to why I had had this sudden recall of something from my early schooldays, now well over half a century ago. What had made me remember this feeling from so long ago, seemingly out of the blue? Trying to analyse my state of mind at that moment, I realised that I had a feeling of wellbeing, knowing I was in the right place for me and glad to be working on a community-owned farm in which the land, plants and animals are cared-for and where the people are friendly, supportive and look out for one another. I was, in fact, in a situation that I suspect is hardly ever experienced in most workplaces these days. This then led me to the further realisation that, if how I was feeling that day was reminiscent of how I had felt during my early schooldays, then there must have been something warm and secure and nurturing about my primary school and the way in which the teachers and pupils treated one another back then. This was not a Steiner school, it was an ordinary state primary school in the 1950s, long before the days of Ofsted, SATS, league tables etc. Somehow I grew up with the notion that the world was on the whole a safe and welcoming place, that adults and policemen were mainly benign, there was joy and beauty in nature – and I also had a sense of how to behave and how not to behave. This gave me something to rebel against when I was a teenager in the 60s. My generation was lucky to have had these positive experiences, as recent alarming reports indicate that many schoolchildren today have quite a different experience of school.

An international study by the Children’s Society in 2015 found that English children are among the unhappiest in the world. Matthew Reed, chief executive of the Children’s Society, said: “It is deeply worrying that children in this country are so unhappy at school compared to other countries, and it is truly shocking that thousands of children are being physically and emotionally bullied, damaging their happiness. School should be a safe haven, not a battleground.”

And now in a report dated 9^th March 2016, the online Spectator magazine’s Health section has said that: “There has been a large increase in the number of British children prescribed anti-depressants, according to research published in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology. The research, led by Dr Christian Bachmann of Berlin’s Charité University Hospital, found that prescription rates increased by 54 per cent between 2005 and 2012. In Denmark the figure is higher still, at 60 per cent.”

What on earth is going on? Clearly, something very disturbing is happening with our young people. Rudolf Steiner, in a lecture given in Berlin in 1919, said:

“What the individual human being experiences consciously when he (sic) strives to attain clairvoyance in the spiritual world, namely, the crossing of the threshold, must be experienced unconsciously by the whole of mankind, during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Humanity has no choice in regard to this; it must experience this unconsciously — not the individual human being, but HUMANITY, and the individual human being together with humanity.”

So are our young people starting to experience this crossing of the threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds, but unconsciously, without preparation? And if so, what part of the spiritual world are they accessing?

My second part-time job is with Emerson College in Forest Row, East Sussex, where I organise a programme of public talks and workshops by leading thinkers. On 9^th March 2016, we were privileged to hear a talk by Lisa Romero, an adult educator, complementary health practitioner and teacher of meditation from Australia.

Lisa’s theme was: Developing the Self – Meditations and Exercise for our Inner Growth. During the course of her talk, she had some interesting things to say about the difficulties and challenges that teenagers are experiencing today. She suggested that teenagers are crossing the threshold into the elemental part of the spiritual world. Lisa enlarged on this in her book, The Inner Work Path:

“Humanity has begun to break through this threshold, the boundary between the physical and elemental world. If those who cross over are unprepared, we will see more mental disorders in our community. As fascination with the occult, psychic powers, and the supernatural continue to grow, all sorts of false paths of ‘inner development’ will become more and more popular. Consciousness-altering substances that exploit a form of gate-crashing to enter the other dimensions will increase. Using these substances to enter different states of consciousness will be seen as an acceptable and inevitable path for our young people.”

Some schools are now teaching their pupils meditation and calling it “mindfulness” so as to avoid any association with the spiritual; but Lisa thinks that this “will lead ultimately to a weakened relationship to the spiritual world, and thereby leave them open to all sorts of potentially harmful influences by stepping backward, not forward, in their incarnating process. All those who truly know the path of inner development know that a healthy relationship to the spiritual world is acquired by completing all the necessary developmental stages of childhood first. These various occurrences that we already see are signs that humanity is crossing the threshold unprepared. Rudolf Steiner describes this unprepared entry into the elemental world, likening it to putting your head into an ant’s nest.”

Where is anthroposophy, and where are anthroposophists, in all of this? One of the things which teenagers need to know at this time is that not all spiritual beings are divine beings. Some of these beings are working to divert humanity from the path of evolution, by encouraging us in our materialism, reinforcing our egotism and selfishness, magnifying our false self and deepening our lower ego – while at the same time supporting our premature access into the spiritual world. Anthroposophists ought to be helping young people to understand that the right path for humanity and each one of us is to align freely with the beings of progression, the beings of the divine spiritual world – but for that to be possible, we must find the progressive being, the divine being within ourselves. Are we, should we be, finding ways of telling that to young people? Are we making sufficient efforts to communicate with teenagers in ways that they can access? I don’t think so. In the meantime, anthroposophy as we have known it is dying. Lisa told me that there are now only 130 society members in the whole of New York City.

The situation appears to be no better in the UK. As Marjatta van Boeschoten, general secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, says in the Spring 2016 Newsletter of the society: “This question (of how anthroposophy can best fulfil its given task) occupied me greatly during the Holy Nights, especially when a range of initiatives in the ‘daughter’ movements in Great Britain are either closing, struggling, in conflict or in financial crisis.” To add to Marjatta’s worries, the ASinGB has revealed that 55% of members pay nothing at all towards their annual membership. What is the future of the society if more than half of its members, out of their own free choice, are making no financial contribution whatsoever?

Surely these symptoms are telling us that the present form of anthroposophy is in serious decline. What are anthroposophists doing about this crisis? My own sense is that another form of anthroposophy is seeking to be born, but it is having an extended labour and a difficult birth. It won’t come from trying to persuade people to read difficult lectures or books, it won’t come from attending the same old meetings with a rapidly diminishing number of elderly anthroposophists (not that I have anything against elderly anthroposophists – far from it – I hope to be one myself before too long) and it certainly won’t come from spending too much time online arguing with the critics.

On the other hand, it may emerge from people who become inspired by one or more of the practical applications of anthroposophy, such as biodynamics or education. I’m struck, for example, by the number of young people who are coming to work at Tablehurst Farm, which now employs nearly 30 people, some of whom are starting families there – this in marked contrast to what is happening on conventional farms, where the average age of a British farmworker is 59 years and where a farm of 300 hectares will be run by one or two men with machines and lots of chemicals. It may emerge if we can find practical, clear and sensible ways of speaking about the spiritual realities behind what is happening in the world, as Lisa Romero is doing. Lisa is part of the Goetheanum Meditation Initiative, which is involving young people from many countries. (Incidentally, Lisa Romero will be returning to Emerson in June for a talk and weekend workshop.)

The times are serious and demand people and organisations of initiative. Places like Tablehurst Farm and Emerson College are seeking to play their parts. Finding ways in which to meet the very real human needs of today’s young people can offer hope and practical solutions not only to them but to anthroposophy as well. Christopher Fry expressed our opportunity in his play, A Sleep of Prisoners:

Thank God our time is now when wrong

Comes up to meet us everywhere,

Never to leave us till we take

The longest stride man ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.

The enterprise

Is Exploration into God.

Where are you making for? It takes

So many thousand years to wake

But will you wake, for pity’s sake?

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Biodynamic farming, Biodynamics, Emerson College UK, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf critics

Tagged as Anthroposophy, ASinGB, biodynamic agriculture, Biodynamic farming, Goetheanum Meditation Initiative, Lisa Romero, Marjatta van Boeschoten, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools, Tablehurst Farm, Waldorf critics

February 12, 2016 · 1:15 pm

No, Mr Dugan, Steiner Waldorf schools are not cult schools.

Following the anthropopper’s last post, my attention was drawn to comments on the Waldorf Critics’ forum alleging cult-like behaviour in Steiner Waldorf schools. Such criticisms have been around for some time, of course. Several long-standing allegations of cult-like behaviour have come from Dan Dugan of the organisation PLANS (People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools) in the USA. Dan listed nine “cult-like characteristics of anthroposophy” on the Waldorf Critics’ website on February 9^th 1999.

Just a year or so before that, my wife and I decided that we wanted to send our daughter to a Steiner Waldorf school. Our daughter had had a happy first year of school in the Reception class of our local state primary school. I remember her skipping down the road on her journey to school, eager to get there to meet her friends and enjoy the day. This changed, unfortunately, when she moved into Year 1 and the National Curriculum kicked in. We began to notice some distinct and disturbing changes in our daughter. She started to become clumsy and was often falling and bruising herself. This happy, outgoing child started to become pale and withdrawn. Most alarming of all, the spontaneous dancing and painting and drawing she had previously done just stopped.

At this point we decided we had to act. We went to visit various Steiner schools with our daughter where she met the teachers and the pupils in her age group and took part in sample lessons. Eventually she decided that she wanted to go to the Kings Langley school. Things moved fast from that point; our house went on the market in July and sold within one week for our asking price; we went on a frantic house search process and eventually found a house we liked and could just about afford. We moved in at the beginning of September 1998 and our daughter started at the Kings Langley school three days later.

Why did we want to send our daughter to a Steiner school, even though any rational assessment would show that we couldn’t afford the fees and that we faced the prospect of years of scrimping and saving and few, if any, holidays? There are so many reasons but here are just a few:

A truly child-centred curriculum that allows children to develop at their own pace and to have a proper childhood
A method that uses art and creativity to teach every subject
The main lesson system which allows subjects to be studied with both depth and breadth
A noticeable quality of warmth in the schools and friendly relations between staff and pupils but also mutual respect

I would like a school with such qualities to be available for every child who might benefit from it, especially for those whose parents can’t afford the fees of the independent schools. That is why I am so pleased for those parents who live within the catchment areas of the new publicly-funded Bristol, Exeter, Frome and Hereford Steiner Academy schools. I wish there were many more, throughout the country, to supplement the good work of the independent schools.

Dan Dugan’s own history with Waldorf schools is interesting and has been set out in some detail here. Dan describes himself as a “secular humanist” but his humanist values do not seem to prevent him from engaging in campaigns of misinformation, defamation and myth-making. In the USA, of course, with the separation of church and state, schools have a delicate balancing act to perform, which PLANS has sought to exploit by bringing legal cases against Waldorf schools – which PLANS have subsequently lost. In seeking to make his case that Steiner Waldorf schools are religious schools, Dan has listed what he calls their cult-like characteristics.

These alleged cult-like characteristics, as identified by Dan, are shown below in bold while my comments on these are shown in italics.

Cult-like characteristics of Anthroposophy include:

1. It clings to rejected knowledge.  (The heart is not a pump, etc.)

Here’s an extract from an article on the AnthroMed Library website which deals with this question:

“To any doctor trained in today’s medical schools, the idea that the heart may not be a pump would, at first sight, appear to be about as logical as suggesting that the sun rises in the West or that water flows uphill. So strongly is the pump concept ingrained in the collective psyche that even trying to think otherwise is more than most people can manage. Yet Rudolf Steiner, a man not given to unscientific or slipshod thinking, was quite clear on the matter and reiterated time and again that the heart is not a pump. “The blood drives the heart, not the heart the blood.”

This topic requires more space than is available here, but anyone wishing to find out more might wish to start with this article from the Journal of Anthroposophical Medicine. There is also a useful description of what is taught about the heart in Steiner Waldorf schools here.

A further interesting fact, which medical science is unable to explain, is that in embryological development, the blood starts circulating in the embryo before the heart organ has been created. In other words, blood circulation in the embryo pre-dates the heart.

2. It requires teachers to commit to the world-view for advancement in status.  (college of teachers).

Many Steiner Waldorf schools do not have a head teacher or principal but are instead organised by a body of staff (mainly teachers but often including administrators) called the College of Teachers. The criteria for becoming a College member usually include a commitment to working meditatively on oneself, thus seeking an active connection between oneself and the spiritual worlds; on being on a continuous path of personal and professional development; and on taking an active part in the running of the school beyond one’s normal teaching or administrative duties. Becoming a member of College does not lead to any increase in status, nor to any increase in pay. What it does lead to is a deeper commitment to the work of the school and a fuller realisation of the seriousness and responsibility of the task of the educator.

3. Its core doctrines are not published.  (First Class).

It is true that what are called the class lessons of the First Class of the School of Spiritual Science have not been published – although these can now be found online, published without support from the society. During the refounding of the Anthroposophical Society at Christmas 1923/24 as the General Anthroposophical Society, Rudolf Steiner also introduced the School of Spiritual Science, which was intended to have three classes, leading from one to the next. Owing to Steiner’s death in 1925, he was only able to provide lessons for the First Class. His intention was that there should not be any published texts of these lessons released for personal reading but that the content of the lessons should be passed on by word of mouth. It was also his intention that anyone who wished to belong to the school should be “a worthy representative of anthroposophy before the world.” The reason for this is that the lessons are steeped in esoteric knowledge and require much background preparation from the student. They are not to be read or talked about like stories from a newspaper, or thought about with our everyday kind of thinking. “One can accomplish nothing whatever in esoteric life if one does not know that in esoteric life truth – absolute truth – must prevail, and that we cannot merely speak of truth and still persist in taking these things in the way one would in the profane, external life.” So these texts are not for intellectual or casual reading, but require a certain cast of mind, as well as preparation and commitment, before engaging with them.

4. It is exclusive.  (Only Anthroposophical knowledge of man leads to right education.)

It’s not obvious what Dan has in mind here – Steiner Waldorf schools of course teach all kinds of knowledge from many different sources, as does any school. Anthroposophy, on the other hand, is not taught to the children, nor is it necessary to be an anthroposophist before teaching in a Steiner Waldorf school. Clearly, the schools hope that anyone who comes to teach in a Waldorf setting will have an interest in anthroposophy and will want to find out more; but it is not a requirement and teachers do not have to sign up to any particular set of beliefs.

5. It guards revelation of “difficult” knowledge.  (Prospective parents won’t be told about the role of Lucifer.)

When Dan Dugan wrote this list of cult-like characteristics in the late 1990s, it was probably a fair criticism to say that prospective parents were not told much about anthroposophy in many school prospectuses. I don’t believe this was for any sinister reason, but simply because it would be difficult to know where to begin with such a complex and extensive body of knowledge. However, in the light of criticisms from organisations like PLANS, school websites and prospectuses are nowadays much more likely to be more forthcoming about anthroposophy, and this is very much to be welcomed. Parents should of course do their own online research and reading about educational systems, as well as pay visits to the school and talk to other parents before committing their child to any particular school.

6. It is a closed system.  (Almost all publications referenced are from Anthroposophical presses and periodicals, all writers refer to Steiner.)

Inasmuch as it applies to anthroposophy, this is probably a fair criticism. I think such a criticism might also apply to other specialist areas originated by a towering figure, eg Jungian psychology, in which new territory was being opened up by the founder. The passage of time will change this, as is already being seen within anthroposophy, where the contributions of people such Bernard Lievegoed, Otto Scharmer, Arthur Zajonc and other highly respected thinkers are building on Steiner’s foundations.

Inasmuch as it applies to Steiner Waldorf schools, the same situation applies, with Steiner’s educational ideas gradually being added to by other experienced educationalists. Steiner Waldorf schools have been to a certain extent insular in their relations with the wider educational world. There are reasons for this, of course, in that the Waldorf system deplores much of what it regards as the excessive pressures and unreasonable demands put upon children and schools by modern politicians; and does not see many of its own ideas understood or referred to in mainstream educational publications. Clearly, however, it is not ideal for the schools to be isolated from the educational culture of their countries and Steiner would undoubtedly have wished there to have been much more interaction between Waldorf and other school systems. I have written more about this here. In those countries (now including England) where Steiner Waldorf schools are able to receive public funding, there is much more of a sense that the schools are part of a pluralistic educational culture.

7. It uses Jargon that redefines common terms.  (Child development)

When Steiner Waldorf schools talk about child development and age-appropriate education, they have in mind the importance of not bringing any form of knowledge to a child before he or she is developmentally ready to receive and benefit from it. Rudolf Steiner has given the schools a model of child development which has been tried and tested now for over 90 years, and on the whole it works very well, because it accords completely with the actual nature of most children.

8. It maintains separation from the world by generating fear and loathing.  (Denigrating public schools, “us vs them” attitude, paranoia)

I’ve not heard any reports of this from schools in the UK but there are certainly allegations of this nature made in the USA. If this has ever happened in any Steiner Waldorf school, it would certainly be deplorable and would be completely contrary to the intentions of Rudolf Steiner.

9. It suppresses critical dialogue, resulting in elaboration but no development of theory.  (Consensus government, “like it or leave,” Shunning)

It is, of course, very difficult in any school if a parent or group of parents starts to create serious unrest in the parent body with vociferous complaints. In such cases, if the parents do not respond to offers of dialogue and discussion but continue to spread disharmony, then they may be asked to leave. The challenge for schools is to be as open as possible about anthroposophy before parents enrol their children; and then to provide plenty of opportunities through parents’ evenings, study groups and orientation days for any issues to be discussed before they become contentious and divisive. If the school attended by Dan’s son had been more open all those years ago, perhaps Dan would have realised in advance that it was not somewhere he would choose for his son’s education.

Conclusion

I am not an uncritical defender of Steiner Waldorf schools and I do recognise that on occasion, things can go wrong. Some schools seem to have an unfortunate knack for upsetting parents and then failing to deal properly with the consequences. The reasons for this can be many and complex and in my post on leadership & management issues in Steiner Waldorf schools, I’ve listed some of these. Improved teacher training, school management and customer care are required before these problems will start to disappear. But I also think that when Steiner Waldorf education works well, as it does for many thousands of children (including my own daughter), it’s one of the best, and most human, systems of education you can find.

I hope it is clear from what has been written above, and in my previous post on anthroposophy, that Steiner Waldorf schools cannot legitimately be described as being part of a cult, or cult-like. But it is also clear that Steiner Waldorf schools need to be as open and transparent as possible with parents about anthroposophy and the part it plays in the approach that teachers take to their teaching. I believe that most Steiner Waldorf schools today are more aware of these issues and that school brochures and websites are far less reticent about anthroposophy than used to be the case. It is not in the best interests of any school to have parents who do not support the Waldorf system or who feel that somehow the school has been less than straightforward with them about what lies behind the education. Well-informed and supportive parents, who understand what the teachers are trying to achieve and who are prepared to work with the school for the best outcomes for their children, are the bedrock of any school system, Steiner Waldorf or mainstream.

Further reading

There are several posts on this blog about Steiner Waldorf education, or which touch on aspects of it. For ease of reference, here are the links:

September 4^th 2014 – Rudolf Steiner visits Margaret McMillan

September 11^th 2014 – The internet, the critics and Steiner Waldorf schools

September 16^th 2014 – Karma and the Steiner Waldorf teacher

September 27^th 2014 – Why some atheists like anthroposophy

October 2^nd 2014 – The issue that isn’t going away – leadership and management in Steiner Waldorf schools

October 4^th 2014 – Different strokes for different folks

October 9^th 2014 – A few thoughts on leadership and management issues in Steiner Waldorf schools

February 15^th 2015 – “Every school could use these methods…”

December 1^st 2015 – “A right good evening, the best of cheer…”

December 13^th 2015 – Guest Post: Leadership & Organisational Structure in Steiner Waldorf schools

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Dan Dugan/PLANS, Leadership in Steiner Waldorf Schools, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf critics

Tagged as Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Schools, Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf critics

December 13, 2015 · 3:21 pm

Guest Post:Leadership & Organisational Structure in Steiner Waldorf Schools

This is the first guest post to appear on the anthropopper’s blog!

It’s from Bernard Thomson in Australia, who is particularly interested in the question of leadership and management in Steiner Waldorf schools. The anthropopper is also interested in this issue and has previously written on the topic, here and here. It was these posts that prompted Bernard to visit me when he came to England recently and, although we have differing views, I invited him to write a post setting out his thoughts. We both hope that this will start a discussion on an issue of vital importance to the development of Steiner Waldorf education.

But first, here is Bernard writing about himself:

“I grew up in the Midlands and attended Elmfield Rudolf Steiner School. In 1973 I went to Germany to complete my education returning to the UK in 1978. I studied philosophy of science and economics at the LSE followed by a year at the Centre for Social Development at Emerson. In 1987 I moved to New Zealand and in 2003 arrived in Australia where I became a business manager at a Steiner school south of Adelaide. After 12 years I began to work as a freelance consultant initially specialising in leadership and governance in Steiner schools. My career and work experience has been predominantly in social welfare organisations, both Steiner based and ‘mainstream,’ with an ongoing interest in social and organisational development.”

Leadership & Organisational Structure in Steiner Waldorf Schools

by Bernard Thomson

The issue of leadership and organisational structure in Waldorf schools is not new. Indeed one could argue that it began in the early years of the first school in Stuttgart and in one way or another has continued ever since. And this should be no surprise since organisations are living systems which defy any permanent structural solutions.

However this topic is pressing and engages many of us concerned with Waldorf education and its capacity to survive and thrive in an ever changing social, political and economic environment. To date the argument has often been between assertions as to what Steiner said or meant about school leadership and the pragmatic response to perceived and, indeed, evident failures in organisational governance and leadership. Steiner did say there shall be no headmaster and he did say that every teacher was to act in full personal responsibility without recourse to the comfort of receiving directions from an overarching authority*

In this contribution I will not debate the pros and cons of College versus Principal structure as I believe this misses the real question.

I take as my starting point that a school organism, like any other social organisation, needs a structure together with process leadership to guide its performance. And it requires such a structure and leadership that best supports its purpose and function. Unlike a production industry where the purpose is an efficient process to deliver goods to willing customers, a school is in the people business; its product is what goes on between human beings namely teachers, students and parents. The human relationships are the fabric which supports the pedagogical practice. The latter cannot exist without the former and the efficacy of educational practice is directly related to the health of the human relationships.

In the production industry, which can be considered as a system of inputs, process and outputs, we might conclude that it can be optimised through specifications which precisely control as many factors as possible. Frederick W. Taylor gave his name to the first so-called scientific management system which sought to do just that. Centralised control from the top appears to be the logical answer to co-ordinating a diversity of inputs and processes. However this authoritarian structure is being challenged because it fails to take account of human (f)actors whose motivation and hence productivity is directly affected by the workplace environment and culture. Indeed there is an increasing number of organisations which are being reimagined as living entities in which ecological systems thinking replaces the mechanistic logic of direct and control, cause and effect. The human subsystem (according to Lievegoed’s phases of organisational development) is, I believe, what is here being developed as part of a move towards the third phase of integration. This accords with my understanding of consciousness soul activity where we do not seek nor expect answers to the challenges we face to be available in a model or formula. Instead the ongoing engagement with other thinking human beings forms the basis for our decision-making processes. And this is the same for both production industry and human services.

This means abandoning certainty (or the illusion of it!) and becoming comfortable with the unknown, the ambiguous, in other words, the creative process. A recent book by Fredric Laloux, “Reinventing organisations” describes various approaches to this challenge, in a range of diverse industries. What they share in common is the removal of central control in favour of distributed authority in which accountability is achieved through clearly defined processes, a system for effectively disseminating information for maximum transparency.

The widespread shift in Waldorf schools across the globe to a more top down or principal leadership structure is mostly justified by the failure of a collective approach to school management. There are many examples of this failure, with which I am also personally familiar. The apparent solution, however, is also producing many failures if these are to be determined on the basis of school performance as judged by staff and parents. Indeed, in Australia at least, there has been a continual turnover of school leaders (variously called administrators, heads of school, directors, principals, etc.) where the common denominator is an authority structure in which the school board or council appoints the school leader with full authority to manage the day-to-day operations of the school. Accountability is one way, and that is up.

Now there are also good examples of leadership performance that build collective strength and support a strong collegial culture within the school. Thus we invariably conclude that it is not the structure but the people that make the difference, and this is true. So are we faced with either a collective approach which may work if there is a high level of individual and social competence, or a single authority which may also work if the “right” person is in charge? Is there nothing more to it than to simply hope or pray that we can get the right people in the right places? And who chooses the right people?

As I mentioned above we are in the people business in which human relationships are key. We are also in the human development business in which role modelling has a powerful influence and we don’t need Steiner to tell us that the character of the teacher, or indeed of all adults, is central in supporting healthy development in young people. So we can confirm Steiner’s vision that the school must be led by a culture of learning and human development, which he called a republican teachers’ academy.

I believe in the notion that you start working in a way that is congruent with the aim. If it is true that for the students, “Our highest endeavour must be to develop individuals who are able out of their own initiative to impart purpose and direction to their lives”⁽¹⁾, then we found teacher practice on personal initiative and self-responsibility. The supporting school organism supports and strengthens this by creating a culture of personal initiative and self-responsibility. The leadership culture embodies this.

In his 1990 book “The Fifth Discipline” Peter Senge introduced the concept of the Learning Organisation which has 5 key features which include personal mastery, building a shared vision and team learning. I suggest that in the Learning Organisation we find a close similarity with Steiner’s vision of how a College of Teachers and Waldorf School management is to be understood.

Steiner’s vision for school leadership and governance recognised the fact that the cultural/ social mission of Waldorf education requires a new form for human learning and collaboration. This insight is now finding resonance in a growing understanding of organisations as social organisms. The “Newtonian” mechanistic model is being replaced by a living systems approach (see “Leadership and the New Science” by Margaret Wheatley).

Organisms have an ecology which connects all the elements together in a living dynamic. They are not run or managed in the conventional sense, but may be said to operate and self-regulate according to a guiding motif. The guiding motif acts as a point of self-reference. In an animal organism we speak of the unique animal instinct which guides behaviour; in the human social organism we must speak of the mission or spiritual ideal. It is just this that Steiner said must replace the headmaster by becoming the focus for the College work. As self-responsible adults participating in a self-regulating school organism we move with our experiences from the periphery to the centre and take out to the periphery our newfound intentions. The task of leadership is to facilitate the collective learning which informs the mission and to guide the processes which transform the mission into individual resolve.

Social understanding and discernment is of course necessary for leadership. Leader-guides must be selected who have the maturity and social skill to advance leadership throughout the school. The school processes must be transparent and accountable and include practical methods for review and evaluation. But the old form where adults make themselves subservient to an “outside” authority which “knows best” has to be left behind.

This process requires a new understanding of leadership as something akin to an alchemical process in which everyone participates. The idea of an “external” reference point or standard against which to guide practice will be seen as always provisional and temporary and must ultimately be abandoned in favour of self-referencing also known as self-governance.

* Address by Rudolf Steiner 20 August 1919 on the evening prior to the lecture course translated as “Study of Man” (also known as “The Foundations of Human Experience”)

⁽¹⁾Marie Steiner

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Filed under Anthroposophy, Leadership in Steiner Waldorf Schools, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools

Tagged as School leadership and management, Steiner Waldorf schools

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 21^st 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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Filed under Anthroposophy, Free Schools, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools, Threefolding

Tagged as Anthroposophy, Christopher Clouder, College of Teachers, Goetheanum, Margarita Woloschin, School leadership and management, Steiner free schools, Steiner Schools, Steiner Waldorf schools, Stephen Sagarin

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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Filed under Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf critics

Tagged as Anthroposophy, College of Teachers, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Schools, Steiner Waldorf schools, SWSF Code of Practice, Waldorf critics

October 2, 2014 · 2:35 pm

The issue that isn’t going away – leadership and management in Steiner Waldorf schools

Two sad little messages from Steiner free school applicants have just been posted:

From North Devon:

“As you may be aware, the next round of Free School applications is in October 2014. Unfortunately all recent applications for Steiner Academies have been turned down by the Department of Education. The feeling is that they are trying to establish how the Steiner education system can progress within their guidelines.

It has therefore been decided that it would be best to wait until after the general election in 2015 before considering another application.

We know that this will leave many disappointed parents and children, not to mention the hard working support team who helped with the initial application and events, but hopefully next year will enable us to move forward. We would like to thank all of you for your kind support.”

And from Leeds:

“After a couple of very trying months, the team has decided to withdraw its application for a new Steiner School in Leeds. The main reason for this decision was our inability to recruit the kind of outstanding leader which the Department of Education and the New Schools Network wanted us to have. We were also concerned by the lack of alternative schools which have been successful in the last application round- the window for alternatives to receive state funding seems to have closed.

It is with a heavy heart over many years of hard work, effort, hopes and commitment that we’d like to say thank you for your support. We understand that this decision must be as disappointing to you as it is to us.”

I don’t know much about the background to these stories, though it is rumoured that Lord Nash, the schools minister in the Department for Education with responsibility for the free schools programme, is not keen to let through any more Steiner academies. What I do know is that Steiner Waldorf education in the UK is in a difficult phase, much of it due to our slowness to evolve our practices and professionalism. The main reason for this is that the private schools are unable to improve themselves sufficiently because of the weaknesses of leadership and management inherent in the college of teachers system.

The message from Leeds quoted above is indicative that the independent Steiner schools’ movement in the UK is not producing sufficient numbers of people with the leadership or management experience (or perhaps the motivation) necessary to take on the role of principal in the new academy schools. The latest free school to be approved, Steiner Academy Bristol, has appointed a teacher from a non-Waldorf background as principal.

But it’s not just the new publicly-funded academies which are affected by these weaknesses – the recent closures of the Steiner schools in Aberdeen and Glasgow were ultimately caused by inadequacies in the management of those schools.

That’s not to say that there aren’t people within the independent schools who could become principals – I know some highly capable individuals, some of them leading quite unhappy and frustrated lives because of their inability to express fully their leadership talents within the college of teachers system to which they are so committed.

Nor, from what I gather, is the situation much better in the USA. A well-placed correspondent has written: “Our North American Waldorf schools, with a few notable exceptions, are not very well led. Few are even moderately successful at the institutional level. The root cause of this is cultural and it exists movement-wide. But it more or less guarantees that we will continue to alienate families by the hundreds across the country year after year, because lack of effective leadership means that real problems are not addressed effectively or in a timely manner. For all of our strengths as a movement we will have to do a lot better at managing operations if we are going to significantly reduce the number of legitimate complaints about individual schools.”

A powerful expression of such parental alienation has recently appeared in this Open Letter to Waldorf Educators.

My own feeling, which I have come to with reluctance as someone who has worked in an independent school and loves the education and its many strengths and wonderful qualities, is that the future of Steiner Waldorf education in this country will be safeguarded mainly by the state-funded academy schools, in which a principal works alongside the college. The Steiner academies are doing very good work, as is shown in the Ofsted reports for the Hereford and Frome schools; they are heavily over-subscribed and they have widespread parental support.

The roots of our present difficulties are manifold and I will be writing about them in my next posting. The independent Steiner schools struggle against great odds and yet most of them continue to achieve wonderful outcomes for their pupils and parents. What I wish to express right now is that Steiner Waldorf educators are working with the name of Rudolf Steiner, who was in my view a great initiate and one of the most remarkable human beings of the 20^th or indeed any century. For us to provide anything in Steiner’s name that is less than consistently good is in a way a kind of betrayal – and this to me is unacceptable.

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Filed under Free Schools, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Waldorf schools

Tagged as Anthroposophy, College of Teachers, Lord Nash of DfE, Rudolf Steiner, Steiner Academy Bristol, Steiner Academy Frome, Steiner Academy Hereford, Steiner free schools, Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf schools

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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Filed under Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner

Tagged as Karma, Reincarnation, Steiner Waldorf schools

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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Filed under Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner

Tagged as Steiner Waldorf schools, Waldorf critics

Tag Archives: Steiner Waldorf schools

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The internet, the critics and Steiner Waldorf schools

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