Steiner Academy Exeter: Misleading Choices

What alarmist nonsense. I went to a Steiner school at the age of 14. I was a veteran of much bullying from a conventional education. I grew up as an atheist and science communicator. Anthroposophy is NOT taught in the curriculum, except for a week in the very last year (which I walked out on as it was utter nonsense – nobody cared or minded.) True, Steiner education attracts its share of anti-vaxers and other nutjobs, but from this article you’d think that Steiner pupils engaged in black masses and played with ouija boards.

What alarmist nonsense!

Mr. Quack gave no intimation Steinerists engaged in Black Masses or Ouija. Please do not exaggerate. He did however point out that Anthroposophy is at the heart of a Steiner education – even if you did not notice being taught those beliefs as such. A more perspicacious student might have realised that Anthroposophy underpins the teaching.

If that we’re not the case, why do the schools just come out and say “we reject Anthroposophy”? Why do they insist on using Steiner’s name – and thereby his philosophy, which has the name he gave it. And that is, anthroposophy.

Wake up, smell the coffee. Watch the gnomes.

May you remain in ignorant bliss.

Whatever the qualities of Steiner education, competence in reading comprehension is not much in evidence.

Anthroposophy is NOT taught in the curriculum, except for a week in the very last year

And the steinerist source quoted by Andy says exactly that.

realities upon which this way of working is based. The teacher is not to teach anthroposophy to the children. But the teacher is required to use anthroposophy as a method of investigation and of understanding in order to properly meet the children.

Like every other defender if Steiner that has appeared here, you have dunderheadedly missed the point. It is not that the school teaches anthroposophy, but that its teaching is soaked in anthroposophy.

You expect your doctor to practise medicine upon you. You do not expect him/her to teach you medicine.

The major concern is that, unlike conventional religious schools, the religious background is obscured.

To use my medical analogy, it would be like visiting a doctor who had secretly been indoctrinated in the Galenic humours as being a description of real biology.

Let’s get this out of the way early in this discussion. The name of the principal-designate is Mr Swindell.

I think that was a comedy boil that needed lancing quickly.

As so often, Cracked.com have got this right:
http://www.cracked.com/article_20312_5-insane-private-schools-you-wont-believe-actually-exist_p2.html

I don’t give a toss about how people educate their children, but if the Steiner Schools teach them to come out spouting prose of the quality shown above: “The link between Steiner education…..”, replete with dead metaphor and even a split infinitive, they should probably all be shut down tomoroow.

I’m still trying to put this at the bottom of the thread. Sorry for the repetition.

Mike the Giraffe

You are walking a well-trodden path with your irrelevant meta-argument. Here again is what you have been asked and which any steinerista is free to answer;

How and where is “MODERN” steinerist education defined and differentiated from Steiner’s teachings ? How is this reflected in the texts and manuals that underpin the teaching in Steiner schools ?

Hello sceptics! As a supporter of anthroposhical social initiatives, I would also like to see Steiner schools provide more upfront information on the anthroposohical ideas that inform their teaching, because I would like these ideas to reach wider audiences. However, in the same way as you wouldn’t expect Catholic schools to provide information on their websites about the Spanish Inquisition or Muslim schools to provide information about holy jihad, don’t expect Steiner schools to provide in-depth information on spiritual science. Steiner schools are offering a form of education not religious indoctrination.

The argument that parents might unwittingly send their children to a Steiner school not being aware of the anthroposphical underpinnings of the teaching is a spurious argument. This is especially the case since every Steiner school is run democratically by a college of teachers. In contrast to other forms of education, every Steiner school/kindergarten is completely autonomous and every teacher is completely free to shape his or her lessons, at least in principle. In practice, most teachers at a Steiner school will be anthroposophists and will therefore base their teaching on the ideas put forward by Rudolf Steiner. The schools operate on a collegial basis, which means all decisions are made consensually by the college of teachers. There is no hierarchy, no mandatory set curricula, no head teachers, no directors and neither the state nor business sector dictates what is to be taught. Remember that state education is directed by government (the folks who like to invade other countries) and increasingly big business (the folks that view individuals as human resources). Steiner schools are free schools. There are also no exams (until GSCE/A-levels, which are tacked on so to speak). It is therefore best to talk to the teachers directly. Go and have a look around a school and talk to people there about your concerns. That way you will be able to make up your own minds.

I suspect the real issue sceptics have with Steiner schools is anthroposophy per se. Anthroposophy is a spiritual path taken in complete individual freedom. To my mind, it is precisely this spiritual freedom and complete reliance on one’s own objective thinking, rather than any form of indoctrination, that frightens off the sceptically-minded materialist and/or atheist. However, it schouldn’t be. In his book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, Rudolf Steiner clearly sets out where all the mumbo-jumbo (to use a sceptic’s term) comes from. The book is written in a style that is accessible to everyone and offers an excellent explanation of how it is that anthrosophists have been inspired by and come to appreciate the social health and validity of many of Steiner’s ideas. By the way, the ‘gnome’ thing is hugely exaggerated by sceptics, gnomes are just one of the many types of elemental spirits.

Hello Dr Rawlins

Here is an article about the gnomes (written by a sceptical parent):

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/my-waldorf-student-son-believes-in-gnomes-and-thats-fine-with-me/274521/

For info on other elemental spirits, try googling “undines”, “sylphs” and “salamanders” — representative of the other three elements water, air and fire.

Education has to be funded somehow. I don’t see why parents should be forced to have their children educated by the state, with all the technocratic, bureaucratic, institutionalised, impersonal, unimaginative, soul-destroying, dehumanising, job-market-oriented, early-over-intellectualising pressure that is put on children in many cases. I’m no right-winger, but I thought the Conservatives’ idea a few years back to give all parents a voucher entitling them to send their child to any school of their choice was a good one. We need education to be free of dogma, whether it be state, market or religious ideology. Steiner schools give individual teachers the complete cultural freedom, as professionals, to shape and design their own classes – this is a revolutionary step in the right direction and should be welcomed, not put outside the financial reach of most parents by a one-size-fits-all, state-imposed cultural fascism.

“I don’t expect anyone who believes in barmpottery to realise they believe in barmpottery.”

One could equally argue that a denier of “barmpottery” is similarly afflicted.

In one of your talks, Andy, you said that if the Waldorf schools were more up-front about their Anthroposophical underpinnings, that would satisfy you, and you’d move on to other targets.

Okay, let’s imagine you could sit round a table with representatives of the British Waldorf schools, and agree on a document that appears on their web sites. What would it contain?

Clearly “barmpottery” is not one of its keywords, unless they accept that Andy Lewis’ interpretation of Anthroposophy is the only valid one. Freedom of conscience is one of our most dearly held social rights, and I assume you agree.

So I propose we try, together, to draft that document.

Andy, in my opinion and experience, the “dishonesty” you perceive, while partly an admitted failure of the schools to provide sufficient information, does not stem from an intention of the schools or teachers to obfuscate or mislead. There are a number of factors, which in my opinion have led to this partial failure on the part of the schools. The first is that anthroposophy itself is an enormous body of knowledge that is very hard to summarise in a form that can be immediately understood simply by reading a page on a school’s website. An explanation, for example, of how and why children require different educational experiences at different ages, based on their stage of spiritual growth into adulthood, is a difficult thing to explain in a couple of paragraphs, as it requires a certain amount of anthroposophical background knowledge and experience. It is something that needs to be understood intellectually, but also, and more importantly, to be experienced and appreciated through the practice of doing it. As this applies to so many of the peculiarities of Steiner education (and anthroposophy generally), it is rather hard, if not impossible, to condense it all into a website of a school.

Secondly, the schools wish to focus on what they actually do – which is the content of the education they deliver. The reason for the conformity or similarity between the pedagogy and the subjects taught at different schools is that individual teachers work with the same indications given by Steiner. These do not constitute a detailed curriculum that needs to implemented and complied with (as is the case with the National Curriculum). The teachers draw on their own individual understanding of these ideas and draw on best practice established by other teachers, including those ideas put forward within their own school’s college of teachers, so as to help shape their lessons in the most fruitful way possible. However, this is again something that arises out the individual teacher’s experience and contemplative work with the pedagogical ideas of Steiner. It is not merely a blueprint or a particular school’s philosophy that is put into practice. It could be thought of as a toolbox that is tested out through each individual teacher’s contemplation and classroom experience. In other words, it is not something that is easy to codify and set in stone.

Education is an art, not a science. In this sense, we are talking about a pedagogy that is completely free from dogma because no outside force prescribes what can or cannot be taught or how it should be delivered. The classroom education is provided through the individual creative cultural work and contemplation of the teacher.

‘Dogma’ Latin – ‘philosophical tenet.’ From Greek- ‘that which one thinks is true.’

In what way is a Steiner education not domatic?

“Dogma — a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.”

Not dogmatic in that way.

“The first is that anthroposophy itself is an enormous body of knowledge…”

Where Knowledge = Fanciful notions extruded from the posterior orifice of a 19th century loon.

This ‘knowledge’ results in teaching kids about gnomes and that aryan blooms is more highly evolved and farmers burying cow horns full of manure in order to make magic potions. I would say “you couldn’t make it up”, but Steiner did.

This is like talking to homeopaths. One can too easily forget what your opponents really believe as the discussion spirals off in different directions.

In the US there are 127 Waldorf or Steiner schools or Steiner colleges in 34 states founded from the 1960s to present day. Source:
http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/05_FindASchool/

For the couple of the websites I looked at, there was only a vague reference to anthroposophy. Lots of gardening going on.

> The basic dogma of Steiner is very simple:
> That the spirit world is real but hidden from us.
> We can access it through clairvoyance
> Human beings are composed of body, soul and spirit.

Okay

> Our spiritual aspects reincarnate through multiple bodies.
> Karma drives our manifestations
> There is a spiritual hierarchy of being based on race
> Steiner Schools exist to help children incarnate in their current bodies.

Nope.

3/7 – not quite a pass grade, yet giving public lectures – hmm.

“How can people know that they are not being told a load of confused mumbo-jumbo of a “19th-century loon”?”

How, indeed.

“I am confident in my answers.”

It’s not your confidence that concerns me, it’s your accuracy and understandability.

We’re trying to condense a description of Anthroposophy into a few short sentences primarily for the benefit of potential school parents.

As I commented earlier, your first three statements are okay:-
– That the spirit world is real but hidden from us.

This is fine.

– We can access it through clairvoyance.

To which I would add “which can be learnt”.

– Human beings are composed of body, soul and spirit.

This is fine. The body is what we can touch; the soul is home and reservoir of our thoughts, feelings, memories, dreams, sensations, intentions; the spirit (the ego) is what glues all this together as “individual”, as the “being” in “human being”.

– Our spiritual aspects reincarnate through multiple bodies.

I don’t get this. If you mean the spirit (re-)incarnates as a person many times, then okay. If not, it’s not clear what you mean.

– Karma drives our manifestations.

This sounds like a form of determinism over many earth-lives. If you mean that everything manifested in a person is driven by her/his karma without his/her participation, then sorry, no. If not, then again it’s not clear what you mean.

– There is a spiritual hierarchy of being based on race.

Absolutely not.

– Steiner Schools exist to help children incarnate in their current bodies.

Steiner schools exist to educate children. I suspect your use of the word “bodies” here, relates to the model of the human being that identifies those characteristics which distinguish the inorganic, the vegetative, the animal, and the human. Each of these characteristics is often refered to as a “body”, meaning an integral somewhat, not a physical somewhat (except in the case of the material “body”). If this is what you meant, then all educational models knowingly or otherwise, attempt to help a child adjust to being, growing, feeling, thinking, knowing, etc. The word “incarnating” is not magic. For example, just look at a pubescent child, rather suddenly finding itself living in a body that “doesn’t fit” anymore. Helping that child to adjust to this new body – to incarnate into it in a healthy way – is the role of all education. This is true of all our faculties at all stages of childhood – and beyond.

“Are you disputing Steiner’s views on the spiritual hierarchy?”

No, I’m disputing your interpretation of them.

“such as how you have tried to defuse the word ‘incarnating’.”

That was not my intention. What have I defused it of? What does the word mean to you?

““Are you disputing Steiner’s views on the spiritual hierarchy?”

No, I’m disputing your interpretation of them.”

There is no mis-interpreting of these views, sorry. Steiner’s views that spiritual hierarchies are based on race are clear. His words speak for themselves… but I’d love to hear your interpretation of how they might not be racist. Have you read Sune Nordwall’s analysis perhaps? Are we going to break it down into “Theosophical” vs “Anthropsophical” terms soon? I hope so… I’d love to get into this discussion with you.

Steiner absolutely was a racist – if you can’t admit that, we’re starting from a position of dishonesty on your part.

Many people with a strong view about religion and/or mystical ideas only know what they have heard. Except for the “priests” of a movement, often the most knowledgeable about it are its critics. Too few adherents of most movements know/understand the fine details, origins and real ramifications of the belief system.

cyril: “Whenever there is a suggestion of such concealment – whether intentional or not – such as fills the debate here, I try to feed these thoughts back to those of my acquaintances who are active in the Waldorf school movement.”

And what is their reaction?

Seems to me there are two main issues at play here:
1)Should religious/spiritual/occult based schools receive public funding?
2)Do Steiner/Waldorf schools conceal the religious/spiritual/occult nature of their programs?

Question #1 makes for good debate – especially as the majority of people on our planet believe in such things. Still, I vote “no.”

Question #2 is simple. The answer is yes. Steiner’s odd (I’m being generous) beliefs are deeply connected to day-to-day activities in his followers classrooms; yet very little of what Steiner teachers learn during their training finds its way into the movements’ outreach material. In fact, more than a few teachers-in-training quit their new career paths prematurely while gasping with incredulity at the inner workings of Anthroposophy.

Out of idle curiosity, I looked up teacher training for Waldorf schools here in Spain: there’s certainly some very strange stuff being taught (and recognised by the authorities): Anthroposofical medicine is well in there, and the ideas of child development are bizarre to say the least. Also curious is that many of the courses seem linked in some way to a catholic university, which is odd. They’re very expensive.

Mind you, I think they’re spot on with the TV.

For those of you who have never stepped foot in a Steiner school, here is a documentary film about Rudolf Steiner and today’s anthro initiatives, incl. schools. Hope it gives you at least some kind of minimal context.

The whole documentary can be viewed in parts here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJcpDjTjlus&list=PLk_e9REm9bpwqAqTQm8L4Ngbrfn9q8kNr

If you just wish to see a 6-minute trailer, see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jmrQ75xaFck

Luke, I think the following thought experiment illustrates the ethical issues you are struggling to perceive or engage with.

Let’s start with the Anglican Christmas Christingle ceremony which I took part in as a child. It takes place in a church, every child is given an orange, with a candle stuck in the top and sweeties and peanuts on cocktail sticks stuck round the sides. The children parade round the church setting fire to the sweeties and peanuts; the vicar explains the orange represents the world, the candle Jesus light of the world etc. Everyone sings a few carols and goes home feeling Christmassy.

Now imagine taking that ceremony and putting it in a school during lesson time. We won’t tell the children or the parents what the candle orange and sweets represent but will intimate that making the Christingle is a craft activity promoting creativity and the orange encourages healthy eating.

So now when the ceremony is conducted, the teachers have a very different appreciation of what is going on than the parents and pupils. The teachers see a symbol of Christ, the parents a candle, the teachers a symbol of the world, the parents a source of vitamin C.

This is the same dissonance in perception that you see in the wet on wet painting, the eurhythmy and the faceless dolls. The parents are encouraged to see a lesson in craft and creativity; the teachers appreciate the spiritual nature of the exercise.

It’s that carefully fostered dissonance in perception that I find creepy. But it’s more than just creepy. All professionals; lawyers, teachers and doctors, share a duty of care and transparency to their clients which this kind of duplicity breaches.

This is also an example of the kind of internal contradiction common to many branches of counter cultural thinking. Your video talks about “putting the human back in the centre”, but you defend Steiner on a utilitarian basis of outcomes, and gloss over the way parents and pupils choices are manipulated and their autonomy subverted. In this way they are treated as a means to an ends rather than an end in themselves, they are commodified and their humanity is made subordinate to the goals of the cult.

“So now when the ceremony is conducted, the teachers have a very different appreciation of what is going on than the parents and pupils. The teachers see a symbol of Christ, the parents a candle, the teachers a symbol of the world, the parents a source of vitamin C.”

Spot on! Eurythmy is a good example. Parents are told it’s a form of “dance” or “poetry put to movement” or some other disingenuous description. According to Steiner, eurythmy embodies Anthroposophy.

“I speak in all humility when I say that within the Anthroposophical Movement there is a firm conviction that a spiritual impulse of this kind must now, at the present time, enter once more into human evolution. And this spiritual impulse must perforce, among its other means of expression, embody itself in a new form of art. It will increasingly be realised that this particular form of art has been given to the world in Eurythmy.

It is the task of Anthroposophy to bring a greater depth, a wider vision and a more living spirit into the other forms of art. But the art of Eurythmy could only grow up out of the soul of Anthroposophy; could only receive its inspiration through a purely Anthroposophical conception.”

From Rudolf Steiner’s “Lecture on Eurythmy” August 26, 1923

It is SO IMPORTANT that you cannot have a Steiner or Waldorf school without it. It is practiced in EVERY grade… as well as by the teachers. It’s one of those big deals that is played off as no big deal…

Liars and other people’s children are a bad mix.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcCvcy0zAlM So this is eurythmy….I’m all in favour of dance movements being part of human experience, but is it me or is this all a bit sexist? The teacher’s remarks are really poor…

The more I see of this stuff, the worse it seems, I would have never found out what nonsense was being pushed if it weren’t for this thread.

Monkey man, education falls into what you might call the cultural sphere. You can’t prescribe “culture” without denying the cultural freedom that is necessary within this realm. If you try to legislate culture, you will end up with fascist or religious fundamentalism. Many teachers have “batshit” ideas (what’s with the obsession with faecal matter?). Whether in state or Steiner education, these ideas will have influence on the education provided. In the state system, many teachers have “batshit” ideas about the absolute priority of academic achievement, for example. And so, within this sphere, you ultimately have to trust the integrity and professionalism of the individual teacher. The choice is (should be) yours, which school you send your children too. If a Steiner school is ever made the default local school, forcing parents to send their children there, I will personally join you, monkey man, on the barricades to fight for the cultural freedom of those parents.

Typo

“freedom being elegant here”

Relevant not elegant. I was certainly not complementing you on your prose.

I don’t agree with the Pope’s view on abortion and gay rights, but I respect the cultural right of Catholic parents to send their children to a Catholic school. I do not agree with the UK government’s view of what constitutes a good education, but I respect the rights of parents to send their children to state schools. I acknowledge the right of religious fundamentalists to send their children to strictly religious schools, even though I do not respect the views of religious fundamentalists. I would draw the line, if teachers were preaching hate against other people. In this case, I believe the state already has a legal right to intervene in order to protect the child. Children are born into particular cultures and to particular sets of parents. For better or for worse, children have to bear this burden as long as parents do not neglect them or break the law. I respect the law. Where hatred is preached to children or where children are physically harmed, then the law has a right to intervene.

Every child has a right to education. In my opinion, the state should fund whatever form of education teachers are willing to provide and parents are willing to have provided to their children. Yes, there probably needs to be some standards, e.g. the basics ( reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.) need to be taught, children need to be able to function within society when they grow up, their health and safety needs to be guaranteed at school. I think it is unethical of the state to impose its view of education on everyone. I do not share the skeptics worldview (dogmatic scientism) that their worldview is the only valid one and that every other view is just abnormal nonsense.

The rightful authorities when it comes to deciding purely educational matters are teachers, who should be given the freedom to teach in the manner they consider best within the above basic legal framework above. If the Conservatives’ idea of giving vouchers to parents to redeem at the school of their choice had been implemented, then the funding issue would be resolved in a manner that would be acceptable to everyone in my opinion.

Luke

I see you are continuing not to address the issue of Steiner schools concealing their real philosophical underpinnings.

Yes, there probably needs to be some standards, e.g. the basics ( reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.)

This is a moot point, especially given that they apparently need a special inspectorate to protect them.

A Church of Englamd school has to satisfy normal inspectors and a church inspectorate. It’s more than a little odd that Steiner schools get to play a completely separate game and at the taxpayer’s expense.

I think there is some confusion sliding in again.

Normal faith schools, whatever you think of them, acculturate pupils to their widely faiths widely held precepts, normally shared by the parents. They cover faith group history, taboos, ethics, festivals and ceremonies.

Steiner schools are not faith schools for Steinerists. In fact your first line of defence was that Steinerism is not taught directly. Providing a Steiner education is instead the adult teacher’s way of manifesting their faith.

Steinerists seem to conceive of their education as a kind of spiritual filter pump; purifying humanity as human spirits cycle through successive lives. The pupils are not being inducted into the congregation, they are themselves the sacrament.

As Anthony Norse has noted, there are number of threads to this debate:-

A. Do UK Steiner schools reveal enough of their Anthroposophical underpinnings?

I’ve already agreed that the schools could do more to describe Anthroposophy and its role in Steiner education. Andy and I tried to construct a brief definition that might appear on schools’ websites, but the process stalled because it seemed to me that Andy wished to be both judge and jury of what constitutes Anthroposophy.

MarkH wrote a short description of what he thought the schools should say about themselves, http://zooey.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/hollowed-traditions/#comment-21822. Apart from a couple of small points, I would be happy to see this appear on the front page of a school’s website. I’ve sent it to a few Steiner school teachers I know, and so far – again with minor reservations – they agree.

Would most of you accept that a definition like this would assuage your concerns about this particular difficulty?

B. The importance of cultural freedom and the role of the State in education.

Cultural freedom, or freedom of conscience, or however you might want to define it, for me is sacrosanct. Scientific materialism is a world-view, so is Anthroposophy. Either neither is a faith, or both are, depending on your … er .. world-view 🙂

The State does not endorse or prohibit any particular world-view. Its role is as guarantor of every citizen’s right to hold a view of the world free from persecution or favour.

A parent also has a right to educate her/his children according to the parent’s world-view, so long as that does not infringe on the child’s rights. A child does not have a State-protected right to a world-view, only adults do. If this weren’t so, all parents could be sued by their children for providing or not providing a particular cultural context to the child’s life.

Because every citizen has a right to an education, the State also has the responsibility of ensuring that all children receive an education. However the State is not a priori responsible for educating them. Many States do take on this responsibility. But wherever there is a rich choice of alternatives to the State system (as here in the UK), this is clear evidence that the State’s assumed responsibility for providing education is questioned.

Andy believes that “the state should ensure that when it is providing education that it is based on a transparent rationale rather than wishful thinking”.

Clearly this begs the question of whether the State should provide education, because in my mind the term “transparent rationale” used here, is merely shorthand for “conforms to the scientific materialistic world conception”. In other words Andy seems to be supporting cultural totalitarianism.

So, naturally this then leads to the next topic:-

C. The question of public taxes being used to support different educational models.

I have an open mind on this one while the State continues to provide education. Some of you have expressed the clear opinion that you do not wish your taxes to be spent supporting an education system whose philosophical/religious underpinning – implicit or explicit – you do not like.

A clarification: In my last post, I wrote:- “The State does not endorse or prohibit any particular world-view. Its role is as guarantor of every citizen’s right to hold a view of the world free from persecution or favour.”

This would be better put as “One of its roles is as guarantor …”

From the PLANS website (2001), an ex-Waldorf parent explains misleading Waldorf websites in the US:

“Incredibly, at each school web site there was no mention of Rudolf Steiner’s connection or belief in Occultism, reincarnation, karma or soul work. In short virtually everything Steiner believed in and worked from and towards with regards to Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education – the essence of the man – is missing from these sites. Instead, from the sum of eleven Waldorf School web sites, we are told that Rudolf Steiner was a – teacher (mentioned 1 time), an architect (1), thinker (1), scholar (1), educator (5), artist (6) and a scientist (7).

This misrepresentation of Rudolf Steiner and his work seems to be at the root of the Waldorf communication problem. We find a much more accurate portrait of Rudolf Steiner at other sites on the Internet. Only a few Anthroposophy sites are needed to find a completely different description of the same man.

From the Anthroposophical Society of America…

“Rudolf Steiner was born in Austria, and grew up with the clairvoyant certainty of a spiritual world . . . Rudolf Steiner shared the results of his spiritual research in 40 books, and in 6,000 lectures (approx.) now available in 300 volumes. He is increasingly recognized as a seminal thinker of the 20th century and one of humanity’s great spiritual teachers.”

From the Rudolf Steiner Archives…

“Foremost amongst his discoveries was his direct experience of the reality of the Christ, which soon took a central place in his whole teaching.”

From the Rudolf Steiner College…

“Fundamental to all of his work is the view that the human being is composed of body, soul and spirit, and that the Christ event is key to the unfolding of human history and the achievement of human freedom.”

From the Anthroposophical Society, Dornach, Switzerland…

“Born in Austria, Steiner was the leading esoteric researcher of the twentieth century, ground-breaking in the realms of the nature of the human being, karma research, spiritual cosmology, and the occult research into Christianity and European cultural history.”

From the Anthroposophical Society in Florida…

“Steiner (to the first Waldorf teachers) �we shall only be able to achieve our task if we see it as not only to do with the intellect and feeling-life, but with the sphere of the moral and spiritual in the highest sense.’ The task was the following: to help the soul-and-spirit being of the child, which has at birth descended to earth from a pre-earthly existence, to find its place in the physical world and to make it competent for life . . . . Rudolf Steiner shows how the developing human being on the long and arduous path into the physical world passes through a series of clearly defined stages, which make definite inner and outer demands. Both the curriculum and the methods of teaching of the new school, as he now described them, were designed to meet these demands as well as possible through the right pedagogical measures . . . This was Waldorf pedagogy. The campaign for a new social order had been especially well received in the big Waldorf Astoria cigarette-factory at Stuttgart.”

http://www.waldorfcritics.org/articles/WhoIsRS.html

Alicia, I think we might be getting somewhere.

You are claiming that if the Anthroposophical worldview is passed on by the teacher to pupils (directly or indirectly), then this causes the pupils harm.

I assume you are not talking about the kind of harm that would give you or those affected sufficient grounds to take legal action.

The examples you have given above, suggest that in your opinion:

1. People who believe in RS’s ideas about karma are likely to be racists or some kind of occult neo-Nazis.

2. People who believe in the occult aspects of biodynamic farming are likely to believe in the efficacy of homeopathy and are therefore likely to endanger themselves and others by refusing conventional medical treatment?

I assume you have many more of these killer arguments. If you do, I’d be interested to hear them.

Luke,

You may have thought that the following question, posed by me to you, was rhetorical. It was not.

You say that they do teach about Atlantis. Is its history taught as literal fact?

So, let’s focus on the student directed learning.

One exciting opportunity for student directed learning I can think of is if a pupil expressed an interest in digital photography. Think of all the jumping off points for exploration:

Art:
Light, shade, composition and history of photography

Science:
Optics, transistors and semiconductors

Maths:
Mathematical representation of a picture, computer algorithms

History:
Social history revealed through photography

Personal development:
Care of a delicate piece of equipment, planning of photographing expeditions.

Only a few ideas, and I’m just warming up! But your pupils couldn’t pursue this kind of enquiry right? Because an evil spirit lives in the digital camera right? So in this case the prejudices of the anthroposophist teacher set bounds to the self-directed exploration of the pupil. Bounds that might surprise a poorly informed parent. It would obviously be impossible to enumerate the ways this might occur to a parent since the ways are presumably infinite, but should the fact and the manner in which it does so not be made clear?

The thing is, if you decided to sit down and devise a system of student directed education for the UK, you wouldn’t come up with something that looked like Steiner. You probably wouldn’t get very far trying to design such a system, because you would turn to the academic literature on student directed learning, discover it didn’t work very well, and give up. But if you were really bone headed and persisted, you still wouldn’t arrive at something that looked like Steiner. So why Steiner at all?

Ape man, I thought about your question, but it didn’t make much sense to me. Children (in the lower school) are generally unable to distinguish “literal” fact from “non-literal” fact. When a you tell a child a story, e.g. Cinderella, then even if you (as a skeptic) were to tell your child that the seven dwarfs are not real, they wouldn’t really know what that means. The child might repeat after you that the seven dwarfs are not real, but in his or her mind what that actually means would be a bit fuzzy.

In the lower school, the children are taught various creation myths in the form of stories. I remember being told stories about Odin, Thor and the Norse creation myths about the “world tree” (I think that’s what our teacher called the cosmic ash tree, as featured in Norse mythology). We weren’t taught this as fact but in the form of a story (being “taught something as fact” is not something I can easily associate with my experience in the younger years at Steiner school – things always seemed to be done a lot more artistically, which, as children, I think we found far more interesting than just being told stuff). I remember drawing a picture of the “world tree” surrounded by various Norse runes. I also remember drawing a picture of the “tohu wa bohu” when we heard about the Jewish creation myths. I honestly can’t remember hearing about Atlantis, although I have a vague memory that when we later learnt about the Ancient Greeks, Atlantis might have featured as something people in the legend of Hercules believed in. Hope that helps.

Matt, your theoretical lesson above about digital photography sounds very much like something that would be taught in the manner you describe at a Steiner school. We had lots of lessons just like that. I’m sorry to hear that the academic literature has found that “student-directed learning” doesn’t work well, because it sounds very positive to me. Why bother with Steiner education, if you can have student-directed learning? That was your question. The fact is, state education is far too bogged down in box-ticking, preparing students for examinations and meeting the requirements of the National Curriculum to be able to offer much of this sort of exciting stuff. Furthermore, state schools lack the necessary pedagogical framework to be able to offer teaching of this kind across the board.

not denying

Monkey man, evidence of the spiritual realities that Anthroposophy talks of is acquired through scientific spiritual research. For insight into how scientific principles and methods are applied to non-material realities, please see the book ‘Knowledge of the Higher Worlds’ by Steiner and quoted above.

Luke: “The physical laws of the universe have not been the same since time began”

The notion that the laws of physics remain immutable is called the Principle of Uniformitarianism and was formulated by a number of geologists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s often attributed to Charles Lyell.

The Wikipedia entry for it says:- “Uniformitarianism is the assumption …”

Note that it is an assumption. Where is the evidence for it? There isn’t any. It remains unproveable. It is therefore a spiritual (ie immaterial) notion. Where did Lyell and Co get it from? …

Richard: “Divine revalation, as a result of pathology, intense meditation, sleep deprivation, study of ancient texts (which ones?), inspitation from fellow travellers, or how exactly?

Certainly not from evidence”

I’m reminded of something to do with pots and kettles. 🙂

More seriously, I would like to assert that there are a number of assumptions in the modern scientific world-view that are unproveable. This doesn’t make the world-view necessarily wrong (or right for that matter); but it does reveal that physically unproveable hypotheses, thought-forms, ideas, etc do contribute to our received “reality”. Their “truth” is often tied up more with their perceived utility than anything else.

Steiner provided a recipe book which Luke and others have referred to. It can and does teach anyone, who takes the task seriously, how to validate Steiner’s so-called spiritual-scientific observations. This is not an oxymoronic term, because like all scientific observations, if the conditions of the observation – including the capacities of the observer – are adequate for the task, then the phenomena are reproduceable.

This is fundamentally no different from attempting to validate Einstein without a knowledge of mathematics. One would first have to plough through a number of text books aquiring a skill one previously did not have, assuming one has both the intelligence and diligence to do so.

If you acquire the skills, you get to prove or disprove the thoughts of the other person. If you don’t acquire the skills, the thoughts can still be appreciated for their utility, or rejected as “barmpottery” perhaps, but in either case with zero authority.

Dr Rawlins, perhaps this might help. Think of yourself as an observation tool. Your feeling, willing and thinking are all means by which you are able to make observations of the world. In ancient times people were able to acquire insight into the spiritual (non-material) world by training their feeling and/or willing by means of a series of exercises that honed these capacities into instruments with which they were able to gain access into non-material/spiritual realities.

These days we are generally no longer able to do this. However, we are now able to school our thinking through various exercises so as to acquire a similar capacity for spiritual perception. In order to train your thinking in this way, you need to carry out exercises over longer periods of time. There are preconditions for being able to undergo this training effectively. As well as developing yourself morally through a set of regularly repeated exercises, you need to be able to separate out your feeling form your thinking, your willing from your thinking, and so on. Conventional science is excellent in this regard because it trains us to think objectively without letting our thinking becoming coloured by our feelings and desires. Once you have developed yourself in this manner, you are then able, through a series of focused meditative exercises, to develop spiritual perception. These exercises are all set out in the book quoted above, which is also freely available online: http://www.rsarchive.org/Books/GA010/. Alternatively, you might prefer “Meditation As Contemplative Inquiry” which was written a couple of years ago by Arthur Zajonc, an American academic and physicist.

Perhaps some demystification of what is meant by “spiritual” might also help. What is the essential difference between a plant and a stone? Well, one is living and the other isn’t. However, there is no conventional scientific measurement of being alive. Sure, you can measure the activity of living beings, but you can’t measure “livingness” itself – at least not with conventional physical instruments. This is because we have here entered a non-material realm of life forces, or what can be referred to as the etheric realm. Now, what’s the difference between a plant and an animal? Well, the one has feelings and can experience, pain, pleasure, hunger, danger, etc., and the other can’t. We are now in the astral realm. Here we share an astral body with animals, as we are also beings that are able to feel. But human beings have evolved to an even higher level still. We are able to exercise self-reflective thinking. Now, thinking itself is in this sense a spiritual activity.

None of the Anthropospophical insight given by Steiner contradicts what conventional science tells us about the material world. It just goes beyond it. When you conduct spiritual research in the Anthroposophical sense, you are exploring worlds that lie beyond/behind/underneath the physical reality that we are all familiar with.

This is all extremely condensed but, if you are interested, the above two titles are probably the best place to start. They are also worth reading from a skeptical point of view because they give you some idea of how seemingly rational people today can come to accept what we’ve have been calling barmpottery.

Monkey man, I see that you’re back to talking about faeces and bullshit. Yes, it is amenable to scientific proof. Why do you think that biodynamic farmers go to all this trouble, especially when they have to make money out of running their farms? These are hard-working people who do it because it works – and for no other reason.

Monkey man, here’s some scientific evidence:

In May 2002, the results of a 21 year study comparing organic and biodynamic farming with conventional agriculture were published, also in respected journal Science. A group of Swiss researchers, led by Paul Mäder of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, showed that while biodynamic farming resulted in slightly lower yields, it outperformed conventional and organic systems in almost every other case. The biodynamic plots showed higher biodiversity and greater numbers of soil microbes, and more efficient resource utilization by this microbial community. http://www.wineanorak.com/biodynamic9.htm

See also:

Soil fertility was greatly enhanced on biodynamic and organic farms, as indicated by numbers of earthworms, number of mycorrhizae and a number of biological activity measurements. Diversity of organisms was increased in organic and especially biodynamic systems relative to conventional systems. Soil organism activity continued to increase in organic systems for more than 20 years after conversion to organic. System performance continued to improve over this time. http://www.organicagcentre.ca/researchdatabase/res_switzerland_long.asp

By the way, instead of you going around saying that this and that is a load of nonsense and demanding evidence, why don’t you do the legwork yourself? Before you say something is nonsense, why don’t provide the evidence to show that you are justified in calling in something nonsense?

Would it not be more scientific to have an open mind about things until you have hard evidence to the contrary?

Andy: “You may be right – but odds are you are horribly wrong.”

Thank you Andy. You seem now to have accepted that there may be more than one way to represent the world around us.

I’m not claiming rightness on my side, and wrongness on yours, nor vice versa. But you have – at least for the moment – stopped saying words like “barmpottery” and, I hope, conceded that my position is – while unlikely to you – all the same, not ridiculous.

supernatural (lit. above nature) = of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe, i.e. immaterial.

love makes the world go round (common expression) = love is the principal force behind human life.

How about, explain thinking?

Cyril’s points above might be seen in the light of the following:

“If mental phenomena are not physical phenomena and if there is mental causation, then the realm of physical phenomena cannot be regarded as a causally closed system. If, however, it is causally closed and if mental phenomena are non-physical phenomena, then, contrary to all appearances, there can be no mental causation. And if there is mental causation despite the causal unity of the physical world, then it cannot be held that mental phenomena are non-physical phenomena.”

Or in other words:

“If one explains consciousness as nothing but a physically caused and determined appendage of the physical organism, then cognition and freedom are an illusion. What we think and how we act are then not the results of free, logically grounded insight, but rather, all our thoughts and actions are determined by physiological relationships within the brain.”

i.e. if it is just all in the brain, then there is no such thing as “reason”, just unconscious physical determinism.

http://www.philosophyoffreedom.com/node/4270

“or the whole of this blog, and a lot more, has no more meaning than dogs barking at each other.”

As it turns out, dogs barking had a tremendous amount of meaning for Steiner. He wrote about the phenomenon here:

“It is well known that if dogs are removed from conditions where they
are in contact with human beings to places where they have no such
contact, they forget how to bark. As a rule, the descendants of such
dogs cannot bark at all.”[From “A Vision for the Millennium” – Rudolf
Steiner – Rudolf Steiner Press – 1999]

It’s hard to imagine a bunch of people collected in a room listening to someone tell them that his bullshit “is well known”.

The following is a summary from training I have received, not the opinion of an expert.

The problem with student directed learning is that pupils, in the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld, don’t know what they don’t know. They also don’t know what will be valuable to learn, and haven’t developed the skills for effective independent study yet.

These fundamental problems can be overcome by highly skilled and experienced teachers. However, teachers come with a range of skills and inevitably only develop experience with time. Done well student directed learning could be brilliant, but it is unforgiving of less than perfect implementation. Practical logistics make it impossible to supply sufficiently skilled teachers in sufficient number to deliver it across the entire state school sector.

As a point for Steiner parents to consider, the feature of having a single teacher for many years does sound nice, but if student-directed learning depends on a good teacher, then parents are making an all or nothing gamble on the quality of that one teacher. At least a succession of teachers would let variable quality average out.

It’s also a slightly odd thing to just assume student-directed learning will work well. Encountering a new academic discipline is a little like visiting a foreign city, some things are familiar, but the language is a different, there are new ways of doing things and it can be a challenge to find your way around. Would you rather go to a new city and meet a guide who’s lived there for years, and has planned a trip to see all the important sights and will take you to their favourite coffee shop; or direct your own exploration, stumbling down side streets, struggling to interpret local signs and finding the worst coffee in the city?

It’s only just occurred to me, and this is really cynical, but is it rather convenient for the occult business of developing souls, to have pupils staggering around slightly lost and struggling to piece things together?

A lot of words have been written again, and we have no answer from Luke or Cyril to the following questions;

1. Where is the evidence that cowshorn/poo water enhances crop production?

2. Why can farmers and wine-lovers think that specific BD agricultural methods work, but be wrong?

Luke/Cyril, it is an oft-repeated pattern for advocates of woo to wander off into vague wiffling abstract discussions when we have found a testable point of concrete intersection between their woolly ideas and the observable world.

@Monkey/Mojo, did you not see my post above with info on the 21-year study on bidoynamic farming reported in Science, on of the world’s top peer-reviewed science journals?

@Matt, yes you do have a point about the risk of having the same class teacher for eight years. Just to qualify though, the class teacher teaches two periods in the morning (known as “main lesson”). The rest of the periods are taught by subject teachers. The class teacher only teaches the majority of the main lessons (on the same subject for a period of about 4-6 weeks) in the lower grades. From about class 4 onwards, these are taught by alternating subject teachers (with qualifications in their respective subjects) in addition to the class teacher. Also, Steiner education is not in anyway purely about student-directed learning, it’s a healthy mixture of input and presentation from the teacher, followed by tasks (mostly teacher-directed) carried out by the children. You have to compare this to mainstream education, where in my experience (secondary education), subject teachers can easily teach around 150 students per day and hardly know more about the individual student than their name and latest test result. Much of the attention of these subject teachers in mainstream schools is focused on the students who are most unruly because the time allocated to the individual lesson is so short. While discipline in Steiner schools is an issue like anywhere else, there are also advantages to having a much closer relationship with the pupils.

@Monkey, in order to grow crops you need soil that is fertile. The fertility of soil is a measure of its nutrients, minerals, moisture, aeration, acidity, soil structure and the micro-organisms that it contains. All of these are dependent on the amount and type of organic matter (dead plants, animal waste and micro-organisms) that flows into the soil. Traditionally, farmers fertilised their soil by spreading manure (typically cow dung) on the fields. With the advent of artificial fertilisers, many farms all over the world switched to synthetic (inorganic) fertilisers (typically made from fossil fuels). This resulted in an increase in crop yields and led to what is known as the Green Revolution. However, it soon became apparent that the effect of these new synthetic fertilisers was to deplete the soil of its nutrients. Farmers had to increase the amount of fertiliser they put into the soil into order maintain these higher yields. Along with soil depletion, there was also a massive decline in biodiversity, due also to the use of monocultures, chemical herbicides and pesticides. As a result, the surrounding eco-system, necessary to support both the quality of the soil and the growth of crops became impoverished. The toxic output killed off many of the species required to grow crops and has also had a negative impact on human health.

In search of a more sustainable approach, one that doesn’t require all the expensive and energy-intensive synthetic inputs, some farmers are now turning to organic production. Decades before all of this, Steiner had already given a range of practical indications of how one might approach farming holistically – in a way that recognises that the soil, plants, animals and the natural environment surrounding the farm constitute an interrelated and self-sustaining organism. But, as you might expect with Steiner, he also gave indications about celestial factors that influence agriculture, which BD farmers take account of through the use of various biodynamic calendars. The heavens and times of year have played a significant role in agriculture since times immemorial. BD farming also provides a number of interesting social benefits by returning the local farm and the food it produces to its local community. One of the indications Steiner gave concerned the Cow Horn Manure that we are discussing. The scientific research I referred to above has shown that, apart from slightly lower crop yields, biodynamic farms outperform both industrial and organic farming on all other counts, including in relation to soil fertility. Cyril’s oenophiles (wine lovers in particular), and those who believe there is more to food than merely the chemicals and ingredients that can be measured by conventional science, will also argue that food produced biodynamically is of higher (spiritual) quality.

I don’t know of any scientific studies that have been carried out specifically to test the efficacy of Cow Horn Manure – it’s probably hard to measure, given the holistic nature of the BD approach – but then I don’t know much about agriculture. So feel free to dismiss it all as hogwash if you like, but just remember that there are consumers and farmers across the world who know an enormous amount more than you do about food and agriculture, and who all swear by it. You might also think about the damage being caused by industrial agriculture before you start bad-mouthing BD.

@Monkey: 1. Fine, you win, 2. Perhaps they’re deluded – dunno, ask them.

@Matt: Sorry, I’m not claiming it is the BEST answer, but I do think it is the best approach that is currently available – in my opinion. I’m not saying people should agree with my opinion or be obliged to send their kids to Steiner schools. Class sizes are non-issue in my opinion/experience. Steiner schools and other independent schools should not receive more of the cake per child than normal state schools, but there is no reason why they shouldn’t be equally funded, provided there is a demand from parents/teachers for the provision of alternative forms of education.

@Dr Rawlins: Sorry for getting annoyed. No, there is absolutely no way that Steiner was a fraud. You might want to claim that he was delusional, but the evidence would be against you. People accept his ideas because they work. This is a man who gave 6,000 lectures on a huge range of subjects, influenced a whole range of prominent personalities, wrote 40 books, designed two of the greatest architectural buildings of his age, created various new art forms, and introduced ideas that professionals and noted individuals have regarded as revolutionary in their respective fields: anthroposophical medicine, education, Camphill education for people with special needs, farming, architecture, economics (associative economics), political science (social threefolding), art (eurythmy and speech formation), art therapy, religion (the Christian Community Church), science (he established the Goethean or phenomenological approach science, he also edited Goethe’s scientific writings), drama (influence on Michael Checkhov), literature (he wrote four mystery dramas, mantric verse, meditation exercises, a history of philosophy) and spirituality (all his esoteric writings and lectures on Anthroposophy itself). We are talking about a colossal figure here who has attracted a worldwide following.

If none of this is convincing, then read some of his books, the Philosophy of Freedom and the title already mentioned, which will show you how these ideas were not given by him as things for people to “believe in”, they were given to people as working hypotheses for them to try out and test for themselves. Furthermore, he explained the means by which you can “see” these things for yourself. You asked whether I believed in gnomes – it’s not about “believing in” it’s about taking these ideas and seeing whether they are of any use to you, whether you can incorporate them profitably into your worldvie. I’ve never seen a gnome, I’m not clairvoyant (yet 🙂 ) – Steiner was. But I can see how the world is a living organism and I find the idea that different elemental spirits are helping to sustain that organism satisfying. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe everything science tells us about the natural world.

Rita, just on anthroposophical medicine. We are talking about anthroposopohical clinics across the world, run by doctors who are trained in conventional medicine — i.e. people with a certain amount of higher education. European universities have professorships in AS medicine, AS medicine has been a recognised specialty within Swiss governmental health policy and there are about 30,000 physicians worldwide (Wikipedia). Then there’s Weleda, a large and successful pharmaceutical company. The “deluded possibility” implies that all the above are deluded as well. It might be reasonable to dismiss RS’s ideas within a specific field in which you have experience and knowledge, but just to dismiss him as deluded across without any justification or explanation …?

Monkey, I don’t know enough about biodynamic farming or agriculture to make an informed judgement about the Cow Horn Manure (Preparation 500). I don’t take everything that RS said at face value – I was responding to Dr Rawlins question of whether Steiner might be dismissed as a fraud by highlighting the sheer range of (intelligent) people and areas of human activity that he has had an influence on. This suggests that RS can’t just be written off as a quack without engaging in some detail with his ideas and the initiatives he has inspired. But to your credit, you seem to be following up on your argument about the preparation and so I’ll accept your verdict that it’s nonsense for the moment. Until I am convinced otherwise, I will agree with you that Preparation 500 has no beneficial properties.

Rita, by engaging, I mean that you explain precisely why you believe something Steiner said is nonsense. Monkey dismisses the use of Preparation 500 because he hasn’t been given scientific evidence that proves its efficacy. What is it about the bits of Steiner’s work that you have read that causes you to dismiss him as deluded? Just saying that you’ve read bits of Steiner and can’t make heads or tails of the terminology he is using doesn’t prove anything about whether Steiner was delusional or not – you just tells you that it is meaningless to you. If you find what you’ve read disagreeable, then why do you find it disagreeable? Does your disagreement prove that Steiner was deluded?

Monkey, you are the one making the case against Anthroposophy, so I suggest you decide on how to proceed with the testing. Yes, I think the physical world (the only world that you believe in) is amenable to scientific testing, but I also think that scientific principles can be applied to research into non-material aspects of the world around us. But don’t let that stop you, please fire away …

OK, I can only give you an example from my own experience. By imagining the character I wished to play as an actor in mind I was able to present the emotions of that character on stage. When I just tried to force the emotions without imagining the character to myself, I was much less successful at performing the role. I repeated this a number of times in rehearsals and in different performances. Whenever I was imagining the character to myself I was more successful at portraying him to the audience. My fellow actors were doing the same exercise and came to similar findings.

Rita, you still haven’t said what particular points you know for a fact are nonsense in Steiner’s writings. I’ve gathered that you personally don’t like the terminology he uses. You mentioned something he said about barking dogs. According to this researcher “Wild dogs yip and squeal and whine, but rarely produce the repetitive acoustic percussion that is barking.” http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/dog-bark-origins/

Do you, Rita, know lots about dogs and are you able to prove from your experience or otherwise that Steiner was mistaken on this point?

This, just to give you an example of what I mean.

I think this is where I get off.

I just want to thank Luke for the effort he’s taken in answering questions. The words “curiouser and curiouser” spring to mind. Still I’m pleased he came out to play.

Because the subject of this blog is Steiner education, I don’t believe that it is the appropriate place to discuss bio-dynamic farming in detail.

I am not qualified to defend this method of farming except with arguments that seem to be generally unacceptable to many of its critics. An example is that many wine producers are converting to BD because their customers like the taste of the resulting product.

However if you wish to pursue the subject, one of the most commonly quoted research articles is:-

L. Carpenter-Boggs, A. C. Kennedy, and J. P. Reganold; Organic and Biodynamic Management: Effects on Soil Biology; Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 64:1651–1659 (2000)

While a little old, it is still quite a good source of peer reviewed literature. So please feel free to have a – possibly ill-informed – debate over it.

Anthroposophists either don’t understand racism and are not racists or they are racists. Or they don’t understand racism and they are still racists. I tend to hope against hope hope that they are innocents who don’t understand racism and that they are not racists; but the skill shown in their avoidance of actually discussing the institutional racism, as written by Steiner, leads me to believe they are racists who understand what they are doing.

A non-racist would never, ever, ever knowingly support an organisation founded on a racist doctrine unless forced, inculcated, brainwashed or otherwise coerced.

I’m sorry, I find this thread mostly useless (although well written!). It’s clearly just an academic/intellectual sparring session, when it clearly is an emotional subject. You will never meet in the middle now matter how strong the logic is to either sides of the argument. I looked around a new Steiner based school in Bristol today as I’m interested in the slightly alternative approach for my little one who starts school next year. A lot of it made sense….however it was terribly organised and lacked structure which worried me. A perfect example of how romantic theory doesn’t sit well with practical application.

I was served pretty well by a conventional state school all my life and believe I’ve turned out pretty well and I’m lucky enough to be in a good job that I actually enjoy doing (well – most of the time!). Do I think my education could have been better and more enjoyable? Definitely, hence why I am open to other methods of teaching.
I’m not interested in the views of intellectuals, I’m interested in the views of parents who have kids or had kids at these schools. All I care about is the happiness of my little one. I’m not interested in the politics of it all. If creative play is working for the kids at these schools and it is making them well rounded individuals (or not) that is what I am interested in hearing. I suggest we get out of our philosophical arm chairs and do some field work, that isn’t based on things that happened many moons ago.

Racist- yes. FACT is, many of his followers are the same, without EVER questioning the nonsense.
FACT: I was at an arts course one time, done by a Waldorf school around the area. This was in 2012. Somehow, I had a question about American First Nations art and asked a question, about what does the Waldorf school think about how wonderful it is etc- I was expressing myself with enthusiasm – but by this time it became more like a private chat with the teacher, since everyone just kind of went back to their own piece- and this ‘teacher’ (little did I know that they are NOT proper teachers, only people who follow religious anthro dogma)- ‘measured’ me with a weasel like look (I read above in the comments about how they are weasels- and that is what reminded me about his one incident that happened with me). He, looked and looked at me- and I had a feeling, that he wanted to say something yet, he does not know if he should or not – but then based on the fact that this was a Waldorf event- he proceeded. That is the feeling I got at that moment in time. All of this teacher’s racist shit – became clear shortly after while he was talking to me, but much of what anthro racism is in Waldorf school became very clear to me, when I got my hands on anthro bs stuff. Plus, later I read that racism against First Nations and Aboriginals is happening and the news confirmed it also in New Zealand etc. This teacher was not young, he was about 60+ years old. He, after “measuring” me up, started to actually talk about things like history and the Europeans coming here and around other continents where Aboriginals live- but that all this: “it is/was the First Nations fault”, as in “they deserve this type of conquest/subjugation”. Feelings of gobsmack and chunder came over me and I was thinking in my head: “what a cock-up he must be and he doesn’t even know it after 60+ years” and I uttered with that gobsmacked face and chunder feeling the “I am completely disagreeing with you!”. He, realizing that he actually showed me “his true beliefs”, nervously did not know what to do and ordered everyone back into the art piece. He most likely was an anthro, I could not find that info, but I found info on who else was, which other ‘teacher’ or parents as a matter of fact, also who from the ‘teachers’ were First Class etc. That and some other ‘disturbingly unusual things’ that opened my eyes and at the end of that year, the only sane option was to leave Waldorf school and we did. It takes courage, IF it is in you, to realize and face the fact that you were bamboozled and deceived by utter dogma- and that you are paying for utter nonsense type of ‘education’, one that is so much stuck in dogma and cult.
There was a mom, a modern minded mom in our class in the beginning. In two years, she ‘changed’ completely. She became ‘natural’. She literally started to letting ‘herself down’- by what she was wearing, by what she was doing, by what she said and how she said it, by how she started doing things, by going to church at the Christian Community (is when I realized that Waldorf is religious- otherwise she would have not sent newsletters from them), by who she rubbed elbows with (ie: this teacher whom I mention above), by what she was saying at the class parent meetings, by actually how she started answering a straightforward question exactly with that weasel type of look, like the teacher did in my above story…etc, etc. Then I found out she became a general anthroposophist and I found out other teachers in that school also are or have become and other parents too- then I understood everything and how far she had gone down the rabbit hole! It is all there, if you look carefully enough and observe.

Wow, 60+ years old and if he might still be teaching, perhaps not young ones but young adults, what kind of morals and ethics can he have? Especially one who went through the Waldorf ‘system’ it might take lots of time to realize IF ever, depending on many things. How would the possible youngsters and parents know that there is lurking with utmost potential a severe noxious racist stimuli in the teachings of this type of school? It is present in every endeavor and one has no clue from the outside with the ‘art facade’, without mentioning about anthroposophy, that strikingly one and their offspring are experiencing anthro religion and cult! This is exactly what Gregoire Perra means by “indoctrination”, because this is exactly what it is. This 60+ years old is a good example- and he even at this ‘ripe age’, still has no clue about it. Did he evolve at all over the years? One has to have much higher morals and ethics, -which depends on upbringings and school and proper education and many other things later in life too, or things like following science-, to actually see that this goes down (the rabbit hole) there. But, because it is a spiritual and cult system enclosed on itself- the harm could be enormous for many – and it is!.
The book by Michael Shermer: Why people believe weird things is what I recommend to the anthro’s!

The book ‘Real Secrets of Alternative Medicine’ (available from Amazon and Kindle) by Richard Rawlins also has remarkedly insightful commentary on Steiner and Anthroposophical Medicine (pp 228-232, 239, 240).

I happen to know that the various postings on this thread were a great help and stimulus to the author – so many thanks to all who have contributed!

May the Wu be with you (page 9).

Cool, Dr. RAwlins. I like the naming of: CAMists, camistry and the placebists (which could become: placebistry). Will be looking for your book 🙂

{Attention dictionaries: must add new words to your dictionaries. Camistry does not equal chemistry and so on :)}

Oh, thanks Dr Rawlins. Reading some introduction in your book online on amazon, and about HPC which is now HCPC in England and: arts therapy, one thing came to my mind. I remembered the ‘art therapist’ in the waldorf school near by. She was cold as ice and that never changed. She was the arts therapist in that school, but little did we know that she was on top of that from Tobias School of Art- which sounds great when you are ‘just’ reading someone’s bio, but it is completely different when you find out that Tobias ‘school’ is not a school at all, it is an independent charity! And anthropos as well, or at least has anthropos ‘courses’…or something like that. Their Facebook page has interesting ‘art courses’ with anthropos nonsense of “lower man” and “upper man” and alike. It also is different, when on top of finding out what Tobias is and what is not, the “art therapist” in that school who went there, is a First Class anthropos as well!!! (this alone, took a lot and lot of digging) Also, waldorf schools have what is called a ‘remedial teacher” who suppose to ‘help’ with kids ‘who are struggling to meet their developmental stages”…Well, needless to say, the ‘remedial teacher’- is also full of not just pseudoscience practice (ie: braingym- it is used in waldorf too- and from the looks of it- braingym found a permanent place in the pseudoscientific hotbed of waldorf), but the course, these remedial waldorf teachers take, IS at one of the closest Steiner centres – NOT at a university level, which would follow science. DO NOT BE FOOLED! It is hard, as we were fooled too, but there was no information available transparently so it took us a while to find it! …then we hit the exit sign as fast as we could…
The ‘remedial training’ is just like the Waldorf ‘teacher training’ is full of anthropos stuff, like: Anthroposophy and Adult Development -Learning Challenges in Relationship to Archetypes,
Introduction to Esoteric Embryology, the Four Organs, and the Seven Life Processes, Constitutional Types, Child Health History and Child Study, Fourfold in Relationship to Healthy Learning, Introduction to the Four Ethers, Supersensible Currents, The archetypal human being and path of development: salutogenesis – the source of health in relation to body, soul and spirit, Explore/experience/study through assigned readings, artistic activities, Explore/experience/study through assigned readings and artistic activities (sculpture, music, speech, painting, movement, eurythmy, etc…AND things like that! Of course the reading material is not other than: pseudoscientific antrho regurgitation! They like you to think that they are legit, by using words like “salutogenesis’…’embryology’ (what the heck is ‘esoteric embriology?’- hahaha hahahah hahahahah…the hallucinations of these people!) ..etc… but there is not even an ounce of science it these ‘courses’ only finger pointing and faulting from reincarnation standpoint! {by the way, the remedial teacher I knew, was also a general anthroposophist, even though never admitted it, but circumnavigated it many many many times, almost to admitting with words like “antrhoposophy was” for this teacher “a way of looking at the world” and this type of lingo- WHICH we did not have any clue about in the beginning that this is antrhopos lingo- only after, when the puzzle was forming beautifully}.

I am disgusted heavily here, just by posting this, this is how much bs this is….

So, just like someone above mentioned an older ‘teacher’- this ‘art therapist’ was also older and cold as ice! Since, she was of the First Class- she most likely was thinking of herself as “spiritually higher” then us… So, what I wanted to say is, there is lots in a name, in a title (find out what it is), and that even their art form is racist! Nowhere else this phenomena exists, as art is art- only here!
Many fall prey to this type of art, even education, since waldorf claims that they ‘have been teaching and using art for 100 years now’- many in the mainstream education also fall prey to this- without ever finding out what the heck the anthropos cult-art nonsense is!

Cool Dr. Rawlins. Thanks.

Well, what a wonderful book: Deviate, by Beau Lotto. Lotto, is a neuroscientist- his work focuses on the biological, computational and psychological mechanisms of perception. The first chapter titled Being in Color- explains the falsehood of Goethe’s Theory of Color and his glorious boondoggle with color, which were the assumptions of the time that reigned then, even though the “science” of his book has loooonnngggg been dismissed. Lotto,continues in the other chapters, to deepen our understanding of human nature, illusions, perception and behaviour. Great book!

Except, except Goethe’s color falsehood is still alive and well in Waldorf/Steiner schools. Steiner himself was inspired by this falsehood and as we know it, it is a never ending story unfortunately.
Waldorf schools still teach the “Newton’s theory is false” anti-science, hide behind the “art facade” that creates a fantastic illusion and parents have no clue. Well, the waldorf teachers are clueless as well, they are believers, and the cycle just goes round and round in a rat race!

o9omil