There is a school in the United States that does not teach reading until the fourth grade.

Math will not come for a while afterward.

Instead of meeting and adjusting to the personality of a new teacher every year, the same one remains for another season of instruction.

Many people consider this incomprehensible at first, yet this alternative method has steadily gained popularity for the past eighty years. It is arguing itself to be the superior path to education. This path is the Rudolf Steiner School System.

More commonly known as the Waldorf School, or simply Steiner School, it is the fastest growing private, not-for-profit education provider in the Western world. The middle and upper classes see it as an attractive alternative for its arts-based upbringing and its opposition to the compulsory rudiments of public schooling. (Oelkers)

The term “Waldorf” comes from its first school, constructed by Emil Molt, the owner of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory. This was in Germany, in 1919, after the First World War. Steiner schools also get their name from their founder, an early twentieth-century spiritual scientist named Rudolf Steiner.

The philosophies of this man are what the entire Waldorf education system is based on.

Rudolf Steiner was born in Hungary, in 1861. His early education primarily consisted of math and sciences at the Technical School of Vienna. At the age of 30, though, he sought after knowledge of the more theoretical kind, completing his doctorate degree in philosophy at the University of Rostock, with a dissertation entitled “Truth and Knowledge”. From the beginning, Steiner always enjoyed sciences, but the philosophies that came with them are what he found fascinating. (Oelkers)

When he was 21, he achieved the honor of editing the writings of the famous scholar, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe’s words influenced Steiner to such great degree that his first book, published in 1886, was on the philosophy derived from his natural science writings.

Particularly attractive to Steiner was his proposal of the existence of two types of knowledge. The first knowledge was gained from traditional academia, the other, one perceived from pure intuition. This second, different, type could reveal hidden truths that the former could not. (Cameron)

From the beginning of his career, Steiner was an educator, serving as private tutor for a wealthy Viennese family. At the turn of the century, he changed to the classroom setting, teaching at the private Worker’s High school in Berlin. Here he became general secretary of the German section of the school’s theosophical society.

After that, he taught at Berlin’s Free College, where he strengthened and organized the thoughts he had sown from the seeds Goethe planted. He gave his first famous lecture, “Monism and Theosophy”, at this same college on October 8, 1902. This lecture contained the keys to many of what would later be his major works. (Oelkers)

In 1912, Steiner broke off from the Theosophical Society. He wanted to make a name for the specialized branch of spiritual science that he had devised, which he called “anthroposophy”, different from other branches for its emphasis on the arts. Of course, he wanted to make a name for himself as well.

While doing so, he designed and founded the first Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, in 1913.  It was a cultural center for math, biology, and the arts, and constructed exclusively by volunteers who freely offered their skills in construction, even through the beginnings of the First World War. (wikipedia.org)

From there, he traveled throughout Europe, giving lectures and writing books on his philosophies, as well as and making connections with doctors, farmers, businessmen, and teachers. He died in March 1925, leaving behind a wealth of insight. (Oelkers)

To this day people still consider and welcome the teachings of Steiner. Proof of this exists in the rising of Waldorf schools, which many consider as the core of his success. Steiner believed that education was a part of spiritual life, or geistige kultur, that could only work when completely free from social structure and abstraction. These coeducational schools, dubbed “free schools”, operate independently from the state curricula. (Oelkers)

The establishment of a Waldorf school starts with a kindergarten. Most important to this beginning is the pairing of a class with a teacher.

Potential teachers gain their certification by participating in a two-year program that teaches spiritual science, special teaching methods, and the ideology behind those methods.

Those who organize a school look for people who treat children with sensitivity and warmth. Temperament of the teacher must match that of the class, for the relation of the two sustains for much longer than the one-year cycle that conventional public schooling relies on. It is important that the class trusts the teacher, as the students consider him or her the manifestation of spiritual science and knowledge. (Oelkers)

The early years of Waldorf’s curriculum, or the First Stage, have a basis of learning “specifically grounded in imagination”. (Richards)

The school day is empty of an arbitrary routine, merely prescribed. The students learn to investigate through artistic means, keeping unlined workbooks and listening to songs and stories, which the teacher does not read, but tells. A kindergarten in particular structures itself around the ideal to give its young students the opportunity to exercise their fantasies. Simple playthings, usually made with soft and natural materials, fill the room, which in itself is a setting for make-believe. A common toy in the classroom is a large pile of colorful scarves and bolts of cloth. These straightforward playthings quickly turn into capes, hoods, tents, or sitting areas in the hands of the young students.

Gradually, as the teacher progresses the class through the elementary grades, he or she guides the play that the students partake in towards a feeling of work. (Richards)

This measured awareness of work is extremely important at this interval of the First Stage. Not only is taking on a task associated with the pleasures of play early on, the teacher also encourages the students to become self-aware, as well as to assess their own self-awareness. In turn, this pushes the students to support their own self-thinking. The ultimate goal is for the child to know their skills are growing, and to take pride in that fact. Enthusiasm to learn is the key to accomplishment throughout the student’s years at school, potentially on to college. It is what the teachers rely on. (Waldorf Promise)

Its arts-based curriculum gains the school much praise, but its un-inhibiting environment on children as well appeals to teachers and parents. Allowing children to take time to work according to personal potentials eliminates pressures on them to rush and compete, and allows them to grow in a more organic manner. (Oelkers)

Along with developing a love for working and learning tenuously in the First Stage, the teacher guides his class in memory strengthening, which continues until the eighth grade. A primary teaching tool here is imitation and modeling, meaning that the teacher does not tell the class what to do, or give handouts with directions. Instead, he or she maintains the direct relationship to the students by performing the task alongside them, and helping beside them. Steiner teaches educators that at this stage, it is not the time to be abstract or theoretical, but very representational and concrete, until the children are supposedly sexually mature. (Oelkers)

According to the lifespan that Steiner proposed in his studies of the intuition, the Second Stage, or the later grades in a Waldorf school, is the time when objectivity and judgment can at last enter the student’s consciousness. The students are still in close contact with the teacher first paired with them at kindergarten.

In these four final years of schooling, they study four different periods of history and literature. Alongside those subjects, of course, exploration of arts and handcrafts continue in their workbooks. For specific subjects, the teacher steps away to let specialist instructors guide the students. (Richards)

One can see here how the early years of Waldorf education are important to the student’s later years. In these grades, themes taught during the First Stage make a returning appearance in the lesson plans, except the students build knowledge from what they already know of them, with new, different depth and attention to detail. (Oelkers)

As organic growth of the student is the focus of Waldorf, the school is free of marks, ranks, and testing until the eighth grade, and even then, marks and grade point averages only apply to students who plan to further their education in college. Most students who graduate from a Waldorf school do indeed go on to college, but before doing so, the school will prepare them for the SATs and college, and “on the whole, they do well.” (Richards)

From this entire synopsis, one can see that the basis is not merely teaching and learning. In actuality, those two are only aspects of the true root of Waldorf education, which is development of the child, resulting in a well-rounded adult who sees the connection between knowledge and spirituality. (Oelkers)

The stages of the student, along with the structure of the Waldorf school, follow Steiner’s concept of “the three births of men”, which list three spiritual developmental stages of the young person from birth. Steiner and his followers believe that up to the age of seven, the child is “woven within the ethereal and astral cover”, having neither need nor desire for the practicality of the adult world. (Oelkers) This explains why memory and repetition of the teacher’s movements are so significant at this stage. From seven to fourteen slowly revealed to the child is his or her “astral body”, or the body of sensation. By the age of twenty-one, the “Body-of-I”, or complete awareness of the self in the cosmos, permanently sets into the young person’s spiritual life. (Oelkers)

It is not hard to understand how rhythm is a basic building principle in the Waldorf School. Along with these three periods present in the program, students and teachers observe the natural patterns of the day, week, and year. The day itself instills rhythms, for example sleeping and waking.

Also acknowledged are the rhythms within rhythms, as the class observes a variety of pulses, from the passing of seasons to their own breathing and heartbeat. The class celebrates the usual observed holidays of a season, but they also survey equinoxes and occasions left unconsidered by the government and other school systems.

In addition to observing the tempos of nature, educators for all the age groups utilize special a form of teaching known as eurhythmics, the act or study of beautiful and harmonious movement. This concept stems from the original establishment of Steiner’s schooling principles. It involves gestures designed to correlate with the movements of the larynx as it makes and forms sounds, resulting in a visual language. A common eurhythmic exercise in the early grades is to repeat the teacher as he makes sound with a matching movement, or to recite a poem in a similar way. (Waldorf Promise)

The importance of eurhythmy shows the significance of music to the entire curriculum. Steiner thought music to be essential to human life, and it integrates into other subjects that the students study, from botany to astronomy to geometry.

The concepts behind the curriculum at Steiner schools show an active awareness of developmental psychological issues. The purpose of the school is to surround the students with subjects matching their psychological and physical stages.

A perfect example of this is how the subjects of Arthurian and Parsifal legends run through the students’ eleventh year, when they are seventeen.  The themes of self-awakening and the reception of destiny lay at the time when students have the opportunity to see and share their own awakening with Arthur and Parsifal. (Richards)

Incidentally, this view of psychological growth falls logically in place with the theories of Piaget. Fully aware that their younger students are in a preoperational learning phase, the school envelops them with objects, settings, and knowledge that stimulate thinking on their own cognitive level. An educator knows that here, the mind frame of the class is not yet at the concrete operational level, let alone the formal operational level. When the students eventually do come to these levels, the teacher brings back the subjects from the early years and presents them in a new manner that matches their more advance points of view. (Berger)

Even more than with Piaget, the Waldorf learning system complements the ideas of Vygotsky and the sociocultural theory, as it emphasizes the importance of the individual relying on the community, and vice-versa. The best kind of relationship here is a “dynamic interaction”, which Waldorf classes resplendently uphold. (Berger) This further explains the use of guided participation, in the form of modeling and imitation, as teaching tools, leaving out abstract concepts for later.

The soundness of the curriculum’s logic and the success of the students do not sway everyone’s opinion of Steiner schools, however.  Some critics accuse the school of steering the children to occult practices and beliefs, and that Steiner’s anthroposophy is a religion, as opposed to a philosophy.  It is claimed that no one in a given school system knows how deeply the connections run with the school’s practices and anthroposophy. The two-year training program is deemed inadequate, and the so-called science is vastly interpretable. (Francis)

Other criticisms originate from the fact that the education system extends beyond the classroom and into the home and lifestyle of the entire family.  The parent must crystallize a strong relation with the teacher for the education to take full effect, and he or she must make sure that the orientation of home life does not clash with that of the classroom. Educators advise parents to keep the home media-free, counting television and computers. Some schools articulate guidelines in the packing of school lunches. One school in Olympia, Washington, explicitly requires two cloth napkins and a ceramic cup in a woven basket. (Francis)

Waldorf critics also question whether Steiner was racist, and his quotes do appear to be anti-Semitic at first. However, those who argue against this fact claim that his words were dissected to the point where a given quote is often drastically out of context with the rest of his writings, and thus dissonant with the whole of his science.

This spiritual science, the one Steiner broke away from the theosophical society for, centers mainly around the existence of a spiritual world and the personal reality it conveys. Steiner stressed that spirituality is more than intuition, but knowledge as well. From these beliefs, he hypothesized the three births of men, and concluded that education should open the door to and develop worldly spiritual knowledge. Such a notion for recognizing human will and thinking as a resource, and acknowledging a common ground that all people share faces both praise and ridicule. (Richards)

In his studies, Steiner further developed an extension of this spiritual science, which he named anthroposophy. This branch of wisdom instills belief in an entire spiritual world and stresses the cosmic unity of the human body, mind, and soul.

During its time on earth, these three aspects of the person ripen with research through compassion.

Once fully developed, it leads to “a way to look that combines insideness and outsideness, an eye for inner form and outer form, for the spirit in physical matter”.

After death, the inner and upper regions of the soul supposedly go to the World of Souls, to follow pure laws of spirituality. (Oelkers)

Those who run Waldorf schools are diplomatic in opinion about who goes to their school and who avoids it. “I don’t think that Waldorf school’s for everybody,” says Scott Albert, admissions coordinator at the Princeton Waldorf School in New Jersey, “and some of that is based on the consistency of values between home and school.” (Francis)

This understanding is a reflection of held principles more contemporary and updated than those of the public education system of the US, though this system’s dogma indeed is noble in origin. The belief that sprouted public school, that all children require at least rudimentary education, that is, up to the eighth grade, is solely an American ideal. The goal of the US perpetually having an educated work force perseveres today since the time of the Civil War.

Art education is indeed part of this curriculum, as the Massachusetts Department of Education states that an effective education plan “provides a sequential program of instruction… for all students beginning in preschool and continuing through high school” in their Arts Curriculum Framework

The main difference in the two school systems lies in the priority that the arts take in each program.

The arts are the basis of Waldorf education, and all other branches of knowledge, from math to history, stem from this base.

The public school system lies on the other side of the prioritizing spectrum. While they claim that all subjects of knowledge are equal in importance, saying in the framework, “Massachusetts schools should educate students to think like artists, just as they teach students to think like writers, historians, scientists, or mathematicians”, there is belief that none are superior, thus completely severing the connections between them all.

Another, more obvious, difference between public schools and Waldorf schools is the view on standards.  The public school system is increasingly dependant on standardized testing and fixed statewide programs.

The Waldorf School rescinds the notion of standards, declaring it too inorganic and pushing knowledge at students for which they might not be ready. Instead, development of individual students is how they gauge the pace of new-coming knowledge.

Having said that, the actual effectiveness of Waldorf schooling is as of today unclear, as there is no empirical data proving or disproving it.

However, the presence of eight hundred schools throughout forty countries, 160 being in the US alone, easily shows its acceptance on the international level. More and more people are seeing how Steiner’s educational values can apply to children, for not only is this number of schools growing worldwide, but also some public schools are adding Waldorf elements to the structure of elementary grades. The educator here is attempting a closer relationship to his or her students. Teachers see that the practice of imitation will improve the children’s motor and listening skills. (Oelkers)

Also in these experimenting schools, teachers work together more to help their students understand the information taught to them. Instead of declaring that the subject they teach is superior to others, they see tie-ins and relations amongst every subject.  This teamwork of the teachers makes more impact on the students. General empathy in a school rises, creating a healthier environment for all people to grow. (Waldorf Promise)

Whether or not Rudolf Steiner’s intention was to create a new system of education in the wake of his philosophies and spiritual sciences does not matter. That he came upon a way to train, at an early age, for the “union of inner experience and sensory of life” at all enriches our universe. (Richards) Perhaps care of children will improve when people become concerned with more than one aspect of a person. A saying that Steiner’s followers operate by is “tell me about the whole child”, and that statement alone shows how the system works.






Works Cited

Berger, Kathleen Strassen. The Developing Person Through the Life Span. 1983. New York: Worth, 2001.

Cameron, Derek. “From Insult to Insight: Rudolf Steiner’s Meditative Technique.” Theosophical Society in America. December, 1999. Online: http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/questmagazine/novemberdecember1999/insulttoinsight/index.html

“Eurythmy.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurythmy


Francis, Meagan. “What’s Waldorf?” Salon.com. May, 2004. Online: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/05/26/waldorf/print.html

Massachussetts Department of Education. Massachussetts Arts Curriculum Framework. GPO, 1999.

Oelkers, Jürgen. “Rudolf Steiner.” Fifty Major Thinkers on Education: From Confucius to Dewey. Ed. Joy Palmer. London, New York: Routledge, 2001. 187-191.

Richards, M.C. Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1980.

“Waldorf Education.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldorf_Education

The Waldorf Promise. Videocassette. Landfall Productions, 1998.