A large outbreak of measles in Salzburg, Austria has been reported. …at a Waldorf school in Salzburg. The the local health department is trying to limit the damage by offering information and recommending vaccination for all children at the school who are not yet vaccinated. Apparently, in Nordrhein-Westfalen were the latest large epidemic occurred, out of 2000 infected, one child died and there’s evidence of lasting damage due to encephalitis among the survivors
PEOPLE FOR LEGAL AND NONSECTARIAN SCHOOLS, INC. (PLANS)
Debra Snell, President
12562 Rough and Ready Highway
Grass Valley, CA 95945
(530) 273-1005 president@waldorfcritics.org
Dan Dugan, Secretary
290 Napoleon St. Studio E
San Francisco, CA 94124
(415) 821-9776 secretary@waldorfcritics.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, DECEMBER 4, 2007
WALDORF CRITICS WIN APPEAL IN CHURCH-STATE CASE
People for Legal and Nonsectarian Schools (PLANS) filed suit against
two California school districts in 1998, alleging that the districts
were running religious programs in public schools. At the opening of
the September, 2005 trial, PLANS refused to present its case without
key witnesses and evidence that Judge Frank C. Damrell had excluded
based on his interpretation of federal court rules. This gave the
judge no option but to dismiss the case.
PLANS contended that Damrell’s rulings were incorrect, and appealed
to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. After a two-year wait, the
appeal was heard November 9, 2007. PLANS was represented by Scott
Kendall of Elk Grove, California.
The three-judge panel included John T. Noonan (Harvard, Reagan
appointee), M. Margaret McKeown (Georgetown, Clinton appointee), and
Edward R. Korman (Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court, Eastern
District of New York, New York University, Reagan appointee).
Kendall told how the case was ten years old. He pointed out that
Waldorf teacher trainer Betty Staley had been listed as both an
expert and a percipient witness. Kendall pointed out where in the
record Judge Damrell had said that it was a rule that an expert
witness couldn’t be a percipient witness. Kendall asserted that there
was no such rule. He referred to Brown v. Woodland, where the value
of experts in a church-state case was questioned, as the rationale
for PLANS not calling any experts.
Michelle Cannon argued for the defendants. Cannon insisted that the
defendants hadn’t heard of Staley being a percipient witness until
the day of the trial. That position strained credibility, given that
Staley had been deposed by PLANS years ago. Judge Korman interrupted
to object that there was no rule, and in any case, what was the harm
in having Staley testify? Judge McKeown also asked pointed questions.
Judge Korman suggested a compromise where the district court might
hold a hearing to determine whether Staley’s testimony was relevant.
Kendall said he wanted all three excluded witnesses, Betty Staley
(Rudolf Steiner College), Crystal Olson (California State University,
Sacramento), and Robert Anderson (WestEd).
Judge McKeown asked Kendall to address the issue that defendant Twin
Ridges Elementary School District no longer has jurisdiction over the
Yuba River Charter School (a Waldorf school). Kendall said PLANS
didn’t dispute that fact. McKeown suggested that the substitution of
the Nevada County Office of Education, now the chartering authority
for the school, as one of the Does named in the complaint was a
matter for the district court.
The Court issued a memorandum on November 21, 2007 (Case No.
05-17193). Judge Korman wrote for the court “The district court erred
in excluding the testimony of the witnesses in question. Because
PLANS intended to call the witnesses as percipient witnesses, it did
not need to comply with the court’s deadline for expert witness
disclosure. Moreover, the record indicates that PLANS disclosed the
witnesses as early as January 2001. Even if the witnesses had not
been properly disclosed, there was no prejudice as the School
Districts had previously designated the same witnesses as expert
witnesses.” The court reversed the decision of the district court
(Case No. CV-98-0266 FCD PAN) and remanded the case back to that
court.
BACKGROUND
Anthroposophy is the spiritual movement behind the world-wide network
of Waldorf schools. PLANS alleges that for Establishment Clause
purposes, Anthroposophy is a religious sect. The defendants claim
that it is a philosophy. This is a crucial issue in the case. If
Anthroposophy isn’t a religious activity, then PLANS can’t allege
that taxpayer-funded Waldorf schools violate the Constitution by
being entangled with religion. Common references classify
Anthroposophy as religious; for example, Encarta: “a religious
philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner from theosophy, holding that
spiritual development should be humankind’s foremost concern.”
PLANS contends that public Waldorf schools are intrinsically and
inseparably based on Anthroposophy. Curriculum decisions and teacher
training are based on Anthroposophy’s child development theory, which
defines stages of reincarnation, a religious doctrine. Science
teaching in Waldorf schools includes crackpot Anthroposophical
doctrines like “the heart is not a pump.” The framework for history
in Waldorf schools is based on Anthroposophy’s proto-Nazi racial
theory. Publicly funded use and reliance on the doctrines of
Anthroposophy endorses that religion in violation of the United
States and California constitutions.
PLANS filed its federal lawsuit in Sacramento on February 11, 1998,
naming as defendants the Sacramento Unified School District, which
operates a “Waldorf Methods” magnet school, and the Twin Ridges
Elementary School District, which carried on a veritable franchise
operation, establishing six “Waldorf-inspired” charter schools, all
located in other school districts.
In May, 2001, Judge Damrell dismissed the PLANS lawsuit against the
two school districts, based on lack of standing. PLANS appealed the
decision, and in February, 2003, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
confirmed PLANS’ right to sue the school districts as taxpayers and
reinstated the case.
When the U.S. District Court tried the case in September, 2005, PLANS
refused to proceed without the key witnesses and evidence that the
judge had excluded, forcing a dismissal. PLANS appealed, and the
appeal succeeded. The case now goes back to the Federal District
Court, Eastern District of California, in Sacramento.
WHAT IS PLANS?
PLANS was organized in late 1995 by former Waldorf parents and
teachers concerned about both private and public Waldorf schools. It
became a California non-profit corporation in 1997. PLANS’ mission is
to provide parents, teachers, and school boards with views of Waldorf
education from outside the cult of Rudolf Steiner, to expose the
illegality of public funding for Waldorf school programs in the US,
and to litigate against schools violating the Establishment Clause of
the First Amendment.
For more information, please see the PLANS web site,
https://waldorfcritics.org.
-30-
-Dan Dugan, Secretary
PLANS, Inc.
June 7, 2007
[Posting from the waldorf-critics list]
I received an off-list e-mail from an ex-waldorf parent whom I have not met but who knows me from a different list from this one. She asked me if I would post the following on her behalf as her e-mail account would reveal her identity. She still has Waldorf connections and wants to stay anonymous for the sake of her children. – Margaret
“Oh I just have to answer this one! After pulling my kids out of a ridiculous waldorf situation years ago, I went online and found this e-mail group. It was a relief to finally get to “connect the dots” – this group, “you folks”, isn’t a club of five concerned ex-parents living in one small town. “us folks” are people from all over the world – exwaldorf parents who have experiences with waldorf schools from ALL OVER the world. we are people who fx were told, in a singsong voice by some smiling Miss, that the children don’t have to be watched too carefully on their playground because they are working out their karma. or that they have guardian angels that will take care of them. (far from addressing the fact that just the year before a girl had cracked her scull while falling on the rocks around the sandbox – and no one had seen it happen, they had just found her unconscious in the sandbox after a while…) – and we went from thinking that the Miss must be crazy to thinking that maybe we were crazy to finally, on this list, find out that that is part of the dogma those poor souls of waldorf teachers are being fed and are regurgitating that is the cause of our strange experiences – we are not making this stuff up. there is something very cultlike in the way the Wschools want more converts but simultaneously foster an attitude of “better than thou” amongst it’s followers, eh i mean community, that pushes people away… there’s a lot of deception going on… both of newly seduced teachers and parents. … so it’s a relief and pretty funny to discover that there are other people out there who made the decision not to kid themselves anymore. i have very dear friends still in our local waldorf school – they are LOVELY people, i like them a lot. but they refuse to question or do any research online. these are intelligent people! one woman, who is married to a famous scientist , actually told me not to believe what i find “on the web”! another woman told me of how she visited the winter light ritual (when the children walk around in a spiral with a candle – i forgot what they call that one ) and she definitely got the feeling that it was a cult. she sat there all day, weighing for and against. they had just relocated from the city, the kids had been to public school and they were flourishing, they loved the community, and ultimately, she figured that if Kate and Bob and Joe and me had our kids in the school, it just COULDN’T be a cult, since we all are such reasonable and nice people… and we’ve all been there – now, after a couple of years of being at the public school i have to say that yes – a lot of things are easier to accept at a waldorf school. aesthetically it is much more pleasing, they don’t send home loads and loads of meaningless worksheets, the kids are outdoors – well, you know the pros.(and i hate to admit this prejudice; the parents are a heck of a lot more interesting than the parents at the public school!)
BUT the secrecy, the “us and them” mentality of the faculty and the “born again anthro parents” – it’s lunacy!! someone here once said that the waldorfgang was the most unintellectual group of people she ever met and I completely agree. i’ve been in studygroups where some old anthro is reinterpreting what steiner said and basically spewing racist ideas and these (mostly) moms just sit there, absorbing it all! when i asked several of the parents that had been to that particular group, if they didn’t feel that the old anthro had said ridiculous and racist things, they agreed but said you just have to take what she says with a grain of salt. how can a school, in todays world, let an old racist hold court in a “studygroup” and when called on it just excuse themselves with that she has to be taken with a grain of salt? when she says that northern europeans are more advanced? that “culture” and most inventions in the world comes from northern europe!?!? and that asian people are wispy and not as grounded as us northern europeans! it’s just so shocking that it’s almost unbelievable! and that is also the problemwith exposing the cult of waldorf – because sincerely, it IS a cult. and it would be completely fine, if they just were open about it. instead there is so much deception and secrecy going on that once you start exposing it, people just don’t want to believe that they had been so gullible. the issue about prayers is a perfect example – are they just verses or are they prayers. you go sit in a classroom where a bunch of four year olds are thanking god for the trees and the blossoms and some of them even saying amen at the end of it and then try to pretend it’s just a verse. and what’s with the completely selfish and immoral practices of these teachers!?!? You couldn’t make this stuff up! would you believe a scenario like this: it’s rumoured that a family has left because the father has or has not had a relationship with his daughters pregnant teacher. Coincidentally, the man’s wife is 9 months pregnant. The parents in the community gossip about it but try to pretend they don’t. Later, a bigger bomb hits – it turns out that another one of the female teachers was having an affair with an employee at the school. with her husbands best friend. the husband is also a teacher at the school. he in turn, ends up having a relationship with the pregnant teacher and he leaves his wife and their brood of kids for the other teacher. you might think this is either unbelievable or immoral or both. but it get’s better – and this is what just cracks me up: a LETTER goes out to the parents in the community stating that some unfortunate events have taken place and the parents are asked not to gossip about it and the school wants everybody to sign the letter, promising that they won’t gossip about it!!!! now try to get your heads around THAT scenario!”
Anonymous
by former Waldorf student Roger Rawlings
January 30, 2007
I grew up in two Camphill communities in North America, Beaver Run (PA) and Copake Village (NY). I spent half of my childhood sick in bed, and the other half working my ass off at whatever I could do to preoccupy myself and keep out of the home. Anthroposophy is a religion, and Camphill is a sect, a cult of fanatics pursuing spiritual development and ultimately perfection. They believe that sickness is the soul incarnating, and also that it has to do with karma. They don’t believe in inoculations, so I had all the child diseases going around, some twice. My being sick all the time was obviously not just the mumps and the measles and whooping cough, so they had the anthroposophical doctors in all the time, in between punishing me for being sick.(that’s why I stayed out of the house as much as I could) There were three doctors, one in Beaver Run, one in The Village, and one that practiced both places. One of them has long since passed away, and another is still alive and kicking, and I hear (and see by his own internet site) that he is doing quite well. The third was youngest of the three, so I imagine he too is up to his old stuff. I won’t mention names, but they are all the same. This brand of medicine is based on a world view that is twisted, and their medicine is not scientifically based. Its root is the religion as laid out by Rudolf Steiner, a theosophical megalomaniac. There is a lot of info on this on this PLANS web site, so I won’t go into this more. Instead I will write about my own first hand experience.
As it turned out I suffer from wheat intolerance. But I never found that out until I was around 36. My health had deteriorated gradually over the course of my adult life, and I ended up bedridden, hardly being able to breathe and all kinds of other wonderful stuff I don’t even want to write about.
Growing up on whole wheat bread made on double buffed and bleached flour from Government Surplus[1] with wheat germ sprinkled on top to make it look organic was the last thing I needed. I knew the food was making me sick, I felt it. But the feeling my parents had was that I should eat more of it, as I obviously needed to incarnate through the food. So I grew up being force fed food that was making me sick. The threat was that if I didn’t eat absolutely everything on the plate, I would get more. And believe me, I did. I reacted especially to bulgur, so my mother made that as often as she could. Bulgur is whole wheat, cooked like rice. That stuff made my legs weak and my stomach wrench. The doctors supported this treatment, wholeheartedly. This was a good, healthy, anthroposophical approach.
As a result, I had “weak lungs” throughout my childhood, constant tonsillitis, and an irritable stomach. As I got older, I learned to ignore the symptoms and get on, and I learned to eat everything on my plate. The doctors who “treated me” gave me little white sugar pills called infludo, and prescribed buckets and buckets of horsetail teat, and also chamomile tea. These two teas seem to be the anthroposophical answer to antibiotics, and they are upheld as miracle medicine. Also, guess what I got for the stomach? Yoghurt topped with wheat germ. Yummy! Just what the doctor ordered!
Another kid who had diabetes was treated with honey bee stings on his temples once a week. This makes sense because honeybees love the sugar, so of course it’s completely anthroposophically logical to sting kids with diabetes with honeybees! Another favourite of theirs was to treat any kind of arthritis the same way; treat inflammation with inflammation! Does your hand hurt? Come here, I’ll get a bee to sting it-now that’ll hurt!
I think the way this medicine works, is to scare the living daylights out of people. That combined with the placebo effect, faith, and cultivating the extreme. They actively discuss the foolhardiness and downright dangers of modern medicine contra their own brand, and propagate fear of modern medicine. I was effectively brainwashed to never question food, and shun traditional medicine. I was forced to eat the very food that was making me sick, under threat of being fed even more, even though I expressed that that very food was making me ill. The doctors, together with my parents, decided I needed to eat more of it to get better.
Anthroposophists also believe that eating potatoes makes you materialistic (which means unspiritual and worldly) and my plea to replace bulgur with potatoes was not only ignored, but also openly ridiculed. Robert is a little materialist!
In the end, after years of deprogramming myself in a process I dubbed “growing up twice”, I met a traditional doctor who had wheat intolerance in his family and therefore some good tips on an elimination diet to see what foods I was reacting to. After that I went to Norway’s top specialist on food allergy and intolerance and underwent a double blind testing on wheat, as blood tests were not conclusive. The result was 100 percent conclusive. I was wheat intolerant. The cure is to avoid wheat. Avoid what’s making your sick. They don’t know the mechanism behind it yet, but there is a direct correlation between ingesting wheat, and getting sick. The anthroposophists take the opposite approach, and say fight fire with fire, eat more, it will strengthen you. It’s kind of strange that they are so dead set against inoculations, which basically work that way, although the virus is modified and rendered essentially harmless.
We moved to Norway when we were teens, and since we hadn’t been inoculated, we all got the German measles, and after that meningitis. One sister was hospitalised, comatose, and in intensive care for months. We all missed out on months of school and I was honestly afraid for my life that winter. What saved us was that we lived in a duplex, and the neighbour was a doctor. He diagnosed my sister, and practically broke the door down with his antibiotics. I can still remember my parents’ hushed voices in the kitchen that night as they discussed whether the pills would damage our health. The good thing about Norway is that there are laws that protect the child against bad parents like these, and they would have been in trouble had they denied treatment. So for all you freedom lovers out there that put your kids through hell under the guise of doing them a favour; stop and think a bit about what you are doing. Think about the bigger picture. Think about the pain you are inflicting your helpless child, under the guise of caring, under the guise of wanting to do the best for them. Making children strong through pain and disease? Its killing them slowly but surely, that’s what I call it. These doctors are quacks, and their snake oil is killing your children. They make their living peddling sugar pills, bee stings and their particular brands of snake oil. They live off your fear and ignorance, and your yearnings to believe in a miracle medicine that will somehow turn your child’s world into Hobbitville, some la la land where the sun always shines, and where tea and honey and a kiss, and maybe a good spanking will get rid of the boo boo. Well, wake up and smell the horsetail tea–they are charlatans and witch doctors and should not be allowed to practice medicine.
I went back to work as a volunteer for one year in Copake when I was 18, and my health started to spiral quickly downwards. In Norway potatoes are a staple of the diet, and my parents adapted to this quickly, as food is also very expensive here, and potatoes are cheap. (Not such a problem with eating food that makes you materialistic when they had to pay for it from their own pocket!) But back in Camphill they were still making fake organic bread with (triple buffed now) government surplus flour in their own bakery, and washing it down with well water (against state regulations), and soup of the day. I didn’t know the cause of it, and was now so brainwashed into never questioning food, that I plodded on, and even started to search for a spiritual cause for my illness! In the end I went to the anthroposophical doctor. He had tended to me before, and knew my history well. I was sitting in his Camphill office, trembling, and I could hardly breathe, wracked in an agony that is indescribable. His prescription? Infludo, chamomile and especially, you guessed it, horsetail tea. And to sleep sitting up. That was the extent of it. He thought it was caused by my incarnating into the village, and it should work itself through as I participated more and more in village life. Translation? Get to work; get on with it, enough complaining already. Drink your tea; take your sugar pill and stop being in the way. I even started to believe it myself. It was either all in my head, or I had some serious spiritual issues to work through.
I got through that year somehow. In the beginning I had worked in the bakery, but managed to get transferred to a workshop. That’s probably what saved me, knowing what I know now. All those fresh cookies and rolls were not doing me any good.
Also, my housemother (each house was run by a couple, usually married) had a particular complication with sickness. She loathed it, saw it as a weakness, and didn’t want to even look at me, let alone offer me her thoughts and time or energy when I was sick. She held a hysterical speech the first time I was bedridden, how she felt this was something I had to go through and work through as my karma, and she didn’t think I should eat when I was sick, so she didn’t want to make me any food. Not even tea in fact. She was a very loud person, with an entirely unmusical, ear-piercing and high pitched warbly, yet grating voice that could cut your ear like a water saw. I was just happy to get her out of my immediate vicinity and agreed wholeheartedly with her in order to get some peace. And that was good for me, as it meant a temporary reprieve from the wheat. It’s interesting though that she was so complicated about disease, I mean they all were/are, but her father had been a medical doctor, even private physician to the king of Saudi Arabia. Which one I don’t remember, but she was very proud of this fact. And to top it all off, she has since gone on to become a doctor of sorts. So she’s out there treating people now! I wonder what her particular brand of alternative treatment is? . Starvation diet and isolation? I can only guess. Another interesting point to make here is that when she got sick with the flu herself, the whole house had to wait on her hand and foot. It was horsetail tea me here, chamomile tea me there. And the usual hodge-podge of vegetables and Government Surplus cheese baked in a pie dish wasn’t good enough for her, no sirree, she ordered steak. Extra rare thank you. Not quite so hysterical about the importance of not eating and being left alone when it came to her own self.
After that year I was in a Camphill place in Scotland for 3 months, and fared no better. I went to an anthroposophical doctor there, and he prescribed… you guessed it; horsetail tea, and thought that I should maybe break up with my Scottish girlfriend and go back to Copake, that I wasn’t incarnating very well and this relationship was bad for me. I must also add that she was not well liked by this time in Copake. They felt she wasn’t right for them, too Ahrimanic, too materialistic, and stealing me away from under their very noses. It was an awful mess.
By this time I had had enough of Camphill altogether, and we went back to Norway. I found work in a home for mentally handicapped adults that had been started by disgruntled ex-Camphillers. That suited me just fine. The health issues continued, and their anthroposophical doctor prescribed the same thing, and I pretty much gave up after that. I learned to live with it, and the symptoms came and went. I was sick a lot, catching anything and everything that was going around, and staying sick twice as long as everybody else. That’s a long time wasted. Years went by, and finally my body gave up. I became seriously ill, and the dance around the doctors’ offices started once again, only this time I was so marred by my experience with anthroposophical doctors that I only went to regular doctors, shunning anything and everything alternative. The road to recovery was long and winding, and it was chance, and in the end desperation that led me to the doctor who finally was able to help me. It has taken some years to recover the effects of ingesting what is essentially poison for my body, and I am not out of the woods yet. Maybe I never will be, maybe it took too long to find the culprit. Who knows, but I am alive and kicking, and each day is better than the rest.
In light of this, I do fully understand people who turn to these quacks through desperation, but I urge people to think and be critical. Its not just alternative medicine, it’s a religion based form of treatment under the guise of medicine. It is not based on science. It is based wholly on the religious beliefs of a crazed madman who believed himself a clairvoyant and called himself a spiritual scientist. It is my experience that his followers want to be just like him, and that is a dangerous thing. Can you imagine your doctor telling you that you are sick because he can see it in the Chakra records? Horsetail and chamomile tea do work when you have the flu or a common cold. Many people know this; it is common knowledge, folk medicine so to speak. But they’re not a miracle cure, far from it. I still use them. They taste terrible, but my own experience is that they help. Anthroposophical medicine has picked up some things from folk medicine, but I assure you, if the good Dr. Steiner had somehow come up with the idea that arsenic in large quantities was good for the gout, then anthroposophical doctors would still be prescribing it, albeit in secret. And there would surely be plenty of testimonies from people claiming that it cured them, and maybe other reports of people almost dying. And you can be sure that the anthroposophical society would focus all their efforts at discrediting these people as liars and lunatics, and carry on with their business in secret. For that is what they do best.
A post note: Intolerance to wheat and other foods is on the rise. Some doctors explain it as psychological in origin and cause; others accept it as purely physical but haven’t been able to determine the cause mechanism. It is a new area of medicine, and it should be said that this is also true for the anthroposophical doctors. My concern is that these doctors were so caught up in their secret theories that they didn’t listen to the patient. The ideology came before the fact. The same can be said of modern medicine, that the prevailing science does not support this group of patients’ problems. But the difference is that normal doctors will most often tell you to avoid a food that you feel is making you ill, and will encourage you to listen to the signals your body is telling you, even if they can’t take a blood test to show allergy or intolerance.
[1] Government surplus is just that, surplus agricultural products the government buys up to keep prices up and farmers in business. Non-profit organisations like Camphill can qualify to receive this food free of charge. They sent it in in 18 wheeler trucks. We got everything from raisins, chocolate chips, peanut oil, roasted peanuts, peanut butter, and every kind of cheese imaginable in great big industrial size blocks. During the butter shortage in the 70’s we had so much butter we used to make campfires with it. We also got cooking oil (mazola, corn and peanut), liverwurst, frozen orange juice and other juice concentrate, and most important, tons and tons of double, and later triple buffed bleached whole wheat flour. They never put that on the wrappers when they sold their wholesome village baked bread.
by Robert Smith-Hald.
By A.I. Finall, S.A. McIntosh, W.D. Thompson, BMJ 2006:333; 1293-1294.
Posted to the waldorf-critics list by Waldorf teacher Baandje
To: waldorf-critics@topica.com
From: baandje <bangus nb.sympatico.ca>
Subject: RE:’Childhood is not magical’ ~ Diana
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 16:39:16 +0000
IMO and as I said, Anthroposophical Waldorf often fails to address the
needs of the individual child and family. Diana’s comments regarding
childhood, joy and magic touch upon a major problem that’s at the heart
of Anthroposophical Waldorf in general.
The reason many Anthroposophical schools exist is because of the
Anthroposophy, period. It’s not because of the children. It’s because a
group of Anthroposophists have it in their minds to promote
Anthroposophy in the world. That’s the Michaelic spiritual task.
Educating children is secondary in these schools; or, it’s the means by
which these many Anthroposophical and cosmic Christian impulses are
incarnated.
In Anthroposophical Waldorf schools, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING centers
around the task of implementing Steiner’s spiritual scientific theories.
Educating children is looked upon in much the same way Anthroposophical
spiritual concepts are embraced: children are “temperaments” or “stages
of human development”; they’re vessels for purpose of receiving cosmic
wisdom in the form of an Anthroposophical curriculum. One could go even
further and say children in an Anthroposophical Waldorf school are
looked upon as “the future initiators of the Christ Impulse”. Again,
EACH INDIVIDUAL CHILD’S EDUCATION takes a back seat to the spiritual
scientific and cosmic Christian tasks and ideals of the Anthroposophical
initiative.
The idea of “magical childhood” is more than just a banal
generalization; it’s simply more spiritual theory and word play along
the lines of all those many other typical Anthroposophical spiritual
sayings: We must “strengthen our will” or we must “overcome our fear of
the future.” But what does any of it really mean, other than something
having to do with the way Anthroposophists conceptualize?
Does any of this spiritual conceptualizing and generalizing actually
have anything to do with the individual child, and with educating the
individual child? Maybe “the individual child in relation to
Anthroposophical theory and pedagogy”, or in relation to “the cosmos” or
“the Christ”. But that’s the issue here — that all of these grand
“magical” sayings and words are first and foremost about instilling and
reinforcing Anthroposophical spiritual theory, and nothing more. It is
not about educating the “individual child”.
dottie zold wrote:
>
> Banjee:
> > Dig deeper into this issue and you’ll unearth the
> > foundational reasons
> > as to why Anthroposophical Waldorf often fails the
> > individual child and
> > family.
>
> And that’s your opinion. I get there were many things
> you didn’t like about Waldorf or the teachers college
> and whathaveyou. There seem to also be quite a bit
> your not happy with in Anthroposophy as well. Doesn’t
> mean your opinion is correct nor does it mean it is
> invalid. Just that it is your opinion. And I have just
> encountered way to many families and young people to
> make such a broad statement as’waldorf often fails
> the individual family and child’. Broad Banjeetmon.
> Waldorf like any school system has lots of room for
> improvement. That would be normal.
by Robert Todd Carroll. Skeptics Dictionary
Posted to the waldorf-critics list 9/3/06, as published in Renewal, Spring/Summer 2006
Text posted to w-c 9/3/06:
The current issue of Renewal: A Journal for Waldorf Education
[Spring/Summer 2006, Vol. 15 No. 1] includes an extraordinary
editorial column by Ronald Koetzsch, PhD. He tells about his stand-up
comedy routine “The Beeswax Conspiracy” that he performs at Waldorf
schools. His show includes his “five-minute introduction to the basic
ideas of Spiritual Science” that he calls “Anthroposophy 101.” He
publishes it for the first time in the column.
Anthroposophy is notoriously difficult to pin down. You won’t find a
creed anywhere. Everything is in 40 books and 6000 lectures by Rudolf
Steiner, but it isn’t organized, and in any given lecture Steiner
jumps around from topic to topic. Anthroposophists are rarely able to
give a short or even truthful answer to a direct question about their
world-view.
Koetzsch has done the public a great service by summarizing the
doctrine succinctly. With the exception of one contradictory sentence
(see below), this summary should be given to every parent who
expresses interest in Waldorf.
*** quoted text follows
1) Behind every material phenomenon and process, even those that
appear inert and lifeless, is a spiritual reality with consciousness,
thought, and intention. We live in a conscious universe. This
spiritual dimension of reality is primary and creative and the
material manifestation derivative. Spirit survives the transformation
and disappearance of the material. This is a counterpoise to the
materialistic view of the primacy of matter.2) The invisible, spiritual world comprises a multiplicity of beings.
These include: the elemental spirits that ensoul the phenomena and
processes of the natural world; the group souls of the minerals,
plants, and animals; the souls of the so-called dead–human beings
who are in the life between death and rebirth; the folk souls of
different ethnic and national groups; and the nine celestial
heirarchies–from the angels and archangels up through the cherubim
and seraphim. The hierarchies are manifestations of attributes of a
single creator God, but are also independent beings.3) The human being is a creation of the celestial hierarchies. With
conscious intent and out of self-sacrificial love, they have created
the human being and the world as a manifestation of cosmic wisdom.
The human being is the crowning jewel of the creation. The entire
universe has been brought into being so that the human being might
come into existence. We are not the chance product of an impersonal,
mechanistic evolutionary process.4) The human being, in fact the entire cosmos, is a work in progress.
The aeons-long, divinely guided process of creation and development
is still going on and will go on indefinitely into the future.5) Each individual human being is going through his own unique
history and spiritual development. This individual destiny is
realized over multiple earthly incarnations. Each human individuality
has an undying spiritual essence that incarnates or takes on human
form in different cultures at successive points in history. One’s
circumstances and personality in one life are largely determined by
one’s karma, the carried-over effects of one’s decisions and deeds in
former lives.6) Part of our individual and collective human task at this stage in
history is to rediscover, as something intimately experienced and
known, the spiritual dimension of reality. Every human being has the
potential, though conscious striving and self-discipline, to directly
perceive and experience the spiritual world.7) Another part of our task is to become able to act in freedom and
out of selfless love for other beings.8) Human culture needs to be transformed according to a spiritual
vision of the human being. Every domain of human thought and
activity–education, medicine, agriculture, social, economic and
political life, art, architecture, religious life, care for the
elderly, and so on–must be renewed on the basis of a spiritual
understanding of the human being. Only if we do this will the
development of humanity and of the Earth continue in a positive way.9) Among the myriad spiritual beings, there are certain powerful
entities who oppose the divine plan. In other words, there are “bad
guys” out there as well as “good guys,” and the former are very
skilled at drawing people away from the path of development intended
by the higher spiritual beings, away from the realization of freedom
and love. These adversarial powers are necessary, however, because
without evil there would be no choice for human beings and hence no
true freedom.10) The incarnation of the Christ, a divine being intimately
connected to the Father God, in the human being, Jesus of Nazareth,
in Palestine 2000 years ago, was a unique and pivotal event in human
history. At a point when the adversarial forces threatened to
overwhelm humanity, the suffering, death on the cross, resurrection,
and ascension of Christ Jesus made possible the continued spiritual
development of the human being and of the Earth. Despite this
important Christological element, however, Anthroposophy is not a
church, a religious sect or denomination, and is not connected to
any. The resurrection forces of the cosmic Christ have been and are
still today available to all human beings, regardless of culture,
religion, nationality, or ethnic group.
*** end quoted text
Koetzsch comments that these ideas are “part of the foundation of
Waldorf Education.” “One need not subscribe to this view, but
understanding it will perhaps help one comprehend Waldorf Education
within its larger context.”
The ringer sentence is in No. 10: “Despite this important
Christological element, however, Anthroposophy is not a church, a
religious sect or denomination, and is not connected to any.” After
the refreshingly clear explanation of the beliefs of a group that
couldn’t, after reading the above, be categorized as anything other
than a religious sect, why was it necessary to make a flat-out
contradiction? It’s unfortunate that Koetzsch felt he had to repeat
the traditional Anthroposophical denial.
“Before the cock crows, you shall deny me thrice.” [Matt. 26:34]
Koetzsch is close to joining Eugene Schwartz in a pantheon of heroes
of the coming-out of Anthroposophy in the 21st century.
-Dan Dugan