When I enrolled my children in Marin Waldorf School in San Rafael, California, I thought I’d found an ideal environment for them to flourish. Outdoor play, creative expression, a “whole-child focus,” and an emphasis on values over grades seemed like a refreshing approach to start off their education. Waldorf presented itself as a non-denominational, alternative education rooted in art and nature, all wrapped in a philosophy that promised to foster a child’s innate curiosity and imagination.
We aren’t a religious family, and I wouldn’t have ever considered sending our kids to religious school. Unbeknownst to me, by enrolling them in Waldorf, I did just that.
The First Signs: A Surprising Conversation
About three months into our first year at Waldorf, I was having dinner with my kids (3 and 5 at the time) when the subject of the recent passing of their grandmother came up. Not one to shy away from existential conversations with my kids, I asked them about where they thought she was.
Out of nowhere, my daughter matter-of-factly stated that her grandmother was in “heaven.” Her use of this term caught me off guard; we had never discussed heaven as a concept. Where did she learn of this? When I inquired, she told me her teacher had taught her about heaven.
Kids pick things up everywhere – TV, friends, other family members. But I didn’t expect such a thing to come from a kindergarten school curriculum. So naturally, my first thought was that it was a rogue teacher forcing her own beliefs on the children!
So I reached out to her teacher right away, and she invited me to talk to her in person1. When we spoke, she assured me that the word “heaven” wasn’t intended in a religious sense, just as a general non-denominational concept. She downplayed the whole thing and assured me that it was a minor part of the program and not her personal belief (which is what I had feared).
Being new to the school, I decided to let it slide, assuming this was a one-off esoteric lesson in world spirituality. I’d soon learn that it was anything but.
Birthday Celebrations with Angels & Heaven
My concerns took a more serious turn at the end of the school year. Waldorf kindergarten holds birthday celebrations for each child, and since my children have summer birthdays, theirs were celebrated at the end of the school year. What I witnessed left me speechless. The kids performed a reenactment of birth where children were depicted as “choosing” their parents with “angels” at their side and descending over the “rainbow bridge” from “heaven.”
This ceremony, presented to the children on a regular basis, was overtly ideological, explicitly religiously-themed, and yet offered as part of a “non-denominational” curriculum. Seeing it unfold, with children acting out the roles, I realized this wasn’t just abstract or symbolic spirituality; it was a full presentation of religious themes.
It struck me how little access parents were given to the classrooms (unlike public schools), making it nearly impossible to gauge just how much of this was part of the daily lessons. It left me with more questions than answers: Was this Christianity in disguise? Was it some attempt at early comparative religious education? Why didn’t they tell us they would be teaching this to the kids in the first place? Who was Rudolf Steiner and why did the teachers seem to hold him in such high regard?
Heaven, Angels, and Festivals
Throughout the year, I found other indications that spirituality was deeply embedded in the Waldorf curriculum. The school celebrated seasonal events like “Michaelmas,” a schoolwide festival with distinctly spiritual themes like “Archangel Michael” slaying the “materialistic” dragon.
One day, as I walked past a second-grade classroom, I heard the children singing with their teacher in their classroom (away from parents): “Angels are watching over me, my lord. Angels are watching over me…” It was unsettling to realize that these “teachings” were woven into the fabric of Waldorf education under the false label of being “non-denominational.”
At this point, I had to confront the disconnect between Waldorf’s presentation of itself and the reality we were experiencing. The emphasis on spirituality, angels, and heaven wasn’t incidental—it was intrinsic to the school’s identity. For a family like mine, which values the importance of secular education, this was troubling. I’d come to realize that while Waldorf claimed to be non-religious, the lines between education and belief were being blurred in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
The Long-Term Impact on My Kids
After we finally left Marin Waldorf, I began to recognize just how deeply these teachings had settled into my children’s worldview. While Waldorf had failed to teach either of my kids to read or do basic math (my daughter was 8!), they had been imbued with a Christian esoteric belief system (that I would later come to know as “Anthroposophy”).
I was inspired to finally write this article this morning, when my 6-year-old son confidently informed me over breakfast that people either go to heaven or hell when they die, and that hell is for people who are “bad.” He went on to tell me that people who go to heaven get to come back, and people who go to hell stay there.
You’ll note that this ideology is not explicitly Christian, combining concepts from Hinduism (reincarnation) and Christianity (heaven/hell). At first glance you might assume that such beliefs might have arisen from an innocuous non-denominational interfaith education program exploring world religions! Alas, these beliefs come directly from Anthroposophy, which blends aspects of Christianity with mysticism, Eastern spiritual philosophies, and Gnostic ideas. Waldorf proponents will swear up and down that Anthroposophy never enters the classroom, so I ask: Why does my son sound like a young Anthroposophist?
My daughter then went on to explain to me that hell is at “the bottom of the earth and heaven is at the top” as my son agreed with her from a knowing place. When I asked them where they’d learned all this stuff, they told me unsurprisingly that their Waldorf teachers taught them this. I was struck by how naturally both of them accepted these ideas and how deeply-held they seemed to be. And this makes sense, because an authority figure that they respected conveyed these spiritual beliefs as “facts” under the guise of education.
As a parent, I’ve always believed that children should be able to form their own beliefs as they grow, without dogmatic ideas imposed upon them from a young age. I try to teach them about different viewpoints, with the hope that they will one day be able to think critically. I don’t believe in organized religion, and I especially don’t believe in teaching religious doctrines to young children who aren’t ready to critically evaluate them.
And yet, here I am, slowly undoing the strange and dogmatic teachings they received at Waldorf. I’m left feeling like, by attending kindergarten at Waldorf, my kids were indoctrinated into a religious cult.
Reflections on Our Waldorf Journey
I can understand why Waldorf’s emphasis on creativity, nature, and spirituality appeals to so many parents. There’s a sense of wholesomeness to it that draws us in, a promise to protect children’s natural wonder in our fast-paced, technology-laden world. But in hindsight, the Waldorf approach seems fundamentally deceptive and manipulative.
The best analogy I can make to my experience was when I visited a state-run “museum” on my trip to Cuba. The museum was advertised as housing objects pertaining to Cuba’s history, but it ended up being a biased tribute to Fidel Castro. It contained many historical objects, indeed, but it was hardly a “museum” in the traditional sense: it was curated to tell a biased story with an agenda.
Leaving Waldorf felt exactly like that for me: they identify as a “school,” and they’ll swear up and down that there’s no religion taught there. But nevertheless, they secretly taught our children theological concepts rooted in a single esoteric worldview called Anthroposophy. So I am left with the same impression: is this really just a “school,” or does it have a secret agenda?
In so many ways I am grateful our kids are now in public school (despite the academic challenges in transition) but I’m left with a sense of regret for not doing more research or realizing sooner what was actually going on behind closed doors.
My goal is to spread the word about Waldorf with prospective parents, before they sign up for a program that is (at the very best) hiding the truth about itself.
- As an aside, with time, I discovered that Waldorf staff never seemed to want to put anything down in writing.