by David Marshak

ED Note: In the September issue of The Global Intelligencer, David Marshak introduced the Waldorf education approach and described its holistic view of child development. We decided to follow-up with a more detailed exploration of the wisdom and drawbacks of applying an early twentieth-century European educational philosophy to the educational needs of today's highly globalized children. Here are his thoughts.

Waldorf schools offer a pedagogy that engages the whole child in profound and deeply nurturing ways. Steiner understood intuitively what 80 years of research in developmental psychology and 40 years of research into brain function have taught us. In addition I believe that Steiner knew a great deal more about human nature and human becoming than science has yet to uncover, particularly about the energetic and spiritual aspects of human beings.

The Waldorf curriculum is a work of genius, and for some or many children and their parents, Waldorf schooling is the answer to their hopes and dreams for education. (We don't really know how widely Waldorf schools might be effective because there are so few schools compared to the school age population as a whole, they are relatively expensive, and although all of the schools offer scholarship assistance, most of the students nonetheless come from middle class and wealthy families).

However, as Ron Miller noted in his Holistic Education column in August, Waldorf is not a good fit for all children. The Waldorf classroom is usually a very caring, indeed a loving environment, but it is nonetheless very much a teacher-led classroom. For some or many children who would benefit from a more self-directed and/or democratic learning environment, the adult-led qualities of the Waldorf model can be a poor match.

This potential for mis-match points to two paradoxical qualities in Waldorf education. First, Steiner taught that the soul of each child can act as her/his inner teacher and that we must give the child freedom appropriate to her/his level of unfoldment so s/he can guide her/his own learning and growth. Yet he created a teacher-centered pedagogy with a specified curriculum largely the same for all children. I believe that Steiner acted in this seemingly contradictory way because the teachers in his school in 1919, all novices in his approach, needed such detailed guidance. Once the original Waldorf school was operating, Steiner did have some ongoing involvement with it, but he was occupied with a multitude of other pursuits and then died in 1924. Thus he never had the opportunity to evolve the Waldorf curriculum and pedagogy beyond its start-up forms.

Steiner emphasized the central role of evolution in the life of human beings and in particular the spiritual evolution underlying all manifestation on this planet. It's difficult to believe that he would want a school that he created for German children in 1919 to be a planetary model for schooling in 2007. Rather it seems almost certain to me that he would perceive evolutionary movement since 1919 and most likely would advocate for education today that more directly manifested his desire to honor the soul, the inner teacher, of the child and give her/him appropriate freedom to unfold her/his gifts.

One particular example of change in some significant number of human beings since 1919 resides in the pace of human unfoldment common in North America today. In 1919 in Germany, young people in grades 6, 7, and 8—mostly ages 12-15—were still children in most respects. Thus, when Steiner prescribed an 8-year relationship between student and teacher in the Waldorf school, the duration of this quasi-parental relationship made good sense. Only after 8th grade did most young people begin to explore and develop what would become their initial adult identity.

In North America today, many or most young people in grades 6-8 are clearly no longer children. Rather they are adolescents already engaged in individuation and identity development, a process that requires separation from their parents. While this process probably never demands as much conflict as was thought to be the case in the 1960s, it nevertheless places significant stress on both adolescent and parent and involves some inevitable conflict and dramatics.

For parents, this is an inescapable responsibility; it's a part of parenting that your child will grow up and become her/his own person and that most young people will push away from their parents as they do. For Waldorf school teachers who have bonded deeply with children and devoted six or seven years to their education within a quasi-parental relationship, it can be very disconcerting and/or disturbing to experience this sort of distancing and/or rebellion from their students, because their now adolescent students experience their Waldorf teacher as if he/she were another parent from whom they needed to gain separation. While I have no large scale data that speak to this issue, I have heard several anecdotal examples of this kind of experience from Waldorf school teachers recently: of five or six years of profound harmony and deep mutual regard in the classroom being followed by two years or so of unexpected conflict, disharmony, and unpleasantness. If this is becoming a more common occurrence within Waldorf schools, then I'd hope that the Waldorf school movement would find a way to adjust its structure to better fit the evolutionary changes in human beings, for example, by creating something more like a middle school, with multiple teachers, for students after 5th or 6th grade.

The worldwide Waldorf school movement faces a profound challenge in my view. Today the movement is stronger and more widespread than it has ever been. There are more Waldorf schools than ever before. But to grow and continue to serve, I believe that Waldorf school people need to find a way through which they can evolve Waldorf education beyond Steiner's 1919 specifics so that it can live in the present rather than becoming reified in the past.

David Marshak has taught people of all ages, led schools and school districts, and studied education and schooling for several decades, most recently at Seattle University. He is the author of The Common Vision: Parenting and Education for Wholeness. For more of this work: thefutureofeducation.org

Two questions that parents often ask about Waldorf schools

Why do Waldorf schools ask or require parents to limit or prohibit their child's use of electronic media? For example, the Waldorf School in Princeton, New Jersey, explains:

"In working with children and observing their play, we have found that the influence of media and technology-related activities (television, computers, movies, DVDs, electronic games, etc.) can have a profoundly negative effect on their developmental health and the social health of the class. We strongly encourage limitation or elimination of these activities."

A variety of studies support the limitation of screen media for elementary school age children in terms of reducing aggression and supporting creativity and the imagination. There is not much research on the complete removal of such media from children's lives. For most Waldorf school students in the elementary grades, the common mass media culture of our time is not a central part of their lives.

Parents must make their own decisions as to how they want their child to interact both with electronics and with the mass media culture. This is a question not so much of research but of values; what is the nature and quality of life that I want my elementary school age child to experience? One pertinent research finding is that young people who don't spend much or any time on computers as children can certainly develop effective computer skills as teens and adults.

Does the Waldorf school's value of allowing each child to develop at her/his own pace hinder the child's ultimate capacity for accomplishment as an adult?

We live in a mass culture today in which many parents are both anxious about their child's normality and desirous of giving their child a step up on the competition. Thus we have Baby Einstein and a slew of similar programs and products.

If you believe that human beings are spiritual beings manifesting in physical form, then most of this anxiety and competitive zeal are unnecessary and destructive. The vast majority of children are "normal," yet more importantly every single child is unique. Mozart was writing symphonies when he was 5 years old. At the same age Einstein was just beginning to talk on a regular basis. And, of course, Albert Einstein never listened to Baby Einstein.

Waldorf schools create a school context where each child is allowed to grow and unfold at her/his own rate, to a significant extent. This is an enormous benefit in our society today where so many of our educational leaders are stuck in an early 20th century paradigm that sees learning as an industrial process in which the desired product is that all kids will know the same things at the same time. Of course, this approach guarantees failure for millions of children while it represses or destroys the curiosity, imagination, and creativity of millions of others. All of the "losers" lose, and many of the "winners" lose, too.