MYTHS ABOUT WALDORF EDUCATION AND ANTHROPOSOPHY

Waldorf, or Steiner education is a 90 year old educational tradition, of European origin, that in a number of respects differs from public education. Today (2014), it is practiced at some 1,000 independent schools world wide, appr. 146 of them in North America.

In addition, the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education has a membership of 37 public Waldorf methods schools in the US. There are also 102 Waldorf Kindergartens that are members of WECAN (Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America).

For a number of decades now, there exists an abundance of published literature, including in English, on Waldorf education, Rudolf Steiner, and anthroposophy as the general philosophical basis of Waldorf education, and much information has also been available for a number of years on the internet.

In spite of this, some people find for various reasons that they have not been informed enough about and understood the nature and basis of Waldorf education, when putting their child or children in a Waldorf school.

This has been a problem especially to some parents with an outspoken secular humanist orientation, who have felt their philosophical world view challenged by Waldorf education, with anthroposophy as its spiritual philosophical basis, and to some parents with a fundamentalist Christian orientation.

Anthroposophy as such, as the philosophical basis for Waldorf education, is not taught in a theoretical sense, nor as a subject, at the overwhelming majority of Waldorf schools world wide.

In spite of this, some people have developed more or less intense, long term negative reaction for different reasons, at times in an obsessive direction. Such people have reacted by cultivating and publishing not only different forms of criticism but also a number of myths about Waldorf education, anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner as the founder of both Waldorf education and anthroposophy.

For a description and comment on some of these myths, see:

SOME MYTHS ABOUT WALDORF EDUCATION

SOME MYTHS ABOUT ANTHROPOSOPHY See also
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Copyright 2004-2014: Robert Mays and Sune Nordwall