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Alan speaks in a very symbolic and esoteric manner in some parts of his books. Although they can be read anthroposophically, passages speaking of Atlantis, archangels, gods, etc. do not need to be taken literarily to be meaningful. The more you read, the more you will realize he uses many different religions to express ideas in a symbolic manner and not in a religious manner. His writings are not religious. In some places his writings are meant to refer to religious events in a historical way. In some places he is using religious figures (from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Paganism, Ancient Roman and Greek Religions, etc.) in a symbolic manner. However, at no point is he promoting a specific religion or speaking from a religious point of view.
I have kept the writing as close to one-hundred percent original so you will also find that he speaks of Australia often and some spelling or manners of speaking may be cultural. Any words I have changed are presented like this: <word>.
Also keep in mind that these books are written by a Waldorf teacher with decades of experience who also studied with a Steiner student himself, so he speaks to an audience that is dedicating their lives to the Waldorf method without exception.
Because of this, all of his views are not reflected in the Earthschooling curriculum and not all of them may be ones you want to embrace or are able to use. In all of Alan Whitehead’s writings the opinions are his own and may not align with Earthschooling or Waldorf Books. In some cases, we will be updating some of these chapters in the future with additional and/or updated information.
Ultimately, however, as I read through these passages I find I can distill wisdom from even those paragraphs that do not resonate with me.
We invite you to read with an open mind and heart and with eagerness to learn and discuss…
STEINER SKITTLES SEXISM
A remarkable educational innovation occurred in a new school in Stuttgart, Germany in 1919 – and went almost unnoticed, remaining so to a large extent even today – especially in Australia.
This was the removal of any and all sexual biases in the schooling of children and adolescents, from 7 to 18 years of age – this was the birth of Rudolf Steiner Education.
In an age which was still suffering a hangover from an over-indulgence of materialism in the 19th Century, co-education, especially right up into senior high school, was virtually unheard of. In spite of the sheer moral outrage of the idea – of girls having the impertinence to be taught in the same school, let alone class, as boys – the over-whelming plausibility of the many detractors’ arguments was clear to all. One such being: How could students concentrate on their ‘Causes of the Great War’ studies – or whatever – when sitting behind some attractive member of the opposite sex? But in the new Steiner co-educational schools, concentrate they did – most of the time anyway!
Another initiative which suffered opprobrium from the paternalistic German community, was the policy of equal pay, and hence status, for women and men teachers. The inference of female inferiority was purged in the Steiner schools, where the kindergarten teacher was regarded as highly – and paid accordingly – as the high school science teacher. All this in a time when women were even barred from election to parliament in Australia, due to their perceived ineptitude!
Another Steiner anti-sexism policy was an attempt to staff the schools with approximately the same number of men and women teachers. A couple of token females will inevitably find themselves under emotional siege in a school dominated by men – and vice versa! A less controllable but ideal aspect of this eternal Yin Yang element, is the balance of boys and girls in a class. How easier it is to teach if one doesn’t have to sustain half a dozen cowering little chaps from the power gams of 20 or so 11-year-old girls, who, according to one of those mysteries of human development, are generally more mature at this age anyway.
Yet boys and girls are intrinsically different, in spite of the convoluted arguments of some misguided feminists to convince us otherwise, any co-education schoolteacher knows this. But the separation begins at home: families who are highly conscious of not programming their tots into stereotypical female/male roles, are perennially disappointed to find baby Jane running out to show daddy her new dress, coquetting around for approval – ‘She didn’t get it from me!’ pleads her dungaree-clad mum.
Or the 2-year-old boy who, in spite of the fact that mum drives him round more than dad, is obsessed with grabbing the steering wheels with a ‘vrroom, vvrrrrooommm’; while his sister shows no interest at all.
Through different, boys and girls are certainly equal – and yet the differences between the sexes are not nearly as great as those things which distinguish individuals. It was on this basis that Rudolf Steiner brought into the world the most innovative educational initiative of this, or any other century – all girls and all boys were to be taught all subjects, from Class 1 right up the Class 12!
Apart from the universality of human nature that this implies, it also stormed the bastions of both male andfemale preserves – jealously guarded by patriarchal and matriarchal societies in cultures everywhere!
Little boys have no self-conscious reaction to learning to knit in Class 1 – big girls enter eagerly into the mysteries of mechanical engineering in Class 8 – reconditioning a Holden motor as occurred in one instance. Right through what is loosely called the Steiner curriculum, there is a recognition of the rounding out of the individual by exposing him/her to as wide a range of learning experiences as possible. A small selection taught in these ahead-of-their-time; non-exam schools follows:
Boys learn to use the sewing machine in one of their Craft, 3-week afternoon block lessons. (All subjects are ideally taught in theme units of about 3-weeks, rather than the fragmenting and time-wasting ‘period’ method.) In others the boys learn Domestic Science, with an important strand being that of culinary skills.
Many of the girls love the Metalwork strand of the Technics stream, whether it be sheet metal work or tool making.
Who says only girls need to know about babies? All Class 10 boys share the Pediatrics or Child Care unit with the girls, learning about the care, feeding and emotional nurture of infants. These future fathers, at present rough-around-the-edges adolescents, actually learn to bathe a real baby – and girls are taught how to make suitable playthings.
And so the list goes on: girls are engrossed in the internecine world of Foreign Affairs and Military Science in Class 11; boys in their Secretarial unit where, among other things, they learn how to tipe…type! The girls go Scuba Diving, the boys do Eurythmy, a movement art requiring great sensitivity. Both are engaged in a comprehensive Dance program right from Class 1, where these uninhibited 7-year-olds hold hands in their beautiful circle dances. And they’re still holding hands in their strictly Modern Jazz Ballet unit in Class 7!
Your correspondent was not given the choice in his 1950s State high school between the electives of Art and Maths – ‘Only girls do art!’ he was informed. He consequently failed Maths and became, among other things, a graphic artist! All lesson examples in this article were taken from his own experience as a teacher in Rudolf Steiner schools in Australia. In these schools, all boys and girls do all the arts – in the Visual Arts, this culminates in a Figure Drawing unit, using live, nude models. Oh how this helps break down the potential for exploitative, secretive attitudes to the boy of the opposite sex. And how mature is the conduct of these 18-year-olds as they see the model before them, as naked as a robin’s egg, as a problem of foreshortening and tonal perspective, rather than as a sex object.
Australia regards itself as an enlightened country – alas not so in education; 19th Century sexist (and other) attitudes prevail, in spite of a few gratuitous changes, girls are still channeled into the support roles of life – guys are programmed to be cannon fodder or corporate heads. I guess not much has really changed since that first school in Stuttgart revolutionized the roles of men and women in education – but 70 years later the Steiner schools are still working on it!
“Strong in body, free in soul, and lucid in spirit – these three are needed for the future above all else.” Rudolf Steiner, Oxford, August 1922
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