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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…
WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST STEINER HIGH SCHOOLS?
Even Rudolf Steiner was an adolescent once.
In a world dominated by material values, as it is in the West, a high school educational system has developed in which the overwhelming emphasis is directed to the preparation of youth for the workforce. Education has become the handmaiden of capitalism.
The price however is heavy – for the community in general, and even more so for the individual; so many important facets of human nature are neglected int his paranoid process, like social and living skills, self-expression and spiritual awakening.
Modern education has created a new class system due to its discriminatory and elitist nature; based not on past values like breeding or wealthy, but on intellectual gifts alone. The brightest students have become the new privileged ‘IQocracy’! Alas those at the other end of the scale swell the ever-increasing ranks of the Welfare State, with its attendant community reprobation and erosion of self-esteem.
Rudolf Steiner Secondary Education is a yeast of life in the learning loaf, introducing universality, creativity and Spirit to every aspect of schooling – for every individual. Students enter life with their humanity intact, their optimism high, and the will to contribute kindled.
At the end of World War I, Germany was in a parlous state, culturally, politically and economically. It was this national turpitude that convinced Emil Molte, a director of the Waldorf cigarette factory in Stuttgart, to ask Rudolf Steiner’s help in providing educational nourishment to the children of the factory workers.
This Steiner did, establishing the Stuttgart Waldorf School with the generous assistance of Molte. The term ‘Waldorf’ really only should apply to this first school, the more appropriate ‘Steiner school’ being the generic term used world-wide.
Steiner employed the best traditions of Dominican academic disciplines, Franciscan compassion for Man and the world, the Cistercian devotion-to-task principles. He imbued each with direct spiritual knowledge; his insights into the mystery of the human being have been reconfirmed a thousand times by teachers in Steiner schools ever since.
Schools mushrooming all over the world, attracting community, government and business support, due in no small part to one factor – creativeness.
The schools stand midway between the two poles in education; those of A.S. Neill and Jean Piaget. Neill encouraged heightened communicative and self-determination skills at the expense of learning structure – academic standard fell accordingly in the ‘progressive’ schools.
Piaget’s theories in relation to human nature are based on Darwinian materialism, categorizing the young so that a competitive streaming and de-humanizing grading can be affected. To us an oxymoron, a Degrading grading!
Steiner espoused excellence in learning on all levels, accomplished by the body, soul and Spirit being involved at every turn. This is one reason that Steiner schools have largely side-stepped the audio-visual revolution – there’s no spirit in a T.V. set! Direct communication, soul-to-soul, is still, and always will be, the best communication medium.
German education for the masses comprised schooling from Class 1 to 8; only the elect were chosen to enjoy the privileges of a secondary education beyond 14 years of age. The original Waldorf School was structured in this expectation; that the (patently NON-elect) children would leave school to seek apprenticeships and employment at the completion of class 8. So the Class 1 to 8 primary school was established.
But when the young people found that their education was so enriching, they begged – in spite of convention – to be permitted to continue to Class 12. They experienced for the first time, that education was a body-soul-spirit enriching phenomena in its own right. And so the first Steiner high school was born, an initiative of the students!
They were the first of generations of Steiner high school students who found truth in Francis Bacon’s postulate ‘I would live to study, not study to live.’
It is this school, for a few short years under the stewardship of Steiner himself, that we have continual recourse to in conducting Steiner high schools even today, some 70 years later; such as the rejection of the examination system, elective subjects and sexism to name a few. If Steiner did it, all other things being equal, like the Class 8 high school entry, it must be the right way – for Steiner schools at least!
Rudolf Steiner’s encyclopedic indications on child development, stress a 7-year cyclic evolution; the first 7 years is complete with the change of teeth; 7 to 14 is the second stage – Class 1 to 7. This of course is brought to a close by puberty – the beginning of the 3rd, 14 to 21 stage – Class 8. The emergence of the independent Astral Body!
It is the recognition of this inviolable and immutable truth of human nature that, with the broad-based introduction of secondary schooling for the masses, the division between primary and high can be based, not on the strictures of social convenience, but on the realities of human nature. When do the schools in your region begin high school? Conversely, it is a sin against the soul of the child to begin thigh school in Class 7, the true end of primary.
From Stuttgart, the Steiner schools spread through Europe and England, but prolifically in Germany – where they were most needed I daresay! But in the 1930s, Steiner’s predictions of a stifling of spiritual life were realized under the jackboot of national Socialism.
The Steiner schools, bright lamps in a stormy night, were snuffed – the light went underground. Through the unbending will of the banned Steiner community, the teaching of the children continued in secret – right through the war! To pop up like optimistic mushrooms after Germany’s defeat. An inspiring precedent to recall in times of travail. If the gods intend something to take place, so it will, regardless of man’s illusions!
And the gods meant this new and beautiful educational initiative, this Wanderer Butterfly, to emigrate to the antipodes. Steiner Education came to Australia in 1957 with a class of just 3 children – humble beginnings! A deed of spiritual confidence by teacher/s, parents and albeit unconsciously, the three kindergarten children, of great moment!
By 1967, this first, and at that time still the only, Steiner school in Australia, felt strong enough to embark on a high school – your author had the privilege of being part of this courageous venture as a Class Guardian.
He was in turn a co-founder of the second Steiner school in Australia, which began in 1971. Yet again, the secondary school took ten years to materialize (or spiritualize, depending on your perspective), beginning with its first Class 8 in 1981. The 5-year journey that followed, with your author as pioneer Class Guardian, was the first attempt to model a secondary school as accurately as possible on the Stuttgart original – especially in eschewing the exam system and introducing a universal curriculum in which all boys and all girls participate in all subjects.
From that time on, Steiner schools, and to a lesser extent the high school component, have flourished in Australia, with new ventures starting every year. Is there a Steiner school near you? If not, why not start one – it gets easier all the time!
The Australian schools stand as an important 5th option to the four other educational streams: the elitist private schools; the State schools; the Catholic schools; and the ‘alternative’ educational establishments (one hesitates to use the word school at all with some of them!).
Steiner schools attempt to embody the Best of that offered by all four – the academic excellence of the private schools; the egalitarianism of the State schools (no student should ever be refused entry to a Steiner school); the commitment to spiritual values (though not the same values, Steiner schools are non-sectarian, non-political, non-everything!) as the church schools; and the respect for the individual, the linchpin of the Progressive school movement.
These four principles – excellence, egalitarianism, spiritual values, and individualism – together form the metaphysical Being of Man. They express Physical, Etheric, Astral and ego realities in that order. To educate the Whole Man, an equal emphasis should be given to each of the four. And that’s how it’s done in a Steiner high school!
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