Humanities Humanize

In “The Last Professor” (NY Times, January 18, 2009; http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/), Stanley Fish writes:

“In previous columns and in a recent book I have argued that higher education, properly
understood, is distinguished by the absence of a direct and designed
relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world.This is
a very old idea that has received periodic re-formulations. Here is a statement
by the philosopher Michael Oakeshott that may stand as are representative
example:

‘There is an important difference between learning which is concerned with
the degree of understanding necessary to practicea skill, and learning which is
expressly focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining.’

"Understanding and explaining what? The answer is understanding and
explaining anything as long as the exercise is not performed with the purpose of
intervening in the social and political crises of the moment, as long, that is,
as the activity is not regarded as instrumental – valued for its contribution to
something more important than itself.”

On the one hand, we may applaud the argument against instrumental learning—necessary for heart surgery, less so for the humanities. On the other hand, doesn’t this “education for education’s sake” argument smack of the same snobby meaninglessness as “art for art’s sake”? I don’t buy it; it reeks of false purity. The humanities (“Geisteswissenschaften,” or “spiritual sciences,” in German) are the studies that have the "function" of humanizing us, if only we don't lose sight of our own humanity. This is instrumental in the highest possible way, and produces measurable effects in the broadest, most multivariate way.

We may drive the hermeneuts and humanitarians out of instrument-minded universities and underground, and we may see ourselves into a new dark age. (Irony of ironies—universities started as cathedral schools, when all there was was humanities, and brought us out of the dark ages.) But let’s not lose sight of the highest function of education, beyond job prospects, life skills, degrees, civic awareness, dumbing-down for corporate tooling—the creation of human beings.

Oakshott is right, but Fish is wrong (too tempting--and too strong a statement--to write, "Fish stinks").

Representations of Waldorf Education VIII: Conclusion and References

Conclusion: Unconscious Precipitation

Through the work of Harwood, Gardner, Richards, Schwartz and Oberman, we can trace, on the one hand, the precipitation of the concept “Waldorf” out of the work of Rudolf Steiner and into its employment in the United States. On the other hand, we can trace a fluid discourse that defines or describes Waldorf education in terms that necessarily take into account historical and cultural contexts. Both processes have proceeded largely unconsciously. For each author, that is, the contemporaneous concept of “Waldorf education” is little in question, except as it opposes or addresses some question of education generally. Similarly, for each author, historical context is seen not so much as a temporary or contingent situation but as the given ground for argument. As contexts change, therefore, these representative books become relatively obsolete, rocks in a river of change, and anyone seeking to know Waldorf education in the present must seek largely elsewhere.

References
Almon, Joan. 1999. Interview by author, tape recording, June 26, Toronto.
Barfield, Owen. 1966. Romanticism Comes of Age. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Beard, C. (1913/1986) An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. The Free Press, NY.
Chase, Alston. 2000. “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber.” Atlantic Monthly, 285, 6, 41-65.
Crain, William. 1992. Theories of Development: Concepts and Applications. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Easton, Stewart. 1982. Man and World in the Light of Anthroposophy. Second, revised, edition. Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press.
Emmet, Beulah. Undated. From Farm to School: The Founding of the High Mowing School. Photocopy.
Fox, Matthew, ed. 1987. Hildegard of Bingen’s Book of Divine Works with Letters and Songs. Santa Fe, NM: University of Santa Fe Press.
Gardner, John. 1975. The Experience of Knowledge: Essays on American Education. Garden City, NY: Waldorf Press.
———. 1992. Two Paths to the Spirit: Charismatic Christianity and Anthroposophy. Great Barrington, MA: Golden Stone Press.
———. 1996. Education in Search of the Spirit: Essays on American Education. (The Experience of Knowledge: Essays on American Education , 2nd ed.) Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press.
Gruber, Howard. 1998. Personal conversation, April 14, New York.
Harwood, A. C. 1958. The Recovery of Man in Childhood: A Study in the Educational Work of Rudolf Steiner. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Higham, John. 1962. Beyond Consensus: The Historian as Moral Critic. American Historical Review 67, 609-25.
Kelley, E. and M. Rasey. 1952. Education and the Nature of Man. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Lemisch, Jesse. 1968. The American Revolution Seen From the Bottom Up. In Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, Barton Bernstein, ed. New York: Knopf.
Oberman, Ida (1999) Fidelity and Flexibility in Waldorf Education, 1919-1998. UMI Dissertation Services: Ann Arbor. UMI Number 9924473.
Oppenheimer, T. (1999) “Schooling the Imagination.” The Atlantic Monthly, 284, 3, 71-83, September.
Piaget, Jean. 1965. Developments in Pedagogy. In The Essential Piaget: An Interpretive Reference and Guide. Howard Gruber and Jacques Voneche, Eds. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc.
Richards, M. C. 1980. Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Schwartz, Eugene. 1999. Millennial Child: Transforming Education in the Twenty-first Century. Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press.
Sloan, Douglas. 1983. Insight-Imagination: The Emancipation of Thought and the Modern World. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Smith, P. (undated) Taking a Risk in Education: Waldorf-Inspired Public Schools. Sunbridge College, NY.
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. 1978. A World Split Apart: Commencement Address Delivered at Harvard University, June 8, 1978. New York: Harper & Row.
Steiner, Rudolf. 1970. The Philosophy of Freedom. Seventh English edition. Michael Wilson, trans. London: Rudolf Steiner Press.
Talbott, Stephen. 1995. The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly and Associates.
Traub, James. 2000. Schools Are Not the Answer. New York Times Magazine, January 16.
Winkler, F. (1970) “Recollections of Alarik W. Myrin.” In One Man’s Vision: In Memoriam, H.A.W. Myrin, 1884-1970. Proceedings, The Myrin Institute for Adult Education, New York, NY. Fall 1970.

Representations of Waldorf Education VII: Fidelity and Flexibility

A fifth book, Ida Oberman’s fascinating and much-needed historical study of Waldorf education in Germany and the United States, Fidelity and Flexibility in Waldorf Education, 1919-1998, supports my division of the history of Waldorf schools into generations, representing three of them in its third section. Oberman’s book is divided into three sections. The first examines the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart from its founding until Rudolf Steiner’s death in 1925. The second examines the course of Waldorf education in Germany after Steiner’s death and during the rise and reign of the Nazis. The third traces the transplantation of Waldorf education to the United States.

The first section locates the origin of the first Waldorf school in Steiner’s intellectual biography. From his interests in Goethe and theosophy, through the founding of the Anthroposophical Society to the threefold social movement, Oberman details the bases for a curriculum based in German cultural history, school administration independent of the state (“free” schooling), and the idea of schooling as social transformation. By anchoring the founding of the first school in the realities of Steiner’s life and the social and political life of Germany after World War I, Oberman provides perspective on what otherwise can seem like a Waldorf decalogue, handed down once and for all time without apparent compromise or context. To add to the context or “cultural field” described by Oberman, as Nancy Parsons Whittaker has suggested, the curriculum of the first school, for example, was also constrained by state requirements and by the strengths and weaknesses of those whom Steiner recommended to teach.

In the second section, Oberman locates a structure for understanding the history of the spread of Waldorf schools in the actions and reactions of anthroposophists and Waldorf teachers upon Steiner’s death. Some, like Marie Steiner, strove to preserve in purity their understanding of Steiner’s wishes. Others, like Hermann von Baravalle, sought to accommodate their understanding of Waldorf education and anthroposophy to their understanding of their audience. And still others, like Ita Wegman, tried to further an understanding of Steiner’s indications through a process of evolution.

Oberman then examines the activity of German Waldorf schools during the rise to power of the Nazis. Her findings, carefully and sensitively presented, should really be no surprise. Too often we forget the ease with which we read history backwards, knowing the results, forgetting that this is a luxury denied to those who lived through it. That some parents and Waldorf teachers saw parallels between Nazi ideology and the German culture as presented in the Waldorf curriculum should not surprise us. Neither should the fact that some teachers argued for making compromises with the state in order to keep schools open as long as possible. Nor should the subtle resistance of Waldorf teachers who discovered a radio “broken” just at the time students were required to listen to a broadcast by Hitler. Nor should Oberman’s description of Hitler’s picture (display required by law) side by side with Steiner’s on a school wall. These details and many others provide a vivid picture of teachers, parents and students living through turmoil central to the twentieth century.

Turning her attention to the United States, Oberman finds the strategies or modes of operation that arose following Steiner’s death—purity, accommodation, and evolution—in U.S. Waldorf schools. She describes the first school, the Rudolf Steiner School of New York City, as one that pursued a “quest for purity” by hiring a number of native German speakers familiar with Waldorf education and by hewing close to the curriculum of the original school in Stuttgart. Further, with the closing of Waldorf schools in Germany, Oberman describes the New York school as assuming the mantle of leadership among Waldorf schools. Whether or not other schools internationally accepted this decision—or even knew of it—is another matter. Oberman’s description of the New York school as one seeking purity is generally accurate, I believe. Curative or therapeutic eurythmy was called “Heil” eurythmy throughout the 1930s, and the school reported annually not only to “Headquarters” (the New York City Anthroposophical branch office) but also to Stuttgart. On the other hand, for example, Baravalle, Oberman’s accommodationist, lectured to the faculty and community frequently, and was offered the position of Director of the school in the late 1930s. He refused, for reasons of his own. Faculty meeting minutes also reveal that a debate occurred as to whether or not it was appropriate for teachers in American Waldorf schools to have German (or other) accents. Such examples are numerous. Purity, to the extent it was sought by the New York school, was not sought uncontested.

Oberman describes the constellation of people around the founding of the Kimberton, PA, school, von Baravalle and Alarik Myrin chief among them, as a group that sought to minimize the anthroposophical ground from which Waldorf education grew. Here again, Oberman is largely correct, I believe. I have greater familiarity with the Garden City, NY, school, Myrin’s second school, and the history of this school also speaks to an attempt to accommodate what the founders saw as a more pragmatic American attitude, one that had little interest in promoting anthroposophy to parents or a larger community. (Rather, especially through the Myrin Institute for Adult Education, they sought to promote fruitful ideas that were often but not always grounded in anthroposophy without discussing anthroposophy itself publicly.) Von Baravalle and Elizabeth Grunelius, both teachers in the first school in Stuttgart, were present in the very early years of the Garden City school but soon left the school to the Americans.

Taken together, and given the long term success—relatively equal among the schools Oberman studied—what are we to make of these differences? Is there room for each, or is one strategy better or more successful by some criteria? I would say that there has been a gradual blending over the years, and that it would be extremely difficult for an outside observer today to distinguish these separate paths to the present from present conditions. Purity is necessarily tainted by seventy years past. Accommodationists have relaxed their stance, on the one hand, and, on the other, everyone else has pursued certain necessary accommodations. Schools have made significant efforts to include their—unfortunately generally small--African American or Jewish populations, for example. We are all, perhaps, evolutionists now. (The argument might be made that, in Oberman’s terms, purity and accommodation are two poles between which evolutionists live.)

Despite my admiration for and agreement with most of what Oberman writes, I must take exception to two particulars. The first is her use of the unqualified “Waldorf” to mean Waldorf education, ideology, and reform. It is a convenient shorthand, as in the phrases, “how Waldorf followers use the past in their present,” or “the history of Waldorf in America.” On the other hand, it reifies and objectifies a form of education that only gradually came to be so calcified after seventy or more years of history. It is an ahistorical weakness, then, that the carreful reader must guard against, especially, for example, when it is inserted unwarranted into a quotation from Emil Molt and Fritz von Bothmer: “The faculty now active at this school have proven... their willingness to continue this [Waldorf] work...” That they did not call it “Waldorf” work is a historical fact, indicative of a less exclusive point of view that deserves greater recognition.

Second, Oberman represents Waldorf education, primarily through its schools, as an “ideology” and a “German reform.” Further, Oberman refers to Steiner’s “target group,” for example, and to Waldorf education’s “theater of expansion.” No doubt historical actors have treated Waldorf education as an ideology operating to reform in a theater of expansion. One should also include, however, consideration for the ways in which Waldorf education strives not to be ideological and does not necessarily represent a German reform, or a “reform” of any but the most expansive, inclusive kind. Reform implies an activist agenda, and plenty of Waldorf teachers have been and are activists. An understanding of freedom or of Waldorf education, however, does not particularly support—or deny support for--any but the most personally transformative activism. And from another point of view Waldorf schools have resisted expansion, cloistering themselves, spending most of a century perfecting an exclusive jargon. This is part of their history, too.

Representations of Waldorf Education VI: Millennial Child

The three strongest complementary and intertwined themes of Millennial Child are these: that education at the turn of the millennium should address, above all, children's will; that education should increasingly concern itself with young--preschool and elementary age--children; and that Waldorf education offers the most appropriate curriculum or pedagogy with which to address these children.

To argue these points, Eugene Schwartz constructs an interpretation of history in which literacy, promoted first in Europe by Charlemagne, grows through the middle ages to the founding of the first universities. The general path since then for European culture, Schwartz argues, has been for educators to concern themselves with increasingly younger children. We have seen the rise and decline of the present conventional curriculum of the “three Rs,” Schwartz says, and the Waldorf curriculum, broadly conceived, is “the” curriculum, now in its infancy, that will grow to become the new tradition or convention.

Following Rudolf Steiner’s picture of child development, this increasing concern with the education of young children winds its way down from the intellectual concerns of university and, later, high school students through a concern with the emotions, feelings and imaginations of older elementary school students, to Schwartz’s present concern with the will-education of young children.

(It is interesting to note, as Joan Almon, 1999, has pointed out, that the original Waldorf School in Stuttgart had a kindergarten for approximately half of one school year during Steiner’s lifetime, run by Elizabeth Grunelius, who later worked at several schools in the United States. Steiner’s education lectures generally concern children age seven and older, although he did speak extensively about child development during the first seven years of life. The point is, much of the preschool curriculum in Waldorf schools has been worked out and implemented after Steiner’s death.)

In tracing this history, Schwartz relies on an interpretation of history that sees decades, centuries and millennia divided into thirds. Further, in his scheme, the first third of each period concerns particularly thinking, the second third concerns feeling, and the last third, will. Given this picture the change of the present millennium sees a triple-threat in the realm of will: the end of a decade, a century and a millennium. Schwartz’s argument is strongest with regard to generations of approximately 33 years each. Historians, whether they subscribe to them or not, are almost universally familiar with interpretations according to generations. Our decade-obsessed and label-conscious 20th century seems especially open to arguments based on generations. Less familiar are Schwartz’s divisions of century and millennium, and readers will have to validate Schwartz’s claims here according to their own experience. I am unfamiliar with such arguments and can find little basis to substantiate them in Steiner’s work, but am unwilling to dismiss them out of hand. If there are esoteric sources for these ideas, Schwartz has not cited them.

Schwartz’s most significant example of his historical structure is the metamorphosis of Freud’s thought in the first third of the century into feeling--particularly as expressed in the work of Dr. Spock, a closet Freudian--in the middle of the century, and finding expression in the will in the last part of the century. I find myself arguing, however, that the thought of the behaviorists in the first third of the century (and after), of Piaget in the middle third (and after), and of systems theorists in the last third, each greatly intellectual, have had at least as much influence in education as has the thought of Freud, especially outside the Northeastern United States.

Further, Schwartz finds powerful evidence for the necessity of a will-oriented education in the spate of diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), characterized by “overactivity, restlessness, distractibility, and short attention span, especially in young children.” In short, ADHD represent the social and historical problem of “uncontrolled will.” Schwartz traces the rise of ADHD and the disorders from which it grew--“minimal brain dysfunction” and “hyperkinetic reactions of childhood”--over the past thirty years or so. He lays out clearly diagnoses and treatments based on perceived chemical, emotional and behavioral causes. By adding a fourth category, “multiple causes,” which must be addressed holistically and phenomenologically, Schwartz recognizes an ego disorder (as opposed to the physical, etheric or astral disorders implied by previous causes).

His discussion, however, may not go far enough. He skates around the clear possibility that ADHD is culturally produced. Here Freud offers an excellent example: He made his reputation in Vienna treating women suffering from “hysterical paralysis,” a psychological disease produced by upper middle class culture in Vienna in the late 1800s. The symptoms--usually paralysis of the hands and forearms--were real and debilitating, but they, and their diagnosis and treatment, disappeared with changed roles for women in society shortly after the turn of the century. The point is, ADHD is likely a similar malady. Plop enough kids in front of various phosphorescent screens long enough, at home and at school, feed them on Fritos and water them on caffeinated soda, remove them from meaningful participation in family and community life and they’ll likely deserve an ADHD diagnosis. As the eminent developmental psychologist Howard Gruber says, “It’s the schools that have ADHD, not the kids.” And, we might add, also the homes, restaurants, playgrounds and day-care centers. Strong evidence for this claim lies in the fact that ADHD affects boys, primarily (just as anorexia nervosa and bulimia affect girls, primarily). Teachers and therapists obviously have to deal with what confronts them, but to argue for treatment of symptoms--even with the most anthroposophic, phenomenological, holistic approach--without addressing the larger cultural and social context points education once again in the dangerous direction of asking teachers to solve society’s ills (see Traub 2000).

A final concern is that Steiner’s words about education and child development regard fully the first twenty-one years or so of life. If we must adopt the language of crisis in discussing education, then that crisis cuts across all ages. The will education of young children, at home and in school, matures potentially into freedom, but the education of adolescents in love and intellect matures potentially into true regard for universal brotherhood, according to Steiner. Is it possible to say that one is more important today than another? Schwartz’s good assumption is that ADHD, teen violence, and other modern maladies of adolescence are better addressed years, not days, before they manifest themselves. Schwartz pursues his discussion with virtually no reference, however, to high school-age children. “Waldorf education” in Millennial Child must be translated as “Waldorf education up to the age of about fourteen.” Readers first encountering Waldorf education in these pages--and Schwartz’s intended audience, it seems, is primarily one that has an interest in but little familiarity with Waldorf education--will find it difficult to conceive of a Waldorf high school education at all. To this extent, Millennial Child propagates a somewhat abbreviated view of Waldorf education.

Toward the end of Millennial Child, Schwartz quotes Steiner: “The Waldorf School is not an ‘alternative’ school like so many others founded in the belief that they will correct all the errors of one kind or another in education. It is founded on the idea that the best principles and the best will in this field can come into effect only if the teacher understands human nature.” Some mainstream educators may well accept Schwartz’s assertion that the time is ripe for a new, appropriately post-Renaissance, post-Enlightenment, even post-Modern educational form. The recurring arguments, experiments and crises in education in the last century or so are possibly the death throes of the school of the past. The force of Schwartz’s argument, however, lies not in the prescription of the brand, “Waldorf education,” with which many educators would rightly take offence, but in the recognition of the historical, social and individual necessity for an education, of whatever name, that is based on the wisdom of humanity.

In its attempt to re-engage in a conversation with educators outside the circle of Waldorf schools and in its re-interpretation of Waldorf education to address immediate social concerns (ADHD), Schwartz’s book represents the generation of schools that I call Variations.

Representations of Waldorf Education V: Toward Wholeness

If Gardner’s voice aims at the prophetic and Emersonian, M. C. Richard’s voice in Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America aims at the oracular. “In new age consciousness, the religious impulse continues to evolve. Like the sun, it shines across all divisions.” (156) As with many, many pronouncements in this book, we may agree or disagree, but we are given little to support a discussion. This is not to say that Richards does not present a progression from idea to idea, but that the ideas are too often ill-examined or axiomatic. What exactly are “new age consciousness” and “the religious impulse”?

Another example demonstrates the limits of her approach. Richards teases apart Steiner’s concept of “Geisteswissenschaft,” translated literally as “spiritual science.” This word normally describes what in English speaking countries are the studies called the humanities or human sciences, but Steiner intends to revive, in part, its older meaning as a knowledge of the human being conceived as microcosmic mirror of the macrocosmic universe (see, for example, Hildegard of Bingen, quoted in Fox 1987) and as a being of body, soul and spirit. “Spiritual science,” Richards writes, is science that is “not a tool… not intellectual science.” “Spirit uses intellect but goes beyond it. Spiritual science requires the union of inner perception (spiritual) and objectivity (science).” (43) The spiritual may involve “inner perception,” although Richards would agree there’s much more to it than this, but objectivity, while scientific, is also spiritual. In fact, Steiner’ spiritual science aims to overcome the apparent dichotomy between objective and subjective experience not in blending or coupling them (nor in using one to destroy the other), but in transcending them—or, equally, discovering the immanence of one in the presence of the other—to discover a common source for each. Semantically, of course, the term “subjective” implies both its opposite, “objective,” and a pair of negations, “non-subjective” and “non-objective.” But this semiotic-rectangular view of these concepts is reductive and analytical. A synthetic view, which, like a geometric proof, can be obtained only through an intuitive, participatory leap, and not through an explanation, discovers the situational or contextual unity of experience. “Subjective” and “objective” do not cancel each other out in meaninglessness; they are poles between which experience is strung.

In searching for an analogy or example to describe this unity of experience, Richards employs “the [physicist’s] recognition that the observer is part of the observed.” This contradicts our naïve understanding of cause and effect, but does not reach what might better be called the unity of quantity and quality. The indeterminance—and apparent unity—of the principles of physics does not lead to understanding or love, which are conscious experiences of quality.

Richards’ book reads like a collection of essays. But for a few introductory chapters and a conclusion, the contents leap around, from “Education As an Art” to “Teacher Training and Handwork” (in itself an odd and inexplicable combination, understandable only in view of Richards’ work as a potter). In its deliberate embrace of the “new age” and its view of Steiner’s work as “alternative”, it represents well the generation of schools I call the Alternatives.

Representations of Waldorf Education IV: The Experience of Knowledge

The Experience of Knowledge is a collection of John Gardner’s essays, written over his twenty-five year tenure as Faculty Chairman of the Waldorf School of Garden City (originally the Waldorf School of Adelphi College, an experimental school started largely at the behest of Adelphi trustee Alarik Myrin; it obtained autonomy from Adelphi in 1973 and incorporated a board of trustees in 1979). The book is organized in three parts. The first contains Gardner’s earlier, grandly philosophical essays on education. An example is “What is Man?” an essay that argues that human beings are more than “organisms,” despite the reductive conclusions of John Dewey, Gestalt psychologists, and, especially, a now forgotten book, Education and the Nature of Man. Gardner’s central point is that self-knowledge, the springboard for any claims about the organismic (or other) nature of man, transcends necessarily the level of the organism alone. It necessitates recognition of an ego, and, hence, a moral stance. (Ego, self, or “I” are “das Ich” in Steiner’s German, not “das Ego,” and denote a concept difficult to translate. Steiner’s notion of self implies a sort of essential and continuing individuality without the abstract connotations of a “thing” that cannot be divided; a self without necessarily implying selfishness or a changeable personality; and an ego in a sense not freighted with Freudian or other psychoanalytic overtones. Some English authors have translated the concept as the “I,” which works in print but is monumentally confusing when spoken because of the homonym “eye”.) Gardner’s argument here mirrors Steiner’s discussion of “ethical individualism” (Steiner 1970) in seeing individualism not as a reduction from a social whole nor as a manifestation of selfishness, but as the possibility of moral choice, choice that might in fact contradict the impositions of “natural” drives and desires.

Part Two of Gardner’s book addresses educational questions of intellect, truth, knowledge, experience and morality. Unlike other essays, in which the philosophical discussion resists touching the ground, Gardner aims here to use the methods of education found in Waldorf schools to illustrate his points. He shows how truth, conceptualized in maturity as intellectual or logical truth, grows first through the activity—especially physical activity—of very young children, and then through the feelings and imaginations of elementary school-age children. Without experiences of truth as action and a feeling for truth, Gardner argues, we will be unlikely as adults to recognize it even intellectually. This three stage description, based on Steiner’s work and Gardner’s observations, finds a clear parallel, for example, in Piaget’s stages of the development of reasoning, his study of genetic epistemology. The term “sensori-motor” accords well with the experience of physical activity that Gardner describes, and Piaget’s stage of “concrete operations” also parallels the manipulation of artistic materials that Waldorf teachers find so valuable in the elementary school. On the other hand, while Piaget was an exacting researcher, his narrow focus neglects, perhaps, the value of behavior and affect, in order to favor the development of cognition. It is worth noting that some American educators have attached ages to Piaget’s stages, something that he himself resisted (see, for example, Crain 1992, pp. 122-134, and Piaget 1965). That is, we could say that Piaget was interested in a precise description of the development of thinking while some later authors have been interested in an educational application, for example. These latter have therefore quantified and simplified Piaget’s work unnecessarily. That Steiner’s rough seven year periods of development do not accord exactly with Piaget’s descriptions hardly matters; the point is that both are describing similar developmental processes, processes that are cumulative and metamorphic. That is, development for both Steiner and Piaget involves “sea changes,” not ladder-like accumulations or accretions.

The title essay of Gardner’s book resides in this central section, and it offers Gardner’s only introduction to the educational methods of Waldorf schools. Gardner emphasizes, for example, “the cognitive power that lies hidden in feeling and will.” (66) He discovers in the cognitive act of learning to read, for example, the necessity for “a vivid experience of the creative, formative powers that lie within language.” (67) We might say that the method used to teach reading hardly matters (whole language v. phonics, eg.) if a child’s imagination and interest are not engaged. (While this reads like a truism, the sterility of “Dick and Jane” readers points to its neglect, at least earlier in the century.)

For a historical consideration of Gardner’s book, the third part is the most instructive. The essays here are mature reflections of “problems of special interest to parents and citizens.” (v) They hew closely to accepted broad principles of Waldorf education in that they are concerned with inspiring genius, developing the possibility of individual freedom, and separating schools from government control as goals for education. They also reflect, however, particularly and often deliberately, concerns of many Americans who perceived political and cultural threats to democracy, individualism and freedom, however conceived, during the Cold War. That is, they stand in clear opposition to, at least, stereotypical conceptions of the threats of Marxist-Leninist socialism: political totalitarianism, cultural indoctrination, and economic communism. Gardner’s arguments are not arguments from the right, however, at least not in the conventional sense. They recognize, for example, that philosophical materialism may underlie both capitalism and communism, and that the Soviet Union and China are not the only nations that might seek to indoctrinate rather than educate their students. In this sense, Gardner’s arguments aim to transcend the Cold War deadlock, while acknowledging it as the foundation of a discourse. In this aim it is surprisingly similar, for example, to that of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s commencement address at Harvard University in 1978. Both Gardner and Solzhenitsyn see a solution to the political and economic standoff of the times in individual transformation. To update their concerns, the world may cheer the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the apparent tensions remain between social responsibility and individual freedom and between reductive materialism and a qualitative, synthetic understanding of the world.

If Gardner’s arguments ring of Emersonian transcendentalism it is no accident. Gardner taught Transcendentalist literature for years, published several lectures on Transcendental writers, and clearly strove, within the form of the essay, for an Emersonian economy of words. His success in this regard was not complete, not that it could be. The essay titled “Authority, Discipline, and Freedom”—here are at least three essays for Emerson, had he wished to tackle subjects so abstract—begins, “Those who dispute about how to educate free men argue the effects of childish obedience upon adult self-reliance, of unquestioning trust and belief in authority during the first school years upon the critical thinking that enables a mature individual later on to steer his way past illusion.” (117) Emerson’s vocabulary and locutions aside, Gardner sets up a debate between Cold War straw men and proceeds to demonstrate how each is only partially correct (and neither is mutually exclusive). Such rhetoric falls short of Emerson’s direct and pithy expression.

On the other hand, in his interest in Emerson—three of ten essays begin by quoting Emerson—Gardner forwards a previous theme of my research, the notion that Waldorf education, taken not as an object but as an expression of a method, derives from influences that predate Steiner. Chief among them for Americans is Emerson.

A second edition of Gardner’s book was published in 1996 under the title Education in Search of Spirit. Despite a note that the new edition has been “revised, updated and expanded,” there are few changes. Some of these few changes, however, are noteworthy. In “Morality and the Experience of Knowledge,” for example, Gardner originally wrote, “The self will out [of its solitary confinement]. Drugs, sex, speed, civil disobedience, and revolution seem to offer ways out; but the trouble with all of them is that their ways are illusory.” (97) In 1996, the same passage reads, “Drugs, sex, speed, and rebellion seem to offer ways out…” (111) Despite similarities, it is easy to read a polemic against the civil unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the first quotation and to catch a recognition of the possible virtues of civil disobedience and revolution in the second. The drama of the times is tempered in retrospect.

In a discussion of “the path of redemption [following the] Fall of Man,” the second edition inserts the phrase, “…whose time must come and has come, if the Fall is not to be final.” (173) Coupled with the addition of the following tortured, pessimistic observation, we read, it seems, the personality change of the author, from active teacher to passive observer:

As the Western world feels the helplessness of its own predominantly material, technological, economic orientation to master soul sickness and social distemper as these are appearing in depression, addictions, criminality, the dissolving of moral values, and the whole tide of destructive behavior afflicting millions of the younger generation—what is to prevent us from being drawn quite out of our orbit?(170)

The foreword to the second edition suggests that, even in Waldorf schools, head and hands suffer the neglect of heart. To remedy this perceived lack, Gardner suggests what he calls the “direct approach” to the spirit (or Spirit; several words are apocalyptically capitalized in the second edition), “intensified wonder, delight, and grateful praise… only spirit finds spirit. … Only the real Self can answer: ‘I truly want…’ ” (14-15) These concepts, that suffer by comparison with the relative clarity of Gardner’s earlier writing, I believe, accord more with Gardner’s late interest in “charismatic Christianity” than they do with Steiner’s work (see Gardner 1992). [N.B.: Some “anthroposophical” literature finds its way to print through vanity presses. Readers unable to locate some of these more obscure volumes to which I refere are directed to the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent, NY, a friendly and reliable source.]

In his interests in transcendentalism, the Cold War, and, later, fundamentalist Christianity, Gardner reflects concerns that accord well with the generation of Waldorf schools that I call the American.

Representations of Waldorf Education III: The Recovery of Man in Childhood

The Recovery of Man in Childhood, the first comprehensive attempt to summarize Rudolf Steiner’s educational ideas for English speakers, enjoys the advantage of the first-born; it has no one to refute or imitate. The book, consequently, is a straightforward account that begins, after two thoughtful introductory chapters, with early childhood and ends, abruptly, with the curriculum of the twelfth grade. Harwood was English. His book was published first in England but was imported immediately to the United States. The Myrin Institute, then in New York City, supported Harwood in writing the book, and the Institute then held the copyright. The book is dedicated, in fact, “to my very good friend H. A. W. M.,” that is, to Alarik Myrin. Mr. Myrin, a Swedish-born American industrialist, aided the founding of two Waldorf schools in the United States, the Waldorf School of Adelphi College (later of Garden City), NY, and the Kimberton Farms School, PA. (See Winkler 1970.)

With Francis Edmunds, Stewart Easton and others, Harwood represents a broad generation of English and Scottish Waldorf teachers and anthroposophists who lectured, taught and even settled in the U.S. With a contemporaneous group of mostly German speakers, they helped to transplant Steiner’s ideas to the U.S. A corollary group of Americans, including Henry Barnes, long-time Faculty Chair at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City, traveled to England, Germany and Switzerland to pursue an understanding of Steiner’s work.

Separate from references to a somewhat more British than American sensibility, somewhat archaic language, and the general presumption that his audience is Christian, Harwood’s book is relatively more free from historical consideration than are the other books I examine below. That is to say, it speaks more directly to longer-term questions of education and less to existing cultural or political contexts. Again, this is due in part to its status as first in the field; following authors, although they do not necessarily acknowledge Harwood, are certainly aware of his work and must carve out a separate niche for themselves.

On the other hand, Harwood’s central aim, the “marriage of the Arts and Sciences, a marriage in the core of their being, based on the ultimate unity of human experience…” (11) echoes an educational debate of the 1950s, at least, as it also reflects a longer-term Romantic interest in similar questions (see Barfield 1966). This post-war debate has recently been characterized, for example, briefly, well, and somewhat controversially, by Alston Chase (2000) with regard to Ted Kaszinski’s (the Unabomber’s) Harvard education, and education in Chase’s view that sought to sunder the search for meaning from scientific truth.

As a summary of longer works by Rudolf Steiner and of long personal experience, Harwood’s descriptions often threaten to collapse into stereotypes. Here Americans may read a British mind: “The inwardness of the girls [in adolescence] may easily degenerate into the horrors of backbiting and spitefulness; the externalism of the boys into the frightfulness of bullying and organized cruelty.” (173) True, perhaps, but easier to imagine there and then. Each teacher and each generation must recast conceptions of, for example, adolescence, if it is not to miss situational and cultural changes.

Steiner was a Christian who, seemingly, embraced all religions. Too often, his followers have been unable to maintain his distinction between Christianity as a collection of organized sects and Christianity as, in part, an inclusive, compassionate attitude of mind. Harwood’s writing is scarcely objectionable, but assumes his reader to be almost certainly a Christian. The last sentences of the book provide an example. “The body is a House and a Temple, and it is the source and fountain of all forms and proportions. It is a secret known to the Christian religion in especial. To live in the body as in a Temple—this is the ultimate gift with which a Waldorf School would wish to send its children into the world.” (208) (Perhaps taken with the German origins of their studies, many writers in English on Waldorf education adopt a style that involves more capitalization than is necessary.) Why Greeks or Jews, for example, have less claim than Christians to this idea is unclear. The Recovery of Man in Childhood, the first comprehensive attempt to summarize Rudolf Steiner’s educational ideas for English speakers, enjoys the advantage of the first-born; it has no one to refute or imitate. The book, consequently, is a straightforward account that begins, after two thoughtful introductory chapters, with early childhood and ends, abruptly, with the curriculum of the twelfth grade. Harwood was English. His book was published first in England but was imported immediately to the United States. The Myrin Institute, then in New York City, supported Myrin in writing the book, and the Institute then held the copyright. The book is dedicated, in fact, “to my very good friend H. A. W. M.,” that is, to Alarik Myrin. Mr. Myrin, a Swedish-born American industrialist, aided the founding of two Waldorf schools in the United States, the Waldorf School of Adelphi College (later of Garden City), NY, and the Kimberton Farms School, PA. (See Winkler 1970.)

With Francis Edmunds, Stewart Easton and others, Harwood represents a broad generation of English and Scottish Waldorf teachers and anthroposophists who lectured, taught and even settled in the U.S. With a contemporaneous group of mostly German speakers, they helped to transplant Steiner’s ideas to the U.S. A corollary group of Americans, including Henry Barnes, long-time Faculty Chair at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City, traveled to England, Germany and Switzerland to pursue an understanding of Steiner’s work.

Separate from references to a somewhat more British than American sensibility, somewhat archaic language, and the general presumption that his audience is Christian, Harwood’s book is relatively more free from historical consideration than are the other books I examine below. That is to say, it speaks more directly to longer-term questions of education and less to existing cultural or political contexts. Again, this is due in part to its status as first in the field; following authors, although they do not necessarily acknowledge Harwood, are certainly aware of his work and must carve out a separate niche for themselves.

On the other hand, Harwood’s central aim, the “marriage of the Arts and Sciences, a marriage in the core of their being, based on the ultimate unity of human experience…” (11) echoes an educational debate of the 1950s, at least, as it also reflects a longer-term Romantic interest in similar questions (see Barfield 1966). This post-war debate has recently been characterized, for example, briefly, well, and somewhat controversially, by Alston Chase (2000) with regard to Ted Kaszinski’s (the Unabomber’s) Harvard education, and education in Chase’s view that sought to sunder the search for meaning from scientific truth.

As a summary of longer works by Rudolf Steiner and of long personal experience, Harwood’s descriptions often threaten to collapse into stereotypes. Here Americans may read a British mind: “The inwardness of the girls [in adolescence] may easily degenerate into the horrors of backbiting and spitefulness; the externalism of the boys into the frightfulness of bullying and organized cruelty.” (173) True, perhaps, but easier to imagine there and then. Each teacher and each generation must recast conceptions of, for example, adolescence, if it is not to miss situational and cultural changes.

Steiner was a Christian who, seemingly, embraced all religions. Too often, his followers have been unable to maintain his distinction between Christianity as a collection of organized sects and Christianity as, in part, an inclusive, compassionate attitude of mind. Harwood’s writing is scarcely objectionable, but assumes his reader to be almost certainly a Christian. The last sentences of the book provide an example. “The body is a House and a Temple, and it is the source and fountain of all forms and proportions. It is a secret known to the Christian religion in especial. To live in the body as in a Temple—this is the ultimate gift with which a Waldorf School would wish to send its children into the world.” (208) (Perhaps taken with the German origins of their studies, many writers in English on Waldorf education adopt a style that involves more capitalization than is necessary.) Why Greeks or Jews, for example, have less claim than Christians to this idea is unclear.

Representations of Waldorf Education II: The Creation of Waldorf Education

I have called the object of my study here “Waldorf education”, but history shows that even that term, well accepted today, came into being only gradually. A. C. Harwood’s title and index do not contain the word “Waldorf,” he does not use the phrase “Waldorf education” at all, and he refers only infrequently to “Waldorf schools”, and then only as representing or modeling the “educational work” or “philosophy” of Rudolf Steiner. I enclose the term philosophy in scare quotes because of my conviction that Steiner’s work does not constitute primarily a philosophy, but a methodology. Steiner deals with epistemological and ontological questions, for example, (see especially Philosophy of Freedom 1970) but his primary concern is the attainment of knowledge, not that knowledge itself, and a description of being, not a theory of it.

John Gardner does not examine this point explicitly, but he does refer primarily to Steiner’s “educational method.” He refers to Waldorf schools and Waldorf education only in the central essay of the book, “The Experience of Knowledge,” the single essay in which he is at pains to view Waldorf schools as models for the implementations of Steiner’s method. The connotation here, different from the present as we shall see, is that Steiner’s method is not synonymous with the existence of education or schools that call themselves “Waldorf.” In the “Foreword to the Second Edition” (1996), Gardner himself employs the word “Waldorf” in quotation marks. “I believe strongly in the excellence and soundness of the new insights that stand behind the ‘Waldorf’ impulse in education; but I am less than enthusiastic about accepting the name generally used to designate this impulse, for it gives no clue as to what the new beginning actually intends or involves,” he continues (12-13). Gardner would likely have agreed that any teacher and any school could, with good will, employ the model we have come to know as Waldorf education. (Cf. Emmet, B. (undated) From Farm to School: The Founding of the High Mowing School).

M. C. Richards objectifies Waldorf education far more than these first two authors do. She refers to “Rudolf Steiner Education,” “Waldorf Education,” and “Waldorf schooling” interchangeably. Her tacit assumption, one that she represents in her generation, is that Waldorf education, the curriculum, principles and practices of Waldorf schools, based on the work of Rudolf Steiner, have a kind of concrete reality that is missing from considerations of earlier authors. The subtle irony here is that her commitment to “become undivisive in our science, our emotions, our creativity—to live in the paradox of separateness and connection…” (156) is initially undermined by her acceptance of the objective existence of something called Waldorf education.

By 1999, Eugene Schwartz’ index contains the following entries: Waldorf approach, Waldorf education, Waldorf high school, Waldorf kindergarten, Waldorf kindergarten playground, Waldorf main lesson, Waldorf method, Waldorf nursery teachers, Waldorf Room [sic], Waldorf school pupils, Waldorf schools, and Waldorf teachers. The process of objectification, clearly, does not end with the creation of one object, but threatens to continue indefinitely. Continued ad absurdam, the process would produce a “separate but equal” parallel “Waldorf” universe. Schwartz, of course, is not responsible for this onslaught of terminology; his vocabulary is simply the one available to him, and the points he examines concern other aspects of education (see below).

The objectification of Waldorf education is not an inherently reprehensible process. It eases discussion of important issues in education and creates a core around which communities of teachers, students, parents and others may form. Although I raise the issue here, I have also relied on the term throughout this work. On the other hand, carried too far, objectification threatens to dichotomize an idea that, at least initially, opposed such a split. Discussion of Waldorf education, once created as an object, then poses itself “against” other forms of education, forms that must themselves be objectified even to be allowed into the discussion. Further, communities gathered around such an unquestioned, objectified idea may become insular. This process traces the rise of a fundamentalism to which Waldorf communities are certainly not immune. In a small way, the separation of “Waldorf” ideas about teaching and learning from more conventional or accepted ideas mirrors, for example, the separation of Protestantism from Catholicism in the 16th century.

I have traced this process of objectification briefly with reference to a few books, but these are simply symptomatic of a wider process. The creation of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA), also exemplifies this process. The Association began with informal conferences of about a dozen Waldorf schools in the mid-1960s and continued through a formal incorporation around 1980. (I have been unable to ascertain the exact year of the founding of AWSNA.) Since then, the Association has trademarked the name “Waldorf” as it applies to education in the United States, categorized schools by affiliation status, decided that public schools cannot be Waldorf schools, and, most recently, become an accrediting body for Waldorf schools. This gradual institutionalization, necessary or helpful as it may have been to those involved, also charts the development of an exclusive educational precipitate, “Waldorf schools.”

As Waldorf education became more established in the United States, its promise as a model for education generally was compromised, in part, by its objectification. By coming to reside, or to be seen to reside, in specific schools only, it forsook its status as a way to discuss how teachers teach and children learn, and became much more than that; an exclusive culture and institution. This process may be traced through the books that I will now examine in more detail.

Before I proceed to the books themselves, however, I should point out three things. First, although the Steiner School in New York City opened in 1928, I am unaware of any book-length considered descriptive works in English on Waldorf education—separate from translations of Steiner’s works—before Edmund’s of 1947 and Harwood’s of 1958. This may reflect two characteristics of early practice: A thorough engagement with Steiner’s work itself, especially including the translation of German material into English, and an active struggle in the few small schools and classrooms to survive from day to day and year to year, a struggle that left little time or energy for book-length reflections.

Second, especially because each of the books I will examine is born of experience, not, for example, of theorizing, agenda-setting, or policy-making, each book represents a culmination of life in a school or of thinking about education. For example, John Gardner’s book was published in 1975, the year he retired after twenty-five years as Faculty Chair of the Waldorf School of Garden City. It is not a state-of-the-art examination, but a reflection of roughly the years 1950-1975. This point may seem obvious, but it points to the value of the books I will examine as historical artifacts. Each is a “summing up” of years prior to publication.

Third, although each successive author almost definitely knew of those preceding him or her, the later of these works contain few references to the others’ books (M. C. Richards refers readers to Harwood’s book once, and Eugene Schwartz acknowledges a couple of contributions from John Gardner, but they seem to refer to personal conversations and not to published work). This is odd given the very few works that aim at any sort of general description of Waldorf education, but may be understandable given the changing needs for a general work. Rather than sources or influences (or opportunities for rebuttal), previous works may simply be so much ink under the printing press, so to speak.

Representations of Waldorf Education I: Four Books, Four Generations

NOTE: This post is more than 8000 words, so I have posted it in 8 sections.

In chronological order, The Recovery of Man in Childhood: A Study in the Educational Work of Rudolf Steiner (Harwood 1958), The Experience of Knowledge: Essays on American Education (Gardner 1975), Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America (Richards 1980), and Millennial Child: Transforming Education in the Twenty-first Century (Schwartz 1999), represent four distinct phases or generations of Waldorf education in the United States. I have chosen to call these generations: 1.) Europeans; 2.) Americans; 3.) Alternatives; and 4.) Variations. (Regarding the inadequacy of the name of the latest generation, any history that attempts to approach the present will necessarily stumble as it nears its goal. I leave it to the future to rename appropriately the contemporary generation when—or if—its character becomes clear. Also, it seems to me, attempts to categorize many things leave a last category, “other”, that serves to demonstrate the ultimate inadequacy of categorizations such as I have undertaken here. This does not contradict the value or utility of taking a stab at it nonetheless.)

These generations mirror closely, although this occurred to me years after first conceiving of them, the generalized generations of historians described as “conflict,” “consensus,” and “plural.” Very simply, many historians, led perhaps by Charles Beard (1913/1986), largely before the Second World War, saw historical change growing out of class conflicts as well as political theory. Even the small presence of Waldorf schools in the United States before World War II shows evidence of this conflict view in the struggle to translate a European, especially German, working-class education for, especially, a New York Upper East Side clientele. Consensus historians, largely after World War II, emphasized common purpose in the movement of history, describing the Continental Congress as, in John P. Roche’s phrase, a “reform caucus,” for example (in Higham 1962). Similarly, having found a more or less secure footing in the U.S., those who thought about Waldorf education after the War described it, for example, as offering a balance to the pendulum swings between traditional and progressive modes of education. (see Gardner 1975). The “new” pluralistic history abjures large-scale syntheses and throws the field open to a multi-faceted approach that includes history “from the bottom up” and consideration of previously marginalized groups (see, among others, Lemsich 1968). And during this period, from the mid-1960s on, Waldorf schools began increasingly to portray themselves not as fellow-travelers in search of educational answers, but as (self-) marginalized institutions themselves. Recently, since 1990 or so, hard to characterize briefly, Waldorf teachers and schools find themselves examining issues from the role of Waldorf education in public school systems and juvenile corrections to the separation of church (and school) and state. (See, for example, Smith, undated, and Oppenheimer 1999.)

The ease with which Waldorf generations may be shoehorned into a simple historiography suggests two things: First, that changes in historical interpretation must themselves be historicized to consider how the practice of history reflects broader contemporaneous social concerns; and, second, that the fit between my object of study and this view of historical interpretation probably calls the simplicity of that historiography into question more than it validates my descriptions.

The books I examine here do not constitute a canon in the literature of Waldorf education; rather, they are among the few works that attempt to portray Waldorf education generally for an audience that is largely unfamiliar with it. Three more works that might be included here but are not, for example, are Rudolf Steiner Education: The Waldorf Impulse (Edmunds 1947), Man and World in the Light of Anthroposophy (Easton 1975), and Insight-Imagination: The Emancipation of Thought and the Modern World (Sloan 1983). Edmunds’ work, although it appeared originally a decade before Harwood’s, is largely superceded by Harwood’s more thorough investigation. The works of Easton and Sloan largely regard topics other than Waldorf education, although each book contains a chapter or an extensive appendix on Waldorf education.

Further, a large and growing body of literature examines or extends aspects of Waldorf practices, curricula and methodologies, but works in this mode usually assume some familiarity with Waldorf education itself, familiarity that can be gained through Steiner’s work, experience in Waldorf schools, or the more primary texts examined here. Although these works as well might be examined to tease out the historical context in which they were written, to do so would likely not add much to the discussion I will begin here.

Although the generations I will describe are gross generalizations, they represent both a chronological progression and changing views of the promises and compromises, the possibilities, tensions and unsettled questions, entailed by the effort to interpret Rudolf Steiner’s educational ideas for a United States clientele.

Teachers wrote all the books examined here, although not all were teachers in Waldorf schools, (M. C. Richards taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, for example) and they attempt to examine or characterize education broadly. They may describe classroom experience and practice, but their goal is to address educational questions beyond simple descriptions of Steiner’s ideas in practice. As these questions change—from a seemingly simple first comprehensive English introduction to Steiner’s ideas, through an Emersonian examination of fundamental questions of the meanings of education in the assumed context of the Cold War and a re-casting of Waldorf education as an educational form that mirrors the growing New Age, to an indictment of misapplications of child psychology in education, for example—a history emerges that shows Waldorf education changing in changing contexts. Waldorf education appears, then, not as a monolithic tablet on which the answers to an educational debate are inscribed, but as a responsive partner in a dialogue. Admittedly, this partner has been virtually silent in the United States for the past seventy years or so, but no less thoughtful or observant for that. Further, even the term “Waldorf education” has its own history.

Barfield and Consciousness

When we discuss thinking and perception, we enter tricky philosophical territory. For instance, there are philosophers today who deny the existence of human consciousness. We may take a cheap shot by asking them how they can profitably write books about this, what they believe their readers are up to, if not consciously appreciating the contents of the book. More to the point, most of these arguments, however sophisticated, are on the wrong track in that they objectify consciousness—reify it—and then, when they fail to find an object (even an immaterial, mental object) called consciousness, announce that it is an illusion. We all did this for decades with intelligence (IQ) back in the twentieth century.

Owen Barfield takes a different approach to this problem. He points out—my paraphrase here—that no one disagrees that we perceive the world around us (however defined) and that no one disagrees that we may think about this world (although what we mean by “think” may be open to discussion). Our consciousness is what mediates, maintains a healthy tension between, or, in Barfield’s terminology, arises when these poles of perception and thinking “interpenetrate” each other. Our consciousness is not a thing, not a hormone or quantity of electrochemical energy, however structured.

Two analogies may clarify this thought. First, the ancient Greeks discussed courage in a way analogous to Barfield’s description of consciousness. In a stressful situation we may experience fear and we may experience an urge to foolhardy behavior. To give in to either makes us ineffectual. Fear prevents action; foolhardiness prompts thoughtless, dangerous action. By mediating these two poles, maintaining a healthy tension between them, allowing them to interpenetrate within us, we may rouse ourselves to courageous action.

Second, Goethe’s theory of colors is predicated on just such phenomena. By allowing light and darkness to interpenetrate each other, colors arise. For those familiar with Goethe’s work, this should be clear. For those not familiar with it, a thorough explanation goes beyond the scope of these paragraphs.

When light and dark simply mix, we get shades of gray. This is instructive in that fear and foolhardiness may also mix in us, unmediated, and produce a state of anxiety. Similarly, our perceptions and thinking may mix in an unconscious, unmediated manner and give rise to thoughtless convention and unexamined “common sense.”

Nothing like wrestling with the big questions.

Three Kinds of Knowing

Accumulating knowledge is like building a collection, right? Each piece in the collection is much like any other. A fact about astronomy is much like a fact about history or writing technique or piano playing or wine tasting or empathetic listening. A degree of certainty or truth adheres to it or is apparent in it, and we accept it for our—growing, we hope—stockpile of things that we know. It can be digitized and stored in a computer and shared online.

Well, no. Knowledge is not singular. Knowing the names of stars is not like knowing how to play the piano or like knowing how to offer solace to someone in pain. Like intelligence, which we used to believe was one thing—measured on an IQ test, for example, but now seen as, at least, a multi-faceted collection of human faculties—knowledge comes in different forms. We can know in different ways. Waldorf and Steiner schools emphasize in particular three ways of knowing, the conscious development of each corresponding roughly with preschool, elementary school and high school.

Michael Polanyi called a first kind of knowing “tacit knowing”, knowing “more than we can say.” Clearly, infants—those without voices—know more than they can say. We can know how to cut a carrot, or the taste of the soup it makes, or how to play the viola, or how to solve a problem in geometry. We can describe these things in language, but the value, meaning, and even the truth of these activities—cutting, tasting, playing, solving—does not translate into language. These become apparent only when we learn to do these things ourselves. Without the experience of doing, often, knowing has little meaning.

You could write a manual describing what you do—nurse, stockbroker, artist—but, if you had to train someone to replace you, would you rather hand off instructions or offer an apprenticeship, some doing? Read a book on building a stone wall, and then claim that you know how to build one. Your aches and calluses will tell you another story. We learn much and know much through doing, and, often, doing precedes and informs our knowing. Hence, in Waldorf schools, the importance of “doing” in preschool, before we emphasize other forms of knowing.

A second kind of knowing is aesthetic knowing. Its value is apparent in contrast to our concept of something that is anaesthetic, or numbing. Aesthetic knowing is alive, awake, and sensitive. It is knowing in heart and gut (yes, the brain plays its role, but we experience our feelings in our hearts and lungs and guts). It is intuitive (“taught from within”). It is a form of knowing especially valuable for artists, musicians, clinical psychologists, theoretical physicists, and even advertising copywriters. It is a form of knowing that connects us powerfully to the world. And it develops in children most readily when they have separated from their parents and begun to comprehend the world around them for themselves. Hence, in Waldorf schools, the importance of beauty and feeling in the elementary school.

A third kind of knowing is knowing through thinking. By thinking, however, I mean a particular kind of thinking that attempts in Henri Bortoft’s phrase to “swim upstream”, reversing fragmentation, categorization, and specialization in order to recover wholeness. Thinking logically with given postulates, thinking algorithmically, is “downstream” thinking, the outcome determined by the input. It is powerful but dead, inherited from the creative insight of others. Recognizing the validity of postulates different from convention, however, involves insight of our own. This synthetic, living thinking can encompass or embrace analysis, logic, and critical thinking. But it seeks to go beyond them to recover or reach the origin of creative thought and imagination. And it develops in students who are wrestling not so much with the world around them as with their own identities in that world. Hence, in Waldorf schools, the importance in high school of the development of thinking.

These three ways of knowing are cumulative and integrative. We do not leave one for the next, but build on what comes before. As adults, our thinking is enriched if we also know how to do and to feel. All three forms of knowing are present earlier, too—small children learning to walk and talk (two of the most important forms of doing) can also feel and think. But by emphasizing one way of knowing at the appropriate time, allowing other ways to develop simultaneously but sleepily, we work in accordance with children’s growth away from their parents and into the world and themselves. We know in our hands, in our hearts, and in our heads. We know goodness, beauty, and truth. The more ways we know, the more value we find in life, and the more value we bring to those around us and to whatever we are called to do.

(I wrote this before hearing on NPR recently about memory studies that divide memory into “declarative” memory—clearly cognitive—and “non-declarative” memory, which sounds just like the memory associated with tacit knowing above. Two points about this: First, interesting that cognitive memory is given pride of place; that is, non-cognitive memory is not given its own name, but is simply called “non-declarative.” Second, interesting that memory associated with the heart isn’t even considered…)