Interpreting a Hard World

When I was a child of nine or ten, the world suddenly seemed hard. I mean this literally. Not that life was hard in some metaphorical way, but that everything from the porcelain sky through the shiny leaves and silver bark of maples in summer to the granular asphalt under my feet had an impenetrable quality. I was outside this world, and I found this alarming, discomfiting, depressing. This feeling overwhelmed me at times, especially on bright days when the sun mercilessly picked out the infinite detail of the world.

That the world was this way didn’t seem like my active perception of it so much as an intrusion from “out there,” and I struggled against it, mentally trying to soften things up, to penetrate their surfaces, or, although I wasn’t aware of this at the time, to become one with them again.

But there was nothing I could do, there was, then, nothing to do about it. This feeling of otherness, of separation, was simply a fact of my existence, but one that I clearly had not noticed before.

For several years—until I was 15 or 16—I could summon this feeling at will, immerse myself in it, experience it, examine it anew. But this ability faded, and now I have only a memory of it.

I forgot about all of this for decades.

And then, a few weeks ago, something about the brightness of the sunlight (the leaves are off the trees), perhaps, triggered a memory, and it all came flooding back.

As an older person, I can begin to interpret this sense I had then. Small children are connected to the world and their parents, at first literally and then, for years and years, metaphorically and, without effort to reconnect, increasingly tenuously. I believe I experienced something of my separation—from my parents and family, but also from creation at large—something of my growing individuality, in seeing the appearance of the world as so impenetrable.

That the world so all-of-a-sudden took on this hard quality implies that it wasn’t that way before this, when I was one, two, three, or eight. That is, that my perception of it was different, that what I found now, by comparison, must have been different. I can only say that the metaphorical inside of the world was still united with its outside. (For Barfield, consciousness is “the inside of the whole world.”) And then these split.

Notes on Starting a Waldorf High School

What follow are answers to questions posed by Douglas Gerwin in research on starting a Waldorf high school (so far unpublished, I believe). I thank the half-dozen or so of my colleagues who helped me come up with these answers a couple of years ago.

What helped the most and least in preparation and founding?
Most:
• A years-long anthroposophical adolescence and high school study group of teachers and parents.
• Students who wanted to continue in a Waldorf school and asked their parents to help make it happen—not many, at first, but a couple with real initiative.
• Steadfast and enthusiastic parents, teachers, and trustees.
• The attitude that we’re going to do this even if we have to meet in someone’s living room to save money; that my child will be there in September even if she’s the only one.
• An experienced lead teacher to inspire students and parents (who had taught the lead class in 7th and 8th grade).

Least:
• A “wait and see” or “prove this is worthy” attitude from some trustees, teachers, and parents.
• Antagonism from elementary school parents concerned that their money would support others’ children’s high school education.
• Selfishness and resentment about “lending” elementary school teachers to the high school.
• That the elementary school had been established for more than 30 years—no pioneer spirit left.
• That the elementary school had “lost” a high school in the 1980s—had started one and then had to close it fewer than four years later.
• Presence of Hawthorne Valley School—including a Waldorf high school—c. 25 min. away. (Although we believed—and still believe—that two healthy elementary schools can support two healthy high schools; that there’s room for healthy cultural variation among Waldorf schools—more choice is better; and that, like gas stations clustered near the center of a town, people will go where the education is.)
• Culture among elementary school parents; expectation that 8th grade “graduates” will go on to prep school.

What were the big surprises, miscalculations?
• The whole thing has been a surprise... That we’re still here and have grown through the nation’s recession, that we’ve had a balanced budget for the last three years, that our students and parents are happy and that the students are accepted to excellent colleges means we haven’t miscalculated too badly...
• That we had a fantastically successful 9th grade year (first year of high school) and then were told that others had misgivings about moving ahead with grade 10. (To be precise, some of us remember agreeing to see how 9th grade went before deciding if there would be a 10th grade—like many prep schools, we could imagine being a K-9 school for a few years before moving to a full high school; others remembered an agreement that we were not adding a 10th grade, no matter what. The lack of clarity here—no minutes or written Board decision—hurt us.)
• How difficult it was to have part of a high school (9th grade, 9th and 10th, and 9th, 10th, and 11th) without a senior class. Seniors are real leaders, and the school didn’t really start to feel complete and entirely happy until spring 2006, just before our first graduation.
• Skepticism of supposedly committed elementary school teachers.
• Economic hardship—more than one teacher worked for a year for nothing. Nothing.
• Community involvement has been spectacular.
• Exceptional visiting teachers.

What were the biggest obstacles, hurdles?
• The sheer difficulty of the operation, top to bottom. The infinite detail.
• Initial lack of money and students. The high school “paying for” a crisis in the elementary school at the time of founding with reduced enrollment. Little money for PR; low visibility...
• Perception that we were “just” a continuation of the elementary school; that we would use elementary school understandings of students and teaching methods. (Which is like assuming that elementary school teachers will use early childhood understandings and techniques…)
• Perception that, because another Waldorf school is 25 min. away, our work was unnecessary or redundant.
• Faculty turn-over. Several teachers miscalculated their commitment or the difficulty of starting a school and left for greener or at least more predictable pastures.
• No tuition remission for our teachers. We couldn’t afford it. Now we don’t support it because not giving remission is a signal to our community that we’re all in this together. Teachers can enter the tuition assistance pool just like everyone else.

What do you wish you had done that you did not do? What would you do differently if you had it to do over again?
• Emphasize value of small school from the start (we spent a couple of years apologizing for our small size before our parents correctly pointed out to us the many benefits of our size): flexibility, motivation of students, caliber of work, focus, structure.
• “Sell” to students in grades 5-8. (We started with the belief that parents should make the decision about their children’s high school, even if we knew that students were making it. And we found each year that including 7th grade families wasn’t enough, nor 6th... “marketing” needs to include the whole elementary school, and targeting events—open houses, plays, etc.—needs to begin with 5th grade families.)
• Emphasize the need for confidentiality among colleagues as we go through the “birth pangs” of starting a school—specifically, for example, when we missed a pay period, it was harmful to the school (and didn’t help anyone get paid any faster) when teachers complained to parents or others.
• Establish a more structured relationship with our Elementary School to allow for greater clarity in planning for the future. We had an ad hoc joint committee of teachers and trustees, but this functioned reactively; we would have benefitted from a more durable, proactive group.
• Devote more energy to educating our elementary school teachers (especially in grades 5-8) about who we were and what we were doing. Like many parents, they assume that a Waldorf high school is “just” a continuation of the elementary school, not a transformation of it...

What are you grateful that you did do?
• That we started (instead of waiting).
• Engaged resources in the community—artists, studios, internships, Simon’s Rock college athletic center, lab, library, and, especially, the “language” trips that we instituted to Germany and Peru every other year.
• Stuck to our strong substance abuse policy. We lost a couple of valuable families by sticking to our guns, but, in the long run, we’re stronger and healthier and our enrollment has grown.

What was most helpful in generating enrollment, philanthropy?
• No annual appeal, just informative letters and requests every other month or so. Relationships with major donors.
• Success of pioneer classes—college acceptance, graduation speeches, general student presentation convinced many parents and students that we were worthwhile.
• Positive student attitudes and supportive students (and these developed more strongly from our 4th year on...)

What best persuaded 8th graders to join high school?
• Visiting days. Skeptical students were usually “wowed” by spending a day with us. Even those who went elsewhere recognized the quality of the school.
• Our annual play, too.
• And the possibility of travel and exchange.
• Also our flexibility—willingness to add courses or, for example, a darkroom and photography to curriculum based on student requests.
• The high quality of our teaching—a Core Faculty experienced in Waldorf schools; 2 PhDs; four of six Core Faculty members attended Ivy League schools and the others are also exceptionally well-educated.

What is essential in starting? What can you do without?
• At least one “real” Waldorf high school teacher, whatever that is, and enough committed families to create a pioneer class—our smallest number in the school has been 12 (our smallest class has been 3, if you don't count the year we had senior class of 4 and a junior class of zero).
• Passion, unity of purpose, and a mission shared among colleagues.
• Everything else, we’ve demonstrated so far, is extraneous, or at least can be jerry-rigged year-to-year.

How did you handle elementary school anxieties?
• Primarily by incorporating separately, not because we wanted to, but because it was the only way we could continue.
• Openness—willingness to meet, to answer questions, to allow visitors to classes, board meetings, etc., etc.
• As more and more nearby Waldorf schools founded high schools, however, the argument that, although it is risky to start a high school, it may be riskier not to, gained some traction among thoughtful parents and trustees.

How did you seek and secure “buy in” from community?
• By quietly representing ourselves openly and honestly. We had open board meetings from the start (and were followed a year later by our elementary school!).
• We try, with limited resources, to make sure that all our families, high school and elementary school, get the student newsletter, our fundraising letters (which we try to make as “meaty” as possible), etc.

Threefold Social Organization and Waldorf School Governance

According to Rudolf Steiner, social organizations should have three cooperative but independent administrations—one to administer economic functions, one to administer rights and responsibilities of members of the organization, and one to administer what he calls the spiritual or cultural functions—he uses these words interchangeably in discussions of social questions—of the organization. These three administrations scale to cover the smallest institutions and the largest social groups. One administration may consider itself more central than the others to the mission of a particular organization, but all must balance if the organization is to maintain itself in health. A school, for instance, could mirror a theocracy if educational concerns are used to trump or bully the genuine concerns of the rights of its consumers.

This example points to the intuitive correctness of Steiner’s view. Take the opposite view; do we believe that justice should be bought and sold, or that the state should govern religion? For those seeking a more conventional (but no less difficult to comprehend) statement of a view of the theefold structure of society, Jurgen Habermas’s concept of a “lifeworld,” discussed in detail in the second volume of his Theory of Communicative Action, outlines a view that is essentially the same as Steiner’s. For Habermas, every communicative act—asking a question, making a statement—expresses all three of the human subsystems of thinking, feeling, and will. (That is, the most rigorous thought is still communicated with some emotional investment and some intention of will; the most emotional outburst still gives evidence of a thought and an intention, and so on.) Further, every communicative act, in that it is directed from one person to another or to a group of others, extends the human capacities of thinking, feeling, and will into a social interaction. Thinking extended into social interaction we may call culture; feeling extended becomes politics; and will extended concerns economic relations.

For Steiner, an economic administration should function according to a principle of solidarity (Steiner says “brotherhood,” but we should update this) through an “association of producers, distributors, and consumers.” For a school, a child’s education is a product in the economic sphere. It is more than this, but it is also this. Hence, a school should have an administrative body that is comprised of producers—representatives of teachers and staff—and consumers—representatives of the parent body as proxies for their children. Such an administration, to ensure that its work is legal and effective, will also require legal and financial expertise. (Introducing expertise of any kind, we should acknowledge, introduces something from the spiritual-cultural sphere.)

The work of this administration is to balance the needs, desires, and resources of producers and consumers to produce a budget and to plan for the future. Clearly, this administrative body may be identified with a school’s board of trustees.

An administration of the spiritual-cultural area of a school functions according to a principle of freedom, and so—despite tradition and received wisdom—it is difficult if not impossible to say how this administration will or should be governed. It might operate as a so-called College of Teachers that uses a consensus decision-making model, but, in freedom, there is no requirement that it do so.

Steiner did not specify a decision-making process for cultural organizations (and, if he did, we would still have to decide for ourselves whether or not we agree with his statements), and, in fact, in the meetings to reorganize the Anthroposophical Society in 1923-1924, stated that the process mattered little and should be left up to individual groups. One group might choose to function aristocratically, another more democratically. His position was that the structure mattered less than the persons involved, and that those chosen to carry out a task be given the freedom to do it. I believe his views here on constituting the administration of branches of the Society are directly applicable to constituting the administration of a Waldorf school. And, in the first Waldorf School, Steiner was the Director, appointed by acclamation (not by vote).

A spiritual-cultural administration consists of the teachers in the school, regardless of how they structure their governance or decision-making. As Steiner said, “no one who is not a teacher is to have anything to say [about how education is conducted].” Powerful words, if true. Of course, visiting teachers—consultants, mentors—and doctors and therapists who work with the students in a school may be included. But that’s about it. In a Waldorf school we may call this group the College of Teachers, the Core Faculty, the Council, or something else. We may worry that it is too small and too exclusive (and then work to make it larger and more inclusive—there are many ways to do this), but this is the body in most Waldorf schools that corresponds to the free administration of the spiritual-cultural life of a school.

And the work of this administration is the education of students.

A third administration, an administration of rights and responsibilities, which functions democratically according to a principle of equality, should clearly include representatives of every constituency of the school community, anyone who has any rights within the organization, anyone who has any responsibilities to the organization. Here we include students, parents, teachers, staff, alumni, retired faculty and staff, and even donors. All have some number of rights and responsibilities to the organism of the school. These include legally recognized rights, and so this administration requires legal representation, if not at every meeting, at least as a resource on-call.

(I use “rights and responsibilities” because I believe that to be a more revealing phrase in this context than “politics,” a word that is tainted in contemporary colloquial use, and more revealing than “legal,” which doesn’t go far enough to describe what I’m talking about. And I include “responsibilities” because these are clearly conceptually necessary, with rights, to describe what I’m talking about. Steiner includes them, although this is often overlooked or forgotten. To call it a “rights” administration alone indulges a kind of knee-jerk American selfishness—I’ll insist on my rights—and ignores the obligations that we owe each other in social interactions.)

Rights are myriad. Perhaps they begin with clear legally recognized rights, but they also include the policies and procedures of the school. Among other things, for instance, applicants have a right to a clear response to their application in a reasonable time. Responsibilities, too, are myriad. Parents must pay their bills. Teachers must engage in appropriate professional development. Breach of rights or responsibilities is reason for discipline or termination.

Policies, procedures, working conditions, contracts, all belong to this administration. Its work is to set and negotiate the boundaries within which the human beings in the organization conduct their work.

Often, it seems, this work is fragmented in Waldorf schools, is not given to one administration. The Board sets its own policies and procedures, as does the College of Teachers or Council. The support staff (administrative staff) may do the same. A Human Resources committee may assume responsibility for some aspects of this work.

This fragmentation may lead to confusion and miscommunication among parents, teachers, and board members. Dysfunction in this area seems to plague Waldorf schools, and I would say that this is, in part, because schools are clear about the function of a Board and a College but remarkably unclear about the function of this third administration—in fact, there is usually no single name we can use to designate it in a Waldorf school, and there is no single administrative body that consists of representatives of all the constituencies of the school.

(In many schools, the Board may see this administration as part of its legal function, but may then micromanage, fail to distinguish properly between economic concerns and those of rights and responsibilities, or fail to constitute and empower a committee that can take full responsibility for this work. Similarly, Colleges of Teachers may fail to distinguish their appropriate educational function from that of a separate rights and responsibilities administration.)

Schools would undoubtedly be stronger if there was a single administrative team, constituted according to correct principles, that oversaw this work. As it is, too often, policies are weak or incomplete, forgotten or ignored, or simply absent, sending persons of otherwise good will up a wall and out of a school.

As a test case, we might ask first about a clear process for terminating a teacher who is not fulfilling her responsibilities to her students or the school. Schools accomplish this, but often with far greater ill will and rancor than sister institutions (that don’t claim to have such an idealistic view of the world but that function with better management and clarity). And as a second test case, we might ask about a clear process and procedure for terminating this person if she is the Faculty Chair or other person who might otherwise be central to the termination of another colleague. Is there a safety valve or a back door?

Democracy here does not imply voting, or not voting alone. Dewey’s broad definition of democracy as “conjoint community” may point us in the right direction. Decision-making may be democratic and consensus-driven (within legal boundaries), or it may be representational and use some other decision-making process. The point is that all voices are heard and considered.

(I am indebted to my students at Sunbridge Institute for helping me clarify several aspects of this article; it attempts to summarize a week of work in an intensive course on school governance.)