Did Dwight Shrute go to a Waldorf School?--New Addition

New information has come to light that warrants re-posting this:

• He wears Birkenstocks with socks AND carries a spare pair in his car.

• He speaks German and apparently knows about that awful German children’s book, Struwwelpeter.


• He plays the (fluorescent plastic) recorder.


• He believes exposure to germs strengthens your immune system.


• He wanted to teach children to make cornhusk dolls...

Did Rainn Wilson or a writer for the American version of The Office go to a Waldorf school?
Is there other evidence that Dwight Schrute did?

Inquiring minds want to know.
Comments, please!

How to Ruin the Soul of the Child

Translations of Quotations Taken Out of Context from Rudolf Steiner

(Before we begin, you deserve some attempt to make sense of Steiner’s frequent references to “soul ruining,” some of which are collected below. As a first pass at attempting to say, in part, what Steiner may have meant by “soul ruining,” we may turn to a recent item on NPR’s Planet Money. Job training, it turns out, is more effective for those who have had an early childhood education, controlled for socio-economic variables. Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman found that training relies on what he calls “soft skills,” which “involve things like being able to pay attention and focus, being curious and open to new experiences, and being able to control your temper and not get frustrated,” things you learn in preschool. Astonishingly, on average, boys who went to preschool, in one study, were found to be 50% less likely to be in jail, and to earn 50% more than their peers. Further, skills not learned early are harder and harder--and ultimately impossible--to learn later. Doesn’t it seem possible—adjusting for translation from an early 20th century German idiom, expressed in lectures transcribed later—that the souls of one group were less “ruined,” in an early 21st century, non-judgmental way, than the souls of the others?)

Conclusions can live and be healthy only in the living human spirit. That is, the conclusion is healthy only when it exists in completely conscious life. That is very important, as we will see later. For that reason, you ruin children’s souls if you have the children memorize finished conclusions.
p. 150
http://www.steinerbooks.org/research/archive/foundations_hum_exp/foundations_hum_exp.pdf

Proceed to reflect with the children, without hesitation, that you are looking beyond their horizon. It does not matter, you see, if you say a great deal to the children that they will understand only later. The principle that dictates that you teach the children only what they can understand and form an opinion about has ruined much in our culture.
pp. 48-49

You can present the human intellect, in a makeshift way, with historical or physiological facts before age twelve, but by doing so you ruin human nature; strictly speaking, you make it unsuitable for the whole of life.
p. 110

Do not give children verbal definitions but show them the connections between the concepts and the phenomena related to air and those related to solid bodies. Once we have grasped the concept of solid bodies flowing in the direction in which they tend when not prevented, we can dispense with the concept of air flowing into empty space. Healthier concepts would arise than those that fill the world today—such as Professor Einstein’s complicated theory of relativity. I mention this as a passing comment on the present state of our civilization, for I cannot avoid pointing out how many harmful ideas live in our culture (such as the theory of relativity, especially in its most recent variation). These ideas run a ruinous course if the child becomes a research scientist.
p. 117

By using shorthand, we retain something in our culture that, if left to ourselves with our present natural aptitudes, we would cease to notice and, in fact, forget. We thus keep something artificially awake in our culture that destroys it just as much as all-night studying ruins the health of overzealous students. For this reason, our culture is no longer truly healthy.
p. 132

The children do not as yet have a full understanding for matters of the rights sphere, and if they are confronted with these concepts too early in their development, their soul forces will be ruined for the rest of their lives because such concepts will be so abstract.
p. 151
http://www.steinerbooks.org/research/archive/foundations_hum_exp/foundations_hum_exp.pdf

Thus, because of this method of treatment—giving him wine as a young child—he was completely ruined by the time he was seven years old.
p. 105
http://www.steinerbooks.org/research/archive/discussions_with_teachers/discussions_with_teachers.pdf

Experimental psychology can be a valuable basis of psychology but when it sneaks into pedagogy and even into courtrooms, it ruins everything that requires healthy development, that needs fully developed people not separated by a gulf from other fully developed people.
p. 150

We must not understand our task as imagining that what is good for one is good for everyone, since thinking so abstractly would be the ruin of all genuine desire.
p. 162
For the convenience of the faculty, the child has, for instance, mathematics or arithmetic in the first period; then, perhaps Latin, then, maybe a period of religion. After that, there is music or singing, but maybe not even that, and, instead, geography. We cannot more fundamentally ruin human nature than by teaching children in this manner.
p. 168
http://www.steinerbooks.org/research/archive/education_as_a_force_for_social_change/education_as_a_force_for_social_change.pdf

The first thing you have to do is to dispense with all the textbooks. For textbooks as they are written at the present time contain nothing about the plant and animal kingdoms that we can use in teaching. They are good for instructing grown-up people about plants and animals, but you will ruin the individuality of the child if you use them at school.
p. 37
The chief point is that thinking must never, never be separated from visual experience, from what the children can see, for otherwise intellectualism and abstractions are brought to the children in early life and thereby ruin their whole being. The children will become dried up and this will affect not only the soul life but the physical body also, causing desiccation and sclerosis.
p. 84

Now if there is the right treatment in the language lessons, that is to say if the teacher does not ruin the child’s feeling for language but rather cherishes it, then the child will feel the transition to eurythmy to be a perfectly natural one, just as the very little child feels that learning to speak is also a perfectly natural process.
p. 105
http://www.steinerbooks.org/research/archive/kingdom_of_childhood/kingdom_of_childhood.pdf

Children should not enter elementary school before their seventh year. I was always glad to hear, therefore (and I don’t mind if you consider this uncivilized), that the children of some anthroposophists had no knowledge of writing and reading, even at the age of eight. Accomplishments that come with forces that are available later on should never be forced into an earlier stage, unless we are prepared to ruin the physical organism.
p. 116
Through ill treatment, a violin may be ruined for ever. But in the case of the living human organism, it is possible to plant principles that are harmful to growth, which increase and develop until they eventually ruin a person’s entire life.
p. 137

We ruin our students’ future worldviews when we introduce them prematurely to subjects such as chemistry, mineralogy, physics, dynamics, and so on.
p. 192

People prefer to fall back on traditional religious creeds, trying to bridge what remains unbridgeable unless they can rise from the sensory world to the spiritual world, as anthroposophy endeavors to do. For adults, such a conflict is indeed tragic. If it arises in childhood before the eleventh year, it brings disturbances in its wake that are serious enough to ruin the soul life of a child. A child should never have to say, “I study zoology and find nothing about God. It’s true that I hear of God when I study religion, but this does not help explain zoology.” To allow children to be caught in such a dilemma would be awful, since this kind of questioning can completely throw them off their proper course in life.
p. 281
http://www.steinerbooks.org/research/archive/soul_economy/soul_economy.pdf

At about the age of twelve, while still under the guidance of authority, another important desire, namely, to reason independently, begins to develop. If we use independent reasoning too much before the age of twelve, we will actually ruin the child’s soul and bodily forces. In a certain sense, we deaden human experiencing with reason.
p. 135
http://www.steinerbooks.org/research/archive/renewal_of_education/renewal_of_education.pdf

The Anthroposophical Writer of the English Language Must Read This

Too many anthroposophists adopt the style of (badly translated) German in writing for an American audience. Here's some advice on avoiding this clunky and annoying style:

Germans capitalize Nouns. Americans capitalize only proper nouns; anthroposophy is not a proper noun and should not be capitalized, nor should any number of other nouns translated from German into English.

Germans are a definite people and use definite articles more frequently than Americans do. A German (Steiner) could write a book, The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy. Three definite articles in a ten word title. Educating Children sounds less stilted to American ears. Teaching Children is even better, and, by the way, the word "pedagogical" is archaic in English.

Germans, as definite people, also speak definitely, using "must," for example, far more frequently than Americans do. What is common in Germany sounds almost impolite, and certainly too commanding and definite, to Americans.

Further, especially with regard to Steiner's lectures from the early 20th century, the style of argument is often to indicate the extreme, recognizing that the audience understands this as a definite boundary within which action will (must!) occur. When Steiner says, for instance, that teaching abstract concepts too early will "ruin a (the) child's soul," he is not saying that one teacher in one instance will curdle the soul the way one undissolved piece of sugar will crystalize a batch of fudge, or one dust mite may ruin a computer chip. He is indicating, in a culturally appropriate way that we need to translate, that such activity, pursued in the wrong way, over time, will lead us in a direction that is unhealthy for children (the child).

It is already enough. We must now stop this activity by the conscious retranslation of the concepts and the language we use to describe our engagement with anthroposophy. Not to do this simply demonstrates our superficial understanding (our misunderstanding).

Do you have to be an anthroposophist to teach in a Waldorf school?

No.

(And, to answer the question in Comments below, it depends on the program in which you're getting your Waldorf teacher education--they vary considerably and there's no standard or template--and it also depends on what your definition of "studying anthroposophy" is--if you mean reading Steiner's work in areas outside education, that's one thing. If you mean reading any of Steiner's works, including those in education, that's another...)

We are Plato's Cave Men and Cave Women

A student asked me to write this up, so here goes.

Plato’s allegory of the cave is just that, an allegory. We mistake it, then, if we try to identify ourselves or others as, say, prisoners. We are all prisoners, but we are also all, to some extent, those who have freed themselves.

For those not familiar with this allegory, I’ll review it. You can find it in Book VII of Plato’s Republic.* Find a contemporary translation. The language should sound fresh, immediate, direct. Plato did not write or speak in archaic or stuffy language. (Grube’s translation is good.)

Imagine that we are prisoners in a cave, chained so that we can see only the rear wall. We cannot see our neighbors, or even our own bodies. Reality, for us, consists of the shadows on and echoes from the cave wall. If we push the allegory, we could say that even our own thoughts, while we are thus chained, are only the shadows and echoes of true thoughts. We have been chained since before we can remember, and we believe that reality consists of the shadows and echoes that we perceive.

If we are able to free ourselves, however, we notice that there is a fire behind us on an elevated platform. Between the fire and us is a low wall that disguises beings who carry objects back and forth, holding them aloft so that the fire casts their shadows on the back of the cave. The prisoners take these to be real.

But, recognizing our mistake, although we are now free, we have not yet seen reality. We need to make our way up a path and out of the cave, into the real world, to recognize the source for the objects of which we had previously seen only the shadows. To be clear—because many who refer to this allegory leave out the middle portion, referring only to prisoners and then their apprehension of the world outside the cave—when we were prisoners, we saw the shadows of images of the things that are real. And, to take common experience, the sun that we see in the sky, the brightest thing in common experience, it is, by this allegory, only the shadow of the image of the true sun.

Emerging from the cave, having spent a lifetime in darkness, we are blinded by the light. It takes time for our vision to adjust, to be able to see in this new, true world.

Then, when we embrace the task of returning to the cave to free those still imprisoned, we are blinded a second time as we pass from light to darkness. To the perception of the prisoners, then, we appear to be blind and to have lost our minds, unable to see the shadows and babbling about a world of which they have no conception. They see no value in our attempts to free them, and may, Plato tells us, turn on us and try to kill us if we persist in attempts to free them.

Also, having seen the world outside the cave, we have lost interest in the now meaningless shadows of images. When we see prisoners competing over shadows, we withdraw, we decline to join this fruitless activity.

Our task, then, becomes a task of education, of gradually turning the prisoners’ minds and sight—these are inextricably linked—to the light of the real.

I don’t want to argue about whether or not this is a good allegory—it has survived more than 2000 years—or whether or not it promotes authoritarianism—those who know leading those who don’t. I want to argue that, as an allegory, it applies in all its parts to each of us.

Each of us is, in some respects, deluded, a prisoner who takes shadows for reality.

Each of us, too, is somewhat free, has turned at least slightly to see the fire and the objects that cast the shadows, has begun to recognize his or her imprisonment.

Each of us has, if only in rare, powerful dreams or fleeting, high ideals, glimpsed the world outside the cave.

Each of us has been blinded by light and blinded by darkness.

Each has returned to others in the cave to help them.

Each has benefited from the work of others to bring us closer to freedom and reality.

Can we say it’s not so?


*Plato, in his humility and in order to indulge a powerful rhetorical device, claims not to record his own thoughts and words, but those of his teacher, Socrates. This is why Plato is the author of the Socratic dialogues. In Book VII of the Republic, Socrates speaks to Glaucon, Plato’s older brother, whose name means “bright eyed” or “owl eyed,” an apt and symbolic name for the allegory laid out in the dialogue.

Good Teachers Don't Answer Their Own Questions

Once Harry Kretz asks a question, he stands and he waits. You can see that he is willing to wait while civilizations rise and fall, oceans dry up, stars die and fall from the sky, the universe rumbles to an end, bang or whimper. He’s present, attentive, with his students, but waiting. He has asked a real question that a real student needs to answer for a real reason. Not to prolong a class, or to demonstrate knowledge, or to be pedantic, but because he’s teaching young human beings and it’s necessary for them to exercise themselves, to rouse their minds to activity, to make connections for themselves. Mr. Kretz asks a question that requires students to engage, to think, to draw new connections, to make an insightful leap across a previously uncrossed gap.

Mr. Kretz, one of the finest teachers I have known—patient, respectful, humorous—will tell you that many teachers, especially young, smart ones, don’t really know how to ask questions. “Don’t ask a question that you don’t actually care if the students answer,” he might say. And, once you’ve asked a question that you believe students should answer, don’t do what too many of us do. We wait a couple of seconds and then, impatient, the onrushing momentum of an un-taught curriculum or the threat of silence or of boredom upon us, we answer it for ourselves. And our students relax back into watching the teacher’s show.

“Er. Um.” A student hazards a guess, voice rising at the end, questioning. Mr. Kretz absorbs this answer and asks another question.

(Speaking of leaps, Helen Keller compared leaps of mind and dancing. Here’s Merce Cunningham from Russell Friedman’s biography of Martha Graham: “[I] felt [Helen Keller’s] two hands around my waist, like bird wings, so soft. I began to do small jumps. Her fingers, still around my waist, moved slightly as though fluttering. I stopped, and was able to understand what she said to her companion: ‘So light, like the mind.’” Sometimes, poetic truth and literal truth are the same thing.)