Waldorf Education and Theory-Induced Blindness

In the early 1600s, the Church believed it knew all it needed to know about celestial motion. The earth sat at the center of the cosmos, and everything revolved around it. That was the theory. Because of belief in this theory, virtually all who looked at the heavens were blind to alternatives, blind to data that didn’t quite fit, blind even to questions about the theory. In his brilliant book, Thinking, Fast & Slow, Daniel Kahneman calls such an attitude “theory-induced blindness.”

Many of those who work in Waldorf schools, unfortunately, suffer from “theory-induced blindness.” Because they “believe in” anthroposophy and Waldorf education, they are virtually immune not only to the areas in which their theory falls short, but even to Rudolf Steiner’s injunctions against such theorizing! Waldorf education, correctly practiced, is a theory only in the anti-theoretical way that Goethe famously stated: “The phenomenon is the theory.”

It comes down to this, by analogy: Say you are a Freudian psychoanalyst. You have a patient whom you know well, but who does not fit your theory of psychoanalysis. Is your allegiance to the theory, damn the patient? Or do you take your cues from the human being in front of you? Is your allegiance to Waldorf education? Or to children and their education?

Much harm has been done by so-called Waldorf educators in the (sometimes unspoken) name of Waldorf education.

Unfortunately, too, many Waldorf critics suffer from exactly the same theory-induced blindness. They, in fact, accept the same theory that Waldorf-lovers accept, they just don’t like it. They criticize it.

Waldorf education raises interesting and valid questions about the very areas that Waldorf critics rail: about science (vs. “scientism,” a belief in science), about values and religion, about the developmental effects of early learning, and on and on. But, as long as we approach what we call Waldorf education with theory-induced blindness, we will fail to understand it, whether we endorse it or criticize it, and our dialogue will be simple polemics and rhetoric.

I could say to many of my colleagues, paraphrasing a rabbi whose name is lost to me, “The Waldorf education you believe in, I don’t believe in.” And I could say the same to many of the Waldorf critics.