How Many Waldorf Teachers Actually Take an Elementary School Class for Eight Years?

About six years ago, one of my MSEd students, Ashwini Pawar, wrote her thesis on this question.

You cannot find Rudolf Steiner saying that teachers should take a class for so many years—“several,” yes. Precisely eight? No. And Mark Riccio has suggested that even Steiner’s conception of elementary school was really only seven years (the eighth year a requirement of Swiss school law).

So Pawar examined ten years of class teaching at six different Waldorf schools and discovered that only 1 in 4 teachers actually takes a class in a Waldorf school from first through eighth grade.

She also asked about what led to teachers leaving a class—burn-out, family changes (moving, childbirth), termination? This is much harder to assess. Teachers don’t necessarily leave for one reason alone. Teachers don’t necessarily confess to burn-out, or, especially, to being fired. Schools and administrators, too, on the advice of their lawyers, won’t necessarily discuss employee termination. And, even if they would, teachers are often allowed or asked to resign before actually being fired. Regardless, as far as Pawar could tell (in my recollection—I’m sorry to say I didn’t keep a copy of her thesis), reasons for leaving a class teaching job were roughly half positive—having a child, for instance—and half negative—burning out or being fired.

In this, Waldorf school teachers mirror all teachers. Approximately half of all teachers leave the profession within the first five years. (Research by Richard Ingersoll.) It’s not a job for everyone, Waldorf or not.

What does this mean? Waldorf schools might do well to avoid presenting this ideal as a reality. If parents are “sold” on the ideal, and, in the process, unhealthily attached to a particular teacher, it can be a real blow to their affection for the school if a teacher leaves midstream. This assumes that schools continue to hold it as an ideal—at least a few Waldorf schools now deliberately divide elementary faculties between lower elementary and middle school.

A Glance at Discipline Methods in Waldorf Schools

Disclaimer—This is a blog post. It is off-the-cuff, not scholarly, from memory, etc., etc. Hope it provokes discussion. Not intended to be more than the beginning of a conversation.


A commenter on a previous post, “Steve P,” asked about the line “pedagogical methods used in dealing with discipline” in a document called “Description of the Main Characteristics of Waldorf Education.” He kindly posted a link to the English version, which I’ve copied here. My response  here is too long to post as a comment on a comment, and the conversation is worth bringing out in the open, so I thought I’d make it a new post.


In my experience, there are few consistently used methods for discipline issues—including bullying and teasing—in Waldorf elementary schools. (Kim John Payne has done a lot of work with Waldorf schools in this area, but I don’t know how many schools use his methods, much about them, how much of it seeps in after he’s gone, etc. Comments, anyone?)


Some teachers are kind and gentle, others are “old school” and harsh. I have known teachers who have used methods indistinguishable from those my teachers used in public school in the 1960s and 1970s—shaming, sending a student out of the room, changing a student’s seat, giving a demerit or “white” or “pink” slip (varies by school), yelling or shouting, meeting with students who are involved in a fracas, having students write repeatedly that they will not (or will) do something, requiring written or face-to-face apologies, calling or threatening to call parents, and, in cases that resulted in teachers being fired, hitting a student or tying a student to a chair.


The one “method” of which I know that may be different from that used in other schools is what teachers often call “pedagogical stories.” Say two students have a conflict because one student calls another names and the second student responds by hitting. Of course, the teacher should stop this behavior immediately, demand apologies, explain that the students know that this is not right, call parents if necessary, and so on. But teachers in Waldorf schools will then often make up (or find) a story in which two characters behave in a way analogous to the way the children (mis) behaved, including, perhaps, egregious or dire or ridiculous consequences in the story for those who do not reform their behavior. I’m not saying this is what Steiner intended (I’m pretty sure it’s not quite right), but I know it goes on. My son was on to it early, and would tell us at the dinner table in 2^nd grade, “Well, everyone knows that the frog is Daniel, who hit Christopher yesterday, who’s the other frog, because they were fighting over a toy truck, which is the lily pad in the story.” Perhaps his teacher was particularly obvious. Perhaps such stories have an effect even when they’re transparent. Anyway, that’s how it goes.


I’ve also heard of—but not witnessed—teachers’ non-intervention because they believe in “letting the children work it out (perhaps karmically).” If there is karma, it works forward and backward, applies at all times to all circumstances, and inaction is as karmically loaded as action would be.


Which reminds me of some of Steiner’s remarks on seating children according to temperament (would it help, skeptics, if we said personality? The “big five” personality traits—openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion—that many developmentalists discuss mirror some aspects of temperament, and then add “neurotic,” which I think of as a personality disorder, rather than a personality in its own right). One idea was that children seated with “like” children would temper their own personalities (temperaments) in reaction to those around them. Frankly, isn’t that how many of us change our behavior and personality over time? If we do at all? Anyway, I suppose this could be called a disciplinary method in some way.


Continuing with class discipline, it’s important to focus on the positive, too. The best teachers I’ve known—the ones I aim to emulate in my own teaching—rarely, if ever, have discipline problems in their classrooms.


Harry Kretz comes to mind, a gentleman so dignified, so respectful of his students, so careful of his time in the classroom, and with such a dry wit, that he could teach for years without a hint of a discipline problem. Not everyone can or should be Harry—each of us has his or her own qualities as a person and as a teacher—but he was fully himself and could therefore allow students to be fully themselves, without the need to “act out.”


As my friend George McWilliam points out, student misbehavior is often due to unease or anxiety and should fundamentally be addressed by a change in the teacher, not imposed on the student by the teacher. Any teacher facing misbehavior may ask, why does this student believe that this is an acceptable way to behave? It’s rare that students misbehave simply for the sake of being “bad.” Students may be bored, anxious, unsettled, overtaxed, insecure, confused, and on and on. It’s the teachers job to address these issues without making them the problems of the student.


Separate from individuality and from addressing nagging unresolved issues in a class, the most positive steps I believe I can take toward classroom discipline are in creating anticipation and expectation at the end of a class so that students enter the next day focused on learning what I’ve hinted at the day before. And, in class, working to generate and maintain interest and to engage students in learning so that they are so focused on what we’re doing (and not on what they could do that would disrupt or distract) that it simply doesn’t occur to them to misbehave. Ideally, if someone does begin to misbehave, the students are allies in helping him or her quickly restore order to get on with what we’re about.


This last point can be taken to a sentimental or spectacular extreme—one of the reasons I so detest the movie “Dead Poets Society”—and must be deep and authentic to be sustained and healthful. Lots of room for error, lots of time for practice. Never a dull moment.


To end, I continue to resist the archaic word “pedagogical.” In U.S. English (and maybe in British English, as well), the word should be “educational.” A pedagogue is not just a teacher—as he or she may have been a couple of centuries ago—but, in caricature, an old, dried-out, unchanging, unfeeling, know-it-all. Yuck.

Crisis in the History of Education in the United States

From one point of view, the growth and development of education in the United States has been formed by perceptions of crisis. This “change-because-something-is-wrong” mentality may exist elsewhere, as well, but others will have to decide whether or not this is so.

Here is a brief and incomplete look at this history.

It begins with compulsory schooling in Massachusetts, instituted, in part, because of the perceived threat of Irish Catholics—their illiteracy, alternate Bible (not the Church of England’s King James) and its interpretation (salvation through works, not faith), alcohol abuse, and devotion to an authority (the Pope) other than the republic in which they stood.

It continues through the restrictions of professionalism and unionizing, including the founding of the NEA in 1857. Michael Katz calls this the rise of “incipient bureaucracy,” which serves administrators, budgeters, and record-keepers more than it does students in schools. Nothing wrong with professionals or unions; changes in this direction were clearly necessary in the late 19^th century, but they quickly come to serve themselves and not the children in their care.

In the 1870s, “manual training” attempts to mold a (lower) class of students into a work force. Reconstruction sees the rise of public education in the south to address, in part, the new threat of the children of formerly enslaved persons.

The Blaine amendments in many states prevent taxpayers’ money from supporting parochial schools in any way. Those who take the separation of church and state in education for an entirely good and entirely given interpretation of the first amendment would do well to look at the anti-Catholic sentiment behind these laws (which were passed in reactionary states because they could not pass the U.S. Congress).

Kindergartens are wonderful places for children—maybe, mostly—but their rise in the 1880s is, in part, due to further waves of immigrants in need of assimilation to a mostly white, Anglo-American culture.

In the 1890s, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) promotes vocational education to continue to deal with immigrant labor in factories and because of the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution in producing unskilled laborers.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, institutionalizes “separate but equal” racism for the next sixty years, including in the construction, funding, and staffing of schools.

The progressive era derives from Jane Addams’ work at Hull House and her attempt to educate young female immigrants. Clearly, turning immigrants into Americans may be said to be a primary driving force in the creation of systematic public education in this country.

Terman, Hall, and the Stanford-Binet IQ tests seek to sort first soldiers for World War I, and, shortly thereafter, students, based on innate and quantifiable “intelligence.” Brave new world, here we go. Despite a century of subtle manipulation, SAT tests are still no more than IQ tests.

The Scopes trial of 1925 brings the creationists’ challenge to science, marking a struggle that continues today in which religious extremists attempt to influence curricula and textbook publishers.

In the 1930s, it seemed to many in the U.S. that capitalism was in decline and that, without socialism or a strong, perhaps fascist, leader in the mold of Hitler or Mussolini, we would fail politically and economically. George Counts’ “Dare the School Build a New Social Order?” is a work wrought by a late, chastened “progressive” thinker who cannot foresee the dehumanizing excesses of fascism and totalitarianism.

Rudolf Flesch, an Austrian, introduces phonetics and fear with “Why Johnny Can’t Read” in the 1950s.

Brown v. Topeka, KS, Board of Ed. overturns Plessy v. Ferguson, marks the rise of civil rights, but leads, eventually, to busing and other questionable (if honorable) attempts to level an uneven playing field and their unintended consequences (“white flight,” etc.).

The Space Race, a creation, again, of fear of the perceived successes of totalitarian socialism, leads to post-Sputnik educational reform and the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which quickly gives us so-called “New Math.”

Since 1983’s “A Nation at Risk,” followed by “America 2000,” “Goals 2000,” and “No Child Left Behind,” we have participated in the questionable rise of standardized testing and all the ballyhoo and anti-education that accompanies it.

Assuming there’s some truth to my interpretation, we should ask ourselves some questions about this century and a half of haphazard history.

Are our children well served by an educational system born out of and continually reformed by perceptions of failure and crisis?

Who is served by the fear and foment of this mode? Is it our children and those who know them best—teachers, parents, psychologists—or is it, more likely, politicians, textbook publishers, educational technologists, and interest groups led by extremists?

Waldorf Critics—The FAQ You’ve Been Waiting For

So you’re interested in Waldorf education and you’re doing your due diligence, looking into it, trying to figure out if it’s right for your child. And you come across the Waldorf critics—the website of People for Legal and Non-sectarian Schools (PLANS)—or the Waldorf critics Yahoo group. And you read and read and wonder what to make of it all. Here are some FAQs, as I imagine them.

Q. Who are the Waldorf critics?

A. They’re individuals. Spend a bit of time on their sites, and you’ll see that some are calm and clear, others are rabid and manic, some are funny, some bitter, some wistful, some scornful. Many, but not all, are former students or parents at Waldorf schools. Methinks many protest too much, and could as easily be great friends of Waldorf education as critics. Some used to be, and may be again; others aren’t, but given their sincerity, may yet be. Some have had negative experiences at Waldorf schools. In my opinion, they too often generalize these experiences to cover “all” Waldorf schools or Waldorf education. Some actually have no experience of Waldorf schools whatsoever, and really are more critical of anthroposophy than of Waldorf education.

Q. They’re so critical! Is there any basis to their criticisms?

A. Their criticisms and arguments range from the astute and accurate to the twisted and just plain wrong. Anyone who has worked in or been associated with a Waldorf school for more than a few months will recognize some of the problems and tendencies that critics point out. Often, the difference is not that Waldorf critics see something that Waldorfers don’t, it’s that critics see problem X, let’s say, as pervasive, making Waldorf education rotten to the core, while Waldorfers see problem X as an aberration in an otherwise healthful educational paradigm.

Q. What are their actual criticisms?

A. The PLANS site is pretty clear about these; the Yahoo group and blogs, as ongoing forums, less so. I’ll restate them, as I understand them, in my own terms.

1.     Waldorf schools are the missionary arm of anthroposophy, an occult, cult-like religious sect founded by the misguided guru Rudolf Steiner. Waldorf schools lie about or obfuscate this connection in order to appear independent of it.

2.     Because of their beliefs, following Steiner, they espouse a racist ideology;

3.     They teach discredited “bad” science;

4.     They allow students to bully one another (it’s their destiny, or “karma”);

5.     They shun technology; and

6.     They subscribe to outdated or incorrect theories of child development.

Q. But this doesn’t sound like what I read in Steiner or what I see when I visit a Waldorf school; isn’t this based on experience of small samples and selectively taking quotations out of context?

A. Yes.

If Rudolf Steiner…

1.     believed strongly in and spoke and wrote about human freedom;

2.     believed in non-sectarian education;

3.     in overcoming distinctions of race and in the highest ethics;

4.     in re-humanizing a dehumanizing thrall to scientism and technological optimism;

5.     in teaching according to human development, even as this changes from time to time and place to place;

6.     in re-attaching human beings to what Huston Smith calls “the perennial philosophy;”

7.     and if anthroposophy is not a religion;

8.     and if Waldorf schools and Waldorf teachers are doing their best to implement an education according to these principles;

then the critics are not so much wrong—although I believe they’re frequently and fundamentally wrong about many things—as they are looking through the wrong end of the binoculars, or looking at a funhouse mirror. They perceive—and then represent—a diminished and distorted view of Waldorf education and anthroposophy.

Q. So their criticisms are groundless?

A. No, of course not. Each contains some truth, or it wouldn’t be worth typing about. Let me be clear.

1.     Some Waldorf teachers and anthroposophists turn anthroposophy into a sect and act in a cult-like manner. But they’re a minority and they’re wrong to do so.

2.     There is bad science teaching and bad history teaching in some Waldorf schools and by some Waldorf teachers. The critics are fond of referencing the work of those, like Roy Wilkinson, who are pretty extreme and whom I steer my education students away from. They seem to ignore the deep and thoughtful teachers and writers about anthroposophy and Waldorf education—Henri Bortoft, Owen Barfield, Craig Holdrege, Stephen Edelglass, Douglas Sloan, Fred Amrine, Arthur Zajonc, Gertrude Reif Hughes; the list goes on and on, and anyone sincerely interested can add to it easily.

3.     Sometimes, curricula in Waldorf schools are based too much on a literal reading of a translation of general remarks made in Europe in the early 20^th century. No doubt. But Waldorf schools have come a long way, especially in the United States, in updating curricula and methods.

4.     Sometimes Waldorf teachers make bad decisions and sometimes these are based on a misunderstanding of Steiner or of anthroposophy and sometimes these are supported by an insecure or ideological school culture, but, again, in my experience, these are rare and, for most students and parents most of the time, are greatly outweighed by the humanizing, creative, warm, supportive, good education in a Waldorf school.

5.     Some anthroposophists, including those in Waldorf schools, have used a selective reading of Steiner or other anthroposophists as the basis for a racist view of the world. I believe there are fewer of these each generation, and, in my experience, examples of anthroposophically-based or Waldorf-institutionalized racism are rare (see “Accusations of Racism,” which I stand by despite the objections of some critics. Were I to write this again, I would probably change the title to “allegations” instead of “accusations,” a more neutral word, but so be it).

6.     Waldorf schools could be more open to parents and visitors—although I believe they’re generally more open than critics give them credit for being, and each school is different, anyway.

7.     In the age of the Internet, I simply don’t believe schools could get away with “hiding” Steiner or anthroposophy from prospective parents, even if they wanted to. And, in my experience, they don’t.

Q. Say, didn’t you go to a Waldorf high school after 8 years of public school, and haven’t you spent much of your career teaching in Waldorf schools? Doesn’t that make you biased?

A. Yes. Or else I know what I’m talking about. Or both.

Q. I’ve read all this. What now?

A. If you’re looking for a school, visit, spend time there (as you would at any school, right?), and meet your child’s future teachers. Research shows that it’s better to have a good teacher in a bad school than a bad teacher in a good school. So much comes down to teaching. Talk to parents and students. Gather information and make the decision based on your own experience and your own thinking. Don’t let critics dissuade you, and don’t let Waldorfers convince you.

If you’re just surfing the Web, looking for truth, good luck to you.