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.
Showing posts with label variations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label variations. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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.
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.
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