If you could change one thing about Waldorf schools, what would it be?

If you could change one thing about Waldorf schools, what would it be?

One thing. Be as specific and as detailed as you like.

The Winch, The Toilet, and the Bus: Concrete Answers to Fuzzy Questions

Sometimes, fuzzy questions have practical and specific answers. You just have to see them. Here are three examples.

1.) A friend of a friend wanted to start an ocean sailing school, and wasn’t sure how many students to plan for. A dozen? Thirty? How would he decide? After a few weeks of contemplation, buttonholing friends to ask opinions, making assumptions and questioning them, he struck the answer that worked. What is the largest readily available winch by which to raise and lower the sails? This determined the largest practical line, which determined the largest practical sheet or sail size, which limited the size of the ship, which determined the number of berths on the ship. Dividing these among instructors and students, he had his answer.

2.) A summer camp at which I used to work wanted to increase capacity, building new cabins, adding staff, planning for more seats in the dining hall, and so on. But how many to add? Again, after considering several different scenarios, each of which had its advantages and disadvantages, the answer became clear: The leech field for the septic system could handle only so many toilets, and that number of toilets restricted the number and size of cabins that the camp could add, which determined the increase in the number of campers. To add any more than this would entail a large expense to reconstruct the septic system, a cost and project the camp was not willing to undertake. Problem solved.

3.) In planning for our high school eight years ago, we knew we were limited by geography—we couldn’t build a sustainable school of 200; there aren’t enough students within commuting distance of our school to make this feasible. Crunching numbers, we saw another limit around 60. Between roughly 60 and 200, we saw what a friend called a “deadly middle ground,” in which we would have to add teachers, facilities, and resources that wouldn’t pay for themselves. So, was 60 our number? We thought so for a while, but then realized that there was a more specific and more practical answer. Given our location and our reliance on and commitment to community resources, we drove our students to a theater for rehearsals, a library for research, a blacksmith or pottery studio for art classes, and so on. Each bus holds 14 passengers, and can be driven by someone with a regular license, no commercial driver’s license necessary. We had our answer, specific and practical: A school of 56. Four vans, four classes of fourteen students each.

Waldorf Schools and Perfection

The following comment was submitted anonymously to the last post (“Theory-Induced Blindness”), but, since it doesn’t address the content of the post, I’ve decided to place it here and reply below.

“Steve, I think that the 'perfection' vibe that Waldorf gives off is more about how parents need to adhere to the 'rules' they give to parents about how to raise their children (no television, plastic toys, eat organic food, no media and on and on) This only creates an 'us' versus 'them' mentality. 

The other piece is trying to lead an Anthroposophical based lifestyle ~ which seems to be confusing to those who have the belief and those who care nothing about it. 

Basically it seems to me that Waldorf has an on going identity crisis.”

Many years ago I attended a weekend seminar for young school administrators. I was the only attendee from a Waldorf school. One of the keynote speakers, a well-known psychologist, heard I was from a Waldorf school and commented, tongue-in-cheek, “Well, they [Waldorf schools] must be approaching perfection about now.” Clearly, even in the 1980s, Waldorf schools had a reputation for (pretending to) perfection.

I believe, like dogmatism, this derives primarily from insecurity, and have written about it before (“Rigidity and Dogma in WaldorfSchools—Some Theories”).

I’m not sure what the writer means by “identity crisis”—Erik Erikson, who coined the term, saw it as a challenge to the achievement of a healthy ego in adolescence. As a metaphor for the insecure and unfinished state of Waldorf education, it may be accurate. In that “Waldorf” is profoundly decentralized, however, it’s hard for me to think or write about it in such generalities. 

Ditto with an "anthroposophical lifestyle." I do believe, however, that excesses by some should not lead to the too-easy dismissal of thoughtful positions on television (even the American Pediatric Association agrees that TV is harmful to small kids!), media, toys, and food.

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.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Education as Liberation and Constraint

Education constrains us. Education guards us. In the transmission of culture and the production of citizens, education works to fence things as they are.

Education liberates us. Education frees us. In the power of literacy and numeracy, in exposure to the ideas of others, education pushes us out of the nest.

Education always occurs between these two poles, simultaneously guarding and liberating. I believe it was the historian Bernard Bailyn who first pointed this out.

In the past few days, I’ve had occasion to enlarge this conception beyond the education of an individual, a Horace Mann, a Frederick Douglass, a you, or a me.

Take an independent (private) elementary school that decides to add a high school. The elementary school has spent years, even decades, growing to a sustainable size. It has a lot to protect, and now it is considering taking a large risk in growing to include grades 9-12. It has to, deliberately, shift its school culture and the appropriate activities of its board of trustees from guarding to liberating. This is asking a lot.

Waldorf schools are relatively unique in the U.S., at least, in that they see themselves, often, as comprehensive schools that include pre-K through high school grades. In their growth from risky beginnings to stable elementary schools, they shift, at an institutional level, from the entrepreneurial, creative work of liberating to the stability and risk-minimizing work of guarding what they have developed, what they have. This is good and healthy—trustees are responsible for safeguarding the institution they hold in trust. But if this institution now tries to grow again—to add a high school—the institution may well find itself at war with itself, a civil war of guards against liberators. Will the high school receive full support, or conditional support? Enough to survive it’s own risky growth? Good luck to it.

Or, think more broadly of an organization like the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA), which assumes responsibility for guarding the trademarks “Waldorf” and “Steiner” as they apply to education. In guarding what has developed over the past decades in the couple of hundred independent Waldorf schools, is it possible that AWSNA will decline to assume the risk inherent in promoting all the growth it might? I would say it’s not only possible, it’s almost inevitable. In the 1990s, AWSNA deliberately decided not to include charter or public Waldorf schools as members, and, ever since then, has had an uncertain relationship to this new approach to the Waldorf method.

Enlarging a conversation about guarding and liberating to an institutional or associational level necessarily generalizes but the general drift and potential conflicts among constituents, remain, I believe.

And, when times are tight, we are apt to guard more and risk less, even if tough times call for greater risk.

We recognize that the work of liberation is risky.

We should recognize that constraint is risky, too.

We can do ourselves in by overreaching. And we can do ourselves in by failing to grow. By maintaining a healthy and necessary tension between the poles of liberation or growth, and constraint or stasis, we actually minimize risk.

The Clam and the Butterfly: The Effect of a Little Interest

William, I’ll call him, wasn’t interested in anything.

–What do you want to be when you grow up?

–I don’t know…

–Any ideas?

–No.

–What about college. Any idea what you want to study?

–No.

–Where you want to go?

–No. 

Fascinating, huh? That’s how his teachers felt. Like trying to teach a clam.

I can’t recall a less motivated student. Bright, talented, but a C student and not interested in doing any better. No hobbies. Coordinated, but no real interest in sports. A reader, but no discernible passion. Other teachers and I shook our heads. Such possibilities going to waste. How to reach someone like this? Dismissive of most literature, dismissive of opinions different from his own, a bit of a know-it-all. A year. A year and a half.

He was on scholarship, and the chair of the board met with him to try to help him recognize the opportunity he was wasting. Not a lot of movement. The board questioned continuing his scholarship. Mom was tearing her hair out. Dad was done with him. Teachers rolled their eyes. 

And then he signed up for a photography elective. He could have taken it earlier, but, really, we gave other students priority because they were better students, they had earned it. 

He and another student spent one afternoon a week in our darkroom. At the same time, he was enrolled in a filmmaking class that we instituted this year, for the first time, because our school has grown so large that not every student can participate in the school play. William enjoyed photography. He loved filmmaking. We closed school early for a snowstorm, and William, for the first time, expressed an emotion. He was crestfallen. He would miss photography.

So far, so good. A student without apparent interest found an interest. But here’s where it gets interesting.

William started making eye contact, even smiling from time to time. He went out of his way to talk to the woman with whom he carpooled to school each morning—earlier, he sat in silence. His attitude improved, his effort improved, his work improved, his grades improved, his relationships with teachers and schoolmates improved. A tough, experienced teacher commented on his new life. He started to open, like a clam.

I remember a similar student—this one, Guy, I’ll call him, had a different personality. He wasn’t dismissive and apathetic, he was just goofy. His grades were terrible, his effort was lacking, his attitude—if he paid attention long enough to have an attitude—was, well, like the attitude of a stone skipping over a pond.

And then, who knows why, he started taking flying lessons. (Our school is a couple of miles from a rural airstrip for propeller planes.) He got a job to pay for them. He decided he wanted to be a pilot. He knew he’d have to improve his grades, to learn some math. And he did it, rapidly. It was like watching a butterfly emerge from a chrysalis in speeded-up nature documentary style. He applied to aeronautic colleges and was admitted to every one. And he’s now a commercial pilot.

It’s one thing to believe that we are whole beings. It’s another thing to see how one little movement toward interest gradually opens us like a chrysalis. Or like a clam.

Shoplifting, or, the Little Joys of Teaching Teens are Almost Without Number

“I heard the manager say he’s going to catch him tomorrow and have him arrested.”

One of our more Norman-Rockwell-looking students, I’ll call him Joe, had been shoplifting on his lunch hour from one of the Norman-Rockwell-looking shops in town, a small pharmacy that sold snack food, close to our school building. Another student overheard the manager after Joe left, and reported what she’d heard.

Now what? Stand back and let things take their course? We—the other teachers and I—talked about the pros and cons of this inaction and decided that wouldn’t be right.

We announced to the school that that shop was off-limits to our students until further notice. Eyebrows around the room made it clear that several students knew why. Was Joe alone? Probably not, but he was the one who got caught.

We met with Joe and his mom after school.

“The manager of the pharmacy knows you’ve been shoplifting. When you went in there tomorrow he was going to have you arrested. What should we do?”

I wasn’t going to pretend not to know what had happened. I’ve learned over the years not to compound trouble by asking someone, say, a thief, to become a liar. This wasn’t an inquisition. It wasn’t a court of law. It was an attempt to help a young man grow up. And, if somehow he was innocent and wrongly accused, his reaction would make that clear.

Joe, to his credit, didn’t try to lie. “I still have some of the stuff I stole. I could return it and pay for the rest.” His mom sat silent.

“And what about an apology?”

“I’ll write an apology,” he said.

“And deliver it to the manager by hand tomorrow,” we said.

He agreed, and walked into the shop alone the next afternoon with a fist full of gum and candy, some money, and his letter. We learned later that the manager was pretty gruff with him, as he had every right to be, and let Joe know he’d be keeping an eye on him if he came into the store again.

Incident concluded, we let the other students return to shopping there, but asked Joe not to—probably to his relief—for the rest of the year. We also put him on behavioral probation for the rest of the year, and, as far as we can tell, he lived up to our requirements.

You hear, sometimes, the kids are “asking” to be caught. I’m not cynical enough to doubt it. But, after our first meeting as we were leaving, before Joe wrote or delivered the apology, we shook hands. He looked each of us in the eye and what he said startled me. He said, “Thank you.”