Important Questions to ask and understand about your Waldorf School

Special specific & additional thanks to Lisa Ercolano

  • Carefully examine the school’s pre-enrollment package.  There should be some reference to "Anthroposophy," as well as at least a simple explanation. If there is not, ask.

  • Ask to see main lesson books from several grades, and from several children within the same class (on the same subject.) This way, it will become obvious that the main lesson books are almost identical, and that the children merely copy whatever the teacher writes or draws from the blackboard -- usually up to and including through the 4th grade.

  • Do you believe in reincarnation? Does you want your child taught by a system that is based -- pedagogically, as well as spiritually -- on a belief in reincarnation? Broach the subject of karma, and its role, in Waldorf education with a class teacher and/or admissions rep.

  • Do you understand Steiner's three, 7-year cycles of child development (in which children below the age of 14 are not allowed to think abstractly -- even if they do so naturally?) Children below the age of 14, according to Steiner, should never form independent thoughts or theories, but should instead learn to trust the authority of the teacher and to think as she thinks. Ask the school rep how this is played out in the classroom.

  • Do you understand that in Waldorf, it's not just a matter of not pressuring kids;   it's actually a matter of repressing their early development, in all ways, not just the late reading?

  • Do you believe that ALL technology is bad for kids? Sure, we all think kids watch too much garbage on TV, and little kids shouldn't spend their time staring at computers. But if you ask, Waldorf teachers will tell you that computers are not good for children because children cannot understand how computers work. They will tell you that in the Waldorf high school, the students are then old enough to learn to build a computer and to use one. What they do not tell you is that they believe that the computer is `Ahrimanic’?? -- connected with the god of darkness?? -- and can sap the child’s will and actually ``suck out the child’s soul.??

  • Do you want your child influenced by the same adult for eight years? Do you understand that if your child develops a dislike for the teacher, Steiner says it's the child's karma, and it will take curative Eurythmy to work it out, and no, the child can't change teachers because the karma has to be worked out with the first teacher? (And besides, at most Waldorf schools, there is only one class for each grade?)

  • Do you know that the creation story your child will learn isn't even in the same ballpark with the creationist one of the Christian fundamentalists, despite the school saying it's "Christian-something-or-other"? Do you know that the creators of the earth will be taught in the Waldorf classroom as 11 or 12 spirits, and none of them is a monotheistic God, but a pantheistic "Elohim"?

  • Do you know that -- eventually -- your child ill be taught science that is NOT the accepted science of the 21st century? Students in Waldorf schools learn Steiner science -- which flies in the face of facts proven again and again by numerous other famous scientists and thinkers, including Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton? At a Waldorf school, children learn, for instance that color comes from the clash of darkness with light (Steiner’s idea) , and that the foundation of this science is occult spiritualism, not real science?
    Students in a Waldorf school also do not learn accepted chemistry. Instead of the Periodic Table of the Elements, they are taught that the four elements are: earth, air, fire and water, which they are taught correspond with various signs of the Zodiac.