Waldorf schools and Rudolph Steiner questions (vanity)

What does anyone here know about the Waldorf education system and the person upon who it is based, Rudolph Steiner?

The school near us flies a flag with an image of the earth on it; no US flag. I know they are into biodynamics. Most of the folks I know who are really into biodynamics are usually pretty out there. I also know that many of the people who pioneered various education systems that came out of Germany during the era of John Dewey were socialists or strongly leaned that way.

What constructive information can you provide other than nut cases, crackpots, or communists? I would like to understand where they are coming from. There is nothing that I could find that was critical of Waldorf which makes me doubly suspicious.

The applications confirmed my belief tnat, in our school at least, the parents were amomg the most immature, self-congratulatory, and self-centered people I’ve ever known.

Like most fringe belief-systems / cults, it has a nucleus of hardcore adherents espousing kooky - though not really offensive - ideas. But since Anthroposophy is surprisingly benign, tolerant, and open, the movement also attracts a lot of "hangers-on" and "fellow-travelers" who simply want to bask in the feeling of belonging to a diffuse and non-judgemental but simultaneously esoteric counter-cultural community and who pick and choose freely at the ideological Smörgåsbord it offers.

For the vast majority of "adherents," it's like joining your local Rotary Club, mixed with various aspects resembling astrology, vegetarianism, Cub Scouts, and Line Dancing.

Here in German-speaking Central Europe - where it originated - most people smile condescendingly when they learn that someone else is an acolyte.

Because there is little internal policing to ensure ideological discipline, members are pretty much free to do and say as they like. Importantly, they don't proselytize.

Regards,

My opinion, based on my contacts with Steiner folks many years ago: Theosophy is a kind of Gnosticism, and was very interesting to me at the time, but after finding out more about the Greek Fathers and such I acquired a more balanced view of the sources. The Waldorf schools are, of course, based on Steiner’s teachings, but my impression was that the teachers didn’t really know too much about the esoteric stuff so much as the practical pedagogy being employed. I would probably prefer it for my children over, say, government schools (if I could afford it), but would keep an eye on things. They have their quirks, which aren’t necessarily bad, such as approaching mathematics via spherical geometry, which is kind of cool (and they get to draw pretty pictures).

Yesterday, I took nearly 30 teens on a 14.5 mile Bataan Death March Remembrance Hike. My officer was up front while I stayed back to push the stragglers.

One kid kept falling back and I encouraged her to push on. While we were walking she spoke about her interest in “Agora Schools.” The way she described them, they’re essentially self paced and the students set a project and work on it. I told her it sounds like it might work for gifted and motivated kids.

Then someone ahead shouted back that they found a grass snake and she full-on sprinted to the front.

Ordo Templi Orientis: an occult group that originated in Germany and Austria, known for ritualized sexual practices (”sex magick”), represented in the English-speaking world by Aleister Crowley, networked with various occult groups in England, France, and America around the turn of the 20th century. Steiner in his student days became associated with future OTO cofounder Franz Hartmann, a leading German Theosophist he met in Vienna in the 1880s among progressive circles centered around one Friedrich Eckstein. Eckstein, Hartmann, Steiner and others in their circle came under the influence of the aforementioned Alois Mailander, who taught meditation techniques adapted from Johann Baptist Krebs aka J.B. Kerning. Mailander was a hidden guru for Steiner and other leading German Theosophists interested in Yoga and yogic sexual practices (Theosophy was the leading source of information on Yoga in the German-speaking world at this time). Steiner regarded Mailander as a reincarnation of the Apostle John and Lazarus (whom he considered the same person) and used his teachings as a key to reinterpreting Christianity from a Theosophical viewpoint (for instance, he borrowed Mailander’s idea that Christ’s Second Coming would not be physical, but “etheric”). Mailander’s techniques were integrated with other occult sexual practices by Hartmann’s German Theosophical associate Carl Kellner, the “spiritual father of the OTO”. Steiner was recruited to represent what became the OTO by Kellner and Hartmann’s associate Theodore Reuss in the late 1890s, and Reuss issued Steiner a charter to start a lodge using the OTO’s rite in 1906. Meanwhile, Steiner became the head of the German section of the Theosophical Society in 1902, at the invitation of leading German Theosophist Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden. After a split emerged in German Theosophy, Steiner and his followers broke off and joined the Anthroposophical Society, launched as a rival to Theosophy in 1912, while Hartmann’s following went with a faction led by Theosophical publisher Hugo Vollrath. After Steiner died in 1925, his posthumous autobiography went to lengths to minimize his associations with earlier mentors and organizations.

Many references discussing these figures are available online. For in-depth research, start with the work of James Webb (The Occult Establishment), Karl Beier (Yoga within Viennese Occultism: Carl Kellner and Co.), and Peter Staudenmaier (Between Occultism and Nazism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race in the Fascist Era).

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