Hello, and welcome to another Sunday with Sarah! I'm Sarah Baldwin and today I'm
here to answer the big question: are Waldorf schools a cult? Now, there are a
lot of misconceptions about Waldorf education. One of the the biggest myths,
in my opinion, is that Waldorf schools are religious schools and I want to
explain a little bit more about that today, hopefully put your mind at ease
from some things you may have heard. I want to go back many years and share
with you my journey in Waldorf education. When I first learned about it and was
interested in becoming a teacher, I had enrolled in teacher training. This was in
the very early days of the internet but I did some research and I found a
lot of websites with alarming information, some anti-Waldorf websites
claiming that Waldorf schools were a cult, they were a religious cult, and
based on this philosophy I couldn't even pronounce which I now know is pronounced
anthroposophy which was Rudolf Steiners worldview. So at this point I was
already enrolled to do the teacher training and then I started getting
worried: "what have I gotten involved in?" And I wasn't sure what to make of it. I
had already paid my money and my training was about to begin so I decided
to go ahead with the training. I was a little bit suspicious, a little bit wary
though. I kind of had one eye open and and was thinking a little skeptically about
what I was learning. But after a week or two into the training, I realized the
people I met, the teachers I was working with were some of the most amazing
teachers I've ever had in my life—full of wisdom—and the days
we spent painting, I mean, we read Steiner but we were painting and doing handwork
and woodworking and singing and eurythmy which is a form of movement. It
was so rich and there was no
religious talk at all. At the end of my first two or three weeks, I thought there
was enough here that I wanted to keep going and I'm so glad I did because
studying anthroposophy, becoming a Waldorf teacher, sending my children to a Waldorf
school changed my life in so many positive ways. When I think I nearly
could have been steered off that path by the fearful things that I was hearing
would have been such a shame. So let me tell you, in my perspective, one of the
best teachers I had when I started my training explained that Steiner's
world views, some of them were were just really, let's face it, kind of out there
philosophically and were hard to make sense of. Now when I started reading
Steiner, what I read was so insightful about child development and human
development, the things that I could relate to. One of the best teachers I had
said when you study Steiner, some of it may make sense to you and some of it may
make sense in five years or ten years. Some of it may never make sense to you
at all. Just take what makes sense to you and
leave the rest, put it on the back burner. That gave me a real sense of relief that
I wasn't being asked to sign up for anything or to believe in anything. What
I learned was Steiner's spiritual view of the world is one that he says you can
investigate for yourself. He described a path of meditation and asked that nobody
believe him but says these are truths one can verify for oneself. So
that, as I said, that really put my mind at ease and I can tell you in my
many years of experience teaching in a Waldorf school, anthroposophy, even though
it's studied by teachers in their teacher training, it is not taught to the
children. Most certainly not. However, children do study all the many streams
of the world's great religions through the grade school years, from Old
Testament stories to stories of the saints in second grade, in some Waldorf
schools. They learn Norse mythology, Greek mythology, they learn ancient Persian
mythology. All these world streams and later Buddhism and Hinduism. They're
exposed to all of this. And if you study all the world's great religions, they all
have the same common theme of love and living a moral and ethical life and so
it is a moral education, I would say, more than a religious education. I have had
the privilege of teaching with teachers who were Jewish and Muslim, Hindu, Pagan,
and some that were adherents of anthroposophy. And there are Waldorf
schools all over the world now, in India, many in China, that are teaching
children and families from different spiritual streams. And at our
Waldorf schools here at home, in America, you know, children whose families don't
practice any religion at all. One thing I say when I'm interviewing parents and
introducing them to Waldorf education is that it's not a religious school but the
teachers do hold a spiritual view of the child, just as Maria Montessori did,
seeing the whole child as body, mind and spirit.
So if having a spiritual worldview is uncomfortable for you, it
may not be a good fit but I just want to assure you that we're not teaching
religion and Waldorf schools are not a cult.
Going back to that idea, when I first got involved and got worried about what
I was getting involved in, I started researching cults and what is a cult and
generally, the Cult Awareness Network defines a cult as having a
living leader and often cults want you to give all your money and cut off ties
to friends and family and everything I read on this checklist reassured me that
I was not getting involved in a cult. Waldorf doesn't have a living leader.
Rudolf Steiner was a philosopher who prescribed this incredible method of
education and it's all about family and community and I hope that dispels some
myths for you. I'm sure this video will generate a lot of questions.
I love addressing these questions and am happy to take them and respond to
them. So thanks for watching and I will see you again next time!