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Playing “Steiner Says”: Twenty-two Myths about Waldorf Education

September 18, 2017

To begin, two stories. During my first year or two of teaching, our faculty meeting enjoyed the presence of two eminent European Waldorf teachers. My recollection is that one came from the U.K. and one from Germany, but that doesn’t matter. One appeared in the fall and one in the spring. The first, answering a colleague’s question, said, “You should never use tongue-twisters; they trivialize language.” Heads nodded. The second, also in response to a colleague’s question, replied, “Of course, the best possible thing for that is to recite tongue twisters with your class.” Heads nodded again. And there we were, back where we belonged, on our own recognizance. Two experts, two apparently contradictory points of view. Presumably, both were based on considered interpretations of Steiner’s work. Years later, just when I thought I would be moving on to university teaching, I found myself happily teaching a seventh grade. An otherwise bright girl, who later graduated high in her prep school class, could not multiply or divide fractions. I asked her why not. Her reply: “Because, whenever I try, I just see gnomes dancing and spinning on the page.” What? Somehow I had managed to teach in Waldorf schools for nearly twenty years without encountering “math gnomes,” and their relatives, including “King Plus” and “Queen Minus.” I had read Rudolf Steiner and Hermann von Baravalle on teaching math, and had no recollection of these gnomes or anything like them. It occurred to me that a lot of what we do in Waldorf schools each day—and sometimes have to explain or defend to colleagues or parents—has little or no basis in Steiner’s work. I’ve since said, seriously, that gnomes have better work to do than to teach little boys and girls about arithmetic operations. More »