Article Archived from The Boston Globe
In a nation obsessed with measurement, an educational approach known for large classes, old-fashioned values, and minimal testing is holding its own. By Edgar Allen Beem
THE BIG BUNGALOW THAT HOUSES grades 1 through 4 at the Merriconeag Waldorf School in Freeport, Maine, is a sunny place with a soaring central skylight and walls of muted yellow, soft lavender, and sky blue. Each classroom has a handmade wooden door with a tree-branch handle. From behind these rustic cottage doors come the sounds of children learning. There are recorders being played, verses being recited in unison, feet stomping, hands clapping.
"Two times four is eight." (Clap.) "Three times four is 12." (Clap.) "Four times four is 16." (Clap.)
The 26 pupils in Sarah Van Fleet's fourth-grade class are standing in a circle reciting their multiplication tables, a timeless exercise in mathematical memorization, but one with a difference. While reciting, they clap out a rhythm and pass around orange beanbags. Van Fleet hands out the bags one at a time to the child closest to her, the child then passes it from one hand to the other behind his back, and then on to the next child. Eventually, each has a beanbag. At the end, Van Fleet places a wooden basket in the center of the circle, and, upon correctly answering a math question, each child tosses in the beanbag.
According to Waldorf theory, not only does learning multiplication in this unusual manner give students practice in memorization, it also requires unison speaking, rhythm, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and cooperation. This pedagogical multi-tasking is typical of Waldorf education, an approach to learning that seeks to address the whole child through the integration of physical, social, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth.
When all her students have tossed their beanbags at the basket, Van Fleet suddenly starts counting aloud. This signals a wild scramble to replace all the desks and chairs. By the time she has counted to 40, Sarah Van Fleet is standing before 26 pupils seated in four neat rows.
"The idea is to work them up into a froth," she says. "Then they're ready to settle down and learn."
AS PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS INCREASINGLY PUSH FOR HIGHER academic standards and exit exams in response to political demands for accountability and improved performance, Waldorf schools are serenely charting a very different course. What they seek to offer their students is not necessarily greater academic rigor, more individual attention, or a competitive advantage but what might best be described as an education with soul.
Students are taught to read later than in public schools. Students stay with the same teacher throughout all eight grades, and class sizes are deliberately large. But with quaint exercises and a lack of standardized tests, these schools of 200 to 300 pupils are increasingly meeting the needs of 21st-century students and parents.
Waldorf schools are the brainchild of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), an Austrian philosopher, natural scientist, and self-described clairvoyant. In 1919, he developed the Waldorf curriculum to educate the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany. Intended as an educational program for the masses, Waldorf schools, which are prevalent in Germany, became an alternative for a progressive few in this country.
The first Waldorf school in North America was established in New York City in 1928, but by 1965 there were still only eight. Today there are 130. The increased interest has generally been attributed to baby boomers, who tend to be well educated and progressive. Some are public policy leaders and prominent members of the community, able to afford tuition that averages $7,500 a year.
Many of the parents share an aversion to the standards-based reform initiatives that have swept through public education in the past decade, such as the Maine Educational Assessment (MEA) tests and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exams.
"Waldorf education is a far more social education than public school," says Van Fleet. "Public schools educate mostly the head. Waldorf schools educate the head, the heart, and the hands. There's much more to children than just thinking."
Of the 18 Waldorf schools in New England, 13 have been formed since 1980, and there are new Waldorf initiatives and expansions every year. Some are exclusively elementary, others are high schools. Some are boarding schools, others are public charter schools. The five Waldorf schools in Massachusetts are located in Lexington, Beverly Farms, Great Barrington, Bourne, and Hadley.
The schools' campuses range from storefronts to the bucolic setting of Merriconeag. Merriconeag Waldorf School - its Native American name means "place of easy passage" - enrolls 150 students in grades 1 through 8 and another 70 children in a kindergarten program, housed at another location. Waldorf schools tend to grow with their students, so plans call for eventually adding a high school at Merriconeag.
Like all Waldorf schools, Merriconeag strives to follow Rudolf Steiner's injunction: "Receive the children in reverence, educate them in love, let them go forth in freedom."
EACH WALDORF DAY BEGINS THE SAME WAY, WITH THE TEACHER greeting the students. "Are you well? Is your mom better? I hope you brought clothes for outdoor games."
As her students arrive about 8:15 a.m., Van Fleet welcomes each one, shaking hands and making eye contact. This personal connection is a daily ritual in all Waldorf schools, an exercise in civility that also helps the teacher gauge the mood of the child and the class as a whole.
Sarah Van Fleet, who taught for 17 years in public schools, first became interested in Waldorf education in 1990 after attending a Waldorf workshop. "Very strange," she recalls. "It was just so foreign to me. They were talking about teaching first-graders to knit." In 1997, however, she left the Yarmouth, Maine, school system to teach at Merriconeag.
"As more and more emphasis was being put on outcomes and testing and learning results," she says, "I realized I couldn't make sense of it. I believe teaching is an art, and I felt I could do that less and less."
The differences between public schools and Waldorf schools are quite evident, beginning with class size. Van Fleet has sole charge of 26 fourth-graders. Waldorf operates on a large-family principle, believing that there is strength in numbers. Since Waldorf classes and teachers stay together for eight years, a healthy mix of personalities is considered desirable.
"You aim for large classes," Van Fleet says. "In Waldorf, if I have 18, it isn't enough. In public school, 18 is plenty."
Then there is the obvious spiritual dimension. Waldorf schools are nonsectarian, but they do acknowledge the existence of a higher power. Witness the morning verse that all grade 1 through 4 Waldorf students, including those at Merriconeag, recite:
The sun with loving light makes bright for me the day;
The soul with spirit power gives strength unto my limbs;
In sunlight shining clear I reverence, O God,
The strength of humankind,
Which Thou so graciously has planted in my soul,
That I with all my might may love to work and learn.
From you comes light and strength,
To you rise love and thanks.
"God is mentioned. The soul is mentioned," says Van Fleet. "The spiritual dimension can come into the classroom, but it is just a recognition that there is more to life than what we see."
One thing not seen in Van Fleet's classroom is a computer. Waldorf schools discourage students from watching television or using computers. "They are deadly for the imagination," says Van Fleet.
The first two hours of school consist of the daily "main lesson," a constant in Waldorf schools. Students play their recorders, sing, recite poetry, recite the beanbag times tables, listen to Van Fleet tell the story of Hiawatha, and then copy stories they have written about the mythical Indian figure Glooskap into the spiral-bound notebooks in which all of their work for the year will be recorded and preserved.
"My greatest wish for public education would be to leave the children in the classroom for the first two hours," says Van Fleet, expressing frustration at all the pullout programs (art, gym, guidance, remedial reading, etc.) that fragment the public school day. "I also wouldn't put such an emphasis on teaching reading and writing at an early age. In Waldorf schools, if you learn to read in the first grade, great. But it's not taught."
Instead, Waldorf schools stress listening skills in the early grades and start teaching reading in the second grade.
"Waldorf children learn to listen really well," says Van Fleet. "Much of the curriculum is delivered orally by the teacher. It's not lecture. It's done in story. In public school, rarely does a teacher tell a story; they read the story."
What is not so evident in Van Fleet's classroom is that Waldorf schools use a developmental curriculum that follows the progress of civilization as the child ages. First-graders learn fairy tales and folk tales; second-graders get legends, fables, and nature stories; third-graders study Old Testament stories; fourth-graders focus on Norse and Native American myths.
Through their eight-year recapitulation of human history, Van Fleet's written assessment of their work will be the primary measure of their progress. There are no letter grades in Waldorf schools until the eighth grade.
At 10:30 a.m., the children have snack and recess. Then, from 11 until 12:15, John Saccone, a former member of Tony Montanaro's Celebration Mime Troupe, puts the fourth-graders through a series of rope-jumping, log-balancing, and ball-bouncing exercises. When they come back in for lunch, the children open their desks, take out place mats that they have crocheted, and eat in silence while Van Fleet reads to them from a chapter book entitled The Wheel on the School. When they have finished eating, several students, both boys and girls, knit quietly as they listen to the story. At 12:45, Van Fleet goes home.
"Good afternoon, Class Four."
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Van Fleet."
The civility of the classroom seems to carry over to the way these 9- and 10-year-olds treat one another. There is no teasing or roughhousing on the playground, no horsing around when Van Fleet dismisses the class for recess. A handful of students stay behind in the classroom, playing string games like cat's cradle and Jacob's ladder. Kelsey, a self-assured girl who has been knitting, notices that Alex, who is new this year, is having trouble with a place mat he is crocheting and offers to help. Alex is pleased with the help and the attention.
"My old school was scary," he says, as several classmates listen in. "Kids swore a lot. There was no such thing as a friend."
After lunch, handwork teacher Christine Colson instructs half of the class in the art of chain-stitching a paisley pattern on scraps of denim, while woodwork teacher Robert Thurrell guides the other half in carving Viking butter paddles out of foot-long pieces of maple stock. A fourth-grade classroom armed with carving knives would be cause for concern in most public schools, but at Merriconeag, the students diligently whittle away the remains of the day. The day ends at 3:05.
For an alternative school, Waldorf education seems to be curiously old-fashioned, standardized, and regimented, right down to the students' look-alike artwork on the wall and uniformly organized lesson books.
"Waldorf education is not child-initiated; it is child-centered," says Van Fleet. "The curriculum was very carefully worked out by Rudolf Steiner in 1919. The teacher brings the curriculum, but the curriculum is so broad that there is a place for everyone to shine."
Lynne Espy knew nothing about the Waldorf philosophy when she was shopping for a nursery school for her daughter Hannah. What drew her to Merriconeag was the order and calm of the classroom, in contrast to the clutter and chaos she witnessed when she visited a public school kindergarten.
"Everything is very deliberate in a Waldorf school," says Espy, who now has three children at Merriconeag and is a board member. "The children imitate Sarah's kindness. It's not talk; it's do. They just do it."
Katy Neveu moved to Maine two years ago from California, where she had volunteered in a Waldorf charter school in Novato. She was predisposed to Waldorf education, she says, because of her mother's experience as a public school kindergarten teacher in Cincinnati. "My mother taught kindergarten for 25 years," says Neveu. "In that time, her classroom went from a play class to a place where little children learned to read on computers."
While Waldorf parents give the schools glowing recommendations, the system also attracts criticism on a variety of levels. Rudolf Steiner's philosophy, known as anthroposophy, is one of them.
Anthroposophy (an-thro-poss-o-phy, literally "the study of humanity") is the spiritual path Rudolf Steiner articulated in his voluminous writings. Though it is difficult to distill Steiner's philosophy into a few words, anthroposophy is an outgrowth of theosophy. As such it holds that the materialist view of the world is incorrect and that the ultimate purpose of the universe is to fulfill a spiritual destiny. Among Steiner's more controversial beliefs were that humans have existed on earth since the creation of the planet, that we now inhabit the Post-Atlantis Period (which he said began when the island continent of Atlantis sank around 7227 BC), and that in the year 3573, human beings will regain the clairvoyant powers Steiner believed they had before the ancient Greek empire existed.
Anthroposophy has come to encompass everything from Steiner's cosmological scheme to the Waldorf theory of education, a system of organic farming, a brand of homeopathic medicine, and an organization (Camphill Villages) of therapeutic communities for the disabled.
The Anthroposophical Society in America, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, reports close to 4,000 members. All certified Waldorf teachers study anthroposophy, but only about 40 percent belong to the society. Most Waldorf parents seem to know little about it.
"Even being at the school for 10 years, I don't know much about anthroposophy," says Espy. "It's not that it's hushed. It's more of a private thing for the faculty."
There's disagreement within the Steiner fold about whether anthroposophy is a religion and whether Waldorf schools have a religious basis. While Jean Yeager, administrative director of the Anthroposophical Society in America, insists that anthroposophy is "a path of spiritual research, not a religion," Eugene Schwartz, author of several books on Waldorf education and a national teacher leader in the Waldorf movement, disagrees.
"To deny the religious basis of Waldorf education is very, very wrong," Schwartz said in a teacher training lecture in 1999. "And the Waldorf leadership, I would say, are waffling on this matter. I would say we are religious schools."
Anthroposophy has sometimes presented a stumbling block for the schools. Katy Neveu helped start the Portland Area Waldorf Initiative, a parent cooperative that operates a Waldorf play group in anticipation of starting a Waldorf school in Greater Portland. The cooperative opened a preschool program in the basement of the Scarborough Free Baptist Church in September, but when members of the congregation brought Waldorf literature to the attention of their pastor, he decided that anthroposophy was incompatible with the church's beliefs and told Neveu that the school would have to find other accommodations.
Not all Waldorf schools adopt Steiner's system undiluted. The Bay School in Blue Hill, Maine, for instance, considers itself a "Waldorf-inspired" school. It does not have a single teacher follow a class through all eight grades and does administer some standardized tests. The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America designates the Bay School and schools that do not adhere to a strict Waldorf program as "developing" Waldorf schools rather than "member" schools. There are also public charter schools, including one in Milwaukee and several in California, that have adopted a secularized Waldorf curriculum. The incursion of even nonreligious Waldorf practices into public charter schools, however, has been controversial.
In Sacramento, a group calling itself People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools (PLANS) has filed suit, charging that public tax dollars should not be used to fund Waldorf schools and arguing that Waldorf charter schools violate the constitutional separation of church and state. A trial is pending in federal court in Sacramento.
PLANS, an alliance of secular humanists and religious conservatives united in opposition to Waldorf, maintains a Web site (www.waldorfcritics.org) that portrays anthroposophy as "a cultlike religious sect." The group finds more than the religious aspects of Waldorf schools troubling; it also argues that Waldorf schools stifle academic achievement.
Steiner's theory of human development, the aspect of anthroposophy with the greatest bearing on Waldorf education, posits that up until the age of 6, a child's soul is getting accustomed to its physical body and that young children learn best by imitation. From age 7 until puberty, a child is seen primarily as an emotional and imaginative being, so education consists heavily of myths and storytelling. Only after puberty, when Steiner believed an astral body begins to inhabit the physical body, is the child seen as developing the critical and analytical faculties to undertake serious intellectual inquiry.
"I can't buy at all that children can't think critically until past puberty," says Janine Bempechat, an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and author of Getting Our Kids Back on Track: Educating Children for the Future. "They are wasting a lot of valuable time [in which they could be] fostering analytical skills, debating skills, and synthesizing skills."
But Bempechat's Harvard colleague Howard Gardner, author of several influential books (among them The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach), sees Waldorf education as consistent with his theory of multiple human intelligences. "I like very much the determinedly developmental perspective of Waldorf schools - the realization that human development in general, and each child's development in particular, has a kind of organic rhythm to it, and its disturbance can be very damaging," says Gardner. "The whole trend now to thrust high school curricula and testing into kindergarten is anti-developmental thinking gone mad."
Waldorf education tends to turn conventional education upside down. Where many American families send their children to public schools through middle school and then pack them off to private schools to prepare for college, Waldorf students typically enroll in non-Waldorf private schools and public high schools after the eighth grade.
So how do Waldorf students do when they move on to public high schools? Kate Christian, who attended a public high school for two years after graduating in 1998 from Merriconeag, says that while taking tests took some getting used to, making the transition from Waldorf to public school was not all that difficult.
"The biggest transition was sitting in classes with kids who didn't want to be there and with teachers who could care less about the kids," says Christian. "I wasn't being challenged enough." Ultimately, she transferred to the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone, the state's science and math magnet school, where she is now a junior.
Had Christian wanted to continue her Waldorf education after the eighth grade, she would find few Waldorf high school programs. In New England, there are only two - High Mowing School, a Waldorf boarding school with 120 students in Wilton, New Hampshire, and Waldorf High School in Lexington, Massachusetts, with 50.
The Lexington school occupies a renovated general store-cum-insurance office on Massachusetts Avenue. The school has a more academic feel than Merriconeag, but the curriculum is still developmentally based. Aspects of physics, for example, are taught in each of the four years. Tai chi and eurythmy (a form of stylized movement developed by Steiner), along with math, science, history, and literature, are also taught. And assessment still takes the form of written evaluations. To accommodate college-bound students, however, teachers maintain parallel letter grades, which are not sent home.
Waldorf High School students do take SAT exams in order to gain admission to college, but because they attend a private school, the state doesn't require them to take the MCAS tests. The SAT scores of Lexington Waldorf's nine seniors last year ran the gamut from 450 to 750 in both math and verbal tests. (SAT verbal and mathematical reasoning tests are each scored on a 400-to-800-point basis. The national mean score is 505 for verbal, 514 for math.)
"Testing is one way to evaluate our students, but it's the worst way," says Betsy Webb, a history teacher and the school's college counselor. "To get our students to do well on the SATs, we have to stop them from thinking too far, get them to go fast. If we had to get them through the MCAS, we wouldn't be able to give them the whole cultural life of civilization."
George Blaszczynsky of Arlington became part of the Waldorf family this school year when he enrolled his son Matthew in the freshman class. Blaszczynsky says he removed Matthew from the public school system because the pressure to have students perform well on the MCAS tests had resulted in a heavy burden of homework, mostly practice MCAS tests. "I really question that approach," he says. "Working hard and working smart have nothing to do with one another."
An MIT-trained engineer, Blaszczynsky recalls being told as soon as he got to college that everything he was about to learn in terms of content would be out of date within a decade. The pace of information obsolescence has only accelerated in recent years.
"At Waldorf," says Blaszczynsky, "Matthew will receive perhaps not so much knowledge as at Arlington High School, but I think he will learn to learn. It's an educational experience that is enjoyable and encouraging."
Waldorf educators point out that Kenneth Chenault, vice chairman of American Express, Victor Navasky, publisher of The Nation, and former ER actress Julianna Margulies are Waldorf graduates.
Chenault, who attended the Waldorf school in Garden City, New York, from kindergarten through 12th grade, says: "Waldorf taught me how to think for myself, to be accountable for my actions, to be a good listener, and to be sensitive to the needs of others. It also helped me to focus on the underlying importance of beliefs and values that are the foundation of good leadership."
According to the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America, based in Fair Oaks, California, 1,100 students graduated from Waldorf high schools between 1993 and 1999. Of those, 78 percent went directly to college, and another 10 percent planned to pursue higher education after taking a year or two off. Waldorf graduates are currently enrolled at such colleges as Brown, Hampshire, Brandeis, Wheaton, Emerson, Boston University, Wellesley, Smith, and Tufts.
There are different standards as to what constitutes success in education. Waldorf schools' standards have more to do with self-fulfillment, happiness, and independent thinking than with gaining material wealth or power.
Lexington Waldorf teacher Betsy Webb argues that while public education in the United States was originally intended to prepare people for citizenship, the goal of compulsory public education since the 19th century has been to prepare students for the work force, the same corporate agenda she detects at work in the current wave of standards-based reforms, exit exams, and demands for accountability.
"If the goal of education is to produce good worker bees to help industrialists get rich," says Webb, "we're failing. That's what public schools were started for, and to a certain extent that's what they still do."
Deborah Meier, principal of the innovative Mission Hill School in Roxbury and recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant" for her work in public school reform, quibbles with some aspects of Waldorf education but also values the schools as exemplars of alternative education. "Waldorf is a reminder to me that high standards are not a single thing," she says. "The adults I know who have come out of Waldorf schools are extraordinary people. That education leaves a strong mark of thoroughness, carefulness, and thoughtfulness. They slow everything down so you will appreciate each part of it."