Accusations of Racism and Waldorf Education

Introduction: Questions of Racism

Waldorf schools have had to contend, especially in the 1990s, with accusations of racism that take two distinct forms. The first is that their principal founder, Rudolf Steiner, expressed racist notions and, therefore, despite whatever other good they may do, schools must disavow these ideas. The second is that schools have, through their curriculum or other institutional practices, expressed racist ideas. In this case, schools should presumably acknowledge their errors and expunge the offending practices or attitudes. This paper is a history of these accusations and of the question of racism in Waldorf education in the United States. It will touch on the accusations of racism against Rudolf Steiner, but a full treatment of this question is beyond the present scope. Further, this paper grew out of research into the history of Waldorf schools that had quite another orientation--the historical promise and equally historical compromises Waldorf schools and teachers have made in finding their way through the 20th century in the United States. Consequently, this is a rough, anecdotal and preliminary investigation of the question it addresses. It contains a small number of stories and observations that I tripped across in the course of other research, and I trust readers to interpret these appropriately. In no way should readers believe I have necessarily seen this situation whole nor addressed its history definitively.

Racisms

The discussions I will examine in constructing this history have generally taken for granted that “racism” has a more or less single objective reality. That is, they have assumed that readers will understand what is meant by racism without examining the concept further, without examining its various complexities and manifestations. I will not attempt to define racism here, but I wish to divide it functionally in four ways before questioning Waldorf education about it. These distinctions are: a. between descriptive and pejorative racism; b. between intentional and naive racism; c. between systemically active and systematically passive racism; and d. between racism generally present in American cultural contexts and racism specific to Waldorf methods, interpretations or representations.

a. The first important distinction exists between what I will call “descriptive” racism and “pejorative” racism. (I have borrowed the terms in quotation marks from Raymond Geuss (1981), whose discussion of the concept of ideology extends easily to a discussion of racism as ideology.) Descriptive racists recognize some historical or biological validity to distinctions of race but do not presume to make claims regarding the superiority or inferiority of any race based on these distinctions. Descriptive racism was certainly the norm until recently, and, technically, is not at all what most people mean when they call someone a racist. Within this strictly technical definition, Steiner was a descriptive racist during the period in which he was a Theosophist, but later moved away from this position.

Some contemporary thinkers see skin color and other indicators of race as existing within a broad plane or spectrum; the distinctions we have labeled “race” in the past are seen to be somewhat arbitrary cultural or political abstractions from a continuum or spectrum of skin colors and physical characteristics. (See Appiah 1992 and Gates 1992) Whether or not this view is supported by genetic or other evidence, time may tell.

Pejorative racists, as the term denotes, recognize distinctions of race--they are, then, a subset of descriptive racists--but claim superiority for one or more races. In common use, “racism” is implicitly pejorative, and anyone today wishing to use concepts of race descriptively will do so in other terms or at her own peril.

b. Racism can further be divided between intentional and naive racism. This distinction is, unfortunately, not as clear as we might wish. Steiner probably intended to be heard as objective, not as a racist, when he spoke, for example, about “blue-eyed, blond haired intelligence,” (March 3, 1923; publication undated) although he plainly did intend to express the concepts contained in his thought, viz., that, in his opinion or experience, the rise or occurance of a particular kind of intelligence was generally associated historically with particular physical characteristics. Without the history of German National Socialism, it’s difficult to know if such a statement would be freighted with such racist overtones today. Regardless, I believe there is a useful conceptual difference between intentional and naive racism, even if the semantics of a given situation can be cloudy.

Further, I am specifically avoiding in this distinction the terms “conscious” and “unconscious,” although they may well apply in these circumstances; it is not my intention to load the discussion with psychological luggage. I am simply interested in knowing so far as possible whether or not someone makes racist claims deliberately.

c. Racism may also be divided between its systematic or institutional appearance and application and its individual appearance. The conventional distinction between institutional and individual racism, however, strikes me as too often convenient and irresponsible, like labored notions of a collective memory or a collective unconscious. There is some validity, however, in the idea that institutions and systems can promote a kind of racism that is different from unintended individual racism. To address this, I will refer to systematically active and systematically passive racism. Passive institutional racism is racism that arises in the wake of the status quo or the promotion of one culture to the unintended detriment of another. Active institutional racism aims to alter the status quo in order to promote the welfare of one race at the expense of another. Again, it is not easy to draw distinctions here, and history may judge an institution differently under different circumstances. Real estate markets, for example, often straddle the line between active and passive racism. Some brokerages intentionally act to further white suburban interests, while others merely passively allow such interests to take precedence.

d. Finally, especially with regard to the history of Waldorf education, we must distinguish the fluid “background” racism of American culture both generally and as it is expressed in Waldorf teachers and schools from “surplus” racism that may result specifically from Waldorf methods or interpretations.

These functions of racism create an oppressive blanket--institutional and individual, deliberate and unwitting, active and passive. Lifting one corner of this blanket will reveal racism at work, but the blanket itself must disappear to see the end of racism. To the extent that Waldorf schools in the United States have woven themselves into the blanket of racism, or found themselves in its threads, they “must take with utmost seriousness every suggestion that [they are] in any way, inadvertently or otherwise, in thrall to attitudes and practices that would hinder [their committment to serving all children],” in the words of Douglas Sloan (1996).

With these distinctions in mind, it is time to address history itself.

Steiner and Racism

Rudolf Steiner was attacked, literally, as an anti-racist by nationalists and anti-Semites during his life. Now, eighty years later, he and the Waldorf schools that espouse his pedagogy have been attacked as racist. How did the same thoughts and statements come to suffer attacks from radically opposed points of view?

1922-1941

In May 1922, the New York Times reported an attack on Steiner, a report that is brief enough to quote in full:

RIOT AT MUNICH LECTURE. Reactionaries Storm Platform When Steiner Discusses Theosophy.

BERLIN, May 16.--Munich enjoyed a riotous demonstration when Germany’s high
priest of Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner, delivered a lecture on ‘Vitalization of
Thought,’ before an audience more than half composed of women. Organized
reactionaries, Nationalists and anti-Semitics [sic] attended the lecture in
force, and toward the end the electric lights were switched off and pandemonium
broke loose. Lighted firecrackers and stink bombs were thrown at the long-haired
Theosophist, and then Steiner’s foes stormed the stage, and a free fight ensued
until police cleared the hall.

Then the demonstrators marched to Railroad Station Square with the intention of hauling down the Republican colors. But these are now taken in at dark and secreted in safe places. The chagrined demonstrators therefore contented themselves with singing the imperialistic “Flag Song” around the flagless flagpoles.

Steiner’s topic that day--“Ways to Know the Spirit in Ancient and Modern Times” (author’s translation; the lecture has been published in German but it has not been translated into English)--was as typical for him as any, and contained nothing that could have provoked the attack. His attackers were protesting Steiner’s public, recognized anti-racist, anti-nationalist positions. Such opposition was not isolated. One German-American with whom I spoke (who does not wish to be identified) attended a debate between Steiner and a German military officer some time in 1919 as a member of a group that intended to heckle and insult Steiner. This man was so impressed by Steiner’s speech and manner, however, that he did not join the protest. On the contrary, he later became interested in anthroposophy, unfortunately, he notes, after Steiner’s death. After moving to the United States in the 1920s, this man became a prominent biodynamic farmer, employing Steiner’s suggestions for the development of healthful agriculture. (Personal communication, March 21, 1998.)

This very early resistance to Steiner’s universalism contradicts the position taken by present Waldorf critic Dan Dugan (1998) who contends that Waldorf schools and anthroposophy were suppressed in Germany only because their racism was of a different stripe than the official Nazi line. In the absence of evidence, this accusation borders on the irrational. While some of Dugan’s criticisms of Waldorf schools are substantial and valid--regarding occasional bad science or history teaching, for example--these are too often lost in a specious and vitriolic haze of rhetoric. During World War II, Waldorf schools were closed by the Nazis, not, as Dugan has claimed, because they offered a racism that competed with the National Socialist view, but because their emphasis on human freedom threatened an authoritarian regime. (See "Mitteilungen aus der anthroposophischen Arbeit in Deutschland, Geistige Indiviualitat und Gattungswesen," Sonderheft, Sommer 1995. Referred to in Sloan, D., 1996).

Further, Ida Oberman (1999) makes clear in her dissertation on the history of Waldorf education that schools in Germany employed different strategies and compromised in different ways to remain open as long as possible, but were, in the end, all closed by government order. Some Nazi functionaries--and Waldorf parents--initially saw possibilities for the instrumental use of Waldorf schools to foster Aryan myths, but were disabused of these fantasies by the considered policies and curricula at the schools.

My focus is on Waldorf education in the United States, however, and I leave this topic to others.

Dugan’s interest in Steiner is political, not scholarly. A balanced view of Steiner’s position would not seek, as Dugan does, only to pluck potentially racist statements from an enormous body of work, almost all of which is beyond reproach. On the other hand, it also would not seek, as did several conversations I have had with teachers at Waldorf schools, to blur or paper over disturbing passages. This defensive attitude on the part of some Waldorf teachers and anthroposophists has been noted and rightly criticized by Dugan. The most balanced, scholarly and thorough treatments of Steiner’s position may be found in essays by Douglas Sloan (1996) and Detlef Hardorp (1999). Sloan deals with Steiner’s thought as a whole, however, and does not attempt to refute every claim of racism nor examine every potentially racist statement. Hardorp’s essay examines several potentially offensive passages in Steiner’s work.
Despite questionable passages, however, there can be no clearer statement regarding Steiner’s (1990b) considered views on race than this:

[T]he anthroposophical movement . . . must cast aside the division into races.
It must seek to unite people of all races and nations, and to bridge the
divisions and differences between various groups of people.

Steiner follows this with a disavowal of theosophical talk of “seven races” and “seven sub-races” as an “illness of childhood.” Researchers find theosophical talk of “root races” in Steiner’s work, but must recognize that, as he grew through theosophy to anthroposophy, he changed both his mind and his terms of expression.

Incidentally, the book from which the quotation above is taken, The Universal Human: The Development of the Individual, (1990b) summarizes in its title Steiner’s appeal to “ethical individualism.” Ethical individualism grows from the idea that it is in the exercise of our individuality that we become most universally human; that is, we act ethically when we consciously oppose the drives and desires that seem to us so personal but that do not distinguish us from others in any real way. This succinct idea is itself an anti-racist statement.

1944

Faculty meeting minutes from the Rudolf Steiner School in New York record a first application by a black student on October 11, 1944. The ensuing discussion is illustrative of the contest between imperfect teachers and an ideal they know they should hold. One states firmly that “there is no question of accepting the boy if he’s qualified,” while another wonders if the school isn’t being singled out as a “test case.” The faculty decides to pass the matter before the Board of Trustees before making a final decision, recognizing the potential economic consequences. Unfortunately, future minutes do not record whether or not the applicant was admitted.

Of equal importance to the question of the admission of the black applicant was a corollary discussion in which it was recorded that the school had an “unwritten rule” that no class would be constituted of more than one-fourth Jewish children. The minutes make clear that this rule was not referred to when a particular trustee, who was Jewish, was present. Further research may establish whether or not this policy was ever enforced, although its very existence argues that the question was raised at least once. Given the influx of Jewish refugees before and during World War II, and given the Steiner School’s particular and contested interpretation of itself as a “Christian” school, we can comprehend the perceived cultural threat while deploring the policy.

In all, the discussion in the minutes, despite a suspicious teacher or two, strikes a contemporary reader as relatively enlightened, coming as it did in the year of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944/1996), a discussion of “the Negro problem” in the United States and almost a decade before the Civil Rights movement really started to move. In the case of this discussion, it may be said, Steiner's ideas provide a scaffold useful for promoting an anti-racist act: the potential admission of a black student. And when a racist policy--a quota on Jews--is discussed, it is not justified with recourse to Steiner's ideas. In 1944, among one small American school faculty, it is clear that Steiner is still considered an anti-racist.

1970-1990

For years The Waldorf School of Garden City had an all white faculty and an all or mostly black custodial staff. One sees here passive racism at work; without intent, the broad economic system of suburban Long Island--white white-collar workers supported by minority blue-collar workers--had been replicated within the school, a school that, had it been asked, would have promoted itself as anti-racist.

Similarly, because most of the teachers at the school were Christian and because anthroposophy is too often spoken of thoughtlessly as “Christian,” festivals and assemblies had a Protestant Christian flavor, not noticed by Christians themselves, who may well have thought they were “toning things down” for public consumption, but very evident and occasionally upsetting to Jewish families with whom I spoke.

According to one credible account, a candidate for a high school teaching job at The Waldorf School of Garden City in 1979 was asked by a high-level administrator who was interviewing alone, "What is your surname?" When the candidate, who is Jewish and who now sends children to a Waldorf school, answered with a name typically taken to be Jewish, the administrator continued, "Please get on your knees." The candidate, naive, eager to please, and sincerely interested in the esoteric basis of Waldorf education, did so, not knowing what to expect. "To teach here, you must accept Jesus as your savior," the administrator allegedly said. The candidate ended the interview on the spot and ran down the hall. Jewish anthroposophists reassured the candidate later that such statements reflected a relatively unique point of view, and were not generally taken to be true or appropriate.

In the late 1980s some members of the faculty at The Waldorf School of Garden City voiced concerns regarding a growing population of African (and Caribbean) Americans in the school. The discussion was not overtly racist, but concerned whether or not the school might eventually become a predominantly black school; the problem foreseen was not a problem of black culture, if such a construct exists outside white imagination, but of the continued economic viability of the school. This point of view is a mirror image of the white fear that a black neighbor in the suburbs will drive down property values. That is, it was both an economic possibility--although how real may be open to question--and a moral failing. For whites, Adam Smith’s invisible hand is often white.

Similarly, while the school did not set out to teach a "white" education, several African-American students with whom I spoke felt the marked absence of “their” culture. None wished to speak for attribution. "It was so clear. White music with a few black spirituals. No black heroes except in February. No African-American folktales," said one graduate of the school from the 1980s, someone who values the school and dreams of starting a scholarship fund at the school for children of color.

In a North American survey (undated), completed in 1994, dividing results between favorable and unfavorable narrative responses, the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA) lists a ratio of 27:17, favorable to unfavorable, with regard to questions of “understanding/appreciation of other individuals/cultures.” Responses from the Garden City school show the greatest variation, but it should be noted that this school, with few exceptions, has had the largest minority population of most established Waldorf schools and of almost all with high schools for decades. At a gathering of 12th grades from various eastern Waldorf high schools in 1991, of the half-dozen students of color, only one--from Washington, D.C.--was not from The Waldorf School of Garden City.

1992-The Present

I can find no discussion of racism in published discussions of Waldorf education prior to 1992, when the question arose following a Dutch investigation of possible racism in the teachings of some Dutch Waldorf schools. (See McDermott 1996) The Dutch schools, followed quickly by others worldwide, quickly disavowed racism and, by default, any possible racist statements of Rudolf Steiner’s. As de Volkskrant notes (McDermott 1996), the furor in Holland was over a course in ethnography, added to the curriculum in Holland and, so far as I can determine, not taught in the United States, although even here some teachers have mentioned others who have transgressed some line of conscience in presenting racial stereotypes. Like cannibalism, however, always attributed to neighboring tribes, I spoke with no teacher who actually taught racial stereotypes or expressed less than a politically correct position on the matter.

The rottenness in Holland coincided more or less with the introduction of Waldorf educational methods into some U.S. public schools, beginning with the Milwaukee Urban Waldorf School, a “choice” school within Milwaukee public school system. (99% of the students and about half the teachers at this school are African American.) In light of the news from Holland and the recent introduction of Waldorf methods into some public schools, Ray McDermott of Stanford University followed an evaluative visit to the Milwaukee Urban Waldorf School with an article in the Waldorf Education Research Institute’s Research Bulletin, in which he commended Waldorf schools for their “quick response” to the issue, typified by a letter from David Alsop, Chairman of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America:

We have resolved to take an honest and penetrating look at ourselves and our schools to see if indeed racist attitudes and behavior exist, and to make every effort to change if this is the case. (8 October 1995)

Another Opinion

I asked Charlotte Colbert, principal of the Urban Waldorf School about eurocentrism or racism in the Waldorf curriculum. "I don't know where Steiner got them," she said, "but music, dance, movement, storytelling, these are African traditions." (Personal communication, February 21, 2001)

These notes in the history of Waldorf education might end here, but for the Waldorf critic Dan Dugan, parent of a former student at the San Francisco Waldorf School and that contradiction, a devout skeptic. Dugan posted translations of several Dutch articles relating to the stew there, included McDermott’s essay, and threw in a vituperative press release he had written himself regarding the tragic story of a disturbed son of two Waldorf teachers who killed a policeman and then shot himself. (1998) In his press release, “Denver Skinhead’s Family Professed Sophisticated Version of Aryan Superiority Myth,” Dugan writes,

Anthroposophists insist that they are not racists, and there is no reason to
doubt their sincerity. They just don’t understand that Steiner’s mythical
history was old-fashioned in his own time and is ridiculously ignorant in
ours.

Steiner was clear, however, that the material of anthroposophy, some of it esoteric “mythical history,” was not fit for nor intended to inform Waldorf schools or the education of children. To the extent that some school teachers attempt to translate complex esoterica for school children, they are clearly wrong-headed. For Dugan, who clearly sees Waldorf schools as part of cult conspiracy, to single out examples of ignorance among Waldorf teachers as evidence for the failure of a method of education, however, is equally wrong-headed.

Steiner’s View?

Steiner’s view on race evolved from his early theosophical writings to his later anthroposophical writings; nonetheless, Steiner may accurately be called a descriptive racist, with the strange caveat that, according to his evolutionary view, race itself is a vestige of an earlier time. (I have no room nor inclination here to summarize Steiner’s claims nor the process by which he arrives at these claims.)

Dan Dugan is also a founding member of PLANS (People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools), an organization that has brought lawsuits against California Charter Waldorf schools in the Sacramento and Twin Ridges districts. (Cases dismissed 2001) The basis for these suits was violation of the “establishment of religion” clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. According to Dugan, at least one of the schools has admitted that anthroposophy is a religion (shooting themselves in the foot, it seems. Plenty of people argue successfully that it is not.

Dugan’s arguments, and the discussion regarding separation of church and state, are remarkably semantic. Any belief other than a sincere belief in skepticism (true skeptics must be skeptical even of their own skepticism, a humble and uncommon position), it seems, may be challenged or promoted as a religion in this New Age. On the other side, Steiner made it clear any number of times that anthroposophy was not intended to be a set of beliefs, but a method for learning to know the world. Again, to the extent that Dugan singles out individual ignorance as evidence of a rotten system, his logic if faulty. And to the extent that some ignorant Waldorf teachers don’t understand the method they espouse, their platform is shaky. In the end, of course, we are all in the same boat with regard to these questions. No one can claim a perfect understanding of anthroposophy, and in its broadest form, some of the wisdom of humanity embraces even those who eschew its sectarian forms and its apparently untestable hypotheses.

Conclusion

Dan Dugan’s hold on the imagination of Waldorf schools and teachers is due largely to our legalistic culture and to the power of the Internet, which allows everyone to become his own publisher.

The present discussion, as a discussion of who is included and who excluded by a particular culture, can also inform discussions of religion--especially Christianity--anti-Semitism, Eurocentrism, and anthroposophical dogma in Waldorf schools. As a model for each of these discussions, I believe my tentative conclusions stand. That is, while some Waldorf teachers may be dogmatic, anti-Semitic or Eurocentric, for example, these failings are failings of their culture, their interpretations of Steiner’s work, and, most important, of their imaginations. Anthroposophy, the wisdom of humanity, surely allows no less. Further, the history of an idea often involves the sclerosis of certain concepts connected with it as they embed themselves further and further in the institutional culture that surrounds them. Waldorf schools are remarkable places, but places inextricably bound to the discourse on race in the United States, whether they acknowledge this or not.

References

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Dugan, D. (1999). http://www.dandugan.com/waldorf/index.html#Articles
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Steiner, R. (1966). “Wege der Geist-Erkenntnis in älterer und neuerer Zeit.” In Blätter für Anthroposophie, 18, 11 and 12, November and December 1966. Lecture given in Munich, May 15, 1922. Untranslated. Basel: Rudolf Steiner-Fonds für wissenschaftliche Forschung.