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?Waldorf? People for Legal and Nonsectarian Schools (PLANS)   Visitors since 8/12/96                 News! PLANS wins again at 9th Circuit Court of Appeals! Press Release Welcome From PLANS PresidentWelcome! People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools (PLANS) is a world-wide network of former Waldorf parents, teachers, students, administrators and trustees who come from a variety of backgrounds with a common goal: to educate the public about the reality behind Waldorf's facade of progressive, arts-based education. Waldorf is the most visible activity of Anthroposophy, an occultist sect founded by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Together, we have performed exhaustive research on Waldorf schools and Anthroposophy, the esoteric, occult religion that both guides and inspires Waldorf teachers. PLANS affirms the right of all religious groups to practice and to teach their beliefs. But we expect those groups -- including Anthroposophy -- to tell the truth about their missionary efforts. My personal experience with Waldorf was very confusing. Instead of the progressive and liberal alternative school I was led to expect by the school's promotional materials and staff, I discovered a rigid, authoritarian environment that seemed to be rooted in a medieval dogma that I did not understand. When, in an effort to make sense of things, I asked questions about this, I found Waldorf teachers to be strangely defensive. I was stunned to arrive at the conclusion that the education of children -- at least as I use the term "education" -- did not seem to be the school's most important focus and objective. But what was? I began to ask questions. What is Anthroposophy? Why don't teachers allow students in the preschool through the early elementary grades to use black crayons in their drawings? Why do students use the wet-on-wet watercolor painting technique exclusively for so many years? Why is mythology taught as history? Where is the American flag, and why don't Waldorf schools teach civics lessons in America? In a school system that promotes itself as "education toward freedom," why do students copy everything from the blackboard? Why do Waldorf teachers talk in high voices and sing-song directions to their classes? Why must the kindergarten room walls be painted "peach blossom"? Why is learning to read before the age of 8 or 9 considered unhealthy? Why do so many Waldorf classes have problems with bullying, and what is the school's policy for dealing with this? Why are teachers always lighting candles? What answers I received were not forthright, and the teachers made it clear that my questions were not welcome. They told me, "If you understood Anthroposophy, you wouldn't be asking that question." Yet before we enrolled, I was told that the school was non-sectarian and that Anthroposophy was not "in the classroom!" I was eventually invited to leave. Thanks to PLANS' dedicated researchers, I now have answers to all of my questions, and many more that I had not even thought of asking! If the information on the PLANS Web site had been available 9 years ago, our family would have passed by Waldorf's door, knowing that its sectarian, occultist nature was not what we were looking for after all. My sincere hope is that the information contained in this Web site will help other families avoid a Waldorf disaster. I strongly believe parents have the right to make fully informed decisions about their children's education. Until Waldorf promoters start being honest, PLANS will be here. Debra Snell President PLANS return to top Help PLANS Now! PLANS needs your tax-deductible donations for trial expenses. Please send your check to: PLANS, Inc. c/o Dan Dugan, Secretary 290 Napoleon St., Studio E San Francisco, CA 94124 Or click the box below to donate on line ($50 maximum):  What they're saying about us... Here's how Sune Nordwall describes this web site (on his web site in Sweden): At the main page of the site of the group, it - to a first look - seems to formulate well founded criticism of Waldorf schools and Waldorf education. But if you look closer at the site, and for a longer time follow a mailing list, personally owned by the secretary of the group, Mr. Dugan, you find that he and the group since a number of years, behind the first seemingly civil surface one encounters at its site after it engaged a professional journalist, except for badly founded criticism of Waldorf education, cultivate, publish and spread a host of defaming and demonizing myths about Waldorf education and anthroposophy as its philosophical basis. The systematical way this is done and published at the site of the group, as a course of conduct rather than a single, isolated instance, puts the site in the hate speech category. It also puts the group in the hate-type category. Though not as fully demonizing, it has a similar character in relation to Waldorf education and anthroposophy as the anti-Semitic group "Jew Watch" in relation to Judaism and people of Jewish origin and/or faith. PLANS GatheringFormer Waldorf parents, students, board members and teachers have corresponded via e-mail for years. Some of us finally got together in Philadelphia and New York in July, 2002. Although much of our time together was social, we discussed some upcoming projects for PLANS. Some of us took time to have our photo taken in front of Independence Hall. click to enlarge photoLeft to right: Diana Winters, Lisa Ercolano, Sharon Lombard and Debra Snell.return to topEducation Expert Softens Support of WaldorfWaldorf's deceptive public relations and marketing techniques ofteninvolve publishing comments by leading mainstream educational expertsand organizations to "normalize" the Waldorf pedogogy. This techniqueimplies that these experts were fully informed about the underpinningsand results of Waldorf education when they offered their supportivecomments.One such expert, Howard Gardner of Harvard University, author ofclassics including The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and HowSchools Should Teach, made a statement to the Boston Globe in 2001that is often quoted in Waldorf advertisements, web sites and printedliterature. For example, the Linden Hill Waldorf school in Wilton,Connecticut, had this to say in a published advertisement for theirschool..."Harvard's Howard Gardner, author of several influential books (amongthem The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools ShouldTeach), sees Waldorf education as consistent with his theory of multiplehuman intelligences. 'I like very much the determinedly developmentalperspective of Waldorf schools -- the realization that human developmentin general, and each child's development in particular, has a kind oforganic rhythm to it, and its disturbance can be very damaging,' he saysin the Sept. 25, 2001 issue of the Boston Globe."Since then, PLANS has had an ongoing conversation with Dr. Gardner abouthis comments, providing him additional information about the Waldorfpedagogy, and about the systematic quashing of critical discussionbetween parents and the schools and on the major Waldorf internetdiscussion forums, where participants who are not "positive" aboutWaldorf are summarily ostracized, reprimanded and/or booted from the discussion.Dr. Gardner has given us permission to publish the following revision to hisearlier thoughts about Waldorf..."Here is a brief note that you have my permission to circulate PROVIDEDTHAT YOU CIRCULATE THE STATEMENT IN FULL:I have not been a student of Waldorf Education but have known about it for many years and have praised some of its aspects and features. I have also been uncomfortable with some of the esoteric and pseudo-scientific concepts that Rudolf Steiner put forth. It has recently come to my attention that representatives of the Waldorf movement have discouraged open debate about the merits and flaws in the Waldorf approach. Such silencing --if true-- is deplorable and calls into question the credibility of current representatives of the movement. I encourage totally open public debate about the Waldorf approach -- all parties will benefit from such discussion. At the same time I must note that there are skilled as well as poor examples of every educational innovation --Montessori, Waldorf, Dewey, Sizer etc-- and it is a mistake to judge an entire movement by only its worst, or only its best, instantiations.With best wishes.Howard"[Dr. Howard Gardner, Harvard University professor, via email to PLANSwebmaster dated September 5, 2002]return to topFeatured QuotesWe periodically highlight interesting quotes from Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education and Anthroposophy, and from Waldorf and Anthroposophist advocates and critics. We maintain a large and growing collection of quotationsin the Articles section. "You see, when we really study science and history, we must conclude that if people become increasingly strong, they will also become increasingly stupid. If the blonds and blue-eyed people die out, the human race will become increasingly dense if men do not arrive at a form of intelligence that is independent of blondness. Blond hair actually bestows intelligence. ... It is indeed true that the more the fair individuals die out the more will the instinctive wisdom of humans vanish." [Rudolf Steiner, founder of Waldorf Schools. Health and Illness: Volume I, p86. (1922) Spring Valley: Anthroposophic Press, 1981]"It can certainly not be denied, that today Jewry still appears as a closed totality, and as such many times has intervened in the development of the present situation in a way that has been less than positive for Western cultural ideas. But Jewry as such has long since outlived itself, and has no justification any more within modern life of the peoples, and that it nevertheless has preserved itself is a mistake of world history, whose consequences have been inevitable." [Rudolf Steiner, founder of Waldorf Schools. from his review of "Homunculus" by Hammerling (1888) published in the German Weekly]return to top Send feedback: contact us or report technical problems: |
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