Waldorf Education in the Cultures of the World

What is Waldorf education?

The educational approach founded by Rudolf Steiner in 1919 is consistent in its commitment to the development and individuality of the child. As an „education towards freedom“ its prime intention is to support the child holistically. Interest for the world, intellectual thinking, healthy morality, artistic sensibility, manual skills, social ability, strength of will...Waldorf education supports the development of that which lives within each individual. This is the best basis for world that needs to grow together and is based on the trust in the abilities of each individual, so that the world remains capable of meeting the future challenges.

Our well-illustrated publication „Waldorf Education“, which contains 40 double-sided contributions gives into to many aspects of the education.

"You will have seen that even if the principles of Waldorf education arose in one country, it does not have anything to do with any nationalism, but with internationalism in the best sense, as it is a question of that which is universal human in all of us. We do not want to educate people who belong to a particular class, nation or profession, but people with the broadest, most heartfelt human interests."
Rudolf Steiner, 17.8.1923, GA 307, p. 245.

The development of the worldwide Waldorf movement

The worldwide Waldorf movement has developed in tandem with „The Friends of the Art of Education“. This association was founded in 1971 in order to support Waldorf education and free education everywhere. Today The Friends can provide that support in the form of 3 million Euros a year in donations.

At first Waldorf education spread through Europe and North America. In the 70s and more so in the 80s schools were founded in South America and Australia, from 1986 in South Africa; in the 90s increasingly in Asia. The Friends contributed significantly to this development.

Whilst there were only 90 Waldorf schools in 20 countries in 1970, today there are schools in 66 countries and in 2007, the 1,000 th school opened its doors. (see our special newsletter "1,000 Waldorf schools worldwide" and many statistics).

Today there are 72 schools in Latin America, 22 in Africa, 108 in Eastern Europe and 44 in Asia and it is primarily the support of these schools that is the focus of the Friends’ work. In the 1990s Eastern Europe became a whole new region for Waldorf education. But also in Asia the Waldorf schools movement first really started developing in that decade.

It would not bet rue to say that Waldorf schools are shooting out of the ground anywhere in the world. This educational approach too often stands in stark contrast to what schools normally are and they usually contradict the wish of parents for an educational quick fix. Nevertheless ever more parents world wide are looking for an alternative to the traditional achievement pressure, multiple choice methods of testing, to turning pupils into trained bearers of knowledge in an education system that aims to educate without art either as a subject or as an educational approach. Thus Waldorf schools in any country are a living example and reminder of the actual meaning of education knowledge and for the possibility of a real education.

Waldorf education wants children and young people to grow into world citizens whilst at the same time leading them to an appreciation of the treasures within their own culture. Both of these aspects are mutually linked since cultural disintegration can often lead to new nationalism and fanaticism.

In the following texts the specific intercultural aspects of Waldorf education are described and this is followed by an extensive discussion of the individual cultural aspects

The intercultural aspect

The Waldorf movement has a strong intercultural aspect:

• based on its understanding of human nature each child regardless of its background, race, religion and so on is seen as a unique individuality who wants to develop his or her individual abilities and who wants to become aware of his or her own intentions and follow these. For this reason the Waldorf schools were pioneers of the rainbow society in South Africa and Namibia, in which people of all skin colours and social background live peacefully with each other. For the same reason Waldorf schools in Israel engage in peace education projects to bring Arab and Jewish children together.

• On the basis of their specific educational approach Waldorf schools around the world discover that they have something in common, namely a common understanding of the developing human being. On the basis of this common experience of teachers from all over the world come together every four years for an international conference. There are also regular regional conferences in South America, Asia Pacific Conference (Taiwan 2005, Bangkok 2007), the Central Asia Seminar and so on. (Beside these meetings teacher training is often organised on a regional basis due to the lack of resources in the individual countries).

• Since in most countries around the world state funding is lacking for independent or non-state educational activities the Waldorf school movement relies upon an international impulse of solidarity and support. This is the task of The Friends with the help of many individuals. Almost all German Waldorf Schools are members of The Friends of Waldorf Education.
  
  
• This solidarity goes further. There are also many individual school partnerships worldwide that take many different forms, for example exchange and advisory visits. The Friends of Waldorf Education send each year some 500 young people – many of them former Waldorf pupils – on voluntary service programmes to internships all over the world such as Waldorf kindergarten, though most work in curative schools and homes. Such experiences are enormously enriching for all concerned.

• A central aim of Waldorf education is awaken interest in the world through the lessons. This „education for a multicultural future“ includes learning two foreign languages from the first class onwards, a specific focus on history and geography of other countries, which aims to create understanding for other cultures. Alongside these experiences in school many German Waldorf schools regularly undertake upper class projects in neighbouring countries, for example in Eastern Europe where the pupils undertake building projects and so on. Many schools participate in the WOW-Day („Waldorf One World“) in which the pupils work out of their own initiative on projects to raise money for disadvantaged children around the world. Some schools organise international youth/pupil conferences such as an international conference on peace education „Walk your Talk“ in May 2007 in Israel/Palestine or the „connAction 2007“ congress in August 2007 at the Rudolf Steiner School in Schloss Hamborn.

The peace education work of Waldorf initiatives in Israel
Eyal Bloch a Waldorf Teacher in Jerusalem started a project in 1998 in which his Class 3 and a partner class from a Palestinian school from the Arab village of El-Hadar near Bethlehem (including many children who had grown up in refugee camps) met every week for a joint project to work together. At first the children- influenced by the attitudes in their environment- were hesitant to hold hands. In the end they worked, played and laughed together as if they had always been together. Soon other initiatives began with other classes.
Eyal Bloch also launched the idea of a „Peace Olympics“ in 1999, which first took place in Olympia and Delphi in 2001. 200 11-year-old children from conflict regions such as Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, former Yugoslavia (Pristina and Belgrade) and Cyprus came together to learn the ways of peace and unity through Olympic disciplines not directed to mere winning but to the spirit of participation. A second „Olympeace“ brought 250 children to Greece the following year.
The Waldorf School in Harduf in Israel cultivated other forms of cooperation with an Arab village school in neighbouring Shefar´am. Following a joint teacher training venture Arab kindergarten teachers started the first Arabic Waldorf kindergarten in Autumn 2004. In the meantime there is a new upper school concept in Harduf in which there is a strong emphasis on cultural understanding. In May 2007 both schools started a joint theater project, which shows how intercultural education can span religious and cultural barriers.
Another quite independent project is the first Jewish-Arab kindergarten „Ein Bustan“ in Tivon that started in the autumn of 2005.

The individual cultural aspect

The education founded by Rudolf Steiner is no „export product“ that is imposed on other cultures.  There are a number of reasons for this:

• Based on the understanding of the spiritual nature of the human being in anthroposophy the being of the child stands at the centre of the Waldorf approach. This acknowledges a universal human nature beyond the cultural level, which is at the same time essentially fully individual. Waldorf education in its fundamental approach is an „education towards freedom”, as the title of the well-known book by Carlgren and Klingborg calls it.
  
  
• Rudolf Steiner provided the Waldorf School with no curriculum. In the years following the founding of the school (in 1919 in Stuttgart) he gave the teachers recommendations as which themes would reflect the developmental needs of the children in the respective age groups. Even when these recommendations supplemented by the subsequent experience of teachers has come to be known as the Waldorf Curriculum this remains in essence body of experience and recommendations from which the individual teacher can draw to teach „his or her” specific classes in an individual way.
  
  
• Waldorf initiatives worldwide arise, with few exceptions, from local initiatives. Individual people encounter the ideas of Waldorf education and are inspired and thus initiatives are founded. Often a more or less lengthy process involving parent’s involvement precedes the actual founding of the initiative. This often leads to the founding of a kindergarten and later a school organically grows out of this initiative.
  
  
• Whilst cultural diversity is being increasingly lost around the world and educational systems are becoming increasingly homogenous (as part of an overall process of globalisation and „Americanisation“ imposed by the World Bank an World Trade Organisation), Waldorf Education specifically works to value and promote local cultural qualities in a context of true internationalism.

From these comments it is clear that the task locally is to develop Waldorf education within the cultural conditions prevailing in that place and time. This requires those involved to continuously pose the following research questions:

What is the relationship between the recommendations that Steiner gave (which were subsequently supplemented through the practice-based experience of the teachers) and the developmental needs of the children? Why do these themes „fit“ to certain age group? What is relevant here and how can this be stimulated? And if these recommendations arose in the context of European history and culture, how can this be translated into other cultural and geographical contexts so that they awaken the same processes in the developing children and young people.

Or even more generally; what is the essential nature of Waldorf education? What does this mean for the place I am working in and for the children with whom I work? What form does Waldorf education have to have in order to meet the needs of these children and this circumstance?

That these questions cannot easily and quickly be answered is obvious. Butt his is true of any educational approach. In principle Waldorf education is more open and individual than most others.

In concrete terms making this educational approach living one in other cultures means finding in the local cultural heritage appropriate fairy tales, legends, myths, stories which in particular are told (or used as the basis for plays) for the younger classes. This does not contradict the fact that many of Steiner’s recommendation were not merely of middle European significance but often having a universal and culturally historical importance (e.g. the myths and legends of Ancient Egypt or Greece).

From what has been said here it should be clear that Waldorf education can take many living forms in different places around the world, but that this needs to more effectively research. This research work is in no sense complete, nor could it be. It requires a major input of time and resources. The questions that have been raised here have in many, perhaps most cases not been adequately studied. Yet Waldorf teachers around the world are aware of them and are working daily upon them. In the end these issues are two sides of the same coin or question; how does Waldorf education in my cultural environment need to be formed? And; what do the children need who are entrusted to me here and now?  In fact this question needs to be asked daily on the basis of a deeply spiritual and therefore also humanistic anthroposophical understanding of the developing human being and that this fact is an essential aspect of the Waldorf approach.

Examples

As far as we know there is no literature, let alone scientific studies of this theme. Thus we would like to give some insight into the practical practice based research into some of these issues.

South America

In South America Waldorf teachers are regularly researching the question of how they can integrate the local culture more into their lessons, and they are also doing this during their large South American Conferences. This involves the natural environment or special musical elements and also the Indian Cultures (especially since official history has often overlooked pre-Columbian cultures even today). As well as this many Waldorf schools, for example in Argentina faces the special social challenge of poverty. Waldorf pupils in Buenos Aires do their social practicals in community kitchens or play music with children from the poor quarters as projects.

In Brazil upper school pupils from the Waldorf school Cuiabà are researching the unique ecosystem of the Pantanal have won a state recognised Environmental Diploma. Several former pupils are now working as scientists.

Africa

In Egypt Islam influences the daily and annual rhythms of the Sekem Waldorf School. The school also celebrates the main Christian festivals. Sekem is an extensive social-cultural project based on biodynamic agriculture. Its founder Ibrahim Abouleish was awarded the Alternative Nobel Prize for his services to multi-culturalism in 2003.

In Togo a kindergarten opened In autumn under the guidance of an experienced kindergarten educator who became enthusiastic about Waldorf education following a visit to Germany and who felt that her own ideals were already close to Waldorf. She herself thinks that "Waldorf is the right approach for Africa because it can connect so easily to the local conditions and requirements and at the same time is future orientated".

In Ghana a teacher who has worked as a Waldorf teacher in Germany has founded a project with street youths (the Baobab Children Foundation). The youngsters learn practical activities that are closely linked to the local economy such as woodcarving, painting, batik, weaving, drumming and dancing.

The Waldorf schools in South Africa especially in the townships cultivate the particular character of African culture in stories, songs, and music and in other artistic fields.

Europe

The Waldorf movement in Norway has begun a renewal of the cultural heritage. The first teachers sought and found forgotten treasures within the cultural inheritance in the form of songs and stories and connected to the tradition in Nordic adult community education in which the living word was cultivated and in which they perform plays, compose poems and music and perform theatre and opera with children.

The regional cultural forms taken by Waldorf education show themselves in countless small unobtrusive ways. The Waldorf pupils in Italien, for example, take part in the vine harvest as a matter of course.

In Moldavia in the Chisinau Waldorf school the children learn not only everything about the Romanian-Moldavian culture and history but they also learn folk dances and play traditional instruments such as the pipes, cavals and ocarinas.

Asia...

In Israel the Hebrew culture influences the way the lessons are structured. The Old Testament is studied in all classes in two or three main lesson blocks. The children learn Arabic from the first class onwards since this is the language of their neighbours. We have already described the peace education initiatives in that land.

In India the Waldorf schools often combine elements from East and West also in the consciousness that there is only one humanity.  Thus the stories of the Brothers Grimm stand along side those of the Indian tradition, along side fable of Aesop the Panchatanta and Buddhist animal fables, along side the Ancient Greek myths, the Nordic sagas and Indian legends. In the fifth class the children meet for the wonderful Greek Olympics.

In Nepal the small Tashi Waldorf School in Kathmandu uses the traditional songs, stories and myths of that long cultural tradition in order to integrate the cultural inheritance into the daily work of the school.

Also in Thailand there has been much research into individualising Waldorf Education. In the Panyotai Waldorf School in Bangkok fairy tales are told in Class 1 that are locally hardly known any more. In later classes Thai legends and stories that reflect the rich Chinese and Buddhist traditions of that land are told. In Class three the pupils build their own bamboo huts and plant and harvest rice. The older classes work with the great Ramayana sagas, which have an Indian origin but which belong to the overall Asian culture. The Thai New Year’s festival of Songkran is celebrated as well as Loy Kratong, the festival of the floating candles, both with understanding, which is very important in the modern culture.

In Japan the Waldorf schools take up traditional Japanese cultural activities. The Kenji-School in Tokyo for example takes part in the annual city festival in which countless people in traditional costume dance and play drums and flutes through the streets. The Waldorf pupils contribute to the traditional Nanazu-May-Dance which was originally a celebration of a rich harvest and peace and in which dances are performed featuring Japanese long and short swords.

In Australia the Waldorf schools try to integrate the Aborigine traditions in their lessons and many Waldorf pupils are active in the campaigns to support the Aborigines, who have suffered 200 years of injustice and persecution. In New Zealand  the Waldorf schools integrate elements of Maori culture.

Summary

The educational approach founded by Rudolf Steiner orientates itself consistently on the development and individuality of the child. It attempts to allow the individual intentions of each child and young person to come to fruition. An essential part of this approach is to awaken and support an interest in the world in each child.

In connection with this aim Waldorf education naturally takes up the local environment of the child, the history, culture, geography of the region. Beyond that Waldorf education tries to direct the attention to the worlds beyond. In this way children can grow up within their own culture yet be connected to humanity as a whole.

That Waldorf education is not an export product that can be imposed on another culture is based on the fact that the heart of the matter is quite simply the nature of the developing child and this belongs to the universal culture of humanity yet is fully individual. As well as this, Steiner gave no curriculum but rather gave recommendations that were orientated around the child’s development. 

Keeping these recommendations inwardly alive is the task of the Waldorf school movement in each country. The research question is, what is the basic character of each development stage and which themes correspond to this? On the basis of this question the Waldorf teacher will be able to find material from the local culture and history to answer these questions and this is all the more the case the more Waldorf schools are founded by local people. 

The expansion of Waldorf education began originally in Europe and North America. In the 70s and 80s school foundations began in South America and Australia, then from 1986 onwards in (firstly South) Africa, then in the 90s in Asia. Founded in 1971 The Friends began helping schools with donations and have contributed in no small measure to the expansion of the movement.

Waldorf schools everywhere represent an education that seeks to foster the inner development and inner wealth of the children. Whilst many state education systems aim to make children fit for the social and economic competition and fill their curricula with testable knowledge, Waldorf education was more concerned with providing an artistic education in the deepest sense and providing the children with a wealth of local and universal culture. Thus many Waldorf schools have become centres in which local culture is cultivated in a living way and even rediscovered. 

Complementing this is a strong intercultural aspect which also characterises the Waldorf school movement. This comes to expression in the following examples:

- The African Waldorf schools were often pioneers of the „rainbow society“ and remain so today;
- Israeli Waldorf schools have a number of peace initiatives working towards a peaceful co-existence between Jewish and Arab schools;
- Waldorf teachers from around the world meet regularly for conferences and exchange;
- Waldorf schools have many international partnerships with schools and conduct projects and exchange trips;
- Waldorf students even organise their own conferences for young people and do voluntary service abroad;
- Many Waldorf schools take part in WOW Day to raise money for disadvantaged children abroad.

Waldorf education is an approach, which cultivates the qualities in young people who can then find their own way in life and who can develop their own abilities. It helps them to find roots in their culture whilst opening them to a universal humanity.

Waldorf education meets the worldwide loss of culture and rise of national and regional egotisms with a living culture and interest for the world.

Holger Niederhausen

Further Information

• Literature about Waldorf Education
• Statistics worldwide
• International Cooperation
• Waldorf schools worldwide
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