Waldorf Education in everyday School Life 

In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain says – “It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.” When you look at the landscape of Mainstream education it looks like an embodiment of rigid and fixed thinking. Be it the curriculum, the way the children are perceived, the method of assessments, the dehumanising environment, the competitive culture, the community or the lack of it – most aspects seem to have been born out of rigid or outdated thinking. Most educational systems and educators seem to have lost the pedagogic relevance in their thinking that neither serves the children nor the future they wish to create.  Even worse than fixed thinking, I fear there is no thinking at all. There are certain beliefs and assumptions about children, their development and the world that has never opened its doors to fresh thinking and renewal. And an ecosystem such as that cannot but create individuals who are then victims of such de-spirited, dead thinking that governs their entire life. 

Waldorf Education at its very foundation is an antithesis of that. Waldorf Education is a true cultural deed.  Be it the curriculum that meets the developmental need of the child, or the pedagogic principles that lie at the foundation of the work or the striving quality in the teachers or the community of invested parents –  in whatever the  dimension, it is enlivened thinking at its every nerve. And when I ask myself what for me, allows this possibility that there can be such an enlivening spirit in the work we do – I go back to the first lecture of Rudolf Steiner which forms the basis for everything we do – “The connection that is established from the very beginning between our activity and the spiritual worlds. We need to form our thoughts so that we can be conscious that this school fulfills something special. We can do this only when we do not view the founding of this school as an everyday occurrence, but instead regard it as a ceremony held within cosmic order.”  To me this is what distinguishes our work from the rest and this is what allows the possibility that everything that wraps the child is bathed in such golden light. 

While the premise and the foundation is established in view of this cosmic law, it is quite possible that we  too fall into the malaise of fixed thinking. In my school community and in other communities too, I notice that most of the teachers come from an experience of childhood and education that is quite steeped in mainstream thinking and rigid ideas. Much as we are drawn to anthroposophy and its living ideals, one often notices our old patterns surfacing. Others are often able to see  this in us, what we ourselves are unable to see. It is therefore very important that we stay connected as a school community and do ‘the work on ourselves’ as intensely as possible. The meditations and biography work have been tools that have served our community greatly in this regard – that we become more and more conscious of what lives in us and are able to transform the dead matter and in its place find the new. 

One interesting observation that I have made in the recent years is that a certain dogma arises with every philosophy and Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education is no exception to this. In our attempts to practice the ideals that lie in front of us, we can become fixated. In this regard, it is my belief, more than anywhere else in the school, the college of teachers and its functioning is most susceptible to fixed thinking and dogmas. I also notice that  there has been a tradition around school leadership and the practices around it, historically, and schools are striving to emulate the same. It is my belief that a school is a living organism and at the same time a social and business enterprise. Unless both views are held together, the foundations can be weak and I see there is room for renewal and fresh thinking on this front  that is befitting for each school and each situation.

While as striving Waldorf teachers we  wish to bring renewed forces in every activity of the school sphere we contend with our human limitations. As Goethe says “The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannot be explored.” 

The school is a place where children and teachers alike feel that they are a part of a joyful endeavour. The school as a future bearing social form works to serve the children who come through the door to meet us each day. And at the heart of this endeavour, stands a circle of teachers, bearing the deepest conviction that they are supported by the spiritual world. And they, stand there, with an ability to intuit what the times are asking of the school today. This circle, creates the spiritual vessel, that can echo what is living within the larger sphere of the cosmos and can bring to the school community, the gift of those beings, who stand behind each member of the circle. And when we are deeply anchored in this image that Rudolf Steiner envisioned for the Waldorf Schools, everything that we do, can be imbued with enlivened thought.