WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Waldorf Schools

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

This week, in light of Jillian's recent exposure to them through TikTok, we discuss Waldorf/Steiner schools. Tune in to hear about whether they are cults, why all the rich people are sending their kids there, and cool Waldorf activities involving fire, beeswax, gnomes, and imagination that parents only pay a college tuition's sum to have their kids experience.  

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM, where we examine the truth disparity between what's in social media and what's actually true. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gulesby. And we're social mediatoring again. But in the same old remote way as we talked about on our last episode. If you didn't catch our 51st episode last week, go ahead and tune into that. We talk about the classic, I think we talked about Donald Trump, right? We did. We always talk about him. He's so relevant. But that. This week, we won't even touch on that at all, I don't think. Not even a little bit. Not even close to what I'm bringing up. I came up with the decision for what we were talking about today because, well, today we're talking about Waldorf schools, also sometimes called Steiner schools, but Garrett will help me hopefully distinguish or figure out why they're called that. And the reason is because I came across this lady on my TikTok for you page who is a teacher

at a Walder's school and her, like, classroom is a really interesting situation. And she was just talking about like all the things and equipment that she needs to be a Waldorf teacher and it just sounded really weird. So I wanted to talk about it. Sounds good. Yeah. So should I just hop right into it? Just dive right in. What do you know? What are you curious about? Okay. So I'm curious about a lot of things. I will say that. But what I know is not I guess not that much. I know that it's the Waldorf method is why it's called I guess a Waldorf school. Maybe it's also called. I guess a Waldorf school. Maybe it's also called. the Steiner method. I'm not really sure about that. But it was started by some guy who's, I guess, probably last name was Waldorf for something. I don't really know. Maybe it was Steiner. Again, I'm a little bit confused on the names. But I know it was started in Germany. And I know that they say that the purpose of that education is to educate the whole human person. And that was the first sort of things that I ran across. And I was like, that sounds like Hillsdale to me. Because that's kind of what we talk about in Hillsdale is like a liberal arts

education educating like the whole person. And so I was like, man, maybe these are like one and the same. Maybe Waldorf schools are just liberal arts schools. And it seems like it might be a little bit different than that because you run into two camps. You run into people who are really passionate about Waldorf schooling and they think it's like the only way to educate children. And it's like, I don't know, the way that you actually get results. And then there's people who complain that, A, it's a cult and B, like these kids don't know how to read. So I don't really know truly.

I do not understand the don't know how to read method. Maybe they just don't teach them how to read. You'll have to tell me if you know about that at all because that was like a big complaint was like, oh, Walder's schools or like those schools where you go and you don't know how to read. Interesting. I don't know about that. What I do know is that they focus. They said that their motto is like head, heart and hands. So like the whole person in that way.

And it seems to be a really tactile type of learning. So there's a lot of artistic, creative outlets that go with it. Like I saw one comment on a TikTok that was like, I went to a Waldorf school for an entire year and I only learned how to knit and how to dance. And I was like that, I mean, to be fair, in second, I think they were in like second grade. And in second grade, I don't know if I learned anything, period.

Maybe I did. I don't remember. It would have been nice to learn how to knit and dance. But those are useful skills. I agree. But then the teacher, who I found on TikTok, talks a lot about it working to create multifaceted students. So she said that she was a Waldorf student and she left like speaking multiple languages and being really excited about sports and playing a bunch of instruments and that sort of thing.

I don't know how they are academically. Like it doesn't seem to be a real topic of conversation when they talk about schooling. It seems to be a little bit more like we're coloring and we're drawing and we're being artistic. That's the other thing about older schools that I have seen on social media is that they're very artistic. There's a lot of like chalk pastels that they're drawing these elaborate portraits on the chalkboard with. And there's like creative sensory stations. And this one specific teacher that gave me a lot of information on her specific Waldorf School was talking about how they use beeswax for everything. And like they make a bunch of sculptures, like colored beeswax to make different sculptures based on like the stories that they read.

And so it sounds like it's working to educate really creative students, hopefully. but I don't really know how effective it is in terms of knowing basic regular skills. Some people were asserting that if you're a Waldorf student, like you can get in any college you want. Like colleges love Waldorf students. Like Ivy Leagues go crazy for Waldorf students because they love that. So there must be some sort of like real academic benefit behind it, but that just doesn't seem to be the focus at all.

I also like learned like some, I guess one-off things here and there. there's like a lot of different ceremonies that they take part in. They do a lot of like lower to upper school graduations and for different holidays real or seemingly made up. There's a lot of ceremonies for them to celebrate. And there's all these like rituals that go along with it. I know one, when they graduate from lower to upper school, they have to jump over like a fire with bare feet or something. Probably not every school does this because I also learned that Walder of schools are, I mean, they're typically private schools. that you pay for and they're super expensive, but there are also like public charter schools that just use the Waldorf method that probably aren't as, maybe not as well resourced as like a really expensive private school. I don't really know how that works to be real with you, but I know that there's different types and that the method can be implemented in different forms of school. I'm trying to think what else I looked into. I think the major controversy that came out of this was seemingly that it's a cult. And I don't know if there's a

there's any validity to that claim, you'll have to talk about, like, maybe why people might think it's a cult. But, yeah, all the kids that they talk about going to Waldorf School are typically more free-spirited. So were any of the people talking about it being a cult from the inside? Like, students that grew up going to Waldorf schools and they were like, it was weird in there. Yes, both. There were people from the outside that looked at it and were like, it's a cult. That's super weird. And then people inside that were like, we jumped over fire and had to wear white dresses.

and jump around in circles and sing songs. Oh my gosh, this is also a part that I'm really curious about because I cannot seem to find it anywhere. Is that are there religious affiliations with these schools? Because it seems like they, a lot of people went to Waldorf schools and like prayed and were forced to say verses. They said like said verses and did prayers every morning. But other people are talking about the fact that these are not,

like there's no specific religion. It's just like they dabble in all religions. Yeah, it's not an explicitly religious. model of education. Yeah, so maybe they're just like little chance and verses that they have for them. But I think that's an interesting little thing. It sounds like maybe a liberal arts education or a Hillsdale kind of education if it was like way less academic and with zero religious or like, I don't know, like classical conservative roots. Like those things don't seem to be a part of the Waldorf school.

I think you'd be right in saying that for the most part. Okay, that's what I have. That's what I've learned. I'm sure there's other things I picked up along the way, but feel free to fill in the gaps or to ask me any questions or to tell me where I was blatantly wrong. Before we do that,

I just want to say that this is a social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.1.7 FM. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gulesby. And we are, we're talking about Waldorf schools slash Steiner's schools slash, just maybe a cult. We don't know.

So let's unpack the name first because I think that's the part that's the most confusing. to this day the reason they're called Waldorf schools is kind of is kind of weird so the guy that invented this educational method his name is rudolph steiner he's an Austrian guy and so that's why they're sometimes called Steiner schools the reason why that would name Waldorf school stuck is because the original Steiner school was made for a company for the the children of one company and it was called the Waldorf Astoria company so it was the Waldorf school because it was

all the kids that were sons and daughters of Waldorf employees. Okay. That's where the name came from. Yeah, kind of funky. So I'm going to address a couple of your other questions and then dive into, I guess, maybe some of the history and some of the components of what makes Waldorf education. So do they learn to read? That was when you asked.

Yes, they do. They actually learn pretty much all of the same math, science, English history that a typical school would learn. They just do it a lot differently. also it's important to keep in mind that there aren't very many secondary Waldorf schools. Most of it is preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, maybe. So mostly little kids, I have some numbers on that that will bring up in a second in terms of how many schools we're looking at. There aren't very many in the U.S.

So the reason why people look at them learning to read as kind of an issue is that they teach them to read later than most kids learn to read. I think they start learning in the first grade, whereas other schools, you know, you could start reading by the time you're four or five years old, so a couple years before. The way that they look at teaching kids things is that the Waldorf philosophy, so Rudolph Steiner's philosophy is that kids are ready for certain kinds of information at certain stages. So in developmental theory, he'd be considered a stage theorist, which just believes, just means. he believes that the kid develops in a sequence of stages, right? It doesn't happen all at once. There's certain kinds of things that a kid is ready to learn at a given time in their life, and they just, they don't think that reading is good for kids that are a certain age. They want them to learn to imagine and play and create before they start to read. And you also asked

about outcomes, like how do these kids turn out in the long run? Does learning to read so late wind up hurting them. I'm sure the jury could still be said to be out because there's not a ton of research on this, but from all the studies that have been done on how these kids turn out long term, they turn out pretty good, actually. For the most part, their academic scores on anything standardized are as good or better than a traditional education. And in terms of higher education, typically Waldorf students have been seen to just get more

education, they're more likely to go for a master's or a PhD, some kind of grad program after after college. They're, you know, accepted into big universities at comparable or better rates than traditional education. So it doesn't seem to really put them at a deficit. One big thing that it seems that they're, they tend to be very good at is any creative aspect, any job or any type of education that requires more creative thinking. They tend to really excel at that. Another aspect of this education that's really emphasized is the kids development of wonder at the world and also interpersonal relationships. They make them work together and do things together a lot, even when they're super little. The philosophy there is just that they learn at an early age, how to share,

how to cooperate, how to, you know, just interact with other people. Another thing you mentioned was the types of Waldof schools, are they public, are they private? What does that look like? I actually dug up some really interesting information on this particular point. So there aren't very many public Waldorf schools. There are a few. And typically when they're opened, people are kind of mad about it. The idea that there's public money being spent on this educational method that they're not super on board with. So typically the opening of these schools is accompanied by some angst from the general population. But they tend to do really well. Their students have good outcomes. And like you said they tend not to be as well resourced as the private schools and it is pretty

staggering when you look at how much these private schools cost it's it's pretty otherworldly so I mean low low low end is like eight grand a year no the high end is 35 45000 dollars a year oh so college tuition college tuition for you know your second grader basically and And so these higher-end schools, I actually watched some, like, promotional material from some of these higher-end schools. Most of them are in Silicon Valley. Oh. Which is, yeah, I'll get into that in a second because it's very interesting, the reason why that is the case. But they are on plots of land.

A lot of them are, like, full working farms. And the kids participate in all the farm work. So they do, like, that's one of their classes. That's one of the things that they learn. And by the time that they leave the school, they, you know, they're pretty handy. They have lots of hands-on skills that they can apply. They can sew, they can knit, they can crochet, they can all dance, they can do just about any kind of yard work you can think of. You know, they can repair things, all that stuff.

And also they have the skills just, you know, your general math science, English history, knowledge. So in a sense, they wind up being well-rounded in just having a variety of experiences. So, you know, why are all these schools in Silicon Valley? That's, I think, the interesting thing. Most of the kids that attend these high-end schools are the children of, like, tech giants. So your CEOs. Because, and here's a really unique thing that a lot of people, I think, would point to as cultish. They are anti-technology, completely and totally.

Most of these schools will not allow an electronic device on the premise. And many of the schools, in fact, strongly advised and will not even allow a child to get into the school, unless their parents sign an agreement to not allow the kid to have any kind of electronic involvement until a certain age. Wow. So the grade school, kids are highly, highly discouraged, and I think in some cases prohibited from access to electronics at school or in the home. In high school, there's limited access at the school.

And it's, yeah, like I said, it's very, very minimal. They don't want technology access, which is very telling because all of these kids are, you know, the kids of, you know, I'm pretty sure Steve Jobs's kids went to a Waldorf school. Bill Gates's kids go to a Waldorf school or went. I guess they're probably older now. But I don't know. I think that's super telling and super interesting. Yeah, it is. Religious or is there any religious affiliation for the most part, no.

a few of them are like kind of vaguely aligned with some form of Christianity or some other religion. A lot of them, not really practice, but they encourage, because they're encouraging kids to have just wonder at the world, they do like chants and prayers and songs. Like I saw this one video of a Waldorf teacher teaching like three and four year old kids a song to sing to the fire gnome, which was super exciting and actually pretty beautiful. cute because all the little kids were singing about a fire gnome. Oh, that's actually really precious. It was pretty cute. And they just were saying like, no, we don't, you know, we won't want them to believe that there is such a thing. We just want them to be, like, excited at the world and, and have awe about it. So I thought that was pretty wholesome. Maybe there's, I don't think there's any bad intent there. I'm going to dive a little bit into the history of the schools and kind of how it,

how it came about. So the first school was opened in 1919, like we said, by Rudolph Steiner. He's an Austrian an educator and a philosopher. They're all about whole child development. The way that he sees it is developing the whole child essentially gives them freedom. It allows them to be released from just sort of a dogmatic way of looking at the world and they're able to, with these creative capacities, look at things in a totally new way. There's 1,200 schools worldwide, 1900 kindergartens around the world that are Waldorf schools, 130 in the U.S., so not very many. They tend to use natural lighting. They don't have a lot of

electric lights. Some, you know, some do, but they try to emphasize that. Most of the supplies are made from natural materials, too. So another reason why it's a lot of times very expensive. And they also try to use very muted colors in the color schemes of the inside of the schools. Everything's hands-on. It's all about outdoors. And the way that they teach subjects is very interesting. Most schools, right, you have five or six subjects going at the same time and you get a little bit of each every year and then by the end you kind of maybe know a little bit about something. Instead, with the Waldorf education model is that you have one big concept that you work on for a block of weeks, maybe it's three to six weeks where you just sort of talk about that one

big concept and you use art, dancing, painting, outdoor activities, all those things in service of trying to learn that concept, whatever it might be. Like, what's an example of a concept that they might pick? Let me think about this. Something like, like spatial awareness or something like that. It could be very broad. And so they would do, you know, they would talk about maybe perspective in drawing and painting and things like that.

And then they would do physical activities that required that sense of depth or something. I'm kind of just shooting from the hip here based on the things that I saw. But that's sort of a general idea of what, they would what they would look at. So yeah, very interesting style of education. It's not really liberal arts per se because they don't, you know, there's not a classical emphasis. They're not looking at the kind of the ancient method for educating kids where you start

with, you know, grammar and all these wrote memorization things. Actually, they aren't really a big fan of having kids memorize anything. So a little bit different philosophy than that. I was looking up, okay, where's like the highest end school? It's in Manhattan, like downtown Manhattan. It's called the Rudolph Steiner Waldorf School. And it's like 40 grand a year to attend there for your kindergartner. And apparently some very famous people's little precious angels attend there.

No way. I couldn't get any names, unfortunately, because I don't think they're going to... Ooh, underlocking key. Yeah, yeah. But, yes, it's a very interesting philosophy, and it seems to work. I don't know if it works better than a lot of other things. It's one of the things that is compared to a lot is a Montessori school. Okay, that makes sense.

It's, you know, Montessori schools are very similar. I would say probably the emphasis on the Waldorf School that's a little bit different is in the outdoors aspect of it. There's just more stuff happening in the outdoors than most Montessori schools do. But they're very, very similar, almost kind of difficult to distinguish. Would you send your kid to a Waldorf school if you had the money? Yes, I think so. Oh, cool. Then I would probably maybe do it. I don't know. I haven't decided because some of the like, I don't know the prayer stuff and the versions. I have to know about that.

We'd have to vet it a little bit, but I do kind of think it sounds, it sounds idyllic. It sounds like a fun childhood activity. Let me sit in on a day and do some coloring, do some painting, see what kind of things are going on here, and then I'll decide. Right. Okay. Are we ready to give it a grade? I think so. Okay. I have my grade. Yeah. Three, two, one. B. C plus, yeah. B. Yeah. Okay. I think it did fine. I felt like I knew what was going on mostly.

Obviously, I was missing some pretty key structural details because no one wants to talk about the structural stuff. Of course not. interesting. What's interesting is all the funky stories and all the things that they're learning. Nomes do seem to be a big theme. I've seen quite a few of them. Hey, they're fun. What can you say? Fun, yes, but they're also, I don't know. Are you scared of Nomes, Gillian? I think potentially maybe a little bit. I think they just kind of make me uneasy. Yeah, but small but mighty. What if they got you?

That's true. I know it's not particularly compelling. Do we have any closing thoughts on the Waldorf school? All I'm going to say is the reason why I gave it is C plus is because normally I wind up shooting slightly higher than you so I was like shoot low this time Garrett shoot low and so that's that's why I gave it a sequence that's probably actually a good move on your part um I'm gonna I don't know I just kind of give it what I feel in my heart there's not a lot of evidence for why I pick what I pick you just have such a kind heart yeah okay and we'll end on that note thank you so much for tuning into the social mediators I'm Julianne parks and I'm Garrett and I'm Garrett and we'll talk to you next week