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I opened this page years ago but did not use it much. Yet the testimonies keep coming up.

I was a former Waldorf mother and a believer in anthroposophy for five years.

The lack of transparency about the anthroposophical background is unfortunately still there, and everything that is done in schools has an anthroposophical reason.

You can find me on Twitter along with other critics and former Waldorfs

https://twitter.com/Rubino83927379?t=9jWkW-B2m82Eh6YX05Nhwg&s=09

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ok. here’s the thing about growing up with an alternative school education. (in my case, Steiner. But I’ll have to say Waldorf here because nobody bloody knows what I’m talking about when I say Steiner outside of Australia).

For those of you who didn’t spend their entire school lives in an overpriced Waldorf inclosure — TV and media are something that you’re supposed to restrict. Like heavily. I know some people who had TVs outright banned growing up. And because I’m an old millennial, the internet wasn’t a thing. Even when it was a thing, it wasn’t a thing because nobody but me and two other people in. my class seemed to have it.

This preamble is a way to explain how devastating it is not to be able to talk to my friends about pop culture. I mean, we can. We’re adults. But there is a gap. At least for my childhood friends. or maybe just a lack of interest. I, personally, had to work very hard to be as media literate as I am. Like I made it my mission. Some teenagers are out there trying to score alcohol or drugs or whatever. I was all about scoring TV. (and the internet. But that was harder, because dial-up and the ubiquitous 90′s family computer room). 

I don’t know if Waldorf are still strongly encouraging parents to not allow TV these days. I’d imagine the internet is the bigger threat for them now since who even watches TV on TV. They may have updated their priorities, but 14 years of my life there has taught me that….this isn’t something they like doing. You get taught the same stuff by the same teachers in the same way forever.  

Being as obsessed with media as I was (and am) was a very very mediocre alternative kid rebellion on my part. I basically had the first four seasons of Friends memorised because I’d downloaded typed transcripts and read those even when I didn’t have the episodes. I read transcripts of Buffy because back then we had to wait six months for the new seasons. I read obsessively about how the X-Files was made.

Even though I’ve wanted to be a writer since before I was literate, I never dreamed of writing for TV or anything like that (I’m australian, it was the nineties. The TV i idolised felt very removed from my world. Novelist was a more attainably goal). 

Anyway. I just think it’s a funny factoid about me. That when I was a child I wasn’t allowed to wear the colour black to class or use black crayons, learned to write using a literal feather quill and ink (the first time I used a ballpoint in class I was 13, and it was only maths that allowed it, until they relaxed more when I was 14). Wasn’t allowed to learn to read until they said so (my mum got told off. We weren’t supposed to ‘learn to read’ until we were about 8.) 

And now? I spend my free time obsessively analysing TV shows.  

*marge simpson voice* I just think it’s neat.

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A common thing I've heard from people talking about why they're drawn to Waldorf is that public schools use standardized, rigid metrics to evaluate students and Waldorf schools don't.

Except Waldorf schools do exactly that, just using different metrics.

While kids in U.S. public schools have to take the same standardized test, Waldorf students have to paint or draw the same picture, memorize and recite the same poem with the exact same inflection, play the same song on the recorder and do it perfectly. And doing "poorly" results in humiliation and judgement, just like in public school.

Public schools absolutely have a problem with expecting and enforcing conformity and sameness and not seeing students as individual people. But Waldorf schools have exactly the same problem. It just manifests itself in different ways.

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I want to talk about L.K.

If you've done deep dives into Rudolf Steiner's philosophies you may have seen those initials. L.K was an elementary school girl who Steiner once spoke about.

He said of L.K. and kids like her "The girl L.K. in class 1...is one of those cases that are occurring more and more frequently where children are born and human forms exist which actually, with regard to the highest member the ego, are not human at all but are inhabited by beings who do not belong to the human race." He goes on to say that kids like L.K. are "not human beings at all but demons in human form."

Given some of the examples Steiner lists, it's an open secret in Waldorf/anthroposophy circles that he is talking about developmentally disabled children.

I am developmentally disabled. Autistic, specifically. A frequent trope invoked by parents of kids like me is that their real child was "stolen" and "replaced." The implication being that we aren't their real children, we're Something Else. Something not quite human, just like L.K.

Waldorf supporters will often claim that survivors take this quote out of context, that it's a metaphor and no one really thinks this is true.

But as a DD kid at a Waldorf school, it couldn't have been clearer that my teachers did believe it. (as an aside, even if it was a metaphor, it would still be disgusting and ableist and dehumanizing and demonstrate a deep hatred of disabled children)

For one thing, I was literally told this several times, that I was not human. That I was a monster. A demon. Not a person. That I had no soul. Because Steiner said so and he was "clairvoyant" so he must have been right. Because in a cult, you don't question shit like that.

The twisted, appropriative Waldorf take on "karma" was also at play. Other kids (the normal, human kids) were encouraged to either bully me or not interact with me at all, because being nice to me or even basically polite would hurt their "karma."

This was in the mid 2000s. Less than 20 years ago. They believe this. Don't ever let them try to tell you they don't.

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Intro Post

You can call me Livvy. It's not my real name, but it'll do. I've been active on Tumblr for a while on a different account, but this little side project of mine started over on Twitter.

I attended a Waldorf school in the Midwest USA for four years, and recently decided it was time to start talking more publicly about it. This wasn't an easy decision because the last time I spoke out publicly, faculty from the school tracked me down and threatened me for it. But it's been years since I was a student there and I still break down in tears over what happened to me. My story matters and I'm going to tell it.

I don't have a solid plan or outline for how I'm going to do this, what I'm going to talk about when, or how much detail I plan on going into. It's more of a "I sporadically post whatever I feel like talking about" kind of thing.

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Humanistische Rudolf Steiner-Zitate auf Postkarten.

Einfach ausdrucken und im Geschichtsunterricht verteilen!

Weitere kostenlose Rudolf Steiner Postkarten bei Steinerquotes.tumblr.com

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Werner Georg Haverbeck wrote a book about steiner and become a member of the Christian community His wife is Ursula Haverbeck better known as the old granny who has denied the holocaust

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Children that dont belong to the human race

“That girl L. K. in first grade, there must be some bad kind of entanglement deep inside. There wont be much to do about it.

These are cases that are more and more common, where children are born and forms of human beings exist, that are not human, but filled with entities that do not belong to the human race.

Since the nineties, you have a big load of egoless humans, where you dont have a reincarnation, but where the human shape is filled with some kind of natural demon.

You can not establish a school for demons.” (Rudolf Steiner)

Source: Rudolf Steiner, founder of the Waldorf School (Steiner Schools), Gesamtausgabe - Ergänzungen zu den pädagogischen Grundkursen, GA300c

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The passive soul of the negro

“Beginning with the completely passive soul of the negro, which is in complete abandon to [devoted to] the environment, to the exterior physique, …” (Rudolf Steiner)

Source: Rudolf Steiner, “Geisteswissenschaftliche Menschenkunde”, (GA107), page 7

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Judaism is an error in world history

“Judaism has outlived itself, it has no qualification within the modern life of the nations, and the fact that it nevertheless survived is an error in world history, whose aftermath didnt fail to appear.

We are not just talking about the forms of jewish religion, we are foremost talking about the spirit of Judaism, the jewish way of thinking. ” (Rudolf Steiner)

Source: Rudolf Steiner, “Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur”, Gesamtausgabe, GA032, page 156

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Indoctrination in the waldorf school

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BBC on waldorf school