Research Bulletin

Nature Deficit Disorder by David Mitchell

In the early 1900s, more than 90% of the population of North America lived in rural areas where farming was dominant, while only 10% lived in urban centers. As recently as the 1950s, most U.S. youngsters still had a connection to agriculture in some form. Even in towns or cities, kids played ball in dusty sandlots or spent hours building forts against fences, in garden shrubbery, or in parks. Their unregimented play allowed them to be at one with nature. That kind of exposure to the outdoors has reportedly faded dramatically in recent decades, but our need for nature—as both psychological and physiological aid—has not. “Neurologically, human beings haven’t caught up with today’s over-stimulating environment,” says Michael Gurian, family therapist and author of The Wonder of Boys.

On Creativity by Stephen Keith Sagarin

We have written child-labor laws and we have outlawed, for the most part, physical torture, but we subject our children daily, with all good intentions, to soul torture. Young children, who should be imbibing the world through all their senses, are taught to read before their minds are fruitfully prepared for this (see Auer, p. 7). Older students are increasingly subject to standardized tests, indoctrinated in the blinkered
thinking that these require. Recent studies and expert opinions add to the growing evidence, evidence we seem as a nation unable to assimilate in our classrooms, that creative experience is humanizing (see James, p. 17) and should be at the heart of any educational program. An opinion in Ed Week by Robert Sternberg1 and a study from the UK by Sue Rogers2 neatly bookend the problem for us.

Allergic Disease and Sensitization in Waldorf/Steiner School Children by Philip Incao, M.D.

In January 2006, the results of a European medical research project were published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The research was designed to look at the rates of hay fever, asthma, and eczema in 6,630 European children aged five to thirteen from Austria, Germany, Switzerland,  Holland, and Sweden. Within this large group of children, the study compared Waldorf school students with non-Waldorf school students with respect to these three increasingly common allergic conditions and also with respect to blood levels of IgE, an antibody marker for allergy.

Left-handedness: A Call for Research by Douglas Gerwin

Should left-handed children be trained to write with their right hand? An article in the most recent issue of Erziehungskunst,1 the German-language journal on Waldorf education, again challenges the practice of some Waldorf elementary school teachers and therapists who encourage children to learn writing and form drawing solely with the right hand.

By Askel Hugo

Download the article: Nurturing Human Growth, A Research Strategy for Waldorf Schools

The development of Waldorf education is not conceivable without the development of a culture of research that is in touch with the core of Steiner’s pedagogical impulse. What does this mean? It means that we need a research strategy for Waldorf education. And it means that this strategy must be meaningful to the public, to Waldorf teachers, to Waldorf schools and the school movement, to Waldorf teacher training institutions, and to the Pedagogical Section of the Anthroposophical Society.

Why: The Purpose of a Research Strategy
Ultimately, we need public research in order to discuss Steiner education in a world in which education—
lifelong and flexible—is a growing focus of attention for governments and for businesses. The survival of Steiner’s impulse for a genuinely human and humane education relies on such a dialog. The more immediate aim is to develop a culture of research and inquiry among teachers and Waldorf schools. A strong oral culture of educational practice based on dialog, one that may be built upon, exists in schools. It needs, however, to be voiced and embedded in a continuous written culture of inquiry. The aim of the Master’s Degree Program in Oslo, Norway is to develop students’ independent research capacity in the context of the two cultures of research mentioned above—oral and written. In addition, research activity among staff members and related to program activity is crucial. What holds true for our Nordic program,
schools, and community, we believe, also holds true elsewhere.

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Excerpt of a lecture by Rudolf Steiner

Download the article: Education and Healing

In the autumn of 1923, Rudolf Steiner gave a lecture at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart concerning the forces which lead to health and to illness in education. He raised the question: Which forces do we really use in pedagogical work? He then continued as follows:
Fundamentally, this question cannot be answered from the usual present day point of view. We can indeed say that the outer life in which we stand demands of man that he do something which as a child he could not do by himself and which must be taught him. It demands, perhaps, also the attitude which we must take as adults in order to help the child accomplish through education those things which he could not achieve alone. The answer to the question, however, “Why do we educate?” remains to a large degree external today because as grown-ups we do not find such great value in what we ourselves have become through our own education.
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This article was published in Education as an Art, Vol. 4, No.3 – 1943-44

By Magda Lissau

Download the article: The Seven Cosmic Artists: An Artistic View of Child Development

Waldorf education, education that follows the understanding of Rudolf Steiner, has its origin in a particular view of a human being as a being of body, soul, and spirit. In many of his lectures to teachers, or prospective teachers, in Waldorf schools, Steiner emphasized that we cannot understand Waldorf education unless we look at the human being from the viewpoint of spiritual science. We need to look at
human beings as living before birth in spiritual worlds, and as having lived previously a life on earth incarnated in a human body of flesh and blood. Moreover, after death, human beings will again sojourn in realms of spirit, and work on their future lives and future tasks. They will do this both with the human souls with whom they share a destiny and with angelic beings, beings who are more highly developed than are human beings at this particular stage of earth evolution.

These views lead to a view of child development that is different from a traditional one. Processes that we may observe in early childhood, elementary school years, adolescence, and early adulthood gain a changed emphasis. Encouraged by several of Steiner’s remarks, I would like to propose one particular way of considering the process of development.
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By Van James

Download the article: Art, Awakener of Consciousness, Humanizer of Society

Art is an awakener of consciousness and a humanizer of society. These functions of art should be clear to all and they should be the cultural experience of all. Sadly, they are not. Hans Belting, art historian, said that “art,” as an understanding of art as an object outside of ourselves, began only about 1400 C.E. Ancient people did not have a word for art as we understand it today because artistic creations were an intimate part of their spiritual-physical lives. For them, original participation, original connection, or oneness with the world was a given.
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By Martyn Rawson

Download the article: Universal Human Nature: The Transition from Kindergarten to Elementary School

The global trend toward early schooling and the pressures on children to become early learners have grown considerably in recent years. Several factors have played into this, including the shock of PISA results;1 the trend toward quality assurance in education through the introduction of standards; and the effects of globalization. Many countries have realized that if they want to compete they must have a better educated workforce. Their unquestioned assumption is that the earlier they start their education the better.

The Lack of a Unifying Image of the Human Being
These external political factors are powerful. What makes the trend to earlier schooling harder to counter, however, is the fact that the science underpinning our understanding of what it means to be a human being, and, in particular, what it means to be a young, developing human being, has also fundamentally altered. In the post-modern age, there is no consensus about human nature, no unifying theory, and not even an agreed-upon framework for development. Geneticists discover ever more structures within the human genome that influence this or that behavior or developmental pattern, but they have not found a universal timetable for children’s growth. The clearest characteristic of the human being to emerge from contemporary genetics is just how plastic, flexible, and variable human beings are. One could say that which is universally human is essentially individual.
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By Arthur Auer

Download the article:  Reading in Waldorf Schools Begins in Kindergarten and Avoids Clouding the Mind's Eye

Universal Literacy: A Recent Experiment in Evolution
Learning to read abstract alphabet symbols and words is a recent activity for most groups of people on the planet—a new experiment in evolution. For more than 100,000 years, through physical, hands-on interaction with the world and through oral communication, young homo sapiens have successfully sculpted the neural circuitry of a healthy intelligence without this skill. For most of the 5,000 years since the invention of writing, most human beings have not had the opportunity or the social need to learn to read. Only in the last hundred years or so has a significant percentage of the earth’s population learned to read and write.
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By Stephen Sagarin

Download the article: From the Editor

By David Mitchell and Douglas Gerwin

Download the article: Report from the Co-Directors

Waldorf Graduate Research, Phase II Update by Arthur Pittis

Teaching Sensible Science by Bob Amis

Working with Slower-Paced Math Students by Lori MacKinder

Report from the Online Waldorf Library by Marianne Alsop

Do Festivals Have a Future? by Eugene Schwartz

As the Waldorf school movement continues to expand in North America, the risk grows that there will be some dilution of its basic principles. With this in mind, it is not surprising that the passionate and comprehensive celebration of the Christian Festivals that characterized the Waldorf school movement in its earlier years is fading. What follows are some thoughts on how this important change has come about and how the future of these Festivals may be understood.

Spirituality in Higher Education, A UCLA Study by Arthur Zajonc

The week before Thanksgiving I found myself at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) among approximately sixty academics invited to be part of a proactive effort to support spirituality in higher education through both curricular and co-curricular means. Ten teams of four had been invited from diverse colleges and universities, including Carnegie Mellon, UC Irvine, Bates, and Wellesley. We were at UCLA’s prestigious Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the behest of Professors Alexander “Sandy” and Helen Astin, founders of HERI, who have been researching the spiritual life of students and the professoriate in recent years.

Quicksand and Quagmires of the Soul: The Subconscious Stimulation of Youth through Media by David Mitchell

Twenty-five years ago I read a report from Liverpool, England, in which a researcher established a high correlation between adolescent crime in Liverpool and its suburbs and American television programs. The report established a ratio between a crime committed and the portrayal of the crime in a television drama. Reports like this one on “copy-cat crime” are popular among sociologists and researchers. They show, however, a statistical correlation, not a causal relationship. Did young people, for example, watch violent television programs and then commit acts of violence, or were young people prone to committing acts of violence drawn to watching these shows on television? Keeping this in mind, and intrigued by the
possible implications of this research, I kept a watchful eye out for research establishing a relationship
between visual and audio impressions and how they make an imprint on the souls of young people.

Download the Article: On Spiritual Research

The following is an excerpt of a chapter, entitled “The Supersensible in Human Beings and the Universe,” from Rudolf Steiner’s untranslated book, Education, Teaching, and Practical Life, edited by David Mitchell © AWSNA Publications 2006, available in Spring 2007.

I would like to indicate here briefly some essential points on how one can become a spiritual researcher today, completely in keeping with the organization of today’s human body.
Not everybody needs to become a spiritual scientist, but some people aspire to do so. Up to a certain point, everybody can at least become an experimenter in spiritual science, by taking up the exercises I have described in my books and lectures. But whoever wants to become a spiritual scientist nowadays must no longer do it through the physical chanting of mantras, but use instead the purely supersensible practice of thought.

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Download the article: The Development of the Hand in the Young Child

This article describes some of the intricacies and the abundance of amazing stages through which infants and toddlers progress in their fine motor development, so that professionals familiar with the basic concepts of motor development can begin to recognize these movements in their work with children.1 I avoid giving specific ages for motor milestones, since each child will progress wisely at her own pace, and the quality of the movement is what is most important, not the timetable.2 While each child develops uniquely, I present an archetype of development. If the child skips a stage or two, all is not lost. All of us, at any age, have potential for further
growth and development. I do not wish to support a deficit model or a fix-it mentality on the
part of teachers and caregivers of infants and very young children, but rather to help them see the genius of the child at work in the unfolding of her fine motor development.
I encourage professionals to supplement knowledge such as that contained in this article by honing their own skills in observation for a short period of time each day.
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Download the article: What Will Today’s Children Need for Financial Success in Tomorrow’s Economy?

The growing “creative age” economy calls for the development of human capacities, capacities that Waldorf schools have cultivated for nearly a century.

Today’s economy is changing. While Waldorf school educators have long believed in the importance of educating children to develop into capable, competent human beings, we are entering a time in which economic success increasingly depends on these same principles. The skills and capacities needed for financial success in the new economy are those that are already a focus of development in Waldorf education: creativity, social skills, self-knowledge, and an inner sense of responsibility or virtue.
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Download the article: Healing Children Who Have Attentional, Emotional, and Learning Challenges

There is an epidemic in our society. More and more children are being assigned more and more labels, labels such as Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), receptive or expressive language disorders, learning disabilities that include visual or auditory processing disorders, and the autistic spectrum disorders like Pervasive Developmental Delay (PDD), Asperger’s syndrome, and autism, to name only a few. What is happening to our children?
What do these labels really mean?
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Download the article: The Tricky Triangle: Children, Parents and Teachers

Any school community has three distinct populations. But, in Waldorf schools at least, after 78 years, the relationship among them has changed. There are the children. There are the children’s parents. There are the children’s teachers. Children—parents—teachers. Why are these relationships so tricky?_¹
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Download the article: Rudolf Steiner on Teaching Left-Handed Children

Rudolf Steiner’s position on the pedagogical treatment of left-handed children has been much misunderstood over the years. This is partly due to the obscurity of the references. Steiner’s indications concerning the pedagogical treatment of left-handed children are buried among the transcriptions of his spoken indications on education. They are not in written works or essays. Some of them were only officially published in English in 1998, and others remain unavailable to this day. The “telephone effect” also contributes to this misunderstanding. When a complex statement is retold from memory through a chain of three or four people, it is inevitably simplified and altered, and this appears to be the case with several misunderstandings that circulate to this day in Waldorf school circles.
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Download the article: Reading in Waldorf Schools, Part II: Beginning in Flow and Warmth

When creative human capacities such as imagination are inhibited through misguided educational methods, persons can find it challenging or impossible to realize their fullest potentialities in life. Rudolf Steiner observed that the effects of reading too early combined with “faulty methods,” which he was personally spared in his early years, can interfere with a person’s destiny. In his words, they “make bodies unfit” physiologically and “harden” them so that the individual spirit “cannot enter fully into the body”:

…It may not be at all beneficial for such a child to learn to read too early. For by doing so something is being blocked for life. …For it is possible to trace back a hardening of the entire human organism…to a faulty method of introducing reading to a child._¹

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Download the article: From the Editor

Clarity, depth, and perspective—attributes of sight—characterize the contents of this issue of the Research Bulletin. Reading the contents of this issue we can experience the clarity, depth of field, and perspectives these authors bring to their material. What will we do, however, with this clarity? How will we employ our new sense and knowledge? The articles collected here aim to affect the way we teach, the way we think about our students, and the way we live in the communities of our schools. Clear sight can lead to confident action.
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Schools of the Future: Meeting the Needs of the Children in the New Millennium by Michael Mancini
A recent leadership council at the Harvard Graduate School of Education addressed “leading and managing the independent school of the future.” In an opening keynote address, Patrick Bassett, president of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), commented on the emerging 21st century curriculum compiled by NAIS and a Harvard education research group. He discussed the need for an ethical grounding in our schools. Parents need to shift, for instance, from wanting their children to be happy to wanting them to be good and virtuous.

Mathematics and Memory by Lori MacKinder
An all too common scene in the home during the evening: a child sits at the kitchen table, staring at math pages with her head held in her hands. Time ticks by. Sometimes tears are involved in the scene, sometimes anger or rage, but the scene does not change. As parents, we long to help our children, yet we often feel inept or too far removed from mathematics or teaching.

Excerpts from "Tilling the Soil of the European Higher Education Area” by John Burnett
The following excerpts describe an ongoing effort in Europe to create a trans-national Master’s program
in Waldorf education. The author, John Burnett, is a member of the Faculty of Education, University of
Plymouth, U.K. References to the “Bologna Declaration” and the “Lisbon Process” concern larger attempts to ease transfer of credits and in other ways support higher education across European national boundaries.

Teaching Science through Experience and Discernment: Teaching Sensible Science
An Interview with Michael D'Aleo by Bob Amis
Bob Amis: How would you explain the Waldorf school approach to teaching science?
Michael D’Aleo: As science is too often taught, a textbook describes a “natural law,” usually one that was discovered some time ago. Teachers then conduct demonstrations to show that this law is valid. Teachers are able, in this way, to show that there is a relationship between demonstration and textbook explanation, but they do not ask students to enter into a scientific process.

News from the Online Waldorf Library by Marianne Alsop

New Research on the Power of Play by Susan Howard
Early Childhood Educational Reform in the Past Twenty-Five Years
In 2003, Sharna Olfman, clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Point Park College in Pittsburgh, published All Work and No Play…How Educational Reforms Are Harming Our Preschoolers.1 Olfman describes the dramatic reform in education and in the lives of children that has taken place in North America in recent decades: “Its guiding mantra is ‘Standards, Accountability, Testing, and Technology,’” she writes.
This wave of reform began with the publication in 1983 of “A Nation at Risk,” a report issued by President Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence. The Commission concluded that “if only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must dedicate ourselves to the reform of our educational system.”2 The U.S. embarked upon “standards based education,” including the introduction of early academic learning, mediated experiences (computer-based instruction), and high-stakes testing.

High Stakes Testing by Eugene Schwartz
The educational opportunities of millions of American children have already been compromised by high-stakes tests, and the likelihood is that, no matter who wins the next presidential election, millions more will suffer. Waldorf education, at its truest and best, has a viable alternative to present to the American mainstream, but that viability is weakened when we ourselves are uncertain about our goals and assessment methods. We must seriously consider convening a national gathering on the subject of testing with presentations from those willing to take a stand, pro or con.

Rethinking the Waldorf High School: Two European Examples by David Mitchell
Educational ideas and practices evolve as new priorities emerge. Similarly, Rudolf Steiner’s original insights concerning the education of adolescents need to be studied, restudied, and understood in regard to the spiritual and societal needs of today’s youth. In such a vein, active thoughts made manifest can be found in the Regionalen Oberstufe Jurasüdfuss (Regional High School of Jurasudfuss)^₁ in Switzerland and the Oslo City High School in Oslo, Norway.^₂

Download the article: Playing “Steiner Says”: Twenty Myths about Waldorf Education

Because of his role as Editor of the Research Bulletin, we wish to state that the following article represents Dr. Sagarin’s research and opinions and not necessarily those of the Research Institute.

During my first year or two of teaching, we enjoyed the presence of two eminent European Waldorf teachers at our faculty meeting. My recollection is that one came from the U.K. and one from Germany, but that doesn’t matter. One
appeared in the fall and one in the spring. The first, answering a colleague’s question, said, “You should never use tongue-twisters; they trivialize language.”1 Heads nodded. The second, also in response to a colleague’s question, replied, “Of course, the best possible thing for that is to recite tongue twisters with your class.” Heads nodded again. And there we were, back where we belonged, on our own recognizance. Two experts, two apparently contradictory points of view. Presumably, both were based on considered interpretations of Steiner’s work.

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Download the article: Anthroposophy and the Riddle of the Soul

The following is an excerpt of a chapter entitled “Anthroposophy and the Riddle of the Soul” from Rudolf Steiner’s previously untranslated book, Education, Teaching, and Practical Life, edited by David Mitchell, AWSNA Publications, available in Spring 2007.

Human beings confront the riddles of existence only once we have developed a certain level of consciousness about life, when we feel the urge to formulate representations, sentiments, and feelings about their relationship with the world. But once we get there, these riddles truly represent what one might call a vital question, for they are not just the expression of theoretical longings, purely external cultural questions. Indeed, they affect our entire stance in the world, the manner in which we find our way in life, the level of inner security and steadiness with which we go through
life. Everything depends on the solution to these riddles.

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Download the article: Living Language in Waldorf Education

Waldorf education takes place largely through the spoken word. Is this just a low-tech approach to education or is living language called upon to carry and contribute to the process of education? The forms in which this educator—living language—enacts its role vary in the course of a school day. The nature and practice of language also need to change throughout the school years in order to support and further a developing human being in a differentiated, age-appropriate way. Involving students with living language in purposeful, specific ways also furthers and supports them in facing the challenges and overcoming the hurdles of their developmental paths.

Particularly in connection with the founding of the first Waldorf school, and throughout the early years of this educational movement for cultural renewal, Rudolf Steiner repeatedly focused on the need to foster and develop the artistic elements of speech. Michaela Glöckler points out that Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogical works contain more references to speech than to any other subject. _¹

Through the artistic renewal of speech—usually referred to as speech formation, creative speech, or the art of the spoken word—we gain the possibility, out of inner activity, to enable speech to be filled with life. We discover the qualities of speech beyond its informational character alone. The more abstract speech becomes, the more human souls become separated from each other. The healing forces of process-filled speaking, speaking that carries warmth and light, allow us to be more fully present in meeting the world, each other, and ourselves.

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