Research Bulletin

Download the article: Book Review: The Marriage of Sense and Thought

(Reviewed By Susan Howard & Douglas Sloan)

Technology has, of course, existed since the time of the Pharaohs. We can admire the skill of the goldsmiths, enamelers and glassworkers, as well as the power of the pyramid builders. Improvements in the trades were certainly made from time to time. However, the rate of technological change since Galileo has been so great that modern technology cannot be compared with anything existing before. Why did the isolation of the individual from the environment bring about such a dramatic spurt in technological development?

We find the answer to this question if we compare the activity of the craftsman with that of the “natural philosopher” of the seventeenth century. The craftsman intimately connected with his work. He may experience while hammering how a change in direction of the blows makes the work easier and he might invent a new form of support for the work. While assembling a structure, he might see how an additional member could increase the strength. New inventions and improvements came about because the craftsman was dealing directly with his work. Contemplating the piece while in bed at night, he imagined how the working conditions or the product could be improved.

Download the article: Book Review: Silicon Snake Oil

(Excerpts From A Review By Dorit Winter)

I’m mainly speaking to people who feel mystically lured to the Internet: lotus-eaters, beware. Life in the real world is far more interesting, far more important, far richer, than anything you’ll ever find on a computer screen. (p. 13)

Mr. Stoll knows what he’s talking about. “He’s the author of The Cuckoo’s Nest - the best-selling book about how he caught German spies prowling through computers - and a genuine legend on the Internet. Involved with networks since their earliest days, Stoll has watched the Internet grow from an improbable research project into a communications juggernaut. He knows computers; he loves his networked community. And yet. . .” (from the flyleaf)

Download the article: Book Review: Life on the Screen

(A Book Contemplation By Dorit Winter)

Life on the Screen is commendable as an introduction to interactive computer use. Sherry Turkle explains the nascent computer culture of a simulation called Multi-User Domains, or MUDs, very thoroughly. Essentially, “MUDs provide worlds for anonymous social interactions in which one can play a role as close to or as far away from one’s ‘real self’ as one chooses.” (p. 12) To impart a bit more of a flavor of MUD existence, I can do no better than to quote the book:

In the course of a day, players move in and out of the active game space. As they do so, some experience their lives as a “cycling through” between the real, world, RL, and a series of virtual worlds. I say a series because people are frequently connected to several MUDs at a time. In an MIT computer cluster at 2 a.m.. an eighteen-year-old freshman sits at a networked machine and points to the four boxed-off areas on his vibrantly colored computer screen. “On this MUD I’m relaxing, shooting the breeze. On this MUD I’m in aflame war. On this last one I’m into heavy sexual things. I’m traveling between the MUDs and a physics homework assignment due at 10 tomorrow morning.”

Download the article: Towards Wholeness in Knowing

In conjunction with a three-year longitudinal study of the Urban Waldorf School in Milwaukee, a survey is being conducted by Patti Smith of Sunbridge College to investigate the unique characteristics of Waldorf education. The survey will focus on perceptions of the philosophy of Waldorf education, strengths of the Waldorf approach to curriculum and instruction, and the outcomes of a Waldorf education.

This summer a pilot survey will be distributed to individuals who participate in summer programs at major anthroposophical adult education centers throughout the U.S. After the results are reviewed and necessary modifications are made, the survey will be sent to individuals who are familiar with Waldorf education, including graduates, parents and teachers in both private and public settings. If you would like to participate, a copy of the survey can be obtained from Sunbridge College, Hungry Hollow Road, Spring Valley, NY 10977 (914-425-0055).

Download the article:  A New Educational Paradigm

(Original title: Das neue pädagogische Paradigma: Identität der Lebens-und Denktätigkeit. English by A. R. Meuss, F IL, MTA.)

“It is of the greatest importance to know that the human being’s ordinary powers of thought are refined powers of configuration and regeneration.”⁽¹⁾ Rudolf Steiner

In Waldorf schools, where the approach to education is based on the work of Rudolf Steiner, teaching relates to a child’s age and development. It takes account both of the laws of physical development and of the stages by which the child and young person matures in mind, soul and spirit. What is new, and important, is that functions of soul and spirit, particularly the ability to think, feel and will, are not taken to be a secondary principle arising from biochemical processes in the human body, but the primary principle that imposes order on the chaos of physical building stones, builds up the body during the growth stage, and later on provides only for healing or regeneration, and the growth processes connected with reproduction. The aim of this paper is to present the basics of this new development-related education and show their relevance to educational practice.

By Wolfgang Schad
(English by A. R. Meuss, FIL, MTA.)

Download the article: Organology and Physiology of Learning

Physiological aspects of young children’s drawings
The scribbly drawings of young children are very helpful if one wishes to study the interaction between physical development and the direction taken in inner activity. In spite of considerable individual differences, we see characteristic themes recurring at particular ages.⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾

The first drawings are uncontrolled vortices coming from the motor functions of a small hand moving in circles, the movement of life. (Fig. 1) Rocking hand movements produce tracks that move to and fro. The nature of the forms is partly determined by the structure of the joints and the degree to which hand and arm muscles have matured. The many variations seen in the second and third years of life, soon with highly expressive forms, shall be left aside here.

By Cindy Weinberg

Download the article: The Middle Passage...

As Waldorf teachers and Anthroposophists, we have before us the opportunity to formulate new thoughts that may bring us closer to understanding the nature of our diverse culture, a culture that struggles continuously to realize its ideals and know its true identity. By working together with the challenging questions of race and diversity, we will develop new capacities that will contribute to the reality and wholeness of the American spirit.

In March 1996, during AWSNA’s Eastern Regional Conference, Norman Davidson gave a talk describing aspects of the American Spirit. He characterized the contribution of the Native American People as being intimately connected to the natural world. He suggested that the souls of their ancestors live on in the rocks, trees, forest, plains, deserts, rivers, lakes and sky adding their formative forces onto the present through the spiritual forces in nature.

From University of Bielefeld (Germany)
Research Center for Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence
(Translated for the International Waldorf Kindergarten Association by A. Buschatz.)

Download the article: New Health Problems of Children and Youth

Compared to the countries of the third world, living standards of children and youth of our first world are mostly favorable. Perilous infectious diseases have nearly been abolished, hunger is conquered, material provisions are mostly abundant and there is ample room for self-development.

 By Michael Kneissle

Reprinted from the Spring/Summer Newsletter of the Waldorf Steiner Kindergarten in Great Britain. Forwarded to the Newsletter by Erika Grantham.

Download the article: Research into Changes in Brain Formation

About twenty years ago, the first evidence came to light showing that something unusual was happening to our brains. Scientists discovered a surprising phenomenon while they were investigating the processing of stimuli and the emotions of Germans. 4000 test subjects had participated in a series of bio-psychological tests stretching over a period of many years. After the conclusion of the experiments, it was discovered that the tested people were no longer able to use their senses of smell and taste as well they could at the beginning of the project.

“The receptivity of the senses of smell and taste had degenerated significantly,” according to Henner Ertel, a psychologist from Munich. “The brain had set a new sensation threshold, so to speak, and had refused to recognize sensations that were below this new limit, sensations that would have been unconditionally accepted before.”

By Detlef Hardorp

Download the article: Rudolf Steiner's Efforts to Encourage...

Detlef Hardorp is a German Waldorf science teacher who has visited and taught in North America, especially through the Rudolf Steiner (Summer) Institute. The article will appear in “News from the Goetheanum” for July/August, 1997

Rudolf Steiner spoke out on occasion against cultural homogenization. Indeed, he energetically advocated that which he alone considered “healing,” namely, a multicultural society in which the autonomy of each culture is not violated.

In this regard Rudolf Steiner even took concrete political action. With the help of leaflet campaigns and by soliciting signatures from prominent people, he opposed State suppression of minorities. In lieu of a centralized state he called for three autonomous entities: 1) an independent and spiritual/ cultural life, particularly also for people of different ethnic origins who live in the same area, 2) a legal system with the same basic rights for all, and 3) an economic life composed of associations among producers, consumers and distributors.

By David Elkind

Download the article: Schooling the Postmodern Child

David Elkind, Professor of Child Study at Tufts University, is the author of many books, including The Hurried Child, Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk and Ties That Stress: The New Family Imbalance.

The child is a gift of nature, but childhood is a social invention. Modern childhood was invented to take account of the newly discovered age differences between children and adults. It was epitomized in the identification of children and adolescents as students, and the central importance of age differences was institutionalized in our age graded schools. Now that we have moved into a postmodern era, we have reinvented childhood in keeping with our new modes of thought Whereas modern childhood was defined in terms of differences between age groups, postmodern childhood is identified with differences within age groups. This metamorphism of our conception of childhood has radically transformed educational practice quite independently of any reform movement or agenda.

By Christopher Schaefer, Ph.D.

Download the article: Developing a Culture of Leadership Learning...

This essay was adapted from a talk given at a Leadership Symposium at Camphill Soltane, January 26-28, 1996: “Leadership in the Culture of Anthroposophical Organizations.” It will also appear in a book, Partnerships of Hope: Building Waldorf Schools and Other Communities of the Spirit, to be published in 1998.

I can summarize my experience working within and outside the Waldorf movement in a provocative way by saying that within the Waldorf movement we have new social imaginations and new social forms, but we often don’t work with them out of a new consciousness. Meanwhile, the conventional world has old, hierarchical forms and old imaginations, but, in part because of economic pressure, works at changing them with a new consciousness. It is a compelling experience to work with United Airlines pilots practicing communication skills, paraphrasing, and consensus, and to see a dedication I seldom experience in our own institutions. For them, the experience of meeting in new ways is so deeply moving because they can experience each other as human beings for the first time, rather than as roles within a bureaucratic structure. For us such a meeting is assumed, and because it is often not worked at consciously, it falls into habit and drudgery.

By Henry Barnes

Download the article: The Third Space

The First Goetheanum and the First Waldorf School: What had they in common? Is there relevance for us today?

Excerpted from the full article to be published through the Pedagogical Section Council in the spring of 1998 (available through AWSNA Publications)

The First Goetheanum burned to the ground in the night of New Year’s Eve 1922/1923.The building, whose forms and colors spoke the language of the spirit, was no longer there. Ten years of work - selfless, creative work - destroyed in one night!

The year which followed that New Year’s night - 1923 - was a year of outer and inner testing, a destiny-laden year for Europe and for the world as well as for the Anthroposophical Movement. Outwardly, it was the year in which the French occupied the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland; the German economy totally collapsed; and Hitler made his first attempt at power. Inwardly, it was the year in which Rudolf Steiner wrestled with the question: Can there be a human community in which each individual member is independent and inwardly free, yet which - as a community - can take responsibility and effective worldly action? Concretely, can the Anthroposophical Society undertake the building of a second Goetheanum in which Anthroposophia, the being of Anthroposophy, can find a home as she once had found in the building that was destroyed?

By Heinz Zimmerman

Download the article: What Conditions Are There for Taking Responsibility...

The Waldorf School can serve as a concrete example of how to form an organ of the cultural life. We are usually quick to assert that a school must be free of State influence and that the freedom of teachers is a basic requirement if education is to lead to freedom. Individual teachers gladly claim freedom for themselves. But much more seldom is consideration given to the second part of the problem: what are the conditions for being able to act responsibly in an independent life of culture?

Freedom from the State is only the obligation to use this freedom responsibly in the service of education. What are the conditions of self-administration? How can we work together responsibly for the school organism? How does a school community that is based on cultivating a relationship to the divine world work in a conscious modern way? Anyone who knows the real situation in the Waldorf Schools knows that these are among the burning questions - the survival of the schools will depend upon resolving them.

By Patti Smith

Download the article: Update: Essentials of Waldorf Education Study

This year the Waldorf Education Research Institute at Sunbridge College conducted the first phase of a three year investigation of the Essentials of Waldorf Education, funded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation. A survey was distributed to individuals who are involved in Waldorf or Waldorf-inspired education in the United States and Canada in an effort to determine primary elements of Waldorf education that would be investigated more thoroughly in the next phase of the study. Of the 250 surveys that were initially sent to schools, training centers, colleges and conference participants, 150 were returned to the research team.

The survey was originally designed to be a preliminary pilot survey. Since the results of the survey were consistent with other recent studies conducted on Waldorf education (McDermott, 1995; Easton, 1995, Kemp, 1994) it was decided to continue the study with a more specific inquiry into several classrooms, which would allow teachers to articulate the essentials of Waldorf education through their work with the children in their classrooms.

Download the article: Update: Racism in Waldorf Education

In the June, 1996, issue of the Research Bulletin, we published an article by Professor Ray McDermott of Stanford University entitled, “Racism and Waldorf Education.” In this article, Professor McDermott challenged Waldorf educators to be vigilant in resisting any expressions of racism, inadvertent or otherwise, which they might encounter in their work. In that issue of the Bulletin, we also published an article by Douglas Sloan of Teachers College. Columbia University, reflecting on Professor McDermott’s article in light of Rudolf Steiner’s own vision of the infinite worth of every human being, a vision on which Waldorf education is based. Subsequent to the publication of this issue of the Bulletin, attempts were made by persons outside of Waldorf education to take Professor McDermott’s article out of context and use it in attacking public school-Waldorf initiatives being explored in Sacramento. On learning of this misuse of his article, Professor McDermott wrote the following letter to the President of the Board of Education of the Sacramento City School District. We publish the letter here both because it brings out the fundamental commitment of Waldorf education to combat racism of every kind, and because it succeeded concretely in the Sacramento situation in clearing the air of any confusion on this score.

Download the article: Educating the Whole Person For the Whole Life

Sitting in my consultation room with a long-married couple - he, a psychotherapist, she, with early Alzheimer’s - a comment by him particularly caught my attention. Our discussion focused on the evolution and further development of dementia in general and his wife s difficulties in particular. In that context he said, “All the difficulties she has now she has had ever since I first met her many years ago, only now they’re worse - and getting worse.” The husband had noticed this before in others; he believed that the peculiarities of our personality early in life can, in later life, express themselves in the extreme as illness. He had noticed that there were certain particular habits of the soul which, to the observant eye, forebode trouble - early in life one can evidence unique modes of relating to the outer and inner world which will pattern the rest of life.

The husband had experienced in his wife, early in their relationship, a quality of dissociation from the concrete world -- a timidity; a reluctance to engage the world. Her inclination was to dwell in fantasy, a predilection consistent with her literary aspirations. As time went on, however, a gradual dysjunction of her mental life and the requirements of the outer world became noticeable. By the time of our meeting, she required almost complete supervision of her daily activities and was unable to direct her life in a meaningful way.

Download the article: Understanding the Etheric Organization in the Human Being

From the early 1980s a growing number of articles on psychoneuroimmunology have appeared in specialist and popular publications showing that negative thoughts and feelings such as stress, grief, faintheartedness, lack of perspective and depression can damage self-preservation and natural defense functions (collectively called the immune system). Conversely, positive thoughts and feelings such as calm, pleasure, enthusiasm and hope have a stimulant effect on the immune system. So far, however, it has not been possible to present a satisfactory working hypothesis on the way thoughts and feelings may affect the body’s immune functions. In view of this, Rudolf Steiner’s research on the dual aspect of the human etheric organization is once again of considerable current interest. Rudolf Steiner spoke of a set of laws that on the one hand provide for growth, regeneration (healing) and reproduction and on the other sustain conscious thought life.

Download the article: Endangered Childhood

We look at children today and although we see many positive qualities and wonderful children, we all see changes which raise serious concerns about the plight of children today. In comparison to children of 25 years ago, preschoolers today tend to be thinner, paler and far more nervous. They are much more likely to have asthma or allergies, sleeping or eating disorders. They are more likely to be diagnosed as hyperactive or to show signs of nervousness or stress. They are much less likely to be able to play than children in the past. On the other hand they are extremely bright, many are very skilled at the computer at a young age, while others are reading fluently by age four or five. It is perplexing to understand what is happening and to know how best to help the children.

These and other questions were explored at a research consultancy held at Sunbridge College in February 1998. It was organized by Douglas Sloan and cosponsored by his institute, the Center for the Study of the Spiritual Foundations of Education at Columbia University, and Sunbridge College.

As one listened to the Waldorf educators and the university researchers, the feeling grew that children are being stripped bare and left naked in the world. There is so little left in the home, the school or the community that protects them. The modern home tends to be hectic and so filled with the buzz of media and technology that the extra skin normally woven by the family is lacking in warmth and substance. Many aspects of this problem were explored in the consultancy, but one was the absence of story telling and the oral tradition in general from the lives of children today. Cynthia Dillard of Ohio State University told of how she brings her college students back to story telling by having them tell the stories of their lives in her classroom.

Download the article: ADHD-the Challenge of Our Time

In 1968, the American Psychiatric Society published the Second Edition of its standard reference book, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II) in which the term “hyperkinetic reaction of childhood (or adolescence)” was first used, supplanting the more generalized term, “minimal brain dysfunction” or MBD. The disorder was characterized by “overactivity, restlessness, distractibility, and short attention span, especially in young children....” In 1980, the DSM-III labeled the problem “attention deficit disorder” or ADD, recognizing that there were two subtypes: ADD with hyperactivity and ADD without hyperactivity. In 1987, the revised Third Edition, DSM-III-R, changed the term once again, this time to “attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder,” or ADHD, once again reflecting the importance of hyperactivity uncontrolled will as a central component of the syndrome.⁽¹⁾

Download the article: Helping Children: Where Research and Social Action Meet

As anthroposophy approaches the new millennium, the same thought is taking hold in many quarters: if we want to be effective in helping with contemporary world problems, we need to work more intensively with other individuals and groups who carry common concerns with us.

In this spirit I recently had the opportunity to meet with about 20 people working for large organizations with a deep concern for young children around the world. The meeting was called by the Academy for Educational Development in Washington, D.C. (web site: www.aed.org). With a staff of 500 and an annual budget of $101,000,000, it works in dozens of countries on a wide array of programs such as focusing on breast feeding and nutrition of children, biodiversity in El Salvador, HIV/AIDS among minority teens in the United States, and democracy in Eastern Europe.

Download the article: Computers, Brains, and Children

Jane Healy walks into the school’s computer room, where she sees a huge banner proclaiming, “COMPUTERS ARE OUR FUTURE!!!” Thirty-two nine- and ten-year-olds sit at the computers, pursuing their solitary math and reading tasks while a teacher and an aide lend what support they can.

Taking up a position behind Raoul, Healy watches as he effortlessly solves a few simple addition problems and then gleefully accepts his reward: a series of smash-and-blast games. When the games end, Raoul is confronted with more math problems. “Groaning slightly, he quickly solves the problems and segues expertly into the next space battle.”

Download the article: Movement and Sensory Disorders in Today's Children

Until recently, schools have trusted that the child was being raised primarily in the home, and that there was a division of labor between the family, which raised the child, and the school, which educated the child.

Download the article: Update -The Research Institute: The First Three Years

The Waldorf Education Research Institute (WERI) at Sunbridge College began three years ago as an initiative to strengthen Waldorf education in North America through research, dialogue of various kinds, and communication of ideas within and beyond the Waldorf education community. It has seemed to the editors of this Research Bulletin important to review the work of the Institute to date, looking at what has been accomplished, and taking stock of what must yet be done, if the Institute is to meet fully the tasks that confront it.

Download the article: The Nature Institute

The Need and the Task
In a recent book the Princeton biologist Lee Silver states,

While selfish genes do, indeed, control all other forms of life, master and slave have switched positions in human beings, who now have the power not only to control but to create new genes for themselves. Why not seize the power? Why not control what has been left to chance in the past .... On what basis can we reject positive genetic influences on a person’s essence when we accept the rights of parents to benefit their children in every other way?⁽¹⁾

Within the past year more and more scientists are willing to state—not always as blatantly as Silver—that genetic and other biotechnologies should be applied full force to the human being. This sentiment has long been beneath the surface and is now beginning to emerge more clearly into daylight. And since the work that flows from this view is supported not only by government monies, but also by the large investments of venture capitalists, there are at the present time strong forces propelling this expansion of biotechnology forward.