Research Bulletin

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.

Download the article: Concerning Anthroposophical Research

Translation: Regina Brenner.

Where do you see the unsolved problems in anthroposophical research, and how about the verification of the research results?
I see unsolved problems in anthroposophical research in all fields. This lies in the nature of science in general, where each result immediately generates further research questions. I expect a large upswing of anthroposophical research in general, if we realize the research potential that is made possible through the established sections at the Free School for Spiritual Science. These are not limited special fields, but they lead to interdisciplinary questions. Rudolf Steiner has demonstrated this in an exemplary way in his lecture cycles, for example in the “Astronomical Course” (GA 323) and the “Pastoral Medicine Course” (GA 318). Only if different fields of research and experience cooperate, many problems (for example medical questions, social questions, pedagogical questions) can be worked upon deeply. We have to create the social conditions for the above, which means to awaken and stimulate the insight, that such is necessary. Presently we work upon this.

Download the article: Can Waldorf Education Be Practiced in Public Schools

In 1997, through the support of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Waldorf Education Research Institute (WERI) began a three-year study to investigate Waldorf education. The purpose of the study was to determine to what extent the pedagogical principles and practices of Waldorf education could be made general to public schools, particularly those serving poor minority children in urban settings. Data derived from a survey of 20 individuals involved in Waldorf and Waldorf-inspired schools provided three themes for the investigation: (1) education that addresses the needs of the whole child; (2) education that integrates the arts in curriculum, and (3) education with a clearly articulated philosophy of child development and teacher self-development. Such an investigation should help to inform the existing debate regarding Waldorf education's relationship to public schooling.

Download the article: Human Biography and its Genetic Instrument

Abstract
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the significance of some of the results of Rudolf Steiner’s research for modern developments in genetics. The key concepts are: the etheric organism as the bearer of the laws and processes of inheritance; the metamorphosis of growth forces into those of thinking; the human “I” (self) as controller and modifier of genetic material and self-organization (molecular-Darwinism) seen anew in the light of anthroposophy.

Introduction
Human biography goes through characteristic stages in body, soul and spirit. At the physical level, active growth and development up to age 20 or 25 are followed by physiological functions continuing at the level reached until about 40 or 45, and then progressive involution and the physiological deterioration of old age to the end of life. Apart from this there are characteristic pathological processes, with acute febrile infectious diseases at their highest level in childhood, chronic diseases in old age, and psychosomatic conditions in mid-life. Compared to this, the human biography in soul and spirit shows remarkable differentiation. Childhood and youth show considerable differences depending on where a person grows up, what kind of schooling he or she has and where his or her interests lie. Choice of occupation and working life, the circumstances of private life-with or without family-all provide highly differentiated opportunities for learning and experience to further individual development.

Download the article: Challenges and Opportunities in Evolution Education

The question of evolution still inspires passionate debate 137 years after the presentation of Darwin and Wallace’s ideas on descent with modification as an explanation of the origin of the diversity of form and function we see in the plant and animal world. Not long ago the news reported a legislative battle in the same state that was the site of the famous Scopes trial. In 1925, Scopes, a biology teacher in Tennessee was prosecuted for teaching the theory of evolution in violation of state law. Seventy years later the Tennessee legislature debated passing a law that would require biology teachers to teach “Creation Science” as a legitimate alternative to the Darwinian theory of evolution. The contention is that both are legitimate theories explaining the origins of animals and, more importantly, of the human being. The epistemological equivalency of Biblical interpretation and scientific methodology is painfully ludicrous. But the concern that lies behind religious objections to the theory of evolution can evoke more sympathy. The traditional scientific view is one of the human being as an animal with no spiritual component, or at best a spiritual component that has to be tucked away and cannot form any part of a scientific theory. It is a view that profoundly alienates us from the world, our fellow human beings, and not the least, ourselves. It is no wonder that there is rebellion against such a view. How can we form a moral framework for life if, fundamentally, we are a chance accumulation of random events, resulting in some complex organic structure that is deluded into the view that it is somehow a free, moral being?

Download the article: Genes and Life-The Need for Understanding

“Which of our genes make us human?” An article with this title appeared last fall in Science (Gibbons, 1998). The article reports that there is hardly any difference between the DNA from humans and chimpanzees. Approximately 98.5% of the DNA is the same. A photo of a chimp standing upright accompanies the article, with this caption: “Chimpanzees may adopt the occasional two-legged pose, but they differ dramatically from humans in anatomy and behavior.” Given the similarity of humans and chimps at the DNA level, and the manifold differences at the biological and behavioral levels, we might conclude that DNA has little to do with the essential differences between human and chimp.

But the author of the article comes to a very different conclusion. She states:

This means that a very small portion of human DNA is responsible for the traits that make us human, and that a handful of genes somehow confer everything from an upright gait to the ability to recite poetry and compose music.

By Will Brinton

Download the article: The High Stakes of Standardized Testing

“She [Nature] is ever shaping new forms....
We live in her midst and know her not.
She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret.
We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her.”

     J.v. Goethe, from T.H. Huxley in Nature, Nov. 4, 1869.

“...there has rarely been a concept more abstract and devoid
of qualities than ‘environment’.”

     Wolfgang Sachs, in A Development Dictionary, Zed Books 1994

Introduction
For many of us who work in the environmental field, it is increasingly problematic to imagine a way of knowing nature that can be different from modern science’s mode of data capture and information accumulation. It has become virtually a truism in the modern environmental field that “..if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Knowing nature seems to mean having more data about her. More than anything, our modern era of science has set into motion a discovery modus operandi, which holds that every stone in nature will be turned over analytically to gain, we are told, a complete understanding of “the mechanisms of natural processes.” In a sense, we have not come very far since Rene Descartes (1596-1650) first formulated the view of the universe as a gigantic clock-mechanism.

By Edward Miller

Download the article: Ecology-Coming Into Being Versus Eco-Data

I recently participated in a study, conducted by the National Research Council, of the appropriate uses of standardized tests for making decisions about individual students. Its findings may be of interest to readers who are concerned about the ways in which the technology of testing has become one of the most powerful influences in our education system.

The study committee was charged by Congress with examining the use of test scores for so-called high-stakes purposes, defined as making decisions about tracking, promotion, and graduation. Such uses are proliferating all over the country, and are widely considered an effective tool for whipping the public schools into shape. For example, students in Chicago must now get at least a certain score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to be promoted to the next grade. Starting next year, high school students in New York will have to pass the state Regents exam (formerly optional) to get a diploma. The committee found that, while testing can and often does yield valuable information about students’ achievement, the nature and limitations of that information are widely misunderstood. Test results, the study concluded, are often used improperly. In the case of high-stakes tests, the effects on individual students’ lives may be disastrous.

By Kim Payne, Arthur Zajonc and Martha Hadley

Download the article: A Waldorf Approach to Attention Related Disorders

A Creative Way to Understand and Help Children with Difficult Behavior

A WALDORF STUDY INTO ATTENTION RELATED DISORDERS
“What is that Waldorf Schools are doing that seems so effective in helping children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder⁽¹⁾(ADHD)?” Many involved in Waldorf education have heard questions like this from Health professionals eager to refer families. Why is it that as the problem of ADHD or what can be called Attention Related Disorders (ARD) increases so to does Waldorf Education’s reputation for being able to reach and teach children with challenging behavior?

A research project exploring the issue of ARD/ADHD in Waldorf Education now underway. The research team is Kim Payne, Arthur Zajonc and Martha Hadley. The project is being sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society of North America in partnership with the Alliance for Childhood, The Waldorf Education Research Institute, and The Hawthorn Foundation.

By Colleen Cordes

Download the article: Update: Forming An Alliance for Childhood

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
and not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.

William Wordsworth
From "Ode, Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood"

As the millennium approaches, is the very notion of childhood obsolete?

Who, after all, really has the time in our fast-paced culture to let children be children?

By Douglas Gerwin

Download the article: Update: Waldorf High School Research Project

A New Initiative for Waldorf High Schools
In this decade the number of Waldorf high schools in North America has doubled-from 10 in 1990 to 22 as of this year. A further dozen Waldorf elementary schools are working on starting their own high schools in the next years.

This dramatic growth in the number of high schools highlights the need not only for finding and preparing Waldorf high school teachers but also points to a further question: how are our high schools faring? A group of seven Waldorf teachers with experience in teaching adolescents and administering at the high school level have banded together to initiate research into this question and a host of issues flowing from it.