Nxivm sex slaver Keith Raniere attended Waldorf Schools and consequently their fundamental teachings may be of some interest to readers in our study of the cult leader.
By AnonyMaker
The problem is, that some teachers and some Waldorf schools do teach some of the worst of Steiner’s Anthroposophist nonsense, or at least teach and treat children based on accepting or believing it.
Anthroposophy is a philosophy founded in the early 20th century by the esotericist Rudolf Steiner that postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world, accessible to human experience
They can never outright reject any of it because of the culty orthodox ideological adherence that prevents them from overtly acknowledging that their guru was ever wrong about anything.
Thus classrooms still have to be painted in the particular colors that Steiner originally specified rather than say a choice of calming pastels, and kids have to be held back in learning to read according to some largely uninformed theory laid down more than a century ago regardless of what the best modern research says about childhood development.
First grade is painted a lovely rosy pink, which evolves to yellow in third grade, green in fourth grade, blue in fifth grade. The color gradually moves from blue towards lavender from sixth through eighth grade
When it comes to racism, US Waldorf schools explicitly reject it – though one or two cases are questionable.
I did a quick check of the one that is perhaps most infamous, and its online photos are mostly full of white kids, in spite of its being located in a very diverse city.
The problem is, it’s a “yes, but” sort of situation.
The Austrian-born occultist, who died in 1925, left a vast body of work covering everything from biodynamic farming to alternative medicine. It is known, collectively, as “anthroposophy”. The SWSF’s guidelines from 2011 said that schools using the Steiner name were obliged to prove “an anthroposophical impulse lies at the heart of planning for the school”. Since 2013, this has been made vaguer: they now need a commitment to “the fundamental principles of Waldorf education”. Those ideas are based in a belief in reincarnation.
Steiner’s more progressive statements can be taken to mean that he thought that non-Aryans could be educated and brought up to the same level as white people, but there’s still the underlying presumption, based on his explicit doctrines of karma and reincarnation by race, that such people have different origins and still-persistent differences.
This is the best that an official Waldorf defense/apologist site can come up with:
“In our own epoch the concept of race will gradually disappear along with all the differences that are relics of earlier times….We can still speak of races but only in the sense that the real concept of races is losing its validity.” https://waldorfanswers.org/ARacistMyth.htm (a pro-Waldorf site)
Rudolf Steiner thought black people were distinguished by an “instinctual life”, as opposed to Caucasians’ “intellectual life”. He believed each race had a geographical location where they should live – black people in Europe were “a nuisance”. There was also a hierarchy in races; a soul with good karma could hope to be reincarnated into a race which is higher up in the hierarchy, Steiner argued. The Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship says: “While the superficial reading of a handful of Steiner’s voluminous, extensive lectures present statements that appear racist in modern terms, none of these occur in his educational writings.” At least he ranks the
And it turns out that Steiner’s underlying belief in how that will come about, is through some sort of extinction of the other races, with the superior white race coming out on top:
Steiner said, “On one side we find the black race, which is earthly at most. If it moves to the West, it becomes extinct. We also have the yellow race, which is in the middle between earth and the cosmos. If it moves to the East, it becomes brown, attaches itself too much to the cosmos, and becomes extinct. The white (weiß) race is the future, the race that is spiritually creative.” https://sites.google.com/site/waldorfwatch/steiners-racism
Again, the problem is that there are contemporary reports of non-Aryan children being treated differently in Waldorf schools because of their race, based on Steiner’s philosophy, by at least some teachers.
And Anthrosopophists and Waldorf schools are too ideological and dogmatic to engage in rational analysis and winnowing of Steiner’s ideas and teachings, and admit that some were simply wrong, so instead they can only equivocate and engage in cult-like apologism, cherry-picking and hair-splitting.
With over 800 schools in the United States, Waldorf Education is an alternative to public and more traditional private schools. Developed in 1919 by Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf schools focus on children learning through imagination and creation. Each school is individually owned and operated; most as nonprofit organizations. A board of directors governs the school, which often consists of parents. Working as a Waldorf teacher is very different from working as a traditional school teacher. Waldorf teachers guide children through investigative learning in core subjects such as language, history, math, science, and geography. Waldorf schools also emphasize creativity and artistic expression. Subjects like music, art, drama, and foreign language — take center stage in Waldorf schools.
There is a lengthy list of famous and successful people who attended Waldorf Schools found here.
Keith Raniere’s name is not on the list. Raniere was not known to be a racist. He would harm any individual equally regardless of race. He did prefer to harm woman, but was not adverse to destroying men.
Young Keith Raniere was a student at a Waldorf School in Rockland County. But don’t blame the school.
