Waldorf schools, also known as Steiner schools, are schools based upon the approach to education founded by Rudolf Steiner in response to a request by industrialist Emil Molt, who in 1919 wished to start a school for the children of employees of his Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany. Now there are more than 900 recognized Waldorf schools and nearly 2,000 Kindergartens in more than fifty countries of the world, making this the world's largest independent and nondenominational school system. There are also about 500 additional schools providing education for children with special needs using Waldorf principles; many of these are within the Camphill movement.

Three-quarters of the Waldorf schools today are located in Europe; the movement is growing especially quickly in Eastern Europe, where communist regimes forbade Waldorf schools until their overthrow in 1989. In the English-speaking world, there are about 170 schools in the United States, 100 in Australia, 40 in Great Britain, and 30 in Canada; there are also many schools in New Zealand and South Africa.

Waldorf and Steiner are registered and protected names, and in the United States, the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA) protects this usage. Schools that use substantial portions of the methodology of Waldorf education but are not independent enough to apply all of the latter's principles refer to themselves as Waldorf-method, or "Waldorf Inspired" schools; these are primarily found as charter schools which are part of the public school system in the United States and, as government schools, are not included in the above figures.

Waldorf Education Information: Inside
[ Description ] [ Pedagogy ] [ Education Philosophy ]
[ Social Mission ] [ History ] [ School Organization ]
[ Teacher Education ] [ Spiritual Foundations ]
[ Waldorf Schools in the U.S. ]

The first Waldorf school

In the chaotic circumstances of post-World War One Germany, Steiner had been giving lectures on his ideas for a societal transformation in the direction of independence of the economic, governmental and cultural realms, known as Social three folding, to the workers of various factories. On April 23, 1919, he held such a lecture for the workers of the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany; in this lecture he mentioned the need for a new kind of comprehensive school. The lecture had two consequences; on the following day, the workers approached Herbert Hahn, one of Steiner's close co-workers, thanked him for the lecture, and said to him: "But it's a little late for us. Could not our children have a school where they could experience such lively teaching?" Independently of this request, the owner and managing director of the factory, Emil Molt, announced his decision to set up such a school for his factory workers' children to the company's Board of Directors and asked Steiner to be the school's pedagogical consultant. The name Waldorf thus comes from the factory which hosted the first school.

The original Waldorf school was formed as an independent institution licensed by the local government as an exploratory model school with special freedoms.

Steiner insisted upon four conditions before opening:

1. that the school be open to all children;

2. that it be coeducational;

3. that it be a unified twelve-year school;

4. that the teachers, those individuals actually in contact with the children, have primary control over the pedagogy of the school, with a minimum of interference from the state or from economic sources.

On May 13, 1919, Molt, Steiner and E.A. Karl Stockmeyer had a preliminary discussion with the Education Ministry with the aim of finding a legal structure that would allow for an independent school. Stockmeyer was then given the task of finding teachers as a foundation for the future school; he was advised to "travel about like a theater director seeking to gather together an ensemble of actors". At the end of August, seventeen candidates for teaching positions attended what would be the first of many pedagogical courses sponsored by the school; twelve of these candidates were chosen to be the school's first teachers. The school opened on Sept. 7, 1919 with 256 pupils in eight grades; 191 of the pupils were from factory families, the other 65 came from interested families from Stuttgart, many of whom were already engaged in the very active anthroposophical movement in that city. In the following years, a numerical balance between the factory workers' and outside children was achieved; it had been an explicit goal of the social three-folding movement to create a school that bridged social classes in this way. For the first year, the school was a company school and all teachers were listed as workers at Waldorf Astoria, by the second year the school had become an independent entity. The Stuttgart school grew quickly, adding a grade each year of secondary education, which thus by the 1923/4 school year included grades 9-12, and adding parallel classes in all grades. By 1926 there were more than 1,000 pupils in 28 classes.

------------------------------------------------------------------

The first decade

Schools founded in the first decade after the Stuttgart school include those in:

Cologne, Germany (1921) (closed 1925)

Dornach, Switzerland (1921) – high school

King's Langsley, England, where in 1922 a boarding school began a slow process of transforming itself into a Waldorf school

Hamburg, Germany (1922)

Essen, Germany (1922) (closed by the Nazi government in 1936)

The Hague, Holland (1923)

London, England (1925), now Michael Hall school in Sussex, England

Basel, Switzerland (1926)

Oslo, Norway (1926)

Hannover, Germany (1926)

Budapest, Hungary (1926)

Zurich, Switzerland (1927)

Gloucester, England (1927)

Berlin, Germany (1928)

New York, USA (1928)

Vienna, Austria (1929)

Bergen, Norway (1929)

Dresden, Germany (1929)

A 1928 attempt to found a Waldorf school in Nuremberg met with resistance from the Bavarian Education Ministry, which stated that there was the "no need in Bavaria for independent schools employing novel ideas, especially when they had no religious ties."

There are presently about 900 recognized Waldorf schools world-wide as well as about 2,000 kindergartens. Germany, the United States and the Netherlands have the largest number of schools, while Norway, Switzerland and the Netherlands have the greatest concentration of schools per population.

United States

Milestones in the early years of Waldorf education include:

1928 - Rudolf Steiner School of New York City is founded by a group of dedicated anthroposophists.

1941 - The Myrins found the Kimberton Waldorf School in Pennsylvania.

1947 - The Myrins found the Waldorf School of Garden City, as part of Adelphi University.

1942 - Mrs. Emmett founds High Mowing Waldorf School, a boarding high school in Wilton, New Hampshire.

Three more Waldorf schools were founded in the 1950s, and five in the 1960s. In 1968 the original Association of Waldorf Schools was founded with these twelve schools. With the 1970s came phenomenal growth leading to the more than 250 schools and early childhood programs today [citation needed]. Thirty seven new high schools have been started in the last decade.

In the 1980s, the first public Waldorf school was established when a principal of an inner-city public school in Milwaukee became interested in using Waldorf methods. The school is now known as the Urban Waldorf Elementary School of Milwaukee. The next public school to incorporate Waldorf methodology was the John Morse Waldorf Method Magnet School in Sacramento, California. A number of public school systems in other cities, including Los Angelos, have also established public Waldorf schools.

Waldorf charter schools have been established in California, Arizona and possibly other states.

In the 1990s, a Waldorf school was established in the Pine Ridge Native American reservation in South Dakota as a bridge between the traditional spirituality of the Native American peoples and modern American society.

The U.S., Canadian and Mexican schools join together in the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America.

Waldorf schools are "self-administered." Looking to build a model of collaborative leadership, the College or Council of Teachers, is the primary governing body working to direct the destiny of the school. These governing bodies of teachers in conjunction with Boards of Trustees in the United States, work to keep schools independent from government incursion on curriculum, testing, hiring and standards in Waldorf schools. Because all Waldorf schools are independent, even from each other, every Waldorf school is a little different from every other Waldorf school.

Waldorf schools use differing governance structures. However, Waldorf schools generally give their teachers the right to make decisions about the school's pedagogy.