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The Q&A session at January's Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub talk (What every parent needs to know about Steiner schools, with Andy Lewis) proved to be what Mrs Merton, in her pomp, would have called a 'heated debate'. But, instead of the depressing level of discourse seen online and in real life these days (shouting, name calling, lying) it remained intelligent, courteous, and enlightening. In that it was a fitting way to follow Lewis's meticulously researched and articulately presented talk about the history of Steiner schools, the problem with them, and why they may soon cease to exist.
It began by outlining the story of Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy itself and Andy's route into it over the last six or seven years since he moved to the Glastonbury area and found himself living near a Steiner school (there's one in Greenwich too, apparently).
Rudolf Steiner's beliefs came out of the late 19c fascination with spiritualism and the occult. He'd been a theosophist, and thus was hugely influenced by that old Evans is a place on Earth favourite Madame Blavatsky, but he split with them, there was a schism, because they believed Jiddu Krishnamurti was the new Christ - and Steiner didn't think a mere 'Indian' could possibly be the new Christ, for reasons I shall outline soon.
Anthroposophy was Steiner's breakaway movement, a spiritual 'science' based on mathematics which claimed we could advance via karma and reincarnation, but to do so we would have to gain esoteric knowledge of higher worlds through clairvoyance and meditation. Those who reach the 'final revelation' are known as blue card holders. This sounds like mumbo jumbo of the highest order and, indeed, Andy Lewis called Rudolf Steiner a mystic barmpot (something David V Barrett of the London Fortean Society had out with him later (in the Q&A, not the car park).
More worrying still than this belief in, very popular at the time, pseudoscience was anthroposophy's idea that reincarnation had a racial, and indeed racist, element (Steiner was a German in the 1920s). Immature souls were black, advanced souls Aryan. Black people used their rear brain, yellow people their middle brain, and white people their front brain.
Steiner claimed he loved all races and that he wasn't a white supremacist because he felt everyone could be white, if only they try hard enough! Unsurprisingly these beliefs don't appear on websites for Steiner schools and nor are they taught at them but they may, and sometimes do, underpin the belief of some of the staff at these schools.
Oh, and children in art classes aren't allowed to use black crayons (cue a riff on the old Henry Ford quip, "you can have any colour you like as long as it's not black).
The Steiner art is quite interesting though and the architecture is cool and curvy. Dance (eurythmy) is another big thing in the Steiner schools. On the surface all fine and dandy, and Steiner schools do make claims to be more creative than normal schools. Although critics, such as Andy Lewis, counter that the art is somewhat prescribed. You can be as creative as you like as long you don't colour over the lines - or use a black crayon.
Where the Steiner organisation is undoubtedly creative is in business. The Triodos Bank exists not just to make money but to further anthroposophic aims, the staff chant hymns. Weleda, who make beauty products and naturopathic medicines (sold in shops as mainstream as Boots), have their roots in anthroposophy too. But by far the biggest industry they're involved in is agriculture. Biodynamic farming to be specific. Waitrose sell biodynamic wines and Prince Charles uses their products at his Highgrove estate. It's all underpinned by an emphasis on 'spiritual enrichment' and astrology charts, observance of full moons, and other rituals are followed.
So the Steiner organisation makes a lot of money by promotion of banking, wine, cosmetics, and woo. This can be fed into schools that use the somewhat bizarre, and surely impractical, idea of breaking childhood up into seven year periods. Something that suggests a lack of understanding that some kids grow up quicker than others.
It is expected that by age seven children will have their adult teeth and, therefore, the strength to learn. Fourteen marks the age by which a child should have reached puberty and therefore able to inspire and be inspired. Twenty-one is the age of the ego and divine selfhood. The child is now an adult. I may have physically been an adult by 21 years old but, mentally, I still had a lot of learning to do.
But I could read long before I was seven - which, according to Steiner, may be why I'm in some way morally deficient. The seven year cycle instructs that children below seven should not be taught to read as it is 'spiritually harmful' - so teachers, and some parents, actively prevent kids of that age from reading. Screen time too is very much frowned upon.
Parents who buy into it are never informed that this is a spiritual 'belief' with no basis, whatsoever, in science or fact. The belief goes so far as to state that a fourteen year old who can't read is better than a seven year old who can. It's almost as if they don't want children reading, learning, and thinking for themselves. Almost as if there was some element of indoctrination involved. Religions, eh?
If the age splits aren't iffy enough, Steiner also liked to break people up into four different 'temperaments' which can even be recognised by certain physical characteristics. The melancholic among us will be tall and slender, the phlegmatic have protruding shoulders, and the sanguine person will look 'normal'. I sadly can't remember how you identify a choleric person but they tend to make good leaders, apparently.
The bonkers beliefs don't stop there. Steiner's theory was that human beings originally came from Atlantis (the great undersea continent), that islands float on the sea and are held in place by stars, and that homeopathy is true and works. He didn't believe, however, that the heart pumped blood around the body, preferring the idea that it is the rather abstract sounding 'seat of the soul', and he didn't believe in germ theory. Therefore he had no truck with immunisation.
Which, unsurprisingly, meant, and still means, that children at Steiner schools are more susceptible to disease and that these diseases can spread very quickly. If children are ill they can have homeopathic 'medicine' but not anything that works. Alternatively, they could just dance the illness away or, even worse, some adherents believe that diseases are good for children. Karmic!
AIDS has been blamed on the use of conventional medicine and in Scotland, remarkably, doctors can still prescribe extract of mistletoe for cancer on the NHS. Another thing that's seen as karmic and, therefore, good for kids is bullying. So bullying is both rife and unchecked in Steiner schools. It helps children.
With all this, it's a great surprise that these schools should have become so popular and supported by such a variety of respected (and some much less respected) sources as I'll come on to. A lot of that, I would suggest, is down to the fact that Rudolf Steiner proposed that the anthroposophical aims behind his schools should be hidden. That's why some of them are known as Waldorf schools.
He recommended lying about their aims, basically. But it's uncertain if they're still lying now or if they've reformed and there are good reasons for this. Much as every teacher you ever speak to complains about how stressful a visit from OFSTED is (usually whilst letting you know how highly they scored at the same time), perhaps the alternative is not so great either.
Steiner schools don't have OFSTED, but their own anthroposphical inspections and guess what? They tend to get glowing reviews all round. One particular anomaly was that some individual teachers had ticked every single box for ethnicity. Only white ones though as they are the only ones who have, at some point, been every race and were now at the top of this very rotten tree with no roots.
It was Tony Blair's government who set up Britain's first publicly funded school in Hereford and both the right wing press (The Telegraph, The Spectator) and the left leaning press (The Guardian) raved about it. There are still only four public Steiner schools, and many more private ones, but Michael Gove, when he was Secretary of State for Education during the early years of the Cameron led coalition government, advocated for more.
Along with Jacob Rees-Mogg's sisters, Gove has recently been lobbying for the introduction of even more (when he's not campaigning for division and economic disaster across the UK, that is). On the question of racism within the Steiner schools, it has been proven that Gove had meetings where this was explicitly discussed and documentation publicly available proves that he agreed any incidents of racism within these schools would be covered up using PR. Or 'spin'.
The tide is beginning to turn though. The Guardian have found that the Woods Report, the one that inspired Blair to green light funding for the first public Steiner school, was written by a person with a background in 'woo' and The Telegraph have exposed the practice of Steiner schools sending gagging letters to parents who have become worried about some of the aforementioned elements of their children's education.
It's also been suggested that investigations have found that some of the adults working in Steiner schools should not be anywhere near children. When these people are exposed they are simply moved to a different school. Again, the potential of being molested is just part of karma - and karma is good for children.
Some Steiner schools have been closed down following these investigations and in the last few weeks the Department of Education have ordered emergency inspections of all Steiner schools. It's, rather obviously, a case of better late than never (and there were several dissenting voices in the Q&A, as mentioned earlier, including an ex-Steiner pupil who seemed perfectly well adjusted and spoke rationally in favour of the schools) but it does seem that in the mad rush towards free schools and, as ever, the fear of criticising religious beliefs, we've let this slide for far too long and if even a quarter of the more trenchant criticisms outlined by Andy Lewis are true then urgent action is required.
Thanks to Andy for an interesting, sometimes enraging, and long (at Greenwich Skeptics you get to yak on a lot longer than at London Skeptics) speech. Thanks, also, to Professor Chris French for hosting another wonderful event, to the audience for making the Q&A so passionate yet so amicable, and to Vicki for joining me for the evening and a not inconsiderable debrief afterwards. Looking forward to the next one.
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