"I believe that the educational movement Steiner founded drifted very far from its source the moment [the act of] founding schools became more important than examining the quality of education the children were receiving and working to really convey the approach to other teachers in all manner of schools and situations. What we call “Waldorf Education” has largely come to mean a set of curricula and specific ways of introducing specific subject matter. This has nothing (in my opinion) to do with the original intent, which was to convey the attitude, the viewpoint toward the children and toward society (any society) with which a teacher could fully meet the physical, mental and spiritual needs of both the students and their community.

Any school is a Waldorf school if the intent of Steiner’s pedagogy is being met within its halls. What was the intent? The intent was to offer an education in a way that gave each child a fundamental, true introduction into the foundation of his or her society while at the same time enhancing that child’s ability to accurately perceive life around him or her without damaging the child’s innate capacity to be sensitively aware of the Creative Love behind the visible world (whatever that capacity might have been, whether large, small or nearly nonexistent—the teaching was not intended to train a student’s spiritual vision, just not to damage what already existed). The education was not intended to found schools separated from their society at large nor was it intended to model a particular belief system.

These goals can be met in a wide variety of settings, with an infinitely wide possibility of curricula, through the myriad possibilities of human personality."

Nancy Parsons Whittaker

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