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August 8, 2005
Lies on the PLANS website
After thrashing with critics on PLANS discussion list, off and on, for a few years now, I relish the opening to contribute something to Dan Dugan's challenge to "point out the lies" on his website. A very entertaining assignment :-).
At PLANS's official website, waldorfcritics, things begin well. It's hard to find anything wrong with its opening sentence: "Welcome!". But things immediately slide downhill from there.
Second sentence at this official website begins: "People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools (PLANS) is a world-wide network of former Waldorf parents, teachers, students, administrators and trustees who come from a variety of backgrounds." Really? Who are they? Where are they? Very few I met there over the years would admit to being part of PLANS. In fact, I was scolded and lectured on several occasions for presuming anyone to be so. Besides those individuals (seven) who are identified as members of the board of directors of PLANS, I found just *one* other person willing to admit to actually being a member of this supposed "worldwide network". Of those eight members identified, six are from Northern California. A total of four of the eight are former Waldorf education parents, one of them also a former trustee. Two are public school teachers, one of them with no apparent link to Waldorf education. The other did actually teach for a time in a public school which had adopted Waldorf methods in the classroom (though this particular teacher did not). So four of the eight (including the teachers) are decidedly NOT "former Waldorf parents, teachers, students, administrators and trustees." In fact, none of the eight have publicly identified themselves to be a former Waldorf student, although one of them (one of the teachers) did serve a very brief stint (a couple days?) in a "Waldorf for Public School Educators" training program before dropping out.
The individuals PLANS has identified as "supporting advisors" have no relationship to Waldorf either. Instead, I think it would be fair to describe them as borrowed 'guns' from Dan Dugan's "Skeptic's Society" circle. At least Mr. Randi's presence on the "advisory" panel broadens the "skeptic" panel beyond Mr. Dugan's Northern California backyard, where the rest of them all live. I think Mr. Randi comes all the way from Florida.
PLANS is not a "world-wide network" organization-it's a motley handful, most of them living close enough that they could lunch together. And this motley crew beckons attention with just these three fingers.
1. A lawyer, who has been funded by a religious organization which was deceived into believing that Waldorf schools engage in witchcraft. Of course, along with this lawyer, PLANS has a lawsuit, initiated against two public schools for incorporating Waldorf methods in the classroom. One of those schools no longer exists, the other no longer incorporates Waldorf methods~~yet the lawsuit lives on.
2. A website~~one filled with laughably alarmist graspings, such as "Nature Table or Altar" and "Wet-on-Wet Painting as Talisman", as well as some very "unfunny", shameful and disgusting tabloid garbage like, "DENVER SKINHEAD'S FAMILY PROFESSED SOPHISTICATED VERSION OF ARYAN SUPERIORITY MYTH".
3. And lastly, a public discussion board~~which has, over the course of seven or eight years, lured a very limited number to come and post complaints they have toward Waldorf, a surprisingly sizeable number of these people having had no real experience with Waldorf at all. That's right--no real experience, neither as student, parent or teacher, but rather they're what I'd call the garden variety "internet opinionators", who despite having no experience or related qualifications, do enjoy giving a good sermon from the soapbox.
Wow. I managed to say a lot, and I haven't even gone past PLANS's first paragraph! Maybe I can write another chapter later, one on the claim made in paragraph two, "Together, we have performed exhaustive research on Waldorf schools"--the "exhaustive research" which uncovers all manner of reportedly Secret Truths about Waldorf education that nobody who is actually *IN* the Waldorf movement knows anything about.
And in this, I see an intriguing paradox. Which is the *real* Waldorf? And which is the *lie*? The Waldorf that is actually practiced in real schools, by real Waldorf teachers? Or the archetype Waldorf school pieced together via PLANS "exhaustive research" as their "researchers" cherry-pick for odd quotes through the voluminous writings of Rudolf Steiner, reassembling the queerest fragments and filaments into a bizarre monster that the overwhelming majority of Waldorf educators dissociate themselves from immediately, a (luckily) thus far wholly abstract institution which has no real counterpart in existence outside the hallowed walls of the PLANS Research Lab?
Linda Clemens
Posted by Linda at August 8, 2005 4:55 PM