Lapis Magazine

An Interview with Rene M. Querido on Waldorf Education and the Path of Anthroposophy

Ralph White, Editor of Lapis, speaks with Rene Querido, one of the seminal figures in Waldorf education, about the leading approach to alternative schooling in the world today.

Rene M. Querido, LLD has been involved with Waldorf education for the past 50 years. He was educated in Holland, Belgium, France and England and studied mathematics and physics at London university. He has lectured throughout the world on historical and educational topics.

In the first quarter of this century, the Austrian philosopher and educator Rudolf Steiner articulated one of the most extraordinary worldviews in modern times: Anthroposophy. Filled with profound insights that are simultaneously practical and spiritual, it has given birth to numerous successful and enduring initiatives in such fields as Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, the Camphill communities for those with mental disabilities in need of special care, and many creative developments in architecture, medicine, and even banking. In fact, the Waldorf schools now constitute the largest grouping in the world in the field of private education. Yet Anthroposophy remains in general, poorly understood and little recognized outside Europe, despite its many achievements.

Given the exploding interest today in alternative forms of education, Lapis felt it was time to talk to one of the major influences in the development of Waldorf schools in America, Rene Querido. Born in Holland and brought up in a family with no religious orientation, he escaped the invading Nazis and came to Britain as a child in the midst of the Blitz. He was introduced to the work of Rudolf Steiner by an enigmatic Cockney workman while working in an art store, and went on to teach in one of England’s early Waldorf schools. He first came to the States in the early Sixties and returned in the Seventies to establish Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks, California, the West Coast’s leading center for Waldorf education. Now retired, he discusses here the nature of his life’s work and the deeper spiritual insights about the world to be found within Anthroposophy.

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RW: What was the Anthroposophical movement in America like in the early ’60s?

RQ: Very primitive in a certain sense. Here in New York we had one of the main schools, founded in 1928, just opposite the Metropolitan Museum and apart from that there was just a sprinkling. So it’s amazing how it grew from there. I had quite a lot to do with that, especially later on. When I came back in ‘75 I was invited to start Rudolf Steiner College Training Center for Teachers and we had only 12 students at the time. Now there are 250 and we have branches out in San Francisco so it’s really grown. There were no schools in Oregon, no schools in Washington state and we helped to start them, trained the teachers and acted as advisors and so on, up and down the coast. It was really quite an extraordinary time.

RW: So since 1975 the Waldorf schools in America have grown significantly?

RQ: Yes. I would say they grew enormously from about 20 to about 170 in the US and Canada. And the schools always start in an interesting way. We as teachers don’t really do very much, it’s the parents. What do we need to start a school? Well I usually say we need a group of dedicated parents who are prepared to find out something about Waldorf education and about the spiritual background of anthroposophy and they should really form a board of trustees and agree to be together for at least five to seven years. And they need seed money and they have to invite advisors, so there are regular articles and lectures published.

RW: Why do think there has been such a phenomenal interest in Waldorf education so that it looks like there’s been about a thousand percent increase in the number of Waldorf schools in the last 20 years or so. What do you think is missing in modern education that the Waldorf schools are providing?

RQ: Well, to be quite frank I think that most state schools don’t meet the needs of the children and one could put it like this: Education comes from the word educare, to bring out, and it’s not only of course the intellectual abilities that have to be promoted so to speak. No. It’s the whole child. And the whole child consists of body, soul, and spirit. And if you merely go for one thing, for one part, then usually the two others are excluded and the soul aspect of the child is very important, the spiritual aspect. So it depends upon how you look at the child. If you think of a child as a spiritual being who incarnates and brings something with her or with him, then our task is really to not just put things into the child but to bring things out and to be sensitive to know what really lives in the child and what particular aspects the child can really become himself or herself. So if you think of that for a moment, some children are very musical, others are mathematically inclined, others are great artists, and it’s up to the teacher to bring that out. So it’s not a question of stuffing knowledge, it’s something far more subtle than that. And we feel that Waldorf education is holistic and it touches upon the hands, the heart, and the head…in that order. So that in the younger grades we do a terrific amount of activity and then out of the activity the heart is warmed, the feelings are warmed, the artistic life becomes creative. And out of the creativity the head awakens. It’s that way around, and not the other way around. Parents then, not always very consciously go into a Waldorf school and they see the paintings, they see the work, they notice what the children are like, and how the teacher deals with the children and they say that’s the sort of education I want for my children. I don’t want this hardened, rigidified type of learning where the individual can’t really express himself.

RW: I remember visiting the Sydney Waldorf school in Australia. On their open house day I was struck especially by the graduating class — their artwork was up all around the walls and it just struck me that as they concluded their education, every single one of these young people seemed to have become an artist in some way. Even those that were going on to study science at university, even they had become creative artists in some way. I really had a strong impression of Waldorf education truly galvanizing the creative impulses within all those who participate. I don’t know how many graduates of Waldorf schools we have in the States right now, but is there anything you could say about the kind of career choices they’ve made or how they’ve adapted to life — how Waldorf education has helped people not just as education per se, but as a preparation for life?

RQ: Yes. Many of them of course have gone to the major universities and have done very well. I’ve been involved for 49 years so I’ve also got many former students, some that are now fifty and sixty years of age, and what I’ve noticed is that they’ve worldwide interests, they’re cosmopolitan, (we have two foreign languages right from the beginning.) They’ve traveled a great deal, they take a great interest in people and their careers, they usually have had to do with people and not with things. I know many who’ve gone into social activities of all sorts, not only teaching of course. The interest in people predominates and a great sense of compassion and wanting to help.

RW: It’s a funny thing that despite the breadth of anthroposophy’s contribution to the world, from Waldorf schools to biodynamic agriculture to the Camp Hill communities for those in need of special care to anthroposophical architecture, banking and so on, compared to some of the Eastern spiritual paths that have become so popular since the ’60s, it remains relatively unknown. What’s your view of what its special spiritual gift is at this moment?

RQ: Well, it’s very much in its practical applications I would say. Because not everybody is interested in deep philosophical spiritual backgrounds. But as you find an anthroposophical doctor that can cure your particular illness, you’ll also be very impressed. And if you find that you’re a gardener and what you plant grows more satisfactorily if you use some of the biodynamic compost then you’ll be impressed or your children go to a Waldorf school. So I think in America particularly, much depends on the practical applications. That is what impresses people first and then they might say I’m interested in the source, let’s have a look at that, how does that function. I mean Steiner put it in a meditative form almost, it’s in prose with meditative form. “Seek real practical life, but seek it such a way that the spirit is not deadened for you. Seek the spirit, but not with supersensible lust, not out of selfishness, so that you can apply it in life in the practical world.” And that’s an interesting thing. Practical life very often deadens the spirit, but spiritual striving very often, not always, but very often becomes selfish. It is not a giving but wanting for oneself: blessedness, happiness, contentment, all those sales points of so many of the spiritual movements today. And fundamentally a spiritual path should lead one to be more practical and more able, more giving, more loving in the world — with one’s fellow human beings.

RW: Now from an anthroposophical perspective what do you see as the major challenges humanity faces as we cross the threshold of the millennium?

RQ: Well you’ve used the word threshold and I think it’s perhaps fair to say that especially since the beginning of this century, we have crossed the threshold of consciousness. We have begun to have inklings of another world apart from the world of the physical senses you might say. It’s a question then of developing those faculties. I think they have to be developed because we will not get answers to the deepest questions of life on earth by merely looking at the physical scene, neurology, physiology, whatever you like. Examining things under the microscope — that won’t solve the human problems. The human situation can only be solved as a social situation if we are able to develop new powers of understanding. I think there will be more and more young people born with supersensible insights or the beginnings of it

RW: Now what if we look at the darker side of what is happening right now. What does anthroposophy see as the directions that we need to avoid that may be powerful in the present culture but that we need to move away from if we’re going to have an appropriate evolution in the next century.

RQ: Well I think there are illicit ways of coming into the spiritual world, through drugs etc. and we should be careful that we go through the gate in the right way because otherwise certain things in the soul can be so harmed that we’re out of balance. The other thing is that anthroposophy has the task rightly understood of meeting evil. It can’t bypass it. I think there are many young people today who want to work spiritually in situations which are very very dark and offer a great sacrifice in doing so. For example, in working with the mentally handicapped and working in prisons, in working with the homeless. All those aspects I think are really penetrating to the depths and not just theoretically. In South Africa we had a school, for example, that had mixed races during Apartheid and managed to keep open. The authorities tried to close it, the white people of course, but they didn’t succeed because the school was so highly regarded. Yes. And in Sao Paolo, Brazil, you have a Waldorf school in the slums. It’s operating on a shoestring and it’s largely financed through friends in Europe. They work under the most difficult circumstances, but they function and they attract teachers who’ll work for practically nothing.

RW: As we stand here now at the end of the century, let’s look first at the positive signs you see and then let’s look at the darker or negative signs. Let’s start off with the positive. What do you see that’s happening right now that we can all feel good about?

RQ: [laughs] That’s not an easy question. But one can also say that nothing productive has ever come without chaos. That sounds paradoxical, doesn’t it? Even the birth of child requires the chaos in the womb. And what is true physiologically, biologically, is also true spiritually. The lying, the machinations against human beings, it’s absolutely dreadful. If you read the newspaper one is given to weeping. And yet out of all that chaos something positive will come. That’s what we have to hold onto otherwise life becomes unbearable, totally unbearable. And then the fact that the individual can still make a difference. This is another thing that is very important for young people to realize: that it’s not corporations who are going to save the world, it’s not big business, it’s the individuals who commit themselves to a task. I’m thinking of the French group, Doctors Without Borders. Of course the Red Cross and Amnesty International are other examples. I think that in those types of things there is great hope for the future.

RW: So despite the many indications of decadence and difficulty that surrounds us you remain optimistic.

RQ: Well because I also think and this is perhaps very typical of anthroposophy that it speaks of the reappearance of the Christ, but not as a physical being, not as a physical incarnation — but on the etheric plane, the plane of the life forces. One can oneself find ways of, what shall I say, entering into these deeper aspects by imagining or sitting in an absolutely darkened room for awhile and then lighting a candle and noticing that the darkness was huge and the candle is very small but that one candle can transform the whole of the darkness. And I think that’s the nature of the spirit of the human being. We just have to set ourselves alight and then our spirits will shine forth, however small it may be. So we mustn’t lose heart! We’re just beginning.

– Waldorf educators acknowledge within every child a spiritual core that is far greater than the immediate presence. To allow this individual genius to manifest as completely as possible is the teachers true task.
– Education is seen as an artistic process. All subjects are presented in an aesthetic manner that allows the senses of wonder and joy to continue to grow as the child learns about the world.
– Teachers stay with their classes for several years, allowing parents and teachers to develop a relationship and become partners in best meeting the child’s needs.
– Children study all academic areas including two foreign languages from first grade, as well as a practical arts program, rather than being tracked into a particular stream of study. Teachers see children as whole beings in the process of realizing their potential rather than as empty vessels in need of filling.

For more information please call the Rudolf Steiner School: (212) 327-1457.