Ruhi Tyson. Article for RoSE. Postcolonial perspectives on history teaching in Steiner/Waldorf schools. NORENSE funding 2022: 50000 SEK
Purpose and aim
In a recent article Frode Barkved (2018) discusses views of history and history teaching in Waldorf education concluding that there is a Eurocentric bias in the development didactics that characterize Waldorf pedagogy.
The purpose of this article-project is to pursue Barkveds line of inquiry further, exploring the subject of history in Waldorf pedagogy from a postcolonial perspective. It is not concerned with discussing how, or if, postcolonialism can or should be taught in schools but about what it means to apply a postcolonial perspective to the contents being taught and the development didactics characteristic of Waldorf pedagogy.
This has a twofold importance. First, the Eurocentric tendency in Waldorf education needs to be discussed in-depth and alternatives need to be explored if Waldorf education is to be an international movement. Barkveds (2018) study is groundbreaking in opening up for this and the present study aims to move one step further. Second, teachers working in Europe where the Eurocentric tendency is perhaps, on the surface, less problematic in itself, still need to engage in reflection regarding the historical narrative proposed in Waldorf education (and in its anthroposophical foundations) in order to overcome the risks inherent in a naïve view. As Barkved (2018) points out when looking at the Norwegian Waldorf-curriculum and its varying iterations this is a work in progress (see further below regarding the Swedish complemental curriculum). Waldorf education holds the potential (and to a large degree also established practice) of being an international educational movement but this also demands a continuous fresh and critical look at those aspects of it where narratives (of development) are universalized that contain strong elements of cultural particularity (see further below regarding eg. the “cultural epochs”).
Outline
Postcolonial perspectives (eg. Bhabha 2004; Landry & Maclean 1995; Said 1979) emphasize the experiences of the colonized “other” in relation to the colonizer. In this they are similar to eg. Sandra Hardings feminist scholarship (1992) in which she has developed what she calls a “standpoint epistemology”. In both cases (postcolonial studies and standpoint perspectives) the argument is advanced that we have inherited a naïve understanding of universality and objectivity. It is argued that this understanding contains unexamined elements of (European) cultural and historical particularity. These can be uncovered, explored and critiqued through such perspectives. For example, the perspective or standpoint of the colonized can be actively taken in order to examine European concepts of history, democracy and development. There is, of course, much more to this kind of scholarship than just that and there is no clear consensus about whether or not any kind of unbiased universality can be achieved or if we are left with a sum of particulars.
One important area of discussion regarding history didactics in Waldorf education is the so-called “cultural epochs” that Steiner outlines and which denote a perspective on history that focuses on the development of human consciousness. Although the term is entirely missing from the Swedish supplemental Waldorf curriculum (Waldorfskolefederationen 2016) the actual epochs (India, Persia, Egypto-chaldaea, Greek & Latin, Modern) are clearly represented, creating both the Eurocentric tendency Barkved (2018) discusses and a tension between a more contemporary discourse in history didactics (the curriculum text emphasizes women’s role in history and also the experience of the colonized) and one that appears to be rooted in anthroposophical esotericism (with the explicit connections removed).
Tensions such as the above need to be discussed and the article aims to do just that although not in relation to curriculum texts. The main focus instead will be a close reading of three major and recently published works on history didactics in Waldorf pedagogy (Bartoniczek 2014; Lindenberg 1981/2008; Zech 2012) as well as Barkveds two articles (Barkved 2018, 2020).1 These will be read and discussed from a postcolonial perspective. Choosing these contemporary texts rather than curriculum texts such as Waldorfskolefederationen (2016) or older works means that the central voices outlining history didactics today are examined. If, and then how, the matter of Eurocentrism is an issue this should become apparent in such texts. Reading curriculum texts might, as mentioned above, highlight a latent tension but given their brevity (a few pages to cover the entire history curriculum) and lack of discussion regarding the deeper didactical considerations behind their formulations would presumably lead to a shallow analysis. This would be a more interesting approach if a comparison were made between the curriculum texts used around the world (eg. in India, Brazil, China, the Philippines, US, etc.). But that is a matter for a different article.
In a recently completed review of empirical research into Waldorf-pedagogy (Tyson 2022) two matters were highlighted. First, that almost all research has been conducted by “insiders” and second that almost none of it explicitly contains critical perspectives (the caveat should be added here that articles such as those by Barkved referenced here were deemed articles of theory rather than empirical studies meaning there are perhaps more critical studies done by insiders than the review suggests). Such critical discussions are an important part of any self-reflective practice and thus the modest hope is advanced here that the reading and analysis of these texts can contribute somewhat to further studies aiming at an in-depth critical discussion of Waldorf-pedagogy as a universal educational impulse.
The article was published in RoSE 2023. 14(1) Link.
1 Lindenberg (1981/2008) was originally published in 1981 but his work has clearly been considered important enough to reprint in 2008.