Waldorf Schools - Origins and History

Origins and History

For more details on this topic, see History of Waldorf schools.

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, had been a private tutor and a lecturer on history at the Berlin Arbeiterbildungsschule, an educational initiative for working class adults. He began to articulate his ideas on education in public lectures, culminating in a 1907 essay on The Education of the Child which included his first comprehensive description of the three major phases of childhood. His conception of education was deeply influenced by the Herbartian pedagogy prominent in Europe during the late nineteenth century.

The first school based upon these principles was opened in 1919 in response to a request by Emil Molt, the owner and managing director of the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company in Stuttgart, Germany, to serve the children of employees of the factory. This is the source of the name Waldorf, which is now trademarked for use in association with the educational method. The Stuttgart school grew rapidly and soon the majority of pupils were from families not connected with the company. The school was the first comprehensive school in Germany, serving children from all social classes, abilities and interests. Because of legal requirements of German schools, Steiner's early German schools had to deviate from his ideal in order to be acceptable; however this achieved one of Steiner's objectives – allowing students to be able to transfer between Waldorf, and conventional state schools. Waldorf schools have been always been co-educational.

Schools began to open in other locations, including Hamburg, The Hague, and Basel. Waldorf education became more widely known in Britain in 1922 through lectures Steiner gave on education at a conference at Oxford University. The first school in England, now Michael Hall school, was founded in 1925; the first in the USA, the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City, in 1928. By the late 1930s, numerous schools inspired by the original school or its pedagogical principles had been founded in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Hungary, the USA, and the UK. Though political interference from the Nazi regime limited and ultimately closed most Waldorf schools in Europe, with the exception of the British and some Dutch schools, the affected schools were reopened after the Second World War. The 1970s and 80s saw a rapid expansion of the schools worldwide; in North America, the count of Waldorf schools went from 9 in 1967 to over 200 independent and charter schools today.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Waldorf schools began to proliferate in Central and Eastern Europe. Most recently, many schools have opened in Asia, especially in China. There are currently over 1,000 independent Waldorf Schools worldwide.

Recognized independent Waldorf schools by continent

Continent	Schools	Countries
Africa	22	5
Asia	46	12
Europe	712	33
North America	136	2
Oceania	47	2
South America	200	6