The Waldorf School
Approach to History

From Hero to History

Those of you who know Eugene Schwartz or have read his plays and books will easily understand why we are so happy that he offered this article for posting at our site. Those of you who have not yet made Eugene's acquaintance are about to encounter a Waldorf master teacher anyone would wish for as their child's mentor. Eugene is that rare individual who combines a keen, ever-searching mind and a delightful, enriching artistic capacity with the social sensitivity and inner solidity needed to guide a classroom of children into a fruitful adulthood. Simply stated, Eugene walks his talk, and, in our experience, what he has to say is always worth listening to. You may contact Eugene at eschwartz1@juno.com

Bob and Nancy

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The history curriculum generally follows these lines:

At this grade level, great stress is placed on the mythological dimension of ancient cultures, and the legendary human beings who stood halfway between the gods and humanity, i.e. the "heroes." The Waldorf schools' approach to history teaching in the middle grades is based on the premise that the need for heroes in the growing child is as natural and healthy as the need for mother's milk in the developing infant. Experience has convinced us that children can penetrate the Zeitgeist of a civilization most thoroughly by re-experiencing the deeds and sufferings of that culture's champions.

Although this may run counter to the antiheroic stance of our own time, Waldorf teachers find that children in the middle grades seek to emulate heroes wherever they can be found. While the ancient mythologies consistently present heroic figures who embody the highest ideals and qualities of the human being, modern American children must rest content with such paragons as the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or Batman. These modern figures often represent distortions and caricatures of the human form. By watching them by the hour in darkened rooms, by wearing them as icons on shirts, bedclothes or bath towels, by assembling them as "action figures" around his bed, the young child is drawn into what could be characterized as a modern form of idolatry.

In his recent study of the crisis in American public schools, The End of Education, Neil Postman acknowledges that

For school to make sense, the young, their parents, and their teachers must have a god to serve, or, even better, several gods. If they have none, school is pointless. Nietzsche's famous aphorism is relevant here: "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how." This applies as much to learning as to living. ¹

Coles became intrigued by the 7-year-old, who had to be escorted to school by federal marshals. She would get out of the car and be met by jeering mobs who shouted racial epithets at her. She would pause, bow her head for a moment, and then walk into the school staring straight ahead. He got to know Ruby's family, and finally felt comfortable asking Ruby why she always paused before she went into class. She said, "I'm saying a little prayer. I'm saying, 'Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.'" This little girl had access to a religious story and tradition, and it gave her great strength.

Where are the stories today? The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers won't do it: If you're being harassed in the school yard, just karate chop your way out of a jam! So many of the stories that our kids are being told or are watching on television are totally bizarre and otherworldly. They're made up of creatures that aren't human; they're made up of plots that don't speak to anything that's tethered to everyday life. ²

I speak of the Cry for myths because I believe there is an urgency in the need for myth in our day. Many of the problems of our society, including cults and drug addiction, can be traced to the lack of myths which will give us as individuals the inner security we need in order to live adequately in our day. The sharp increase in suicide among young people and the surprising increase in depression among people of all ages are due, as I show in this book, to the confusion and the unavailabilty of adequate myths in modern society. ³

During a recent visit to a New York City public school classroom I experienced something of the "healing power" of the heroic myth. When I entered the combined 4th/5th grade room, the teacher told me that she had to set aside her lesson plan for a while in order to deal with an argument that had arisen between two girls involving jealousy and cliqueishness, which had led to some acrimonious insults. Utilizing a method that was very much the creation of Generation Two methodologies, the teacher set up a flip chart and asked two students to moderate. The two principals in the conflict were asked to give their versions of what had happened - which led to more acrimony - and other children were asked what they thought was best to do in such a situation. Ideas and suggestions were duly noted and recorded on the flip chart: "Ignore people who insult you," "Be nice to your friends," "Don't use bad language," etc. It was clear that by this time of year (late December) such discussions were not new among the children, nor had they proven terribly effective. The overall feeling I had was of children who had been trained to intellectualize their emotions in order to "control" them, but whose real feelings were lurking behind the scenes, ready to erupt as soon as the discussion ended and the flip chart was put away. I could almost feel the spectres of Generation One and Generation Two haunting the classroom's corridors.

During a break time, the teacher, her principal and I discussed what I had seen, and she acknowledged that little or no progress had been made in healing the rift between the two antagonists. I stated that Waldorf teachers perceived such argumentativeness, even vindictiveness, as a natural part of fourth grade behavior.

"So what do you do about it?" she asked. "What do you do in a Waldorf school when this stuff breaks out."

I smiled. "We tell a story," I said, "In which the antagonists are given a mythical dimension. That tends to objectify the experience. In fact, in fourth grade we tell many Norse myths, in part because the Norse gods are the most argumentative and aggressive gods in world mythology - that, and their liveliness, provide an accurate reflection of the fourth grader's own nature. We don't say very much directly to the children involved, but let them 'digest' the story and see the effect of their behavior as though it were happening to someone else."

The teacher looked skeptical.

"And that works?" she asked.

"It takes a few weeks," I conceded, "Or a few months, or sometimes a few years. But, yes, eventually it works."

"If you tell these kids a Norse story, they'll just use it to make fun of each other even more," she said, "And they probably won't even listen in the first place."

"Let him try it," said her principal. Within a few minutes I was standing before the class, relating the tale of Loki's jealousy towards Baldur. The envious and spiteful Loki finds a way to kill the almost immortal Baldur, but, instead of being accepted by the Aesir, he is scorned all the more. In the tried-and-true Waldorf method, I did not draw any link with the events of the morning as I told the story, and I did not look at the two girls involved, but rather spoke to the class at large. They proved to be a quiet, attentive and completely involved audience.

Later that afternoon, as I was preparing to leave, one of the antagonists came up to me and handed me a piece of lined paper. Upon it she had written her name, her school name, the date, and the following (spelling has not been corrected):

After the children have heard such a story for the first time - for example, the life of the great Persian sage and hero Zarathustra - the teacher does not immediately throw out questions to test the children's comprehension. Instead, the teacher allows the children to "sleep on it," and engages the whole class in an oral review of the story the next day. (Although we do a lot of "reading comprehension" these days, not enough is done to assure that youngsters listen to what the teacher says!) Now that the children have inwardly pictured events from the hero's life, the teacher may draw a definitive scene from that life on the blackboard, or ask the children to depict an event with which they felt linked.

On the third day, the teacher tries to guide the children to connect their own lives and strivings with that of the hero. Following this discussion the teacher may give a written assignment. That is to say, on the first day the children took in the story as a sensory experience, related to their thinking processes; on the second day the tale's content arises in their feelings, and on the third day it is accessible to their will. This is, obviously, a slow process, which values the child's depth of penetration over his facility at rattling off newly-acquired facts. The pre-adolescent thrives on those assignments in which she feels her life as one with the life that under study. Here are excerpts from a fifth grade girl's response to the story of the birth of Zarathustra, the ancient Persian sage:

I Am Zarathustra

My nation was at one point one nation, but things changed

Our god, Ahura-Mazdao, gave our king, King Yimir, a golden blade. Ahura-Mazdao told Yimir to cut through the earth with that blade, and then to sow seeds into it. This was the first farming ever done. When they saw the next year that the seeds had grown, about half of the Turanians rejoiced at this, and followed his example. Now these were the first farmers. After that, they learned how to raise cows, build fences, grow vegetables etc. This new people called themselves Iranians...

The Turanians became more and more evil...and one day the Iranians couldn't take it anymore. So a war was fought. The Iranians kept losing the war because they were not very experienced fighters. So they prayed to Ahura-Mazdao.

Ahura-Mazdao heard their prayer, and promised to send a prophet. But he said that the prophet would take many years to descend. He told the wise men to look up to the sky, and they would see the prophet's Daena [soul] in a star form.

So they waited many years, and the wise men saw the star growing bigger and closer every year.

One day my Daena became a baby bird. I came into a nest, where two snakes had attacked the eggs. So I went up into the tree and attacked the two snakes. For this, the parent birds fed me. One of them fed me a seed. I chewed it, and spat it out.

That chewed seed became my new Daena. I was growing very quickly, and within one night I was fully grown. The people of the town thought this was a sacred plant. They called it a Haoma plant.

One night, a young woman of fifteen had a dream, that she was to bear the son of Ahura-Mazdao!...While she was sleeping, there was a light around her, that grew brighter every day. Some said that her light was bright enough to give light to the whole town. The townspeople thought that she must be a sorceress. So they brought her to another town where the people gladly accepted her. Her name was Dugdhova. She had a husband whose name was Pouroshaspa.

Pouroshaspa also had a dream one night. He dreamt that he took a piece of the Haoma plant and mixed it with milk. When he woke up, he did just as he was instructed to do. He gave his wife one half of the mixture and he drank the other.

About nine months after that, Dugdhova gave birth to me. They named me Zarathustra. Just as I, Zarathustra, was born, a very bright light covered the town and everything around it. This disturbed Ahriman greatly. He told the Turanians to go and destroy this child at once.

So they went, a whole army. When they arrived, they pushed down our humble door. There they stood, with weapons drawn. But I just laughed and said, "I think that Vohu Mana [the leader of good forces] will conquer Ako Mana [the leader of demons]." With that they all fled. Kings of the Turanians were to try to overcome me, but always in vain... ⁴

By way of comparison, excerpts from an eighth grader's work indicate an understanding of the complexities of a relatively modern figure - in this case, King Henry VIII of England:

Weak and tired, he looked down at his obese, flaccid body as he lay on the bed. Henry sighed. How happy life once was! But now, now he was just an old man, with many worries. If only he could return to those years when he had just become King. If only; if only...Blackness. Then the sound of familiar music; people laughing; but it seemed so far away...He sat on his throne, dressed in rich finery--but who was this sitting next to him?

Catharine? Catharine of Aragon? The former Queen of England sitting at his side? It could not be! And yet, Henry felt young, alive! He saw his musicians, playing the piece he had composed, the dancers dancing at his command, people laughing and talking. Henry smiled--it was the old, happy life again.

One of the dancers caught his eye. It was his second wife, Anne Bolyen. Henry suddenly realized that he didn't want to go through all those long years again. Taking over the Catholic Church, divorcing Catharine, marrying Anne and then beheading her...

She stood on a platform and said, "Henry, I love you and will always love you!" And with that, she kneeled and placed her head on the block. The ax came down as if in slow motion. A split second before it severed her head from her body, there was blackness once again...

The smell of the streets faded away. Henry felt ill and tired and could hardly breathe. Catherine Parr, his last, loving wife, sat next to his bed, weeping. But he was not in the bed...or was he? There was a duplicate of himself on the bed. Henry looked down upon it from where he seemed to be floating...King Henry VIII was dead.

This narrative approach contrasts markedly with the methodology proposed by the team of scholars and teachers responsible for setting the standards for teaching history in the next century. In the history curriculum developed as part of the "national standards" to which the federally-mandated Goals 2000 program aspires, history-as-story disappears. This living and stirring approach to history is replaced by the tired warhorses of Generation One, history-as-ideology, history-as-concept, in short, history as the inexorable pressure of abstract forces. Compare these sample essay assignments from the Goals 2000 study with the Waldorf student essays above:

Analyze gender roles in different regions of colonial North America and how these roles changed from 1600 to 1760...

Summarize the evidence for and against the proposition that Mesolithic peoples, such as lake-dwelling Maglemosians, were pioneer innovators taking advantage of opportunities offered by changing climate, rather than its victims...

Analyze the relationship between Muslims and Hindus in the [Mughal] empire and [compare] Akhbar's governing methods and religious ideas with those of other Mughal emperors, such as Aurangzeb... ⁵

Although each history main lesson block focuses on this single subject, the interdisciplinary nature of the curriculum calls on every class teacher to weave a number of other subjects around this central core. Above all, it is essential for the Millennial Child to bring every subject into her will; after studying the neurological development of school-age children, Robert Sylwester of the University of Oregon said,

Children need to be more physically active in the classroom, not sitting quietly...Knowledge is retained longer if children connect not only aurally but emotionally and physically to the material... ⁷

English and Composition

Students in the Waldorf grade school do not use textbooks, but create their own "texts": the "Main Lesson Book," described above is a compilation of all that a student has learned about a subject during a particular block. Much of the text of a sixth grader's main lesson book has been written by the student in draft form, corrected by the teacher and then rewritten neatly into the book. Compositions are also read aloud as part of each day's review, critiqued by classmates and teacher etc., so that every history block is also a period of intensive work in composition.

Drawing and Painting

Rather than cut and paste magazine illustrations or photocopy textbook illustrations, Waldorf students learn to draw and paint images that they copy from primary sources or imaginatively create themselves. As a youngster carefully recreates a detail from a Roman sarcophagus or depicts a naval battle against Carthage, he lives much more fully into the subject than he would by passively gazing at photos or digitized images on "interactive" software. Clay modeling is another artistic medium that can be put to good effect in this grade.

Mathematics

From three to five times a week, the class teacher will begin the morning with a few minutes of math work, using worksheets or asking the class to do "mental arithmetic." Here, too, the children's interest in Roman life can be put to good use, e.g., "A Roman legion was composed of 10 maniples of hastai, 10 maniples of principes, 10 maniples of triarii and 10 turmae of cavalry. Maniples of hastai and principes each were made up of 125 javelineers, 50 velites and 10 commanders. Maniples of triarii were composed of 60 spearmen, 40 velites and 10 commanders. Turmae of cavalry had 30 horsemen and 6 commanders. How many men were in such a legion? The legion was led by six tribunes; that meant that each tribune commanded how many men? Create a pie graph that tells us what percentage of the soldiers were on horseback. What percentage were spearmen?" And so on! Time/distance problems involving the construction of the Via Appia, area problems involving Roman monuments and arenas, or problems concerning the growing and decreasing population of Rome through the ages exemplify the way in which the children's enthusiasm for history can be channeled toward other subjects.

The Sciences

The integrated Waldorf curriculum for sixth grade indicates Mineralogy as the central natural science for this year, while Mechanics will be central in the Physics studies of seventh grade. The engineering genius of the Romans, and their thorough mastery of quarrying and masonry, provides much in the way of source material and cross-referencing for the science work in both sixth and seventh grades. An excerpt from a sixth grader's composition illustrates how history and science can intersect. It was written from the point of view of an African infantryman who accompanied Hannibal across the Alps.

...Today our commander Hannibal did the strangest thing. We had come to a mountain pass that was completely blocked by a huge boulder. We were all certain that we would have to head back. There was no way that our elephants could ever go over that rock.

Hannibal only shouted out, "Gather wood and pile it around the boulder!'

We did that, and then he told us to light the wood so that a great bonfire was created. But didn't our commander know that rocks don't burn?

He shouted out once more--"Empty your wineskins onto the boulder!"

Our wineskins!! Did he want us to die of thirst? But you know how it is with Hannibal--we did what we were told, and quickly!

Then, wonder of wonders, as we poured our wine over the boulder, it sputtered and groaned and CRACK! The boulder split into a million smithereens, and we could easily march over it!

One of the soldiers from Carthage told me that Hannibal knew that something in the wine could dissolve the boulder, which he said was made of "limestone." When I return home, I must learn more about these wonderful things, but right now we are bound for the conquest of Rome!

An historical period is never taught in a Waldorf classroom without being accompanied by poetry and song from that particular period. Waldorf students routinely learn long poems by heart, and, through the grades, sing increasingly demanding musical pieces, from American folksongs to Gregorian chants and Elizabethan madrigals. Macauley's lengthy poem Horatius at the Bridge is often recited by sixth graders during their Roman history block, and many classes learn poetry in Roman Latin and Church Latin as well. No less important are the class teacher's efforts to embody the historical period as a class play, which is performed for the entire school at the end of the year. Students not only learn their parts; they are also responsible for helping to design costumes, props and sets, so that all that they have learned now takes palpable physical form. A modern youngster who is able to experience the weight and warmth of a toga (up to eighteen feet of cloth gathered around one body) learns a great deal about the aggrandizing nature of the Roman aristocracy.

These examples only hint at the fullness of experience that the Waldorf curriculum provides the developing child. The class teacher, who must, of course, prepare for all of these subjects, and who never gets to repeat anything for eight years, is similarly enriched as she teaches. A multitude of integrated curricular examples could be garnered from the teaching of history in the seventh and eighth grades, but these would go far beyond the scope of this section. It is my hope that what has been discussed indicates that history can be successfully taught as part of an integrated curriculum. If, as Cicero has said, "Those who do not learn what happened before they were born must always remain children," the teaching of history in our turbulent times is a grave responsibility. To teach history in such a way that it illumines every other subject in the curriculum is a challenge that we should forcefully take up.

Two examples may give some sense of the effect that the Waldorf approach to history may have on students. Elyssa Moseley, a former student of mine, visited Israel in the summer after eighth grade, and in a letter described a visit to David's Tower, a medieval castle:

I had never been in a castle before, and as soon as I was on the drawbridge I was struck with a sense of wonderment, considering all that I had learned about castles from a certain teacher of mine. The history! I was delighted, entranced, excited and amazed at the courtyards, the gardens, the towers, and the excavations going on in them. You see, people kept rebuilding this castle on top of the remains of the castle before, until it extended into great depth. The whole feeling of being in that castle, and imagining how the medieval ladies had sat in the gardens sewing, and how the soldiers had stood at the slit windows to shoot arrows or pour Greek fire - perhaps in the very place where I was standing! It was very exciting! Experience is so much more rewarding when you have learned about its history beforehand. I have to stop now, my mom wants to write something. Sincerely, your history-intoxicated student...

I am one of the engineers whose task it is to develop test plans for the process, monitor the tests, collect data, and evaluate the results. It's quite a project. We're essentially on new ground here, and there are few models to fall back on.

The most important aspect of Waldorf education is that it teaches you how to think. Real problems in life or in work come up all the time where you say, there's no way to solve that with the tools I've been given. How do you picture a hundred thousand years from now? In a way, mythology, and an understanding of how various cultures developed through history is closer to that kind of thinking than analytical, scientific thinking. Every day I have to attack problems where I have to think freely to gain any foothold, and that's the kind of thinking that was cultivated in the Waldorf schools.

In a Waldorf school they don't break subjects up into well-defined categories, like this is math, this is physics, this is chemistry. We had these three-week blocks where we'd study a piece of something, like Greek history, or art history, or light, and we'd experience how all these disciplines, or subjects, were woven together into what we call culture. By studying different cultural epochs, by studying various disciplines and science in an artistic way, you get a larger perspective of life - a broader vision. I'm able to think of the life of my planet instead of just my lifetime. ⁸