Public funding of 'occult' teachings challenged in court

Rudolf Steiner

In a case that already is well into its second decade, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is being briefed on why California taxpayers should not be funding Waldorf-method schools in the Sacramento area because of their allegedly occult-based teachings.

The brief has been filed by the Pacific Justice Institute, which is representing an organization called People for Legal and Nonsectarian Schools in the battle that was launched over the schools' teachings in the 1990s.

The case already has been before the 9th Circuit three times, and PLANS has won each dispute over procedural issues. The latest argument is pending over a decision by a district judge to disallow 99 percent of the evidence PLANS proposed to present during a trial over whether the Waldorf teachings are religious.

"This case is truly stranger than fiction," said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute. "It is incredible that we as taxpayers are still supporting schools founded on a belief system that incorporates elements of Hinduism, European occultism and a heretical form of Christianity.

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"We cannot have a constitutional double standard where mainstream Judeo-Christian beliefs are excluded from public schools while unorthodox beliefs have access to funding," he said.

PJI said it has filed its opening brief with the court in the case, which challenges the constitutionality of taxpayer-funded charter schools that are based on occult teachings.

Its client, PLANS, has been battling since the 1990s over public funding for the local operations of the network, which is found throughout the United States. Some Waldorf schools are private, but others are run by public funding, including in the Sacramento City Unified District, which is the defendant in the current dispute.

According to Pacific Justice, Waldorf education is based in Anthroposophy, which was started shortly after World War I by Rudolf Steiner. The law firm explains Steiner's teachings "cobble together a range of beliefs from Hindu reincarnation to Norse mythology. Steiner's writings also reflect the racial superiority that gave rise to the Nazi regime."

At trial, U.S. District Judge Frank Damrell said he didn't think Anthroposophy was a distinct religion, so Waldorf schools could not by definition violate the First Amendment. But Damrell delivered his conclusion after excluding virtually all of the evidence.

Officials with the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America did not respond to a WND request for comment on the dispute or to explain the teachings of their school.

The association promotes on its website "The Ascending Spiral of Knowledge" and explains its ideas are rooted "in the spiritual-scientific research of the Austrian scientist and thinker Rudolf Steiner."

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"According to Steiner's philosophy, the human being is a threefold being of spirit, soul, and body whose capacities unfold in three development stages on the path to adulthood: early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence," the website explains.

The site boasts of having more than 250 schools in America and more than 900 worldwide. There are special school programs set up around the country to provide instruction to prospective teachers, providing a "Certificate in Waldorf Education."

But the persistent plaintiffs in the case said they launched the challenge after concluding that mythology was being taught as history, American civics lessons were absent, there was no American flag and asking "why are teachers always lighting candles."

"What answers I received were not forthright, and the teachers made it clear that my questions were not welcome. They told me, 'If you understood Anthroposophy, you wouldn’t be asking that question.' Yet before we enrolled, I was told that the school was non-sectarian and that Anthroposophy was not 'in the classroom.' I eventually was invited to leave," reported Debra Snell, president of PLANS.

The site claims the schools are "an activity of Anthroposophy, a cult-like religious sect following the occult teachings of Rudolf Steiner."

"Waldorf education has never been examined critically to determine whether it lives up to its claims. Waldorf's two-year teacher training program is woefully inadequate. The first 'foundation' year is an Anthroposophical seminary program, consisting mostly of the study of Rudolf Steiner's occult philosophy and leading the teacher on Steiner's path to 'initiation' as described in his book 'Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.' Teacher trainees also must read Steiner's 'Reincarnation and Karma' and 'Occult Science,'" the site reports.

It also posted a quote attributed to Eugene Schwartz, a "respected Waldorf master." He said, in a 1999 lecture at Sunbridge College in Spring Valley, N.Y., that, "I'm glad my daughter gets to speak about God every morning: that's why I send her to a Waldorf school . . . I send my daughter to a Waldorf school so that she can have a religious experience . . . when we deny that Waldorf schools are giving children religious experiences, we are denying the basis of Waldorf education . . . The time has come for us to stop pussyfooting around [theories] that will sound too strange if we tell parents what we are really doing . . . Tell everybody what we are about. The day they walk into the school, let them know...it is our responsibility to share with the parents those elements of Anthroposophy which will help them understand their children and fathom the mysterious ways in which we work. Yes, we are giving the children a version of Anthroposophy in the classroom; whether we mean to or not, it's there."

The website says PLANS "would like to see Waldorf schools advise parents up front that the teacher's interactions with their child will be guided by their belief in karma and reincarnation, which leads some Waldorf teachers to speculate that a child may have been born to the 'wrong' parents, for instance, or may have been drawn 'karmically' to the Waldorf school even against the parent's wishes."

According to plaintiffs, the Waldorf movement started moving into public education in the U.S. in 1991 with training workshops, and "these activists have led to violations of church-state separation laws."

The brief argues that the most recent district court decision – to prevent the plaintiffs from introducing evidence, was based on faulty premises. One is that the term "religion" means different things in different places in the First Amendment.

Further, the lower court erred in its application of a definition of what is religion, the brief argues.

According to the brief, "Christians have argued that Anthroposophy is inconsistent with the Bible because Christianity does not embrace the tenet that life continues after death and is then reincarnated into a subsequent human life … Despite this, Steiner teaches that there is no conflict. He argues that the lack of reference in the Bible to reincarnation does not mean that scripture rejects that notion."

WND has reported on a number of cases of religious influences in U.S. public schools. One recent report was on the operations of Turkish expatriate Fethullah Gulen, who was revealed to be linked to Islam-influenced schools run at U.S. taxpayers' expense.

There are more than 100 facilities in 27 states now resulting from the work of Gulen, who lives in a heavily guarded compound near Saylorsburg, Pa.

WND also reported when there were reports that a publicly funded school in Minnesota was providing an Islam-compliant education using taxpayer dollars.

And just recently, a dispute developed in Texas when state officials adopted a resolution warning textbook publishers to provide fair treatment of the world's religions or face being snubbed by the state that buys more textbooks than any other.

The resolution, introduced by former Texas school board member Randy Rives, states: "Resolved, That the [State Board of Education] will look to reject future prejudicial social-studies submissions that continue to offend Texas law with respect to treatment of the world's major religious groups by significant inequalities of coverage space-wise and/or by demonizing or lionizing one or more of them over others."

The resolution, adopted on a 7-6 vote, declares that "pro-Islamic/anti-Christian half-truths, selective disinformation and false editorial stereotypes still roil some social-studies textbooks nationwide," including some "politically correct whitewashes of Islamic culture and stigmas on Christian civilization."

The resolution included pages of footnotes documenting the specific offenses discovered in various textbooks, including "patterns of pejoratives toward Christians and superlatives toward Muslims, calling Crusaders aggressors, 'violent attackers' or 'invaders' while euphemizing Muslim conquest of Christian lands as 'migrations' by 'empire builders.'"