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Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy of freedom as a basis for spiritual education?

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Rudolf Steiner's philosophy of freedom as a basis for spiritual education?

Iddo Oberskia
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 International Journal of Children’s Spirituality
Vol. 16, No. 1, February 2011, 5–17

Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy of freedom as a basis for spiritual

education?
Iddo Oberski*

Centre for Academic Practice, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK

(Received 19 October 2010; final version received 14 November 2010)
Taylor and Francis
CIJC_A_540751.sgm

International
10.1080/1364436X.2010.540751
1364-436X
Taylor
2011
10Article
16
Dr
ioberski@qmu.ac.uk
00000February
IddoOberski
& Francis
(print)/1469-8455
Journal
2011of Children’s
(online)
Spirituality

The spiritual well-being of children is often thought to be an important goal and

outcome of education. Such spiritual well-being is also implicitly assumed by the
Human Rights Act, which includes the right to ‘freedom of thought, conscience
and religion’ [Article 18]. I argue that such freedom requires an education that
fosters development of spiritual freedom. What spirituality means to people can be
determined through empirical research. However, the nature of actual spiritual
freedom itself can be understood and experienced only through a phenomenology
of one’s own thinking. Steiner offered such an approach. As an extension of
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Goethe’s earlier holistic scientific method, Steiner showed that in thinking we

have hold of a corner of the world process in which we, as human beings, play a
crucial part in its coming into being. Steiner’s philosophy of freedom leads
logically to spirituality, through intuitive thinking and forms the basis of Steiner-
Waldorf education, which has the potential to foster spiritual freedom, without
addressing spirituality explicitly.
Keywords: spirituality; freedom; monism; Steiner; Steiner-Waldorf Education;
phenomenology; thinking

Introduction
There is great variation in the extent to which a spiritual dimension is acknowledged
in, as well as explicitly addressed through, education policy and practice across coun-
tries, but also across school types. For example, in religion-based states and schools,
spirituality is broadly acknowledged and valued as a fundamental principle underpin-
ning education, albeit usually explicitly within the outlines of a specific cultural-reli-
gious framework. In secular societies this is often not the case (for example Australia,
see de Souza [2004]). To take an example from my local (secular) context, educational
policy in Scotland regularly refers to the ‘spiritual development’ of young people as
an objective of education in general (for example Scottish Office [1998, para 4.3]
‘value and promote them moral and spiritual well-being of pupils’) and of specific
subjects (for example ‘sex education should contribute to the physical, emotional,
moral and spiritual development of all young people within the context of today’s
society’ [Scottish Executive 2001, 3; Scottish Executive 2005]). Spirituality has also
been identified as an important aspect of adult education, in particular in relation to
education for personal and social transformation (Tisdell 2001), and some educators
think that spiritual health has a place in the curriculum (Fisher 2001). Interest in, and

*Email: ioberski@qmu.ac.uk

ISSN 1364-436X print/ISSN 1469-8455 online

© 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/1364436X.2010.540751
http://www.informaworld.com
 6 I. Oberski

research on, spirituality has grown and its importance to education is increasingly
acknowledged, although teachers rarely consciously and publicly adopt a spiritual
dimension within their classes.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18 (United Nations 1948)
refers to the right of every human being to enjoy ‘freedom of thought, conscience
and religion’, referring to the right of every human being to freely think, hold values
and beliefs, without fear or threat of discrimination or persecution. The Declaration
says nothing, however, about the nature of these thoughts, values and beliefs, so for
example someone with beliefs of their own superiority to others will be equally free
to hold such beliefs as someone who believes in equality. In those societies where
the Declaration is adopted (for example Council of Europe: Registry of the Euro-
pean Court of Human Rights 2010) this is acceptable provided one’s actions are
legal and do not constitute an infringement upon other people’s similar rights. But
Article 18 seems to make the assumption that, given such rights, every human being
will somehow also be able to muster the inner freedom to think and have their own
values and beliefs or, in other words, be spiritually free. However, it seems more
likely that such inner freedom does not simply arise, but comes about through an
education that engenders it. Therefore, the Declaration can be interpreted as either
presupposing a healthy spiritual development or requiring an education that fosters
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it. Such education would then include learning to be free in thought, conscience and
religion. In other words, when we speak of ‘spiritual freedom’, we are really refer-
ring both to the rights, externally defined by the Declaration, and to an ability to be
free in spirit. As an indication of what such spiritual freedom, in the latter sense,
may consist of, ‘Thoreau insists that we find ourselves not in someone else’s
mandated and predetermined image, but in the more educative journey toward our
own personal wholeness’ (Gruenewald 2002, 13) and Steiner (1999) wrote that ‘It is
a moral advance when a man no longer simply accepts the commands of an outer or
inner authority as the motive of his action, but tries to understand the reason why a
particular maxim of behaviour should act as a motive in him. This is the advance
from morality based on authority to action out of moral insight’ (131). While free-
dom as defined by the Declaration falls largely within the legal sphere in that it
gives every human being the right to such freedom, rarely is it made explicit what it
means to be free within and what spiritual development towards such inner freedom
might consist of.
The purpose of this paper is to inspire interest in the contributions made by Steiner
to our understanding of spiritual freedom and children’s spiritual development
towards such freedom. I will first briefly explore some of the research on spirituality
and argue that it is largely irrelevant to an understanding of the nature of spiritual free-
dom. The latter ought to be based on an objective investigation of what such freedom
can be, rather than on an investigation of spiritual experiences themselves, which
range across a very wide spectrum of manifestations and which in turn invite expla-
nations that lie outside their own domain (such as biological ones, [see, for example,
Foster 2010]). This is not to deny the intrinsic interest and (political, educational)
value of such studies, nor of those explanations, merely their relevance to this discus-
sion. This will be followed by a brief introduction to Rudolf Steiner’s (1861–1925)
notion of what spiritual freedom might consist of, a description of how he arrived at
it and an argument that holds that it can and should provide a basis for an educational
approach aiming to foster it, as implied in the Declaration of Human Rights. Finally,
I will provide some examples of the practical application of such understanding.
 International Journal of Children’s Spirituality 7

Research on spirituality
Tisdell (2001) reviewed the literature on spirituality in education and noted that spir-
ituality is certainly not identical to religion, which is an ‘organised community of faith
that has written codes of regulatory behavior’ (2). (For an in-depth discussion of the
difference between religion and spirituality, see, for example, Hay and Nye [2006].)
Hamilton and Jackson (1998, as cited in Tisdell 2001, 2; see also Hodge 2001), in their
study of conceptions of spirituality among women in the caring professions,
concluded that there were three main aspects to such conception: development of self-
awareness, a sense of interconnectedness and a relationship to a higher power. Fisher
(2001) derived a definition of spiritual health that describes it as ‘permeating and inte-
grating all the other dimensions of health’ and ‘a dynamic state of being, shown by the
extent to which people live in harmony within relationships’ in the personal, commu-
nal, environmental and transcendental domains (48). Lerner (2000, as cited in Tisdell
2001) argues that spirituality values the different manifestations of spirit across
cultures, religions and traditions and may therefore be useful across a wide range of
disciplines. Wright (1997) advocates for spiritual education to be strongly contextua-
lised within a nation’s spiritual traditions, starting with pupils’ own spiritual outlooks
(16), but also making them aware of other spiritual traditions within society. Hay and
Nye (2006) investigated the nature of children’s spiritual experiences and concluded
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that the ‘core’ of this spirituality is ‘relational consciousness’ (107 and further). All
these definitions attempt to capture what spirituality is, as an experience of spirit by
others. However, attempting to define spirituality, accepting that spirituality is an
important meaning-making theme in the education of many young people and adults
or identifying the perceived conditions for spiritual health all have limited value in
elucidating the nature of spirit itself, even though it may be useful in clarifying the
nature of others’ experiences of spirit.
Steiner-Waldorf (SW) education is based explicitly on the recognition that human
beings are fundamentally spiritual in nature (even if they don’t experience themselves
as such) but it is non-denominational (though first established within Western, Christian
society in Germany). Therefore these schools would be good models for an education
based on spirituality. However, researchers have only rarely cast their eyes towards
these schools or towards the philosophy that underpins them, with some notable excep-
tions. For example, Woods et al. (1997) interviewed four SW teachers about the role
of spirituality in their practice and confirmed that ‘Steiner Waldorf schooling reflects
the fact that it has developed a detailed conceptual context for the spiritual’ (31). They
also noted that, according to the teachers, imaginative and creative aspects of education
were ‘given full play’ (29) in SW schools. Henry (1992) compared school rituals in a
SW school and a college prep school, concluding that the latter encouraged an instru-
mental-rational way of perceiving the world, while the former fostered an organic, holis-
tic and aesthetic world-view. This was not surprising as the prep school aimed to send
its pupils to the most prestigious universities in the country, while the SW school aimed
to prepare its students for a lifelong journey towards self-expression and holistic growth
(304). Henry did not place a value judgement on the differences between the two schools
but merely noted how school ritual embodies values and how, as such, both schools
are successfully using rituals to embody their distinct values. Similarly, Woods et al.
(1997) thought that ‘a spiritually-centred education clashes with a detailed, closely
prescribed curriculum driven predominantly by utilitarian, goal-orientated and
economic considerations’ (37). A recent study by Dahlin (2010) suggested that SW
schools encourage young people to engage at a deeper level with citizenship dilemmas.
 8 I. Oberski

Astley and Jackson (2000) realised in their study of spirituality in SW schools that
before addressing how spiritual development is engendered, it is vital to address the
epistemological issues, in other words, what is spirituality within the context of SW
education? They described the kindergarten classroom in terms of the absence of ‘the
right angles of mass production’ (221), of artificiality, but they questioned Henry’s
interpretation that rituals encourage children’s spiritual development and asked
whether spiritual development has any objective existence that evidence can confirm,
whether that evidence can be verified by anyone else, whether there are grounds on
which it can be disputed or whether instead we have to abandon doubt as an ‘episte-
mological disposition’ (227) and commit to ‘Steiner mysticism’. I will return to these
important points later. Bone (2005) also writes about breaking bread as a ritual that
makes something mundane into something spiritual. She looks at three different
settings, including a SW school, and concludes that ‘eating is a regular social practice
and in all three settings it accentuated different ways of celebrating the spirit of the
child’ (315).
Empirical research on spirituality has tended to focus on ‘second-order’ perspec-
tives and observational methods in order to explore its importance in schools and in
people’s lives. Researchers generally ask questions in such a way as to ensure that
they can be answered independently of the person asking the question, independently,
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as it were, of ourselves (while at the same time recognising that interpretations carry
a subjective element). The researcher as human being is usually ‘bracketed’ out in
order to arrive at ‘objective’ knowledge, as evidenced for example by Astley and
Jackson (2000), above, in their recognition of the tension between experiencing
spirituality on the one hand and evidencing it for public scrutiny on the other. While
this leads to useful information, to a kind of ‘natural history’ of the phenomena under
study, key questions concerning the inner human experience and the nature of spirit
can hardly be satisfied in this way. Hodge (2001) highlights how the assessment of
spirituality in social work practice has traditionally been through quantitative
measurement and notes that ‘the problems inherent in quantitative assessment may be
particularly relevant in the realm of spirituality’ (204) because of the need for clients
to ‘circumscribe their experiences to fit limited options presented in a specific scale
and its predetermined understanding of reality’ (204) and because spirituality is seen
as a subjective experience, which varies across cultures, traditions, religions, gender
etc. The problem with studying religious or spiritual experience is that within the
current dominance of scientific thinking, such experiences can simply be explained
away by pointing at their causing factors, lying within psychology, brain anatomy,
physiology or electro-biochemistry. Thus the phenomenon that is thought to give rise
to spiritual or religious experiences, namely the existence of spirit, is denied and the
experience itself explained through underlying, material processes that are thought to
be ultimate causes.
Steiner argued (see below) that this rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of
the nature of spirit. It is simply impossible to prove the existence of spirit to someone
else, it is only possible to demonstrate it to oneself, through experience. However, it
is possible to point in what direction of human experience we must look to encounter
spirit and come to the realisation that it does exist, even if we do not yet experience it
directly for ourselves.
This complimentary but more direct approach to understanding inner processes
would be to either start with ourselves or consult the accounts of those who have
thought deeply and written extensively about their contemplation of their own inner
 International Journal of Children’s Spirituality 9

processes. Thus, in order to understand those inner processes, it would be useful to

start with an exploration of our own inner being, attempt to experience it for ourselves
and to conclude on that basis whether or not a real spiritual world exists. No doubt this
approach will seem unscientific, but, as Steiner (1968) demonstrated, it is actually far
from it. This requires a ‘phenomenological’ approach to the inner world of experience.
Hay and Nye (2006) briefly touched on the spiritual dimension of qualitative research
(90) and described how, after intense engagement with the data, Nye ‘experienced an
initial intuitive sense of children’s spirituality’ (107). It would have been valuable for
the current discussion if a more in-depth account of this spiritual dimension and intu-
itive sense had been provided, but this kind of account is generally absent from the
academic literature. We could turn our attention instead to spiritual leaders and their
writings, but, while these may be inspirational, they are seldom explanatory. An
exception can, however, be found in the early writings of Rudolf Steiner. Steiner’s
early work (up to approximately 1900) lays the epistemological foundations for his
spiritual research, whereas his later published work focuses on the results and
application of the research. He was the founder and spiritual leader of SW schools and
of the Anthroposophical Society, but also an accomplished scholar, gaining his PhD
(entitled Truth and knowledge) from the University of Rostock in 1891. In his The
philosophy of freedom (1999, originally published in 1894), through a rigorous
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exploration of the question of freedom by ways of an introspective, phenomenological

analysis of thinking, he leads his readers towards an initial experience and understand-
ing of the foothills of the spiritual world itself. There are many other writers and prac-
titioners who merit the title of ‘spiritual leader’ but few, if any, have presented their
experiences in a way that makes them replicable (through intense engagement) and
objective. Moreover, few have had as much direct impact on education as Steiner.

Steiner’s phenomenology of thinking: the nature of spirit

Because many readers will be unfamiliar with The philosophy of freedom (Steiner
1999), it will be necessary to represent it in some detail here. In The philosophy of
freedom, Steiner carefully relates his ideas to those of other philosophers, such as
Eduard von Hartmann, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer and Spinoza, and
attempts to show some of the fallacies in their reasoning insofar as it relates to the
question of freedom. While Steiner deals in his book both with the nature of freedom
as well as with the consequences of his monistic worldview for the whole of life, I will
here focus on his examination of thinking and his idea of freedom. However, I will
first attempt to briefly justify the claim that Steiner’s philosophy of freedom is
essentially phenomenological (a term he did not use himself), by first briefly compar-
ing his philosophy to that of Heidegger’s and then by further exploring his own
method of enquiry.
There are some striking similarities between the philosophies of Steiner and
Heidegger. For example, Heidegger worked towards ‘a kind of thinking that helps us
move beyond metaphysics and humanism, beyond the form of modern subjectivity
with its associated mode of calculative thinking, indeed, beyond representational
thinking and will power’ (Peters 2002, 15; see also Allen and Axiotis 2002) and
Heidegger, like Steiner and others (e.g. Rousseau, Goethe) saw teaching as an art, or
the ‘bringing forth of being out of concealment’ (Peters 2002, 7), which resonates
strongly with both Goethe and Steiner’s epistemologies. However, Heidegger argues
that, as ‘receivers of Being’ (Fitzsimons 2002, 182; cf. Barnes 2000; Bortoft 1996;
 10 I. Oberski

Steiner 2000), there are dimensions to our existence that are impenetrable and that
we should focus our attention on those dimensions to avoid ‘ultimate nihilism’
(Fitzsimons 2002, 183). This explains why phenomenological research in education is
about subjective meaning-making: it is essentially interpretative, in contrast to the
objectivity of empirical science.
In contrast, for Steiner there are no realms of knowledge inaccessible to the human
mind, as any such perceived limits are in reality merely the outcome of our (intellec-
tual, abstract, materialistic, dualistic) thinking (see discussion below). To Steiner, the
study of thinking through introspection is the only legitimate starting point of any
inquiry after truth, as thinking is the main tool we use to gain knowledge. We cannot
legitimately use our thinking to gain knowledge if we have not first established what
it is, in and of itself and in relation to the rest of our experience, and whether it can be
trusted to give us such knowledge. An inner exploration of thinking leads us into the
very depths of our own being, through an intuitive grasp of its essence, or perhaps
through what Bonnett calls Heidegger’s ‘poetic thinking’ (Bonnett 2002, 233 ff.).This
is also closely related to Husserl’s intentionality ‘as a dynamic description, involving
consciousness and its freedom to act’ (Bonnett 2002, 223–37). For a more detailed
comparison between Heidegger’s and Steiner’s views, see Dahlin (2009).
As to methodology, phenomenology is an attempt by the researcher to under-
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stand phenomena from within them, rather than from the outside, yet requiring a
‘bracketing out’ of one’s own subjectivity while simultaneously focusing one’s
attention entirely on the ‘being’ of those phenomena: ‘… in phenomenological
reduction the endeavour is to abandon not only personal prejudice, but also scien-
tific concepts’ (Wilson 2006, 15). Commonly, phenomenology values second order
interpretation and meaning making and draws on interviews and observations of
others (as opposed to self) to come to an understanding of phenomena. Indeed,
according to Levering (2006), subjectivity is the inevitable starting point for
phenomenology. Not so for Steiner. While his approach is phenomenological to the
extent that he explores the lived experience of thinking by bracketing personal prej-
udice and scientific concepts (explaining in detail what those prejudices and
concepts are and how they stand in the way of understanding thinking), he goes
beyond phenomenology (Levering 2006, 457) by claiming an objective introspec-
tion that itself becomes possible only through an understanding of thinking itself.
Steiner argues that thinking lies both before and above the very distinction between
subjectivity and objectivity and therefore cannot itself be said to be either. The logic
of this may be clear, yet knowledge of the objective spiritual reality of thinking
requires experience at first hand, by thinking through and testing out Steiner’s
account. In the following section I will discuss this viewpoint in more depth as it
relates to the idea of freedom.
The problem of freedom is not about freedom of choice because, whatever choice
we make, it can be argued that there is always a definite but unknown reason (or
unconscious cause) why we made a particular choice. However, it is possible for us to
know why we make a particular choice. A clear distinction must therefore be made
between an action carried out in full awareness of its reasons and causes and one with-
out such awareness. In the former case, when I consciously decide on a course of
action, seeing full well that there are other possible courses of action and knowing
why I decide on this particular one, it does at least seem possible for me to be free. In
the latter case, to the extent that I do not know why I am doing something, I cannot be
free. The question then remains: ‘How the decision comes about within me’ (Steiner
 International Journal of Children’s Spirituality 11

1999, 10) in the first place. As it is the knowledge of the reason for my action that
affords the possibility of freedom, where does this knowledge come from and how do
I know if it is not simply the result of unconscious (material) processes in my brain?
To my experience at least, knowledge in general is the result of thinking and this is so
quite independently from any material processes supposedly underlying my thinking
(material processes which needless to say have been identified as such by thinking).
Knowledge of the specific reasons for my action is thus also gained through thinking.
It is then meaningful to talk about freedom only when the thinking accompanying my
action is itself free (rather than itself the result of unknown causes). So what is
thinking? The first part of Steiner’s book is dedicated to answering this question in a
way that offers the reader not just the argument, but, with intensive reading, also the
experience of thinking to which Steiner refers. In the second half Steiner addresses
the idea of freedom, but now speaking to the reader who has grasped the nature of
thinking through his/her own experience.
Steiner (ibid) explores the nature of thinking experientially and then compares his
insights with the ideas of major philosophical perspectives. However, he begins his
quest by observing that: ‘Nowhere are we satisfied with what Nature sets before our
senses’ (13), instead we always demand explanations of what we observe. Through
this desire for knowledge we position ourselves opposite to ‘what Nature sets before
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our senses’ and put ourselves ‘right in the middle of this antithesis of spirit and matter’
(13). This epistemological position becomes particularly strong through the discovery
of the materiality of our own body as if we ourselves are completely material, yet
somehow experience an inner life that is non-material (spiritual; objecting that this
inner life is merely the result of neuro-physiological processes merely affirms once
again the transparency of thinking, see below). Attempts to overcome this fundamen-
tal antithesis have dominated Philosophy for centuries and have lead to a variety of
dualistic and monistic explanations, with the former exploring how spirit and matter
might interact, the latter how in reality they might be interwoven.
Steiner (ibid) rejects both dualism and monism at this stage, embarking instead on
a journey of a quite different quality, which will eventually lead him to propose a
different kind of monism: ‘We can find Nature outside us only if we have first learned
to know her within us. What is akin to her within us must be our guide. This marks out
our path of enquiry. We shall attempt no speculations concerning the interaction of
Nature and spirit. Rather shall we probe into the depths of our own being, to find there
those elements which we saved in our flight from Nature’ (19, original emphasis). We
must first of all concede that thinking itself belongs to Nature. Steiner does not only
call on the reader’s ability to think logically and follow his argument that way, but he
attempts to offer just those opportunities to our own thinking that open up the possi-
bility to experience its fundamental nature. Studying the Philosophy of freedom is
therefore more than the satisfaction of curiosity, or gathering of information or facts,
it is a lived experience during which the being of thinking itself may become revealed.
Through thinking we add concepts to our observations. We are able to connect
separate observations (Steiner calls these ‘percepts’) only through concepts, without
which those percepts would remain in isolation from each other. The most fundamen-
tal antithesis in the world therefore seems to be between percept and concept, but:
‘Everything that enters the circle of our experience, we first become aware of through
observation’ (24, my emphasis, original emphasis removed). One of the phenomena
we can observe in the ‘circle of our experience’ is thinking itself. However, ‘thinking
as an object of observation differs essentially from all other objects’ (24, original
 12 I. Oberski

emphasis) because: ‘in observing thinking, we are applying to it a procedure which

constitutes the normal course of events for the study of the whole of the rest of the
world-content, but which in this normal course of events is not applied to thinking
itself.’ (24–5). In other words, normally, thinking is ‘transparent’ (Bortoft 1996) and
we do not observe it, because our thinking attention is fully on the world we observe,
not on the process by which we do this, namely observation and thinking (cf. Levine
1994).
Steiner (ibid) makes these two crucial observations about thinking: (1) ‘it is the
unobserved element in our ordinary mental and spiritual life’, it is transparent and it
is not possible to observe my current thinking, only my past thinking. But because
thinking is part of our own activity, we can know it ‘more immediately and more inti-
mately than any other process in the world’ (27) and (2) when we make thinking the
object of observation ‘we are not compelled to do so with the help of something qual-
itatively different, but can remain within the same element’, namely thinking (31). So
‘in thinking we have got hold of one corner of the whole world process which requires
our presence if anything is to happen. The very reason why things confront me in such
a puzzling way is just that I play no part in their production. They are simply given to
me, whereas in the case of thinking I know how it is done’ (32).
While thinking connects separate percepts, it is also through thinking that we deter-
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mine ourselves as subjects standing apart from, yet within Nature. In other words,
‘subject’ and ‘object’ are concepts determined through thinking. Thinking therefore
precedes and transcends them. It is thinking itself that confronts us with both the unity
and the duality of self and world: ‘Thinking is thus an element which leads me out
beyond myself and connects me with the objects. But at the same time it separates me
from them, inasmuch as it sets me, as subject, over against them’ (ibid, 43).
Observation is to percepts what intuition is to concepts. This means that concepts
arise from within, rather than being abstracted or generalised from observations. We
will never be able to understand the world purely through observation, but must of
necessity use our thinking: ‘I can never perceive how a percept originates out of the
non-perceptible’ (ibid, 76) and ‘All attempts to seek any relations between percepts
other than thought relations must of necessity fail’ (76). Finally, it is through feeling
that ‘concepts gain concrete life’ (88, original emphasis), because we are not merely
thinking beings, but also feeling beings.
In the second part of the book Steiner explores the consequences of this world-
view for the whole of life, returning to the notion of freedom and coining the terms
‘moral imagination’ and ‘moral technique’. He distinguishes four increasing levels
of spiritual freedom that may result in action: (1) perceiving through the senses,
where a perception is immediately linked to an action. This is commonly called
‘instinct’ and means the action is not free; (2) feelings, such as pride, honour, pity
and so forth, which are associated with particular percepts; (3) thinking and forming
mental pictures, where particular thoughts and mental pictures accompany percepts
and lead to actions; (4) conceptual thinking independent of percepts, that is, pure
intuition: ‘Intuition is the conscious experience – in pure spirit – of a purely
spiritual content. Only through an intuition can the essence of thinking be grasped’
(ibid, 122).
In summary then, spiritual freedom requires the development of intuitive (or pure
conceptual) thinking (level 4, above). This intuitive thinking can then be consciously
applied to the whole of our life, so that our thoughts, feelings and deeds are in
harmony with the world process. To the extent that we are able to apply this in life,
 International Journal of Children’s Spirituality 13

we can be said to be free. The relevance of this worldview to contemporary education

is explored below.

Education for freedom: Steiner-Waldorf schools

One of the aims of education is to engender spiritual freedom in young people. But
this does not mean a kind of anarchic freedom where everyone just does what he/she
wants at any moment for their own satisfaction, nor is it freedom of choice. Also, the
freedom conceptualised by Steiner could not simply be lumped together with either
the Romantics or the Post-Modernists, or both, as described by Wright (1997) (see also
Bortoft 1996, 21), even though Steiner’s phenomenology is an extension of Goethe’s
(Colquhoun 1997; Peroff 2003; Seamon and Zajonc 1998; Steiner 1968). Steiner’s free-
dom refers to the ability to make well-considered decisions and choices, to act in accor-
dance with the needs one perceives, not just for oneself but for the community and the
world at large, through intuitive thinking. Thus we have in thinking a real possibility
of taking hold of the world, provided that we can develop our thinking in such a way
that it becomes free of conditioning and our own subjective, habitual conception of
the world around us. When we do, our thinking (rather than our own fantasy) provides
us with those aspects of the world that are not accessible through sense perception and
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can thus be truly termed ‘spiritual’ and holistic. In fact, ‘When we observe our thinking,
we live during this observation directly within a self-supporting, spiritual web of being.’
(Steiner 1999, 121). This kind of thinking gives us access to the spiritual content of
the world and to the extent that our thinking is developed thus, we can say that in think-
ing as well as through thinking we experience this spiritual dimension and are free.
Actions based on intuitive thinking are therefore truly free actions.
So how do we engender spiritual freedom through education? From the discussion
above it seems that we must teach children from an early age to think about their own
thinking, to develop their metacognitive abilities. This view would certainly find
support in the thinking skills literature, where there is evidence that teaching metacog-
nition improves test scores (Adey and Shayer 1994; see also Higgins and Baumfield
1998; McCrindle and Christenen 1995; Thinking Skills Review Group 2004). In a
similar vein, Hay and Nye (2006, 146 ff.) suggested that, given children’s spiritual
experiences as uncovered by their research, relational awareness ought to be underpin-
ning the entire curriculum (158) and they seem to suggest this could be done by inte-
grating certain educational approaches that encourage children to develop and express
their relational awareness. However, I would argue that such an approach runs the risk
of becoming instrumental and achieving the opposite effect to that it intended. This is
because it is itself not conceived holistically. One cannot simply extrapolate from
children’s spiritual experiences to curriculum development, unless it was thought that
we are dealing with relatively straightforward physical causes and effects. To put it
differently, an apple tree produces apples out of itself, rather than by being fed apples.
It needs the right conditions to do this, such as sunlight, earth, water and air. What is
therefore needed is an organic understanding of how spiritual freedom develops from
within the developing human individual and under what conditions we can help it
flourish, taking into account the realisation that we’re not talking about such freedom
in the abstract, but in actual developing human beings, with their real spiritual-physi-
cal make-up.
I will briefly describe how Steiner applied his philosophy and the results of his
later spiritual research to education. This is not to imply that SW teachers are the only
 14 I. Oberski

teachers who are working in this way (for example, van Manen’s [2003] approach
seems entirely consistent with SW education as are several insights by Hay and Nye
[2006, e.g. 149]). There are also many examples of educational initiatives that reso-
nate strongly with Steiner’s approach (Reggio Emilia, Outdoor Education, Education
through the Arts etc.) but that do not seem to be underpinned by a philosophy of
freedom of similar depth and breadth. Also, while SW schools may serve as models,
they vary in the degree to which they take Steiner’s ideas as prescriptive as opposed
to indicative.
Steiner-Waldorf schools, of which there are now around 1000 across the world,
are non-denominational, co-educational schools founded on the above philosophy
and the knowledge gained from ‘spiritual science’. Steiner’s philosophy itself is
explicitly not part of the curriculum, but forms the epistemological and philosophi-
cal underpinning to school organisation, curriculum and pedagogy (and often also,
in addition, to the design of the school buildings, as well as pupil and teacher health
and diet).
What is needed in the education of children to achieve freedom is the ability to
develop this kind of thinking (which involves also feeling and willing). Steiner-
Waldorf education flows out of Steiner’s expertise in applying intuitive thinking to the
nature of the human being, child development and the evolution of consciousness.
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Nowhere does Steiner suggest that we should teach children intuitive thinking directly
through special exercises. Such exercises as he does suggest are typically aimed at
adult readers. While the development of intuitive thinking is very important, it would
be naïve, if not dangerous, to try and teach it directly as another ‘thinking skill’, across
the age range, without a thorough knowledge of human development, derived through
intuitive thinking. For example, the way in which thinking is developed through the
SW curriculum is tuned into intuitive knowledge of (amongst other things) human
development conceptualised in stages of roughly seven years. During the first stage
the curriculum revolves around the development of the will. Feeling provides the
focus for the second seven years and thinking only comes into direct focus during the
third seven years. The development of willing and feeling are thus seen as essential to
a healthy ability to think and this is manifest in the different pedagogical approaches
in each of the three stages (e.g. Steiner 1929, 1974, 1989). The emphasis in SW
schools on creative activities, such as rhythmic games, drawing, painting, music and
movement, may give the impression that these schools foster innovation and original-
ity, but while they may indeed do this, in actual fact the purpose of these activities lies
much more in the development in pupils of willing, feeling and eventually intuitive
thinking through the imaginative faculty, which may later foster moral imagination.
Steiner-Waldorf teachers employ a variety of approaches across diverse subjects for
drawing on the pupils’ imagination (Oberski 2006). There are many further examples
of particular aspect of SW schools that could be used to illustrate the way in which
they are based not just on the need to develop intuitive thinking, but on insights into
child development based on such thinking. The simple routine of shaking the teacher’s
hand before entering the classroom, of starting the History curriculum with fairy tales
and myths and of the use of imaginative and physical activities in learning the times
tables are all examples of how intuitive thinking is fostered across the curriculum,
without tackling it head-on. Some of these approaches could very easily be adopted in
other schools, whereas other aspects of SW schools, such as their curriculum or organ-
isation, are less easily transferable. Finally, there are aspects to SW schools that seem
to have their root in tradition (for example the reliance on whole-class teaching) rather
 International Journal of Children’s Spirituality 15

than in the philosophy of freedom or spiritual insight. But the only way to discover
what is really needed is through rigorous engagement with one’s own spiritual
development. The philosophy of freedom could be a reliable guidebook for teachers
on this journey.

Conclusion: spiritual education for all?

To have ‘freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ clearly requires, besides a
legal framework, an education that fosters development towards inner spiritual free-
dom. What spirituality means to people can be determined through empirical
research. However, the nature of spiritual freedom itself can only be understood and
experienced through a phenomenology of thinking. Steiner offered such an
approach, as an extension of Goethe’s earlier, holistic scientific method and he
showed that in thinking we have hold of a corner of the world process in which we,
as human beings, play a crucial part in its coming into being. Steiner’s philosophy
of freedom leads logically to spirituality, through intuitive thinking. It gives a clear
meaning to spirituality and embraces the definitions given in the introduction. To go
in search of evidence of spiritual development within the sense-perceptible world
(as Astley and Jackson [2000] suggested) is then a naive realistic endeavour,
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doomed to failure. Steiner shows the untenability of naive realism, except for think-
ing itself. Any evidence of spirituality can thus only be found through intuitive
thinking. Further, to suggest that we must commit ourselves to ‘Steiner mysticism’
in order to understand what goes on in SW schools is misleading. Yes, we must
commit to understanding Steiner’s worldview before we can judge the nature of the
spirituality he had in mind, at least as applied in SW schools. But to imply that this
worldview equates to a subjective, non-scientific mysticism is to admit to one’s own
ignorance of the nature of this worldview.
Steiner-Waldorf schools embody a form of education based explicitly on a thor-
oughly developed understanding of thinking and spirit. In the twenty-first century it
is becoming once more possible to talk about spirituality and to acknowledge that
one important aim of education is to foster healthy spiritual development. Steiner-
Waldorf education has, for almost 90 years, attempted to foster such development,
not through a narrow instrumentalism, nor through religious indoctrination, but
through a holistic education based on intuitively derived knowledge of the develop-
ing human being. Even acceptance of the simple concept of seven-year phases of
child development with their characteristic ‘modes’ of willing, feeling and thinking
would be able to contribute significantly to the healthy development of young
people and would, inter alia, provide a rationale for artistic and creative expression
infused throughout our school curricula as well as for the introduction of intellectual
and scientific approaches to knowledge at a much later stage than is currently the
case.
Educational researchers interested in spirituality need to begin to take Steiner and
SW Education seriously and engage in depth and breadth with both. This does by no
means exclude empirical work on SW education (see, for example, WREN 2010) and
Steiner’s work (as well as Goethe’s, see, for example, Rowland [2001]; see also issue
8.1 of Janus Head [2005] on Goethe’s Delicate Empiricism) has much to offer in
terms of epistemology and research methodology. Through such engagement it may
become possible to develop an integrated approach to spiritual development for all
schools, underpinning both curriculum and pedagogy.
 16 I. Oberski

Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their constructive and encouraging criti-
cal comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes on contributor
Iddo Oberski is a lecturer in learning and teaching in the Centre for Academic Practice at
Queen Margaret University. He is joint programme leader of the masters in professional and
higher education.

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