AWE on waldorf critics - Informing the public about PLANS Inc.

Introduction

For several years, a small, vocal anti-Waldorf group in San Francisco, called "PLANS Inc." ("People for Legal and Non-sectarian Schools Inc."), has been publishing a site on the Internet called “waldorfcritics". In recent years, PLANS has advertised its site widely on the Internet using sponsored ads from Overture.com.

PLANS Inc. has also been pursuing litigation against two public school districts in California for operating two public Waldorf-methods schools, one as a charter school and one as a magnet school.

At first glance PLANS appears to be raising thoughtful, well-founded and well-formulated objections against Waldorf education.

Anyone with some background in or experience of Waldorf education will, however, soon realize that most of the material posted on the PLANS web site contains numerous inaccuracies and distortions, some subtle, some obvious.

PLANS' statements on their web site and in online discussions on the "Waldorf Critics" mailing list, owned by the secretary of the group, are seriously distorted and are not supported by the published research on Waldorf education.

PLANS also cultivates and publishes a number of myths -- defamatory even to the point of demonization -- about Waldorf education, plus a number of demonstrably untrue allegations about Waldorf education and anthroposophy (the spiritual philosophical basis of Waldorf education), and Rudolf Steiner, the founder of both.

The publication by PLANS includes valid criticism, but it is also filled with defamatory exaggeration, distortion, and delusion about Waldorf education, about its founder Rudolf Steiner, and about anthroposophy, the philosophical approach from which Waldorf’s view of education of the developing child derives. PLANS’ Internet campaign is in many ways an extension of the long-term personal philosophical crusade of one of its founders to compel education, the sciences, medicine, and related pursuits to conform to strictly secularist/skeptic principles.

Investigation also shows that PLANS relied on false allegations of witchcraft teachings in order to raise funds to litigate their case against the two public Waldorf-methods schools.

For documentation and more detailed analysis of PLANS Inc. and its argumentation, see the different sections at this site, listed to the left.