The central focus of Waldorf education, as one of the movements based on anthroposophy, is the development of that essence in every person that is independent of gender, race or other external characteristics. It makes the Waldorf teacher work at building an understanding and appreciation of each child's place in the world as a world citizen, rather than primarily as a member of a specific nation, ethnic group or race.

In 1935, this anti-racist and anti-nationalist stance of anthroposophy and Waldorf education made the Nazi authorities in Germany prohibit and dissolve the Anthroposophical Society and prohibit the Waldorf schools from taking on new pupils, after extensive investigations writing on Waldorf education in the prohibition:

"The methods of teaching developed by its founder, Steiner, and followed in the anthroposophical schools still existing today follow an individualistic and human-oriented education, which has nothing in common with the principles of National Socialistic education.

"As a result of this opposition to the National Socialistic idea of Volk (Voelkische Gedanke), the continued activity of the Anthroposophical Society imposes the danger of injuring the National Socialistic State. The organization is therefore to be dissolved on account of its subversive character and the danger it poses to the public."

In spite of this, a few individual authors of the extensive literature on anthroposophy and Waldorf education over the past 80 years have, in some passages of their works, given expression to a racism prevalent in their time, that runs counter to the heart and essence of both anthroposophy and Waldorf education. These isolated cases have in recent years been cited in secular humanist rhetoric by critics of Waldorf education.

One such example is a work by an Ernst Uehli (1875-1959) on "Atlantis and the Riddle of the Art of the Glacial Ages". The work, originally published in 1935, was not directly related to Waldorf education, but had continued to be reprinted and republished in new editions in 1957 and 1980 by a small anthroposophical publishing company. It contained a chapter on Africans tainted with racism, which was based on a misunderstanding of anthroposophy.

While forgotten by most, this work was cited as a rhetorical example of anthroposophical racism by some small anti-Waldorf groups in Germany in a media campaign in 2000, that emptied the stocks of the publishing company of the few remaining copies of the book it had left.

Another example is a Max Stibbe, (1898-1973), whose writings in the 1930s and 1960s inspired the development of the subject of "racial ethnography" at Dutch Waldorf schools. This subject continued to be taught in to the 1990s in certain Dutch schools but was never taught at other Waldorf school world wide. For a description of and comment on this, see here. Such racial stereotyping is antithetical to the essence of Waldorf education.

Accusations that racism was taught in Waldorf schools in the Netherlands and appeared in Steiner's writings prompted the Anthroposophical Society in the Netherlands in July 1996 to set up a commission to investigate the issue, led by an anthroposophical lawyer specializing in discrimination issues. The commission set about analyzing the published works of Rudolf Steiner, encompassing approximately 89,000 pages, mostly transcripts of some 3,000 lectures, but also some 50 written works.

The key question it tried to investigate was whether Rudolf Steiner taught a racial doctrine, in the sense of a seemingly scientific theory whereby the superiority of one race is supposed to be legitimized at the expense of another.

The 720 page report of the commission, that was published on April 1, 2000, going through the complete collected works by Steiner, answered the question in the negative: anthroposophy contains no such racial doctrine.

For more on this, see here.

The examples of Uehli in 1935 and Stibbe in the 60s are disturbing and indefensible, reflecting the prevailing racism in large parts of the world through the greater part of the 20th century. While they show that such racism in a few instances has also flowed into the works of authors on Waldorf education and anthroposophy, projecting invalid characteristics of the past into the present, such attitudes do not reflect the essence and goal of Waldorf education. 

For more, see:

• Rudolf Steiner on individuality and genus
• Rudolf Steiner on the invalidity today of the concept "race"
• Rudolf Steiner on nationalism and racism as decaying impulses of humanity