Perhaps you’ve heard of Waldorf schools — those weird, cultish educational establishments where students learn to knit, are prohibited from watching television, and are taught to read in third grade.
Upon hearing that I’ve attended a Waldorf school, many people ask, “Isn’t that the one with the gnomes?” (Waldorf Schools are often associated with the mystical creatures of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.) Whatever image of a Waldorf education you have created for yourself is probably strange and not entirely positive.
I attended a Waldorf school for more than 12 years prior to coming to Tam. When I arrived at Tam at the start of my freshman year, I immediately stood out as one of the few students who had not gone to MVMS, and my new classmates were quick to ask me what school I had come from.
Fairly quickly, I became used to the raised eyebrows and abrupt “oh’s” that would meet my answer of “San Francisco Waldorf School.” Some people were downright rude, asking if it was true that I had learned to read in 5th grade or whether I had ever seen a movie. Most were perfectly polite, but even the most civil of these encounters were marked by surprise or even alarm when others realized that I had gone to a Waldorf school.
Waldorf schools have a stigma for turning pre-teens into inept, socially awkward adolescents who are unprepared for the challenges they will encounter in the “real world.” Waldorf schools encourage parents to keep their children from watching TV or movies and from playing video games.
To my new public-school peers, this seemed to be the most surprising thing about Waldorf schools; most of them simply couldn’t fathom a reality sans-TV. Painting, woodworking, knitting and other artistic pastimes are also known as prominent aspects of the Waldorf curriculum. These activities are hardly popular among most public school students, which lends to the image of Waldorf students as isolated, art-loving weirdos.
Furthermore, Waldorf academics are often thought of as less rigorous than those of public schools. Waldorf students do learn to read a bit later than their public school counterparts (my class learned in second grade) but as a whole, the curriculums of the two systems don’t differ much from each other. I took Algebra One in eighth grade, just like many MVMS students, along with extensive Spanish and English classes.
Waldorf schools’ emphasis on the arts seems to take away from their credibility as academic institutions. But in reality, Waldorf students don’t learn in any less rigorous a manner than kids at other schools — we just learn by different methods, which I feel are just as effective as those utilized in public schools. I remember playing a question-and-answer game at my freshman orientation. One of the questions was “would you rather give up your smartphone or your TV?” At the time I had neither, so it was a surprise to watch the other kids in my group struggle as they agonized over which of the two brought greater joy to their lives. While many kids are horrified to hear that I haven’t had c

able TV in my house for 12 years, I see it as a blessing that, over the last decade, has given me a wealth of time with which to pursue other activities.
The same goes for the arts that were such a prominent part of my education at Waldorf. Even among my Waldorf peers during middle school, there was a sense of grudging resentment that came with taking painting, drawing, and woodshop classes a combined six times per week.
But over the last two-and-a-half years I have spent here at Tam, I have grown to appreciate these classes for instilling in me an ability to think artistically and creatively, when so much of high school education is literal.
While there were certainly students in my class who emerged from middle school ill-equipped to succeed in a high school setting, the same is true of students who went to other middle schools.
There are certainly students in my grade here at Tam who didn’t go to a Waldorf school who are having a more difficult time — academically and socially — than I am. And that’s completely fine. But, I ask, the next time you speak to a student who tells you they went to a Waldorf school, don’t assume that they are socially awkward, or unintelligent, or weird, or that they’re all that different from you.