United States of America
Negative Karma & Disgruntled Parents
Windsong School
Events are unfolding in Spokane, Washington where six families are suing the local Steiner-Waldorf school “for claims of negligence, emotional distress, sexual harassment, disability discrimination and failure to report child abuse.”
This is an ongoing case so it’s not possible to state what truly happened and what may be fabricated, but the parallels we’ve reported on so many times over the years, and especially with our own experience, cannot be easily ignored.
For one thing, the school claims this lawsuit is but part of “a smear campaign by disgruntled parents”. Chad Sokol who reported on this story for The Spokesman Review quotes Lauren Bergstedt-Kohler, a kindergarten teacher and one of the school’s founders: “The families expected a lot from the school and our staff freely gave them extra time, care and attention. The allegations they are now making in this lawsuit are simply not true.”
This is the classic first stage of defence for Steiner-Waldorf Schools. As Margaret Sachs told us once about her own personal Steiner experience, “It seems not to matter how bad the wrongdoing of the teachers; they typically circle the wagons and defend their fellow Anthroposophists at the expense of innocent children.”
Another critic, Carol Wyatt, concurs: “They turn the victim and victim's family into criminals worthy of expulsion. They literally demonize the whole family and create gossip and injury to the children.”
We explored this habit Steiner Schools have to attack and smear families back in 2014.
According to Sokol, one apparent chink in the parent’s lawsuit armour, is the fact that they filed similar complaints “with several government agencies, including Child Protective Services, the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the state Department of Early Learning”, and that “Bergstedt-Kohler said those agencies already have determined most of the allegations in the lawsuit are unfounded”.
This may be true, but our own experience sheds a different light on the situation. When our children were expelled from the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School because the staff refused to deal with the bullying and preferred to protect the bully rather than change their behaviour policy, we also complained to various government agencies.
They got back to us stating that the school had done nothing wrong, but the information the Department of Education unwittingly gave us showed the school’s clear deception:
The school had given the government a copy of their Parent Handbook. Comparing it with the one we had in our hands, we saw that they had altered it prior to submitting it as evidence.
The original stated that “It is important, therefore, that parents speak directly with teachers about any issues that may be affecting their child’s well-being.”
By removing that sentence from the doctored handbook, they were able to convince the Department of Education that they followed their own rules to the letter and that we were nothing but “disgruntled parents” who were unusually demanding. Sound familiar?
The lawsuit filed against Windsong School singles out a specific kindergarten teacher. The parents claim that she “justified bullying by stating that children must get rid of negative karma from past lives.”
As expected, this is categorically denied by the teacher and the school. “Bergstedt-Kohler acknowledged that karma and reincarnation are themes of anthroposophy, but she said those ideas are not taught at Windsong”, reports Sokol.
The problem is that this denial is repeated time and again by Steiner Schools the world over. How long before the mainstream actually media connects the dots?
This notion of karma may not be directly taught, but is does shape the school. For instance, Cynthia Kennedy and Betty Robertson wrote for the Alan Howard Waldorf School, “Can a child's karma or destiny be that of a victim or bully? Is it a child's destiny to seek certain experiences to build his or her self-esteem and inner self? Should a potentially abusive situation be stopped, and if so, at what point? […] For a child who is being victimised, it must be the teacher's role and responsibility to determine how much victimisation is healthy to enable the child to be strengthened through the experience and at what point the exposure is excessive and detrimental.”
Whether it’s due to karma or not, the reluctance to properly deal with bullying in Steiner-Waldorf is also perfectly exemplified by this quote from the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School newsletter: “Oddly enough, a zero tolerance policy, in which an attempt is made to squash the bully completely, can be a breeding ground for other types of addictions, Payne said. Denied his or her usual behavior, a child may simply become compulsive about something else, like video games.”
Back in the US, Sokol continues, “The lawsuit also alleges that Akiyama and other Windsong employees mishandled several incidents in which girls were sexually assaulted by boys in their kindergarten class.”
Sadly, this is not the first time such an allegation has been made against a Steiner-Waldorf school. According to our research, it’s happened in Green Meadow Waldorf School, Toronto Waldorf School, and Tridha Steiner School.
Bergstedt-Kohler states that “Child Protective Services found the allegations to be baseless.”
It is hard for us to be impartial when it comes to such accusations. We know how agencies can turn a blind eye to abuse in these schools.
For instance, a police report about our own complaint against the Steiner school which abused our children stated that “they were embroyled [sic] in a dispute with the Titirangi Rudolf Steiner School...They were protesting over what they called a “bullying” issue at the school.” Putting bullying in inverted commas in a police report, especially concerning an event involving an axe and unsupervised children, pretty much says it all.
When we contacted the government’s Health and Safety department and explained what had happened to our children, we were informed that if the school hadn’t specifically written in a document that axes cannot be used to threaten pupils, then the school didn’t breach Health & Safety guidelines by letting a child do just that!
And when that school finally admitted to having wronged our children, after exemplary assistance from the Human Rights Commission, the moment the media got hold of the story, they immediately went back on what they had signed in the settlement, claiming nothing had happened to our children and we were just liars.
We’re not the only ones who have direct experience of Steiner Schools being deceitful and outright lying. Grégoire Perra, a former Anthroposophist and Steiner School teacher once wrote: “Steiner-Waldorf schools therefore rest on an organised, efficient hoax, established for over 90 years, on a habit of manipulation and misrepresentation which is not only structural, but which also becomes part of the constitution of its people. We lie, we cheat, we steal, and even worse, without seeing the problem with this type of behaviour.”
Bergstedt-Kohler states that this lawsuit against her school “is a reckless allegation designed to cause harm to Windsong, which has been these families’ goal from the outset”.
Of course it’s always technically possible that six families decided to enrol their young children in the same Steiner kindergarten for the sole purpose of causing harm to that school.
If such allegations had never be raised against other Steiner schools before, you might be possibly inclined to believe that. After all, who expects a school to lie to them?
But Steiner schools are not just schools. They’re part of the cult of Anthroposophy, one which as we’ve showed time and again, regularly vilifies people who speak out.
To make matters worse, a group of influential people who publicly claim these schools are dangerous, also attack parents who speak out, making it hard for families to know who to turn to and who to believe. This is not unusual when dealing with a cult.
Viewed through that lens, we’ll leave it up to you to conclude which version of events might be more truthful.
