Waldorf Notables

Peter Nitze, Waldorf and Harvard graduate, CEO and President at Martek Biosciences Corporation
If you’ve had the experience of binding a book, knitting a sock, playing a recorder, then you feel that you can build a rocket ship-or learn a software program you’ve never touched. It’s not bravado, just a quiet confidence. There is nothing you can’t do. Why couldn’t you? Why couldn’t anybody?

Bruno Walter, Composer and Conductor
There is no task of greater importance than to give our children the very best preparation for the demands of an ominous future, a preparation that aims at the methodical cultivation of their spiritual and their moral gifts. As long as the exemplary work of the Waldorf School Movement continues to spread its influence as it has done over the past decades, we can all look forward with hope.

Saul Bellow, Nobel Laureate
If I had a child of school age, I would send him to one of the Waldorf Schools.

Paul Bayers, Professor Columbia Teachers’ College
The importance of storytelling, of the natural rhythms of daily life, of the evolutionary changes in the child, of art as the necessary underpinning of learning, and of the aesthetic environment as a whole–all basic to Waldorf Education for the past 70 years–are being ‘discovered’ and verified by researchers unconnected to the Waldorf movement.

Ernest Boyer, President, Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Teaching, Former U.S. Commissioner of Education
Waldorf students are encouraged to live with self-assurance, a reverence for life and a sense of service.

M. Baker, M.D., Executive Director, Gesell Institute of Human Development
Pushing skills before children are biologically ready sets them up to fail.

Gilbert Grosvenor, President Emeritus of the National Geographic Society
Waldorf Education draws out the best of qualities in young people. While this is not an instant process, the values they learn provide a lifelong platform from which to grow.

The International Conference on Education of the United Nations Educational and Scientific Cultural Organization
Waldorf Education places the development of the individual child in the focal point, convinced that the healthy individual is a prerequisite for a healthy society.

Jens Stoltenberg, Former Norwegian Prime Minister
Waldorf Education encouraged me to always strive to become a better human being.

Arthur Zajonc, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Physics, Amherst College
Waldorf Education addresses the child as no other education does. Learning, whether in chemistry, mathematics, history or geography, is imbued with life and so with joy, which is the only true basis for later study. By the time [Waldorf students] reach us at the college and university level, these students are grounded broadly and deeply and have a remarkable enthusiasm for learning. Such students possess the eye of the discoverer, and the compassionate heart of the reformer which, when joined to a task, can change the planet.

Raymond McDermott, Ph.D., Professor of Education and Anthropology, Stanford University
American schools are having a crisis in values. Half the children fail according to standard measures and the other half wonder why they are learning what they do. Among the alternatives, the Waldorf school represents a chance for every child to grow and learn according to the most natural rhythms of life. For the early school child, this means a non-competitive, non-combative environment in which the wonders of science and literature fill the day without causing anxiety and confusion. For the older child, it offers a curriculum that addresses the question of why they are learning. I have sent two of my children to Waldorf schools and they have been wonderfully well served.

Elliot Eisner, Ph.D., Professor of Education and Art, Stanford University; Past President, American Educational Research Association; Author: “Curriculum and Cognition: Educating Artistic Vision”
I believe that Waldorf Education possesses unique educational features that have considerable potential for improving public education in America. Waldorf schools provide a program that not only fosters conventional forms of academic achievement, but also puts a premium on the development of imagination and the refinement of the sensibilities.

Dee Jay Coulter, EdD, Instructor, University of Northern Colorado, Outreach, Educational Consultant
I first heard of Waldorf Education about five years ago, after having carried out extensive study of the neurological aspects of cognition, movement, and maturation. I was delighted to discover such a neurologically sound curriculum. I heartily support efforts to spread the awareness of Waldorf Education and hope that it will spawn not only an increase in Waldorf Schools but an infusion of at least some of the ideas into the mainstream where they are so sorely needed.

Richmond Waldorf School