CultNEWS101 Articles: 9/2/2025

Malaysia, Falun Gong, China, Nazism, Anthroposophy, UK, The Kingdom of Kubala

Free Malaysia Today: Falun Gong exhibits allegedly seized by 'China police' near National Monument

"A Falun Gong practitioner claims that seven men, identifying themselves as policemen from China, removed her group's exhibits near the National Monument in Kuala Lumpur last Friday."

" ... The woman, who wanted to be known only as Yong, told FMT she had set up the booth there three months ago to educate the public about Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China.

"I chased after them and asked for the items to be returned. One of them said, 'We are policemen from China'. They ignored my pleas and drove off," she said.

Yong claimed the men left in a van accompanied by a local tour guide and driver.

In May, then Kuala Lumpur police chief Rusdi Isa said the arrest of more than 70 Falun Gong followers ahead of Chinese president Xi Jinping's visit to Malaysia was lawful as "Falun Gong is an illegal organisation".

"As such, it is not permitted to carry out any activities," he was quoted as saying at a press conference."

Between Occultism and Fascism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race and Nation in Germany and Italy, 1900-1945 by Peter Staudenmaier

"The relationship between Nazism and occultism has long been an object of popular speculation and scholarly controversy. This dissertation examines the interaction between occult groups and the Nazi regime as well as the Italian Fascist state, with central attention to the role of racial and ethnic theories in shaping these developments. The centerpiece of the dissertation is a case study of the anthroposophist movement founded by Rudolf Steiner, an esoteric tendency which gave rise to widely influential alternative cultural institutions including Waldorf schools, biodynamic agriculture, and holistic methods of health care and nutrition. A careful exploration of the tensions and affinities between anthroposophists and fascists reveals a complex and differentiated portrait of modern occult tendencies and their treatment by Nazi and Fascist officials.

Two initial chapters analyze the emergence of anthroposophy's racial doctrines, its self-conception as an 'unpolitical' spiritual movement, and its relations with the völkisch milieu and with Lebensreform movements. Four central chapters concern the fate of anthroposophy in Nazi Germany, with a detailed reconstruction of specific anthroposophical institutions and their interactions with various Nazi agencies. Two final chapters provide a comparative portrait of the Italian anthroposophical movement during the Fascist era, with particular concentration on the role of anthroposophists in influencing and administering Fascist racial policy.

Based on a wide range of archival sources, the dissertation offers an empirically founded account of the neglected history of modern occult movements while shedding new light on the operations of the Nazi and Fascist regimes. The analysis focuses on the interplay of ideology and practice, the concrete ways in which contending worldviews attempted to establish institutional footholds within the organizational disarray of the Third Reich and the Fascist state, and shows that disagreements over racial ideology were embedded in power struggles between competing factions within the Nazi hierarchy and the Fascist apparatus. It delineates the ways in which early twentieth century efforts toward spiritual renewal, holism, cultural regeneration and redemption converged with deeply regressive political realities. Engaging critically with previous accounts, the dissertation raises challenging questions about the political implications of alternative spiritual currents and counter-cultural tendencies." 

Independent: Exclusive: A missing Texas mom was found living with a lost 'African' tribe. Now, her family speaks out

"A missing Texas woman found living with the self-proclaimed leaders of a lost "African" tribe in a Scottish forest insists she is there by her own free will, despite her family's fears she is lost to the sect forever.

Kaura Taylor was recently found living in the woods with the group after vanishing from her home three months ago, leaving relatives distraught.

"It is very stressful, and difficult. It breaks our heart. We're overly concerned about Kaura, but she doesn't think anyone is concerned about her," Taylor's aunt Teri Allen told The Independent.

In a message posted to Facebook after 21-year-old Taylor, mother to a one-year-old child who she took with her to Scotland, said that she was not missing and lashed out at reports she "disappeared."

"I'm very happy with my King and Queen, I was never missing, I fled a very abusive, toxic family," Taylor wrote, following up with a video message telling U.K. authorities to leave her alone in the woods in Jedburgh, 40 miles south of Edinburgh. She added that she is "an adult, not a helpless child."

However, Allen on Thursday pushed back stridently against those assertions, describing her niece's younger years as "very sheltered and protected."

She said Taylor "was brought up in church, but not their religion. Not this thing that they got going. It's a bunch of hogwash."

Speaking to The Independent from her Dallas-area home, Allen said Taylor kept it "totally hidden from the family" when she began communicating in 2023 with so-called Kingdom of Kubala leader King Atehene, a former opera singer and PR agent from Ghana whose real name is Kofi Offeh, and his wife Jean Gasho, who now goes by Queen Nandi.

Queen Nandi did not respond to a request for comment. An email seeking comment from King Atehene bounced back as undeliverable.

The Kingdom of Kubala claims to be a lost Hebrew tribe that aims to retake the land they say was expropriated when Queen Elizabeth I expelled native black Jacobites from England in the 1590s.

The trio in Jedburgh hope to add to their numbers by bringing other supposedly lost tribes back to their purported ancestral homeland."

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Ginger root and meteorite dust: the Steiner ‘Covid cures’ offered in Germany

The movement best known for its schools is firmly entrenched within the German health sector


Rudolf Steiner’s followers practise a therapeutic exercise called Eurythmy in 1931.



Philip Oltermann in Berlin
Guardian
January 1, 2021


In a pandemic where global leaders have peddled quack treatments and miracle cures, Germany has often stood out as a shining beacon for science.

It is the country that developed the first diagnostic test to detect the coronavirus, and the first vaccine approved in the west to shield people against the disease. It is a country whose physicist chancellor told parliament she passionately believes “there are scientific findings that are real and should be followed.”

But Germany is also a country where some people who fall severely ill with Covid-19 can find themselves taken to hospitals where they are treated, under sedation and without a formalised opt-in procedure, with ginger-soaked chest compresses and homeopathic pellets containing highly diluted particles of iron supposedly harvested from shooting stars that have landed on earth.

Followers of the “spiritual scientist” and self-proclaimed clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner advocate such therapies to fight the coronavirus because of a supposed “anxiety-relieving effect on the soul and the body” and ability to “strengthen the inner relationship to light”.

There are no peer-reviewed studies or clinical trials proving the effectiveness of these remedies, and they are not included in the official treatment guidelines issued by Germany’s leading intensive care associations.

Yet in Germany some of these therapies have been given to critically ill patients throughout the pandemic at Steiner hospitals such as Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe, one of a network of 16 clinics in Berlin offering intensive care to Covid-19 patients under the oversight of the prestigious Charité university hospital.

The country’s public health insurance companies, which are part-financed by German taxpayers, have duly picked up the tab via flat-rate payments for hospital treatment of coronavirus patients.

However, public acceptance of the movement and its philosophies is facing renewed scrutiny after a year in which Germans have seen followers of the Steiner philosophy march alongside anti-vaxxers and the far right in protest at the government’s measures against coronavirus.

Best known outside Germany for the left-leaning schools focused on self-directed play with wooden toys, Steinerism started out as a multi-disciplinary spiritualist philosophy in the late 19th century.

Born in 1861 as a citizen of the Austrian empire, Steiner claimed to have access to higher spiritual planes that gave him insights into reincarnation, links between cosmic bodies and plant growth, and evolutionary history, including the years of Jesus’s life not covered by the Bible and the sunken continent of Atlantis.

By the time of his death in 1925, Steiner had applied his philosophy to a wide array of subjects, including education, architecture, agriculture, dance and medicine.

In the 21st century, anthroposophy remains a minority movement, albeit one that enjoys a high level of social acceptance and institutional support in German-speaking countries. In Germany, there are more than 200 schools, more than 500 nurseries and 263 institutions for people with mental disabilities that follow Steiner’s philosophy. The country’s highest grossing drugstore chain, dm-drogerie markt, and second-largest chain of organic supermarkets, Alnatura, are both run by self-professed anthroposophists, and cosmetic products made by Steiner-devoted brands like Weleda and Dr Hauschka are not only for sale in German pharmacies but are also enjoying a global boom.

While the number of employees working at these institutions and businesses who take Steiner’s philosophy at face value is likely to be low and dwindling, the movement has carved out a steady presence in German public life.

“In some ways anthroposophy is a German success story”, said Helmut Zander, a historian of religion who has written books critical of the Steiner movement. “It hits a nerve that our society has for a long time ignored. Organic farming has gone mainstream over the last decade – Steinerists have done it since the 1960s.”

Steiner’s belief in illnesses as rites of passage that are necessary to purge spiritual imbalances is starkly at odds with the basic foundations of modern science. And yet anthroposophy has made considerable inroads into a public-private healthcare system that puts stress on consumer choice.

There are no fewer than 10 Steiner hospitals in Germany, and anthroposophic medicine is tolerated by German law as a “special therapeutic form”, meaning remedies can be approved for use without external proof of their effectiveness. As recently as 2019, the conservative health minister Jens Spahn chose not to remove homeopathic remedies prescribed by Steiner clinics from the list of treatments covered by public heath insurers.

But the pandemic is testing the German tolerance of Steiner esotericism in more ways than one. “Anthroposophy claims to have access to secret, higher knowledge,” said Zander. “There’s a proximity to the mindset of conspiracy theorists, even if the number of Steinerists who are that way inclined is probably small”.

Oliver Rautenberg, whose critical blog on the subject has found a wider readership in the pandemic, agrees: “There is a widespread conspiracy mindset in the Steiner community. Anthroposophy has long been one of the most influential esoteric movements in Germany. But most people know surprisingly little about it”.

The application of anthroposophic remedies on sedated coronavirus patients has also stretched the definition of alternative treatments as a matter of personal choice.

Berlin’s Charité university hospital, which is in charge of allocating people with severe coronavirus infections around the city, said it was in most cases “not able to offer intensive care patients the freedom of choice” of where they are being treated.

When asked how the hospital obtained patients’ consent for alternative adjunct therapies when they were sedated or in a serious condition, a spokesperson for Havelhöhe hospital said: “Relatives are informed of the therapeutic methods.”

The hospital did not reply after being asked on three separate occasions to explain in writing how its opt-in procedure worked or whether patients were made aware of the lack of proof of the treatment’s effectiveness.

The clinic insisted that the alternative remedies it used were “adjunct therapies” that complement conventional treatments. Common remedies used at the three German Steiner hospitals that have treated coronavirus patients over the last year – Havelhöhe, Stuttgart’s Filderklinik and Herdecke in the Ruhr valley – were first advocated in a March article in the medical journal published by the Steiner movement’s global centre in Dornach, Switzerland, an expressionist congress hall with not a single right angle.

They include moist chest compresses with powdered ginger root, mustard flour or yarrow tea, as well as “potentized phosphorus and correspondingly potentized meteoritic iron” in the form of homeopathic pellets. Wala, a manufacturer based in Germany, told the Observer its pellets, which have also been widely prescribed as a preventative for Covid-19 at Steiner care homes for disabled people, contain ground-down remnants of meteorites that haven’t fully burnt up after entering the earth’s atmosphere.

A Havelhöhe spokesperson said there were no scientific studies proving that these remedies worked, and there had not been enough time to carry out trials. “But we noticed that they do the people good.”

The author of the article advocating the remedies, Georg Soldner, a Munich paediatrician, said field reports on the effect of meteoric iron had been published in the Vadecum of Anthroposophic Medicines, a handbook that is also published by the Dornach centre.

Edzard Ernst, a former professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, told the Observer when shown a list of remedies used at Steiner hospitals: “None of the remedies listed have been shown to be effective for any condition. Most are highly diluted and therefore utterly implausible. Postulating that any of them are effective against Covid-19 is, in my view, highly irresponsible.”

German Steiner hospitals have been transparent about their use of alternative therapies in the fight against the pandemic. In an October 2020 interview with the anthroposophic magazine Erziehungskunst, Havelhöhe’s clinical director, Harald Matthes, claimed that his hospital’s approach had been so successful that no patients with Covid-19 had died on its ward so far.

Havelhöhe reiterated the claim to the Observer in an email, stating that the clinic had seen a 12.4% fatality rate for patients with Covid-19, almost half of the national German average of 24%. Out of 145 patients, the hospital said on 10 December 2020, 88 had recovered and 18 died.

Such boasts are met with irritation within Germany’s medical community. Berlin’s Charité stresses that “the most severe cases” of coronavirus infections in the city are being treated in its own hospital – a fact that is more likely to explain Havelhöhe’s low fatality rate than its use of alternative remedies.

“To make such claims in the middle of a pandemic is highly unprofessional and risks causing uncertainty among patients,” said Stefan Kluge, director of intensive care medicine at Hamburg’s University Medical Centre. “The case fatality rate in any individual hospital is always dependent on the seriousness of patients’ conditions when they arrive there”.

Kluge urged Havelhöhe to carry out clinical trials proving the efficiency of their methods, such as his own hospital had managed to do between March and December last year.

Some historians are not surprised by the Steiner movement’s self-assertive stance in the midst of a pandemic. Robert Jütte, a historian of medicine, likened the current situation to the cholera epidemic of the 1830s that gave rise to the homeopathy movement.

“Throughout history, we can detect a pattern”, he said. “Whenever academic medicine is poking around in the dark, alternative therapies rise to the top”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/10/ginger-root-and-meteorite-dust-the-steiner-covid-cures-offered-in-germany

CultNEWS101 Articles: 10/1/2019

Film, Former Extremist, Waldorf School, Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy

Deadline: Director Zaida Bergroth On Cult Drama 'Maria's Paradise': "The Idea Was To Concentrate On The Love And Power" - Toronto Studio

"There were quite a few films about cults at this year's TIFF, and one of the more provocative meditations on human manipulation came from Finland. Titled Maria's Paradise, Zaida Bergroth's film was inspired by the true story of Maria Åkerblom, who ran a cult in rural Finland that caused a major scandal back in the 1920s.

'I got extremely intrigued by this main character, Maria Åkerblom," Bergroth told us when she came to the Deadline studio with her cast. "She lived in Finland in [the] 1920s, she was a leader of a Christian cult, and she was extremely charismatic, but she had a very dark side to her. After that, we started to write the script and explore her character, and then we came up with a story about Maria and her favorite girl follower, Salome, a young teenager who absolutely adored her, and didn't see anything negative about her actions. It was their relationship that really intrigued me.'"

The Atlantic: The Former Extremists Trying to Fight Extremism

" ... Deradicalization and counter-extremism programs, especially those involving former extremists, are relatively new in the United States, but they have a longer history in Europe, according to Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism, who helped recruit Morton to work there as a researcher. The U.K.'s Quilliam—which describes itself as "the world's first counter-extremism organization"—was founded as a think tank in 2007 by three British former radical Islamists.

The Obama administration launched its own "countering violent extremism" initiative in 2011, with a variety of programs aimed at helping local law enforcement share information, do community outreach, and try to prevent attacks. The program was always a target for criticism, ranging from complaints about underfunding to accusations that it unfairly focused on and stigmatized Muslim communities. Right-wing extremism, moreover, was not a top priority then, and one organization dedicated to countering it got some funding under Obama but saw it lapse under Trump.

But there wasn't a systematic effort to recruit formers into that project early on. Vidino had observed the European experience and thought such a strategy might be useful in the United States, though he told me he was aware of 'some of the issues.'"

NDR: SWR-Doku: Author's proximity to Waldorf schools

(Google Translation)

Too close to the Waldorf school world?

" ... Because Esther Saoub was the author of a contribution in the Tagesthemen, which dedicated itself to the 100-year existence of the first Waldorf schools in Germany.  She is also the author of the 45-minute SWR documentary "Waldorf global - a school goes around the world", which is still in the ARD-Mediathekto see is . And: Esther Saoub was a Waldorf student herself, her children attend a Waldorf school, she is a board member of the school association of the "Waldorf School Uhlandshöhe", she appears on podiums of the Waldorf school celebrations and she was supposed to moderate the festive event last weekend. In short: Ms. Saoub seems to be closely associated with the Waldorf world. Should someone write reports on the topic for public media?

Is surprised that Esther Saoub has made the documentary about Waldorf schools: Volker Lilienthal, Professor of "Practice of quality journalism" at the University of Hamburg.

"No," says Professor Volker Lilienthal, the chair of the "Practice of Quality Journalism" at the University of Hamburg: "The fact that Esther Saoub herself appears as a writer, I'm very surprised." The author Saoub is indeed socialized in public service broadcasting, she knows the professional standards, she would have had to do without herself. " The contribution in the Tagesthemen was "an advertisement for the Waldorf schools," wrote the Humanistic Press Service (HPD).

Criticism of the Waldorf schools in 45 minutes documentation? None. Of course, there would be a lot of criticism about Rudolf Steiner, the founder of reform education. His statements on racial issues and Judaism have been widely criticized. Sure, such racial stereotypes were prevalent in their day, but they did not show up in 45 minutes of filming. A subordinate sentence in the film touches on this criticism marginally: "The Waldorf schools explicitly distanced themselves from its partly nationalist positions in the Stuttgart Declaration in 2007". More criticism is not found in Saoub's films."

BBC: Why are Steiner schools so controversial?

" ... Rudolf Steiner, the intellectual father of Steiner schools.

The Austrian-born #occultist, who died in 1925, left a vast body of work covering everything from biodynamic farming to alternative medicine.

It is known, collectively, as "anthroposophy".

The SWSF's guidelines from 2011 said that schools using the #Steiner name were obliged to prove "an anthroposophical impulse lies at the heart of planning for the school".

Since 2013, this has been made vaguer: they now need a commitment to "the fundamental principles of Waldorf education".

Those ideas are based in a belief in reincarnation.

Pupils may not have been sold this creed, but Steiner was very strict that teachers were not supposed to pass them on to children - just to act on them.

So, for example, the Steiner curriculum's focus on a late start to learning is driven by the pace at which souls incarnate.

An odd rationale, but not a very worrying result. Other consequences, however, are potentially more troubling.

For example, Steiner himself believed illnesses in our current lives could be explained by problems in the previous ones.

And in overcoming illnesses with a root in a previous life, individuals could gain "reinforced power" and improve their "karma".

Vaccination, in effect, gets in the way.

'Unvaccinated populations'

That may help explain the Steiner school attitude to vaccination.

The schools state that they have no formal policies and parents must choose for themselves.

But children in Steiner schools are less likely to get their jabs.

The Health Protection Agency - before its recent abolition - used to note that Steiner schools ought to be considered "unvaccinated populations" for measles.

Related ideas of the benefits of overcoming adversity emerge elsewhere.

The DfE memos report a complaint that a teacher allowed violence among children for karmic reasons, and cites teacher training resources that are sympathetic to this idea.

This karmic belief set also has a racial element.

As we reported last week, Steiner was, by any modern definition, a racist.

'Hierarchy in races'

He thought black people were distinguished by an "instinctual life", as opposed to Caucasians' "intellectual life".

He believed each race had a geographical location where they should live - black people in Europe were "a nuisance".

There was also a hierarchy in races; a soul with good karma could hope to be reincarnated into a race which is higher up in the hierarchy, Steiner argued.

The SWSF says: "While the superficial reading of a handful of Steiner's voluminous, extensive lectures present statements that appear racist in modern terms, none of these occur in his educational writings."

But some of these ideas have polluted some Steiner schools.

The SWSF was "horrified" by our report on a diversity training day at a private Steiner school, which had been triggered by a real issue around racism.

Four white teachers, asked to tick a box giving their ethnicity, ticked every box.

They believed that they had ascended through all the races.

Some Steiner schools also teach about the lost continent of Atlantis - a myth that, to Steiner, explained the origins of the hierarchy of the races."

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Steiner schools celebrate hundredth anniversary with emphasis on internationalization

Religion Watch
Volume 34 No. 4

While the schools and educational movement inspired by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) first spread in German-speaking countries and then in other areas of the Western world, they are now present in other cultural surroundings as well. But the success of Steiner’s educational principles at the 100th anniversary of the first school’s founding may also lead to a dilution of the specific Anthroposophical legacy he pioneered, writes Kai Funkschmidt in the EZW Newsletter (January). For a century, Anthroposophy, which considers itself an esoteric “spiritual science,” has met with significant success in developing initiatives that would have a wider impact on society, far beyond the ranks of the Anthroposophical Society and related organizations. One could mention biodynamic farming and Demeter products, Anthroposophic medicine and Weleda products, trends in arts or architecture, as well as the significant role played by Steiner’s impulse in alternative educational fields with the network of Steiner schools (also called Waldorf schools). All are seen as “applied Anthroposophy.”

While the German schools were closed by the Nazi regime, activities resumed after WWII. Today, one percent of all German pupils are enrolled in a Steiner school, with 90,000 children and teenagers enrolled in 245 schools. The global spread of the schools has been striking in recent decades. The first school in America opened as early as 1928 in New York City, but it was only in the second half of the 20th century that the global spread of Steiner’s educational system increased markedly, and even more so in recent decades, with 1,100 schools and 2,000 kindergartens currently established in some 80 countries, according to the movement’s own statistics. Each school is formally independent and the result of a local initiative, with associations playing a coordinating role. However, all schools remain based on the worldview and specific educational instructions provided by Rudolf Steiner. However, Funkschmidt observes that the noticeable presence of the Anthroposophical approach varies from one school to another. From time to time, some Anthroposophical periodicals have been asking for a stronger emphasis on Steiner’s legacy and the Anthroposophical ethos in the schools.

(EZW-Newsletter is a free newsletter in German sent once a month: https://www.ezw-berlin.de/html/103.php; a website has been launched for celebrating the Steiner school anniversary and includes a two-part documentary movie on the schools around the world: https://www.waldorf-100.org/en/)

http://www.religionwatch.com/steiner-schools-celebrate-hundredth-anniversary-with-emphasis-on-internationalization/

Exclusive: Top Steiner school ordered to close by Government over child safety fears

Camilla Turner, education editor
Telegraph News
September 2, 2017

Britain’s flagship Steiner school has been ordered to close amid fears over child safety, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

The Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley had already been banned by the Department for Education (DfE) from admitting any new pupils, following a series of damning Ofsted inspections which uncovered a raft of safeguarding failings.

It comes after Denis McCarthy, a senior staff member who was also a leading figure in the UK’s Steiner school movement, was sacked from the school for gross misconduct.

“He was a senior figure in anthroposophy,” a source close to the school told The Sunday Telegraph. “He was the most powerful person in the school, he had a large following.

“The school did everything that they could to protect him: minimising or dismissing concerns, and deleting safeguarding emails."

The development raises questions about the 34 other Steiner schools in the UK and Ireland, which includes four state funded Steiner academies.

Steiner schools, which are favoured by liberally-minded middle-class parents, base their curriculum on the spiritual philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, called anthroposophy.

A Steiner education emphasises child creativity and the importance of rearing “free thinking individuals”. Actor Mark Rylance sent his daughter Nataasha van Kampen, the filmaker who died in 2012, to a Steiner school in Crouch End, London.

Friends star Jennifer Aniston told Vogue magazine how the Steiner school she attended in America did not allow her to watch television, but she was allowed to go to the theatre.

The Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley charges up to £9,570-a-year in fees and is set on ten acres of grounds on the site of a 13th-century Plantagenet royal palace in Hertfordshire.

The school has issued a public apology to children and their families for “real and serious failings going back several years”, acknowledging that it failed to act on “repeated concerns raised by parents” over safeguarding.

The school was notified in July of the Secretary of State for Education’s intention to remove it from the independent schools’ register, a decision which the school is now appealing. 

The drastic move, which is only used as a last resort by ministers, follows a spate of highly critical inspections over the past 18 months.

Parental concerns about pupil welfare triggered an an emergency inspection last March by the School Inspectorate Service (SIS), which inspect private schools, after which the DfE ordered Ofsted  to take over.

Following the inspection, a school newsletter described school inspectors as “aliens” and told parents that there was much “shuffling of feet” when inspectors asked to speak to the school’s head. 

Steiner schools do not typically have a headteacher, but rather are run by a committee or group of teachers. In November Ofsted inspectors found “serious weaknesses in the school’s management of safeguarding”.

They added that “several” of the 39 formal complaints received from parents from the previous school year alone related to safeguarding.

Inspectors said that “serious allegations of a child protection nature” were already being investigated by other authorities.

In December Ofsted said the school must “urgently” addresses weaknesses in its management of safeguarding issue.

An inspection earlier this year found a series of underlying flaws. “Leaders have failed to identify that the culture of close relationships at the school puts pupils at risk,” inspectors said.

“Leaders have underplayed and misrepresented the school’s safeguarding failings to parents”. The school confirmed that one teacher, Mr McCarthy, had been dismissed in January for gross misconduct “following a series of concerns about safeguarding and SEND [special education needs and disability] provision, reluctance to follow management guidance and a breakdown of trust and confidence”.

Mr McCarthy had taught at the school for 35 years and was in charge of training teachers. He rose to the role of  “Chair of the College of Staff”, meaning he was accountable to the chair of trustees on behalf of staff, and was responsible for ensuring that the school was run in accordance with the educational principles inspired by Rudolf Steiner.

He was also a senior figure in the Steiner school movement, and had served as a  director of the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, which runs all 35 Steiner schools in the UK and Ireland. 

Now he advertises his services online for "Waldorf inspired home schooling”.

Richy Thompson, director of public Affairs and policy at Humanists UK, said that  child welfare issues at other Steiner schools must  be examined.

“For years now we have been aware of concerns about inadequate safeguarding at Steiner schools, including at Kings Langley,” he said.

“We are glad that these concerns are now being taken seriously and hope that other schools similarly come under closer scrutiny.”

Georgina Halford-Hall, chief executive of Whistleblowers UK, said: "The regulators and statutory bodies involved in this matter have missed many opportunities to protect children.

"We have supported whistleblowers at this school.

"They have been confronted with the determination of an organisation to put the protection of its reputation above its safeguarding responsibilities. We welcome the long over due apology issued by the school to them.”

The school’s newly appointed Principal, Tim Byford, said in a statement on the school’s website: “The School and leadership wishes to fully and publicly apologise to those children, and their families, to whom the school failed to provide a safe and supportive learning environment.”

He added: "The new leadership of the School is putting into effect a strategy to address all of the issues identified by Ofsted and others, working closely with parents, staff and all stakeholders.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “All independent schools must meet the Independent School Standards and those that fail to do so must improve or face closure.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/02/exclusive-top-steiner-school-ordered-close-government-child/

Steiner schools have some questionable lessons for today's children

With their free and easy philosophy, parents for years saw Steiner schools as a serious alternative to mainstream education. But, as Lee Williams reports, some have discovered a more sinister side to the lessons being taught


Independent
Lee Williams
November 8, 2016

  

With its beautiful grounds and emphasis on creativity and imagination, the new school seemed perfect for Lottie Antwi’s daughter. Eleven-year-old Sarah had a talent for performing arts, one of the reasons the Steiner school in Hertfordshire with its huge theatre looked so appealing. At first Sarah enjoyed herself and seemed to be thriving in the environment. It wasn’t until half a term later that the problems began. “They got a new teacher who was, basically, not well,” says Lottie.

“He got them to look up swear words one day and just said, ‘Oh look I’ve found c***!’” Sarah also complained that the new teacher – drafted in from another Steiner school – hurt the children when shaking their hands in the mornings and told them stories involving decapitations and other disturbing details. Following several complaints, the new teacher was dismissed after just eight weeks. The Antwis were prepared to put the incident down to a single bad teacher and continued with their daughter’s Steiner education. It wasn’t until Sarah’s second year that things started to go badly downhill. “Her teacher read out a poem,” says Lottie, “and it said, ‘The little boy had so much chocolate on his mouth he looked like a nigger’.”

As a mixed-race couple, the Antwis were incensed. They demanded a meeting about the incident but the teacher showed little remorse and the school made no attempt to discipline the individual concerned. “It was very odd. In a state school I don’t think that would happen,” says Lottie. “The teacher wasn’t suspended, nothing. They just said the teacher was getting training for it, but I don't think it was proper training, just normal class training.”

Baffled by the school’s response, Lottie Googled "Steiner school racism" at home that night and was stunned by the result. “All this stuff came flooding out of my computer, ” she recalls, “that they believe in reincarnation through the races with white people at the top. I read for four hours and literally cried, thinking where is our child at school?” The Antwis removed their daughter from the school as soon as possible.

Mother of three, Belle Jackson, sent her children to a Steiner school in the Midlands for similar reasons to the Antwis. Belle was attracted by the lack of academic pressure at Steiner schools, where reading and writing aren’t taught directly until the age of six and emphasis is placed on experiential, arts-based learning. Belle’s two sons enjoyed their time at the school but daughter Joanna suffered problems. Joanna was excluded by others in her class and subject to bullying and name calling. The problems escalated when Joanna’s father picked her up after school and found her soaking wet. “The children had been playing in a wheelbarrow by a stream,” says Belle, “and they tipped her into the stream. There were no teachers watching. They hadn’t cleaned her up or dried her off and when my husband spoke to the teacher she simply said, ‘Oh, she asked for it’. ”

The school had no bullying policies in place, according to Belle, and the children were left unsupervised at playtime. “It was incredible that no teachers were there to look after her, ” she says. “They believe it’s the karma of the child and the child has to work through it themselves.”

Karma and reincarnation were just two of the beliefs held by Steiner education founder, Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher and occultist who started the first school in Stuttgart in 1919. Steiner’s educational system was based on his spiritual philosophy, anthroposophy, which blended religious ideas from the Far East with aspects of Christianity, zoroastrianism and gnosticism.

Steiner’s approach to education was founded on the use of imagination, creativity and practical learning, with a spiritual theme running through all subjects, including even maths and science. He incorporated elements of dance and physical expression – so-called eurythmy – into his lessons, which were thought to help the students’ personal and spiritual development. And he believed that analytic thinking and academic learning were unsuitable, even dangerous, for younger children.

Today there are more than 1,000 Steiner schools in over 60 countries, making it one of the biggest independent school systems internationally. Yet Steiner schools have faced continuing controversy over some of the ideas of their founder. One of these is the claim that Steiner believed in so-called reincarnation through the races, where the souls of humans evolve through a hierarchy of races culminating in white Europeans. Steiner’s dubious theories on race were witnessed first-hand by one prospective parent, Dan Dugan, during an open day at a Steiner school in San Francisco. Dugan wandered into the school’s bookshop where he found a text on health and illness.

“I dipped into a Rudolf Steiner lecture from 1922,” says Dugan, “where he was talking about how intelligence naturally comes from blond hair and blue eyes. I thought, oh God, this is the foundations of the Holocaust.” Shocked, Dugan approached a teacher who told him that none of Steiner’s beliefs were taught at the school, only his educational methods. Dugan allowed himself to be persuaded, he says, because he was so “blown away” by the beauty of the school and impressed with its arts-based curriculum.

Dugan enrolled his son. But the doubts soon returned when he attended a chemistry demonstration lesson. He found that it wasn’t really a science lesson at all but a spiritual philosophy about heat and light. On another occasion an anthroposophist physician gave a guest lecture which Dugan describes as “pure quackery”. He decided to voice his concerns to prospective parents at an open day and then at a meeting with teachers. During the meeting Dugan says he was told: “You don’t have to believe what we believe but you can’t complain about it in front of other parents.”

He decided to pull his son out of the school. Since then Dugan has become secretary of the Parents for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools (PLANS) in the US, where he has amassed a wealth of literature on Steiner education and anthroposophy. According to Dugan, Steiner schools teach pseudo-history, with much of the curriculum taken up with Bible stories, lives of the saints and Greek, Roman and Norse mythology. Science is also not mainstream, but so-called Goethian science, based on observation without theory. “Some of the lessons are just crazy, ” says Dugan, “like the way they teach about colour. They believe that white light is not composed of colours mixed together. They believe white light is pure spirit.”

Other bizarre theories mean younger children aren’t allowed to draw pictures with pencils or pointed crayons because straight lines are thought to harm their development. Likewise, computers and all forms of media are shunned until later stages of development, at home as well as at school. These forms of media are thought to embody “a materialistic spirit named Ahriman, who alienates the human being from his spiritual roots,” according to an ex-Steiner teacher who blogs about her experiences online.

According to this teacher, children at her school were taught that there are just four elements and that the continents are islands floating on the ocean. Elemental spirits like gnomes were invoked to explain things such as the working of a fax machine, to deflect children from ‘'dangerous'' analytical thinking. And the lack of supervision at playtime was explained by the fact that “angels watched over the children”.

When she tried to explain conflict resolution skills to a group of children repeatedly pushing a child off a tree stump, she was reprimanded by other teachers and told that the children were “working through things and needed to be left alone”. Overall she warns parents to be careful of Steiner schools which, she claims, definitely pass on the ideas of their founder.

Kevin Avison, senior advisor for the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship in the UK and Ireland, denies that bullying is tolerated in Steiner schools or that children are left unsupervised at playtimes. He points out that Steiner establishments are inspected just like other schools and that they would be shut down if such practices were allowed. He also calls the claim of belief in reincarnation through the races “a complete and utter misunderstanding” of Steiner’s teachings. Steiner was, according to Avison, talking about a time “long, long before humans were around. He certainly wasn’t talking about it in modern terms.”

Avison further points out that the only school in Apartheid South Africa that allowed black children to study alongside whites was a Steiner establishment. But Avison does admit that Steiner education has its problems and can attract the wrong sort of teacher. “I really feel upset sometimes that our schools aren’t doing better than they are,” he says, “and in many respects these parents have very good points. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing otherwise.”

But for many parents like Belle Jackson, this comes too late. She feels that Steiner schools should be open from the start about the ideas behind the education and what children will be exposed to. “The thing that worries me most about my experiences,” says Belle, ” is that they didn’t tell us the truth of what it was going to be like. If I had to do it all over again, I certainly wouldn’t. ”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/steiner-schools-have-some-questionable-lessons-for-todays-children-a7402911.html