ABSTRACT
Since around 1975, Waldorf education has been presented as “one of the established orientations in reform education” in teachers’ colleges or education studies, and it has been seen as a kind of “canonical orientational knowledge for prospective students” that was even integrated into the curriculum of education studies in the German state of North Rhine Westphalia. The inclusion of Waldorf education among the education reform movements suggests itself simply because they emerged around the same time. Rudolf Steiner inaugurated Waldorf education in the summer of 1919, right in the middle of the education reform period that, following its modest beginnings before 1914, found broad reception in the ready-for-change, turbulent times after the First World War. All the educational reformers mentioned, including Rudolf Steiner, belong to this stream that gained particular momentum after the turn of the century. Education reform and Waldorf education also share a high, sometimes even excessive, estimation of education in general and school in particular.
