ABSTRACT
Polish reception of Waldorf school was strongly dependent on political circumstances and social moods meandering between openness to the new and conservative fear of the unknown. In the 1980s, the first signs of more favourable times for the return of the Waldorf school to Poland began to appear. This was related to democratic changes, increasing openness to the West, and emerging fashion for New Age, resulting in the occurrence of alternative media covering Waldorf topics. The second section of the chapter—“The liminal times: readaptation of Waldorf at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s”—starts with the emergence of Waldorf schooling in the Polish and German press as well as the similarity in values of Waldorf and other new Polish schools. The chapter then discusses the fears and hopes of the school’s European inclinations and finally focusses on the relations between Waldorf schools and the Polish educational social movement and on its “Solidarity”-oriented identity. The chapter finishes with the section “Becoming an educational alien: Practices of othering Waldorf in Poland,” tackling the crisis of Waldorf schooling caused by the interest of the Catholic Church, distance from the mainstream of educational changes, and other reasons leaving a long shadow on this educational alternative till now.
