In addition, the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education has a membership of 23 public Waldorf methods schools in the US. There are also 100 Waldorf Kindergartens that are members of WECAN (Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America).

For a number of decades now, there exists an abundance of published literature, including in English, on Waldorf education, Rudolf Steiner, and anthroposophy as the general philosophical basis of Waldorf education, and much information has also been available for a number of years on the internet.

In spite of this, some people find for various reasons that they have not been informed enough about and understood the nature and basis of Waldorf education, when putting their child or children in a Waldorf school.

This has been a problem especially to some parents with an outspoken secular humanist orientation, who have felt their philosophical world view challenged by Waldorf education, with anthroposophy as its spiritual philosophical basis, and to some parents with a fundamentalist Christian orientation.

Anthroposophy as such, as the philosophical basis for Waldorf education, is not taught in a theoretical sense, nor as a subject, at the overwhelming majority of Waldorf schools world wide.

In spite of this, some people have developed more or less intense, long term negative reaction for different reasons, at times in an obsessive direction. Such people have reacted by cultivating and publishing not only different forms of criticism but also a number of myths about Waldorf education, anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner as the founder of both Waldorf education and anthroposophy.

For a description and comment on some of these myths, see:

SOME MYTHS ABOUT WALDORF EDUCATION

• "Waldorf education methods have not been investigated and are unproven and unsupported by modern research"
• "Waldorf schools teach anthroposophy and want to make the pupils into anthroposophists"
• "Science teaching in Waldorf education is not scientific"
• "Waldorf education is racist"