Advent Study 6
Tradition, Renewal, and the Courage to Discern
On this Fourth Sunday of Advent, I find myself pausing in my own teaching and asking: what am I holding onto, and what am I letting go of — in my classroom, in my practice, and in the lives of the children I see each day?
Tradition has become an uncomfortable word in parts of Waldorf education. Increasingly, it is spoken of as something embarrassing — a collection of empty habits that must be cleared away so that something “new” can take their place. I see this happening, and it makes me pause.
This framing is not only careless; it is pedagogically dangerous.
Children do not thrive on constant novelty. They thrive on rhythm, repetition, and recognition. Steiner was unequivocal about this: what returns, what is familiar, builds the inner ground from which freedom later emerges. To strip education of tradition in the name of progress is to misunderstand both child development and the spiritual foundations of Waldorf education.
Of course, not all traditions deserve preservation. I have had to let go of certain practices that no longer served the children but there is a profound difference between discernment and destruction. Too often, critique is offered without responsibility for what is lost in the process.
I have repeatedly been told that long experience counts for little if it does not produce something new. This reveals the real problem: novelty has quietly been elevated to a moral virtue. In my own work, I have seen the opposite: small, steady practices — repeated, observed, and refined — shape the children more than any flashy “novel” approach. Practices are abandoned not because they fail the child, but because they are insufficiently original.
Steiner warned directly against this impulse:
“It is a serious error to believe that education must always be inventing something new. What matters is not novelty, but whether what we bring to the child is alive and inwardly true.”
Waldorf education was never meant to be preserved unchanged — but neither was it meant to be endlessly reinvented to satisfy individual egos, institutional trends, or marketable innovations.
Living tradition requires far more effort than disruption: it demands study, meditation, observation, and the humility to let experience temper enthusiasm.
I have tried to live by this in my teaching. Some materials I once insisted on using had to be replaced — not because tradition demanded it, but because the children’s needs required it. Wax crayons gave way to pencils for writing. Modelling wax gave way to plasticine in a cold classroom. The tradition was not lost; it was renewed in service of the children.
When former pupils return to Waldorf schools as parents, they are not seeking novelty. They are seeking meaning. To dismiss this longing is not progressive — it is forgetful.
For me, the question is not whether traditions are old or new. It’s which ones I have the courage to keep alive — and I wonder: which ones are you keeping in your own classrooms, homes, or hearts today on this fourth Advent Sunday?