Partnerships of Hope: Building Waldorf School Communities

By Christopher Schaefer, PhD. AWSNA Publications, 2012, 208 pgs.

Review by Jean W. Yeager.

I wish Chris had written this book 30 years ago when I first came across the work of Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf education. I was self-employed and working in advertising and marketing, raising three small kids, and new to Waldorf. This is just the sort of book I would have read with great relish and interest because it gives a broad context to many things that Waldorf and anthroposophy can “get you into.”

The book could be a portal, a bridge from practical, corporate, business life to a new understanding of organizational/social life that is just as practical, but somehow involves the heart in a way you didn’t know was possible.

On the one hand, this is a very practical book. I found myself reading certain chapters because I am busy with several nonprofits, each of which is at the moment in some state of change, crisis, or transformation. Anyone involved in the practical life of schools, business, and enterprises of all sorts will find very helpful and stimulating insights here. I found an exercise for small groups that I used a few days after having read it. Good stuff.

On the other hand, it is a very uplifting and motivating book. After all, the title is Partnerships of Hope. Chris’s examples are drawn from more than 40 years’ experience consulting with businesses and nonprofits, and advising Waldorf schools at every stage: as new initiatives, struggling enterprises, community engines; in the crises of maturation, and even in some desperate situations filled with conflict, strife, and hard feelings. The kind of “hope” Chris writes about is nothing “airy-fairy,” but is hard won. You can trust it.

This book is also a compilation of Rudolf Steiner’s “social development thinking”; you’ll find everything on that subject covered here except economics and the threefold social order. The beauty of a book from a researcher and academic like Chris is that the references provided in the bibliography and endnotes are a not-to-be-overlooked treasure in their own right.

If you are not entirely familiar with anthroposophy, this book will help you make your way from the very practical to the very esoteric. As I said, Partnerships of Hope is something of a portal from the practical life into the social mysteries that are our challenge in this era, and a reminder that two quite different worlds, that of the truly practical life and that of the spirit, can come together in us. One of his final chapters, on the “Mysteries,” is well worth several reads. You might even find that one or two of the topics Chris introduces prompt a desire for more information and a bit of research. I hope so!