(From the Website for the Salaam Shalom Educational Foundation)
 
The first Waldorf School opened its doors in September 1919 in Stuttgart, Germany, under the sponsorship of the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company. The director of the company sought to provide a new kind of education for the children of the factory workers -- a comprehensive and highly cultural education that would help them to become creative and balanced individuals in the fullest sense. This new kind of education was to work towards cultural renewal as an antidote to the despair gripping Central Europe and its young people in the aftermath of World War I.

The first Waldorf School was revolutionary for its time -- open to children from all social, religious, and economic backgrounds, and co-educational. By 1928 it had grown to become the largest non-denominational school in Germany, serving as a model for other Waldorf Schools in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, England, and the United States.

With the rise to power of Hitler's government, a life and death struggle began for the German Waldorf Schools. There was continuous harassment, and finally they were closed with the simple explanation that there was no place in Nazi Germany for any school that educated individuals to think for themselves. After World War II, the Waldorf Schools were the first private schools to be opened by the American occupational government for the very reason that they had been closed years before -- their commitment to independent thinking.

Following the war, the Waldorf Schools rapidly spread through Europe, North and South America, to South Africa, Canada, United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Waldorf educators work in refugee camps as well as uptown Manhattan, in the “Favelas” of Sao Paulo as well as Helsinki, in South African townships as well as in young Eastern European democracies, all in order to enable children to acquire the skills required to play an active role in the world. There are now over eight hundred Waldorf (or Steiner) Schools in thirty-five countries and six hundred nursery and kindergarten initiatives

Waldorf education therefore serves to awaken and foster the inherent individuality we all possess. In this way, interest in others’ differences is also promoted. Bridges between individuals and groups are built as a result, which is why Waldorf education is able to form a virtually ideal foundation for multicultural societies.