I visited one briefly, as a guest-student, somewhere around third or fourth grade. I remember it as one of my more bizarre educational experiences, but who knows how much of that "oneiric" atmosphere is just because I was so young and it was so short that I didn't really have enough time to get used to the school and develop "familiarity" with it, so maybe it made a stronger impression on me than it should have.

Overall, the children were actually surprisingly normal - NOT illiterates who couldn't even learn times tables, as a popular rumor had it - although there was something "eery" in the air. The place was not very school-like, and the activities I remember doing were way lopsided in the areas of arts, crafts, and practical skills, with a whole slew of subjects-not-subjects, such as gardening and woodwork (the latter I didn't actually do, it was for a bit older kids), and a weird PE-not-PE that consisted in some sort of dance and rhythmical activities.

Arts and crafts were also preferred approaches through which the children learned "academic proper" areas. They actually made their own books. I presume that the older children did, at some point, use some "real" textbooks, but I don't actually remember any from "my" classroom. I just remember big colorful notebooks with lots of unrelated pictures (masterfully drawn - many children were really good at it, I felt a bit out of touch with what was going on) - for example, a deer drawn in a math notebook next to problems (not even word problems, just numbers and... a deer). To this day I have no idea what that was about. In any case, there was lots of drawing and painting, whether casual in "academic" subjects, or for its own purpose in some of their "extra" subjects.

The other children did tell me some weird things, such as that they didn't actually learn to read right in the first grade but waited for the third (I think? but in any case, when I was there, they were already literate). Or that they couldn't paint with some specific colors, or whatever. Not sure what that was about, either. But in any case, I don't remember being taught anything that unusual, only being under the impression that the school wasn't school-ish, it was as if we did extracurriculars the whole time, and we were outside a lot. I wasn't taught any mysticism or anything like that.

When I got a bit older and asked my parents what on Earth that episode was about, what kind of school that was, I learned the word "anthroposophy" and Steiner's name, but they also told me that, to their knowledge, few people if any were taking any of that seriously. According to them, the school was mostly for children of various hippies who liked it for its pedagogical approach, as well as for many parents who specifically sent there children who were a bit "odd" - still mainstream enough for a mainstream school, but sort of needed extra time/attention of the kind that was normal there, especially if they were overall a bit behind, so the parents wanted them in a "less academic, more hands-on" school, but that still covered all of the mandatory curriculum.

The school that I "went" to (I feel awkward putting it that way, because I wasn't "really" a student there, probably not even formally registered during my stay - it was a short stay in another city, I think my parents had some business to do there and instead of arranging where I would stay and who was going to take care of me while they were away, they just took me with them, I guess they knew somebody who could "insert" me in that school as a guest during the day while they do their stuff) was elementary and middle school. After that, the kids went to "normal" high schools, there was no Waldorf high school. I heard of a few stories of perfectly normal, painless transitions, but it seemed that most transitions had some element of extra difficulty to it. I guess that it must have been a bit of a shock to leave that "oneiric", hands-on, slow-motion environment in favor of an actual academics-oriented school.

To wrap this up - no idea why I just shared all of that - it's certainly not an educational choice I see myself making for my children, as I'm far too academic-minded for such experiments, but the whole "mystical" element to it is probably highly overstated. I do think it's concerning if children are receiving education of poorer academic quality due to all of that focus on the extras, but I don't know if that's always the case.

How any of that has anything to do with feminism, though, is beyond me.