Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

IntroductionbyJohn H. Wulsin, Jr.In 1997 the Association of Waldorf Schools in North America focusedon America as the theme of its annual conference in Wilton, New Hampshire,at the Pine Hill and High Mowing Waldorf Schools. When there are overeight hundred Waldorf Schools in many parts of the world, what does itmean to be a Waldorf School in America? In 1999 AWSNA focused again onAmerica at the annual conference at the Toronto Waldorf School. That year aresource for study was the newly published edition of Carl Stegmann’s TheOther America. John Gardner’s American Heralds of the Spirit has also givenmany people helpful insights into America. In a conversation with DavidMitchell, the idea arose to collect various articles that had been written onAmerica and to publish them in one volume. Hence, The Riddle of America.Initially, I combed sources familiar to people who had somerelationship to Waldorf education. In time, however, in true Americanfashion, the trails started leading in many directions, such as ThorntonWilder’s Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, 1952, and Edward JamesOlmos’ new book, Americanos, 1999, the first book fully about and by LatinAmericans. Some people were willing to write new articles about particularaspects of America. And, of course, dimensions are missing.The Riddle of America endeavors to explore and reveal what WaltWhitman, in his essay “Democratic Vistas,” calls America’s “nativeexpression-spirit.” This term, original, slightly rough-hewn, neverthelessis the most distilled seed-name I can think of for the subject of this book.I hope all the articles, some implicitly, some explicitly, will shed light onAmerica’s especially mysterious “native expression-spirit.”The Riddle of America begins with three articles exploring the mythicbackground of America. “Oraibi” is the Hopi story of the evolution of thexi