Waldorf Schools - Steiner Education
Waldorf Education, sometimes called Steiner education, is a world-wide movement based on an educational philosophy formulated by Austrian Rudolf Steiner after World War I. With a goal of educating the "whole child", Waldorf educators place a strong emphasis on balancing the child's natural stages of development with creativity and academic excellence. There is a strong emphasis on the arts, social skills and spiritual values.
Waldorf education is practised in Waldorf schools, homeschools, and special education environments. There are now over 900 Waldorf schools throughout the world including Europe, North & South America, Africa, Australasia and Japan.
The name comes from the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company, in Stuttgart, Germany which was the first institution to host a Waldorf school.
Description
Based on the work of Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf schools employ a curriculum that addresses subjects on three levels:
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the head or the intellect. The education claims to teach the student to think for themselves.
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the Heart. The education's stated aim is to instill a sense of feeling and spirit.
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the hands. Waldorf schools work to involve arts and crafts, everything from paint to coppersmithing.
Often there is an attempt to integrate these three elements into the teaching of all subjects. A conscious effort to build a sense of community and environmental responsibility is fostered at every level, including parents, teachers/staff, students, and alumni. Movement, sport and drama are employed throughout; in fact, a type of body movement called Eurythmy (beautiful or harmonious movement), is taught to every age group.
Further Waldorf Education makes no sharp division between theoretical and practical subjects, the arts and logic subjects like maths etc. Steiner repeatedly emphasized the unification of the three subjects of art, spirituality, and science, since he believed these had a common root in the human expression of culture, as stated in his The Arts and Their Mission lecture from 1923.
Waldorf Schools are co-educational, and predominantly comprehensive. Most are run co-operatively and are self-administered. In both Australia and New Zealand some schools have successfully integrated with the state funded school system, with some adaptation for state prescribed curricula. Most have no school uniform.
The schooling is divided into 3 stages (see Pedagogy below) of Kindergarten (early years to 7), Middle school (7 to 14 ) and Upper school, (14 to 19).
Pedagogy
Steiner developed a 3-stage pedagogical model of child development that is utilized in Waldorf education.
From birth and until approximately the age of 7
The child at this early stage learns through imitation and example, so it is best to surround him with the goodness of the world and caring adults to emulate. Waldorf teachers work to support the amazing physical and spiritual growth the child experiences at this time.
Emphasis is placed on traditional household activities such as cooking, fingerknitting, helping with chores, storytelling, rhyming and movement games. Children are not taught specific academic subjects at this time, including reading and writing, and are sheltered from the media and even stories which include violence.
At approximately age seven, it is believed an initial physical growth stage of the child is completed. Two signals that this stage is complete are the ability to reach over his head to touch the opposite ear, and the change of the teeth. As reprinted from the Foundations of Human Experience, Lecture 9: "...when their change of teeth is complete, it re?ects the conclusion of the development of the head."
After approximately the age of seven, until puberty
Academic instruction is integrated with arts, spirituality, craft and physical activity. As Steiner stated in "The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, "...the child should be laying up in his memory the treasures of thought on which mankind has pondered..."
The curriculum is highly challenging, structured, and creative. In Waldorf schools, one teacher aims to stay with each class as it advances from its first year all the way through to year 8, teaching the main subject lessons. Specialist teachers are utilized for secondary subjects.
After puberty
The child is helped to begin a guided, but independent search for truth in himself and the world around him. As stated in "Education for Adolescents" (1922), "The capacity for forming judgments is blossoming at this time and should be directed toward world-interrelationships in every field."
Instead of having one main teacher who teaches most subjects, the students in high school have many specialist teachers. They begin to grasp concepts and analyze the facts and knowledge they learned in the earlier stages.
Teacher training
Specialist Waldorf education teacher training colleges, based on hundreds of pedagogical lectures Steiner gave, are in operation throughout the world. Spiritual theory based in anthroposophy is still taught to every aspiring Waldorf teacher, though it should be noted that the influence of the spiritual teachings varies greatly among the schools and other educational environments.
Wider Social Purpose
Besides seeking to foster creative development of the "whole child," Steiner also started the Waldorf movement in order to help fulfill a social purpose: that education, while remaining fully accessible and available to all regardless of economic background, should eventually cease to be controlled by the State, and should instead come to depend on the free choices of families and teachers freely developing a highly pluralistic and diverse range of schools and educational options.
Steiner held that where the State administered education, culture was crippled in its ability to impartially distinguish good from bad in state action and in economic life. Without the capacity to make impartial, independently-based critiques, i.e., critiques not controlled by the state and economic interests, society would proceed relatively blindly. He also held that educators whose methods and work were determined by the State often had their competencies and creativity greatly weakened through the lack of full self-responsibility and independence.
Social health, he believed, required education to be a matter of freedom and pluralism, such that teachers and parents should be permitted to make a thousand different educational flowers bloom, and then all families should be enabled to choose freely from the highly diverse and spontaneously evolving range of options. At the same time Steiner was flexible and pragmatic, and understood that compromises with the State would have to be made, and that even in an ideal system a few legal restrictions (such as health and safety laws), provided they were kept to a minimum, would be necessary and justified.
History
Waldorf education was developed by Rudolf Steiner as an attempt to establish a school system that would facilitate the inclusive, broadly based, balanced development of children. His first opportunity to open such a school came when Emil Molt of the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company asked him to do so in 1919 in Stuttgart, Germany. Steiner insisted upon four conditions before opening:
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that the school be open to all children;
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that it be coeducational;
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that it be a unified twelve-year school;
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that the teachers, those individuals actually in contact with the children, have primary control over the pedagogy of the school, with a minimum of interference from the state or from economic sources.
The first year the school was a company school and all teachers were listed as workers at Waldorf Astoria, but beginning with the second year the first school was independent.
Within a few years, many other Waldorf schools modeled on the Stuttgart school opened in other cities. Most of the European schools were closed down by the Nazis but after World War II were reopened. Today (2005) there are over 900 independent Waldorf schools worldwide, including over 150 in the United States, and 31 in the UK and Ireland. There is also a large homeschooling movement utilizing Waldorf pedagogy and methods.
There is a growing Waldorf charter school movement (controversial among Waldorf educators, some of whom believe it is wrong to merge Waldorf with the State and destructive of independent Waldorf schools, which lose funding when some parents opt for the 'free' charter schools. Other Waldorf educators believe the compromise is necessary in order to reach state school students).
Criticism of Steiner education
Waldorf educators are most often questioned about not teaching reading and academics until approximately age 7. Critics claim that a "window" of intellectual opportunity is lost. Proponents cite research, by Piaget and others, which supports the view that early academic learning actually interferes with the development in early childhood of faculties that will enhance later learning capacity. (David Elkind: Early Childhood Education: Developmental or Academic) They maintain that the literacy-building techniques Waldorf schools use during early childhood—storytelling, music and singing, games, speech, and movement exercises—help to nourish imagination and a love of language which will be carried long after the child learns to read.
Waldorf schools have been criticized for their spiritual nature, which many interpret to be religious. Some critics feel that the teachers influence the children with Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science, which most Waldorf teachers study. Some even go as far as to say that the schools are front organizations for indoctrination into Anthroposophy. Supporters respond that in a genuine Waldorf school Anthroposophy is never taught.
In 2005, a UK government-funded study praised the schools' ability to develop students through closer human relationships rather than relying purely on tests, but reported that the state sector could provide guidance to Steiner schools in teacher training and management skills. [1]
Primary sources
Steiner, Rudolf: The Foundations of Human Experience, ISBN 0880103922 - these lectures were given to the teachers just before the opening of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart in 1919.
Steiner, Rudolf: Practical Advice to Teachers , ISBN 0880104678 - also held in Stuttgart in 1919.
Steiner, Rudolf: Discussions with Teachers, ISBN 0880104082
Steiner, Rudolf: Education As a Force for Social Change, ISBN 0880104112
Steiner, Rudolf: The Spirit of the Waldorf School, ISBN 0880103949
Steiner, Rudolf: Rudolf Steiner in the Waldorf School: Lectures and Addresses to Children, Parents, and Teachers, 1919–1924, ISBN 0880104333
Steiner, Rudolf: The Genius of Language: Observations for Teachers, ISBN 0880103868
Steiner, Rudolf: Faculty Meetings with Rudolf Steiner: 1919–1924, ISBN 0880104589
Steiner, Rudolf: The renewal of education through the science of the spirit - these lectures were held in Basel in 1920, ISBN 0880104554
Steiner, Rudolf: Education for Adolescents, ISBN 0880104058
Steiner, Rudolf: Soul Economy: Body, Soul, and Spirit in Waldorf Education, ISBN 0880105178
Steiner, Rudolf: Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 1, ISBN 0880103876
Steiner, Rudolf: Waldorf Education and Anthroposophy 2, ISBN 0880103884
Steiner, Rudolf: The Spiritual Ground of Education, ISBN 0880105135
Steiner, Rudolf: The Child's Changing Consciousness: As the Basis of Pedagogical Practice, ISBN 0880104104
Steiner, Rudolf: A Modern Art of Education, ISBN 0880105119
Waldorf Resources
General Articles
Waldorf Schools and Pedagogy
Homeschooling
Special Education
Discussion
Finding a Waldorf School
Criticism of Waldorf Schools
Waldorf School Advocacy
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