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Waldorf Education, periodically known as Steiner education, occurs as globe-wide movement according to an educational philosophy formulated by Austrian Rudolf Steiner after World War I. Using a goal of educating the "whole child", Waldorf pedagog place a heavy emphasis in balancing the baby's natural stages of development by using creativity and academic excellence. There is a hard emphasis on the arts, social skills and spiritual values.

Waldorf education is practised within Waldorf schools, homeschools, & favorite education environments. There are at present concluded 900 Waldorf schools throughout the world including Europe, North & South America, Africa, Australasia and Japan.

A title comes from either a Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Company, in Stuttgart, Germany which was the number one institution to unsuspecting hosts the Waldorf school.

Description
Depending in the act of Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf schools uses the curriculum that addresses subjects in terzetto levels:

a head or even a intellect. A education claims to teach a student to believe for themselves. a Heart. A education's declared aim is to instill the feel of feeling & spirit. a hands. Waldorf schools function to require arts & crafts, all about from either paint to coppersmithing.

Typically there exists an attempt to integrate these leash elements into a teaching of tons cases. The conscious effort to build the feel of community & environmental responsibility is fostered at each level, including parents, teachers/staff, students, & alumni. Movement, sport & dramthe come listed throughout; as a matter of fact, a nature and severity of person movement known as Eurythmy (beautiful or harmonious movement), is taught to each cohort.

More Waldorf Education makes there is no acutely section between theoretical & practical cases, a arts & logic cases such as maths etc. Steiner repeatedly emphasized the unification of the trinity cases of art, spirituality, & science, since he believed these got a most common root within the person expression of culture, equally stated in his A Arts & Their Mission lecture from either 1923.

Waldorf Schools come co-educational, and preponderantly comprehensive. Virtually all come rerun co-operatively and are self-administered. Around two Australia and New Zealand a bit of schools have by having success integrated by owning a state funded school patterns, with some adaptation for state prescribed curricula. Virtually all keep close at hand there are no school uniform.

A schooling is divided into Trinity stages (watch Pedagogy beneath) of Kindergarten (early years to 7), Middle school (7 to 14 ) & Upper school, (14 to 19).

Pedagogy
Pedagogy, Steiner's Three-stage pedagological model of kid development, is used around Waldorf education.

From birth and until approximately the age of 7
A toddler at this early stage learns across imitation & lesson, thus these are better to surround him using a goodness of the globe & nurturing adults to emulate. Waldorf teachers operate to trend lines a amazing physical & spiritual incubation a infant lives at this instance.

Emphasis is located in traditional personal activities like preparation, fingerknitting, helping by having task, storytelling, rhyming & movement games. Youngsters come non taught specific academic cases at this period, including reading & writing, & are sheltered from either a media & possibly stories which include violence.

At close to age septet, these are believed an initial physical incubation stage of the tyke is completed. 2 signals that this stage is complete come a ability to email above his head to touch a paired ear, & a vary of the dentition. Equally reprinted from either a Foundations of Mortal Personal experience, Lecture 9: "...when their change of teeth is complete, it reflects the conclusion of the development of the head."

After approximately the age of seven, until puberty
Academic instruction is integrated by using arts, spirituality, craft & physical activity. When Steiner declared in "The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, "...a tyke should become laying higher inside his memory a treasures of thought in which humanity has pondered..."

The curriculum is highly challenging, structured, and creative. In Waldorf schools, one teacher stays with each class as it advances from first grade all the way through grade 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 Stripling" (1922), "A capacity for forming judgments is blossoming at this instance & should become directed toward globe-interrelationships inside each 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.

A note on teacher education: 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 "all baby," 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:

  • that the school be open to all children;
  • that it be coeducational;
  • that it be a unified twelve-year school;
  • 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

    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. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4633601.stm]

    See Also
    List of Waldorf Schools
    See the seperate article , List of Waldorf Schools.

    Some Notable Parents Who Have Chosen Waldorf Education
    Russell Schweickart, Apollo 9 astronaut Sam Shepherd, playwright and actor Willy Brandt, 1971 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, former Chancellor of West Germany. Carly Simon and James Taylor, singer songwriters Eric Utne, founder, publisher, and former editor-in-chief of Utne Reader, teacher and parent Clifford Stoll, astronomer, computer systems administrator, author Joe Namath, professional football player Gilbert M. Grosvenor (1875-1966), President & Chairman, National Geographic Society Greg Allman of the Allman Brothers band, Ingmar Bergman, director John Paul Jones, bassist for Led Zeppelin Karl Otto Pohl, president of German federal bank, 1980-1991 Mikhail Baryshnikov, dancer, actor Paul Newman, actor, philanthropist-entrepreneur Prof. Daniel T. Jones, coauthor of the bestselling management book, Lean Thinking Rolf Gutbrod, architect (e.g. the Liederhall in Stuttgart, Germany) Peter Schneider, conductor

    Some Notable Alumni of Waldorf Education
    Kenneth Chenault, the President and CEO of American Express, USA, and an African-American Kristen Nygaard, inventor of object-oriented computer programming Michael Ende, author: The Neverending Story Sandra Bullock screen actress, USA Victor Navasky, professor of journalism publisher and editor of The Nation. Jens Stoltenberg, former prime minister of Norway F.A. Porsche, automobile designer, Germany Chris Elliott screen actor and tv-entertainer, USA Wolf-Christian Dullo, oceanographer Jennifer Aniston, actress, USA Stanislas Wawrinka tennis player, Switzerland Linn Ullmann, author Albert Watson, photographer Julianna Margulies actress in tv-series, USA Mika Eichenholz, music director Nico Widerberg, sculptor and painter Rainer Fassbinder, film/stage director George Hume, BBC journalist Luke Donald, professional golfer Timothy Daly actor, USA Justin Theroux actor, USA

    Sources

    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

    Secondary sources
    Blunt, Richard:
    Waldorf Education. Theory and Practice, Novalis Press, Cape Town 1995.

    Harwood, A. C., : The Recovery of Man in Childhood

    ____________ . : The Way of A Child''

  • Waldorf FAQ
    Basic introduction answering 23 frequently asked questions about this type of education.

    Waldorf Education - A Growing School Movement
    Brief introduction to the method with list of appropriate links.

    Waldorf Inspired Students at Home
    Provides lesson plans and support materials for homeschooling based on the Waldorf model.

    Waldorf Resources
    Information for present and prospective Waldorf school parents.

    Head, Heart, Hands: A Waldorf Family Newsletter
    Collection of articles on issues in Waldorf education.

    Online Waldorf Library
    Searchable database of Waldorf education resource materials.

    School With Balance - Education Week 10/18/95
    Article on this type of education deriving from a visit to the Pine Hill Waldorf School in New Hampshire.

    Waldorf Education: Learning With Rhythms
    Describes the way rhythms are used as a methodical pedagogical tool in Waldorf education.

    Teaching About Computers in Waldorf Schools?
    Discusses approaches to teaching about computers under the Waldorf methodology.

    Waldorf Education List
    Mailing list with some 800 participants.


    Society: Religion and Spirituality: Esoteric and Occult: Anthroposophy
    Society: Religion and Spirituality: Esoteric and Occult: Personalities: Steiner, Rudolf





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