What is Waldorf Education?
Waldorf education is a worldwide independent school movement developed in Europe nearly 100 years ago by Austrian philosopher, social reformer, and visionary, Rudolf Steiner. Today, Waldorf education is represented across the globe, with about 1000 schools and nearly 2000 early childhood programs in over 60 countries. In Waldorf education, the learning process is essentially threefold, engaging head, heart, and hands—or thinking, feeling, and doing. This is the basis out of which Waldorf teachers work to nurture and engage each child through a curriculum and methodology that integrates academics, arts, and practical skills.
Although Waldorf education has been available in the US since 1928, with the founding of the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City, it has never been especially well-known here. But with increasing dissatisfaction over the high-stakes testing currently consuming mainstream education; the growing recognition of the many benefits a child receives through experiences with art, movement, and nature; a concern over a reliance on technology by younger and younger students; and the news that leaders in the high-tech industry are touting the lifelong benefits of low-tech Waldorf schools in educating their own children, more and more parents and educators are taking a closer look at the Waldorf approach and what it has to offer.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF WALDORF EDUCATION
Waldorf education begins with the premise that childhood is made up of three distinct stages of roughly seven years each—birth to age seven (early childhood), seven to 14 (middle childhood), and 14 to 21 (adolescence). Each stage shapes the way children feel about and approach the world—intellectually, emotionally, physically, and spiritually—which, in turn, shapes the way they learn. Waldorf educators believe that curricula and teaching methods should be appropriately tailored to these developmental stages, each evolving as childhood unfolds.
Early Childhood
Develop The Limbs Through Doing
Young children from birth to age seven live primarily through their senses and learn best through imitation. Striving to be figures worthy of imitation, Waldorf early childhood educators nurture each child’s flowering, providing gentle, yet sensory rich environments and play-based activities that encourage the young child to investigate the natural world, explore social relationships, and expand imaginative capacities. These activities lay crucial foundations for intellectual, emotional, and physical development.
Middle Childhood
Develop The Heart Through Imagination
Between the ages of seven and 14, children learn best through lessons that touch their feelings and enliven their creative forces. The Waldorf lower school curriculum is alive with fairy tales and fables, mythological sagas, and stirring biographies of historical figures. Waldorf elementary (or “class”) teachers integrate storytelling, drama, rhythmic movement, visual arts, and music into their daily work, weaving a tapestry of experience that brings each subject to life in the child’s thinking, feeling, and willing. Entrusted with the essential task of accompanying their students on a several-year journey, Waldorf grades 1-8 teachers have a role analogous to that of effective parent, guiding the children’s formal academic learning while awakening their moral development and increasing their awareness of their place in the world.
Adolescence
Develop The Mind Through Discernment Of The World
Ages 14 to 21 marks the development of the independent intellect and, along with it, the ability to examine the world abstractly and exercise discernment, judgment, and critical thinking. Students in Waldorf high schools are given increasing autonomy over their education under the mentorship of teachers who are specialists in their fields.
From Sunbridge Institute