A Waldorf approach to education, in a nutshell
What IS Waldorf education?
So often, I get asked this question (or see it asked in groups I belong to): I’ve just discovered Waldorf/Steiner education, but there’s so much out there! What is it, basically? Where do I begin to read about it without getting overwhelmed?
This is my attempt at beginning to answer this HUGE question (the first of what may well end up as a series of blog posts). At the end of this post you’ll find a list of a few of my favourite books to explore Waldorf education further.
First and foremost, Waldorf education is an approach to teaching and learning that understands the human being holistically – as a being connected to the world and the cosmos, and that recognises that individuals are always on a journey of development. Everything that the curriculum, pedagogy, and approach to working with children includes, is underpinned by, this basic understanding.
Through Waldorf education, we, as educators (at home or in classrooms), are working to support the healthy development of the whole human being – head (thinking), heart (feeling), and hands (willing). Academics are important, but equally so are social-emotional learning, a relationship to the world, and an appreciation for truth, beauty, and goodness. Waldorf education is about helping children to form a love of learning, to be confident and free in how they see and experience the world, to appreciate the natural world, to understand how things work, and how human beings have found our place here and now.
The Waldorf curriculum, as given by Rudolf Steiner, works to help children find their place in their world. It helps to carry them through the safe and dreamy land of early childhood, into the awakening mood of the early school years. It provides the questioning 9-year-old with a mirrored experience of their own inner turmoil as suddenly the inherently good world they have lived in becomes a bit murky. It supports the transition children experience from stories and imagination being the most important thing, to human history and observational science becoming exciting, as children journey through middle childhood. And it helps adolescents connect to the world, and find their own place in it if they work through the high school curriculum. Every year of education has its own theme within the story curriculum, and this is really where Waldorf education is set apart from other approaches. The story curriculum is an extra layer that provides nourishment for children at the level of development they are at and meets their needs even if they never realise this at an intellectual level.
In 1919, Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures to the teachers that would make up the faculty of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany (see The Foundations of Human Experience, Discussions with Teachers, and Practical Advice to Teachers). In these lectures, he laid out, at a very high level, what the core of the curriculum should be, his understanding of child development, suggested ways of working with children of different temperaments, and new and groundbreaking ways of approaching core subjects such as Maths, Literacy, and Science. These first teachers filled in the blanks, and those that followed as schools began to spring up around Europe, and then the world, created and recorded their interpretations and experiences of curriculum and approach to pedagogy.
Much of what we now consider the ‘correct’ way of doing Waldorf education stems from these pioneering educators who had the courage and inspiration to try things that had never been done before in the world of education. Anyone who has read the lectures that make up the First Teachers Course (see lecture links above) will understand just how little Rudolf Steiner was actually able to share in the time he had with those first teachers (in the years following, before his death, he did share more on curriculum – none as holistic and intentionally for teachers however as this first course). The Waldorf curriculum and way of ‘doing education’ as it currently stands is actually a fair few steps away from what Rudolf Steiner originally shared. But the thing he said most often as our priority, always, has remained the same: Waldorf education is about educating the whole human being and supporting each individual child on their own path of development.
So, where does that leave us as we look toward the next 100 years of Waldorf education? Martyn Rawson, the author of ‘The Yellow Book’ (commonly referred to as THE Waldorf curriculum used all over the world – ‘The Tasks and Content of the Waldorf Curriculum’), threw that exact book on the ground in a lecture he was giving and said ‘I wish everyone would throw this away!’ Why? As one of the most well-researched, highly respected Waldorf educators in the world, Martyn Rawson recognises that Waldorf education for children here, today, must look different. Our children are different, and the world they are growing up in is going to provide them with enormous tasks in their future. Waldorf education needs to respond to the challenges in the world. It needs to recognise that our children are more awake to the world much earlier than they were 100 years ago – and the world is asking them to be. It needs to respond to the beautiful, contemporary diversity in the world – we have children experiencing Waldorf education from every corner of the world, from a multitude of cultures and languages, bringing the gifts and questions of neurodiversity – and we need to pick up the mantle that Steiner tasked us with of educating towards freedom. In essence, this is what Waldorf education is about – supporting our children to be free-thinking individuals. Children who grow into young people who can approach challenges differently. Who can think critically. Who can solve problems in their world in ways that have never been considered before. Who are good human beings. And after all, isn’t that all that any of us truly want for our children?
Books for further reading about Waldorf Education:
You are your child’s first teacher by Rahima Baldwin Dancy
Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne
An Introduction to Steiner education by Francis Edmunds
Creativity in Education by Rene m Querdo
Waldorf Education, a Family Guide by Pamela Johnson