Receive the children with reverence,
Educate them in love,
Send them forth in freedom.
Rudolf Steiner
Waldorf Educational Philosophy
Children need to be engaged in three distinct ways – through the head, heart and hands. This is the primary educational paradigm of Waldorf education. Rather than focus the educational work solely around the objective of acquiring knowledge, creating a meaningful learning process itself becomes the focus. Through multi-faceted, multi-sensory learning experiences, teachers and students use a variety of intelligences to develop three distinct capacities – for thinking, for feeling and for intentional, purposeful activity.
Waldorf schools are concerned with the development of the whole child. The Waldorf curriculum exposes students to a wide variety of subjects, encouraging them to develop in a well-balanced way. Efforts to lead children to fullness must be concerned with helping children develop the ability to separate what they feel from what they do. Education should be based on the understanding that for young children their impulse for activity is intricately connected with their feelings.
Self-discipline is the ability “to do the right thing”. A key element that enables self-discipline to develop in a healthy way is the formation of good habits that become second nature.
When children are young it is possible to develop these habits by providing good examples and consistent routines. This enables children to learn by doing and is preferable to the reminders and lectures that are often given to older children when these habits were not established early on. When a young child becomes accustomed to hanging his/her coat on a hook whenever he/she comes to school, it becomes a natural part of what is done. The good habits that children establish at an early age pave the way for the development of maturity and self-discipline later.
When children bring heartfelt interest to their studies knowledge comes alive. This conjunction of feeling and thinking makes students more receptive and perceptive. Students begin their education with their feelings melded with what they do. During their time in school, their feelings must merge with what they think. When feelings connect strongly with ideas, idealism is born. Engendering thinking that is warm, vital and creative is an important goal of Waldorf education.
It is imperative that education directly touch the hearts of children, to help them care about their fellow human beings and reassure them that there is beauty and goodness in this world and that they play a role in preserving that beauty and goodness. As Vaclav Havel stated in his address to the United Nations, “The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and in human responsibility.”
To develop the capacity for emotional involvement, Waldorf schools enhance their educational program by integrating the arts throughout the curriculum. Artistic activities such as painting, drawing, drama and music infuse every child’s school experience.
Although capacities for thoughtfulness, emotional involvement, and intentional activity are connected, they do not develop uniformly. They develop during three distinct seven-year stages of childhood, and are therefore worked differently in preschool, grade school and high school.
In early childhood, from birth until around age seven, the child is primarily active. It is through activity that the young child is most easily engaged and most easily taught.
The urge to be active does not disappear when a child enters first grade. Neither is the young child unemotional before this time. Rather, activity recedes in importance and is gradually supplanted by a growing inwardness during the grade school years. During age six or seven until about age fourteen, feelings are paramount. This change occurs gradually, a growing emotional capacity begins to show itself.
The third seven-year phase is the one in which thinking prevails. Teenagers are certainly emotional and active, but their capacity for critical thinking shows itself with the onset of adolescence and particularly at the beginning of high school.
It is a Waldorf teacher’s responsibility to recognize each child’s strength, and together with the parents, bring this strength to fullness through a well-rounded education. Waldorf teachers will assess children in a variety of way to determine if they are developing a well-balanced array of abilities. They will look for signs of health: attentiveness, enthusiasm, involvement in class discussions and interest. These observations from a wide variety of subjects and situations are refined and distilled over the course of the school year. They provide a complete “portfolio” of a child’s performance and progression throughout the year. They become the ingredients in the annual written evaluation that is delivered each June.
Waldorf teachers first describe what the child does well and always mentions with appreciation the overcoming of difficulties and the development of any new capacity. Then teachers mention areas where children need to make more progress. This can be presented as a wish list, a hope for something to be accomplished in the future.
Waldorf Preschool Philosophy
In the Waldorf preschool the students enter a room that looks more like a home than a classroom. The lighting is subdued, the curtains and walls are pastel colors and the furniture is simple, natural wood. Most toys and play structures and wood, and carpeting encourages children to find a place on the floor to play. In the Waldorf approach early academic instruction is absent. Waldorf preschool provides an education that is rich in language experiences, sequential routines, and learning opportunities. The children are placed in a learning environment that provides many natural opportunities for learning. Young children will learn by doing and what they love to do is play.
Play is a key component of the Waldorf early childhood program because it promotes well-rounded, three dimensional development by engaging them emotionally, mentally and actively. Play develops emotional maturity through social interactions. It’s through play that children move beyond their own egocentricity and expand their knowledge of the social world. By learning to share, to agree and to cooperate, children learn to be part of a social group. This understanding is essential for the formation of positive human relationships and is one of the important life lessons children begin to learn in a Waldorf school.
Play helps the child develop discipline and concentration. Not only does play develop a child’s attention span, it also gives rise to imaginative and divergent thinking. This enables children to consider situations and to solve problems in a variety of different ways. Waldorf teachers purposely choose play objects that are not designed for a single purpose, but to serve the children in multiple ways.
The third beneficial aspect of play is activity. A principle of early childhood education is that young children learn about the world by interacting with their environment.
Work is also an important part of Waldorf preschool. Teachers intentionally work in the presence of children, with their help if possible. There is usually a day for baking, a day for making soup or butter, a day to wash the placemats, and time everyday to prepare the snack. Participating in work enables children to learn important lessons that are necessary for life. They learn to do their fare share and to help others.
Meaningful and purposeful activity done in the presence of children also provides them with actions to imitate. Impressions that young children take in and mimic become behaviors that are learned for life. The role of imitation is essential when it comes to learning language. Young children are able to learn so readily through imitation because they are so impressionable. Whatever is done in their presence becomes part of them. For this reason Waldorf teachers try to act in ways that are worthy of imitation. They speak softly and work carefully, modeling these behaviors continuously.
Preschool children come together each morning for circle time. The teachers stand with the children in the ring and lead them in song and movement games. Hand and foot coordination, eye and hand coordination, a sense of rhythm, tonal awareness, spatial awareness and a whole variety of intelligences are cultivated through enjoyable activity.
Besides the time for purposeful work and play, there is also time for quiet reflection. Story time is a large part of the program. Through told stories and puppet shows children learn folk and fairy tales from around the world, and develop literary skills. Stories are told from memory so that the magic of the spoken word can captivate the children. Great attention is paid to the quality of speech and the choice of words used, expanding the children’s vocabulary and their attention span. These tales provide children with models of good behavior without burdening them with admonishments or lectures.
