by David Marshak

Rudolf Steiner founded the first Waldorf school in 1919 at the invitation and with the support of Emil Molt, the CEO of the Waldorf cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany. Molt wanted to a new school for the children of his employees. Steiner was a genius: a mystic, a spiritual teacher, the inventor of biodynamic gardening (articulating the principles of a modern, organic agriculture within both practical and spiritual contexts; please see this article for more information), and eurythmy (a movement art that integrates feeling, bodily expression, and spirit). He also designed buildings that incorporated both secular and sacred space.

Steiner intuitively understood both the complex, systemic nature of human beings and the developmental pathways of human becoming in childhood and adolescence. According to Steiner, each human includes four "bodies" or sub-systems. The physical body is the body of matter, the body known to our senses. The etheric body, an energetic sub-system, contains formative forces that help to organize and shape the growth of the physical body as well as partic­ipate in the child's moral development. The astral body or soul also consists of energy; it contains the faculties of the soul - thinking, willing, and feeling - that make up our inner life. The third energetic body is the spirit, which is each human's connection to the divine.

Steiner described three profoundly different epochs in what we now call child and adolescent development:

• Birth through about the seventh year; the end of this epoch is marked by the changing of the teeth. In the first epoch, children learn by imitation. They perceive what takes place in their environment - physical, interpersonal, moral, and spiritual - and, in their own way, imitate the examples they find. During the second half of this epoch, if allowed, children develop a rich and complex imaginative life.

• About 7 years of age through about 12-13 years of age; the end of this epoch is marked by puberty (and as Steiner predicted, the age of puberty has decreased in industrial societies since 1920). Children's thinking is emancipated from the body and achieves new forms. Their capacity for feeling broadens and deepens, as does their capac­ity for moral understanding. This "heart of childhood" is an age of rhythmical movement, as children's outer behavior is one with their inner growth. Children need the opportunity to express their rich life of rhythm in motion, language, and music. As children move into this epoch, they draw away from the imagination and seek to comprehend and master the physical world around them.

• About 12/14 years of age through 21 years of age. Adolescents' inner worlds expand to a new level of aware­ness, which is dominated by independent and critical thought. Thinking comes now from the head, not the heart, and youths can work with abstraction and theory. Young people need the opportu­nity to think on their own, make their own evaluations and decisions, and experience and learn from their consequences. They need neither control nor suppression but help and support, and they respond positively to leadership viewed as reasonable, valid, and respectful of their integrity. It is essential that their learning during this time include an ongoing connection and balance between head work and hand work.

Steiner saw the overall process of unfoldment through these three epochs as regular, consistent, and predictable. However, he noted repeatedly that while almost all children and youth move through the events of these three epochs of human becoming, they do so at their own pace. The experiences of many children and youths closely follow this generalized timetable for unfoldment, while the experiences of others vary considerably from the timetable.

Steiner developed a school curriculum and program based on this wisdom. The organizing principle for Waldorf education is "head, hands, and heart," so the intellectual, the artistic, and the social aspects of the child's life are equally valued and woven together in each day's experience. In the early grades children start with folk tales, histories, fairy stories, poems, playing musical instruments and listening to music, drawing and painting, hand work (for example, sewing, knitting, weaving, and carving), and games. The learning of conventional academic subjects - reading, writing, arithmetic, nature study, geography, science, and languages - flows from story, aesthetics, and rhythm.

Steiner also waited until 2nd grade before he asked children to learn to read, because he knew, as brain research has recently shown us, that many more children would be developmentally ready to read by age seven. He embedded the learning of letters and words first in the body - writing in sand, for example - before asking the mind to learn what these symbols represent. Also, in Waldorf schools, all children learn to play a musical instrument starting in first grade and continue to play instruments throughout their schooling.

Steiner developed a brilliant, integral, developmentally-appropriate curriculum for grades 1-12. He wanted his school to support the unfoldment of the child in all of her/his aspects - and in freedom from the influences of government and economics. As Steiner explained,

The need for imagination, a sense of truth and a feeling of responsibility – these are the three forces which are the very nerve of education. Our highest endeavour must be to develop individuals who are able out of their own initiative to impart purpose and direction to their lives.

One key element in Waldorf schools is that the teacher stays with a class of children from first grade through 8th grade. While each class has additional teachers every day for special subjects, such as eurythmy and hand work, the main class teacher is with her/his class for the majority of each school day. This is an enormous responsibility - and opportunity - and in some ways the teacher becomes almost a quasi-parent to her/his students. Steiner gave three injunctions to the teachers in his school:

To receive the child in gratitude from the world they come from; to educate the child with love; and to lead the child into the true freedom which belongs to man.

Waldorf school teachers are usually drawn to their work by a deep experience of calling. They believe that children should not be rushed into adult consciousness but allowed to profoundly experience each step in their unfoldment through childhood and adolescence. In Waldorf high schools teachers are organized by a more conventional pattern of academic subjects. Still, most Waldorf high schools are small, and so relationships between students and teachers often continue to be profound.

There are currently 124 Waldorf schools in the United States, another 21 in Canada. In the US these are all tuition-based private schools. The Canadian Waldorf schools are also "independent and autonomous," according to the Waldorf School Association of Ontario. In the US and Canada the "Waldorf school" name is trademarked, and thus only schools that go through a process of start-up regulated by the Association of Waldorf Schools in North America and adhere to its fundamental principles can call themselves a Waldorf School. Thus, unlike Montessori schools, which can vary a great deal depending on their owner or teacher(s), Waldorf schools in various locations share a significant similarity, since they follow the same curriculum and largely employ teachers who have been prepared in the same methods and approaches. Finally Waldorf schools are governed primarily by a collaborative council of each school's teachers.

There are more than 600 Waldorf schools in Europe (these are sometime called Steiner schools). The core principles of these European schools are similar to those in the US and Canada.

There are also "Waldorf-style" public schools in the US, almost all of which are charter schools. Betty Staley and Arline Monks, long-time faculty members at the Rudolf Steiner College near Sacramento, for many years offered summer workshops for public/charter school teachers who wanted to employ Waldorf pedagogy. This approach has been controversial and has led to litigation, with opponents of Waldorf schools and some Waldorf educators arguing that one cannot separate the religious/spiritual content of Steiner's school model from its pedagogy. A federal district court in California ruled in 2005 that Waldorf-style schools are not religious schools. Currently there are Waldorf-style public schools in California, Arizona, Oregon, and Wisconsin.

David Marshak has taught people of all ages, led schools and school districts, and studied education and schooling for several decades, most recently at Seattle University. He is the author of The Common Vision: Parenting and Education for Wholeness. For more of this work: thefutureofeducation.org

Resources

Association of Waldorf Schools in North America www.awsna.org

Waldorf Education in Canada www.waldorf.ca

European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education steinerwaldorfeurope.org

Toward Wholeness: Rudolf Steiner Education in America by M.C. Richards

Millennial Child: Transforming Education in the Twenty-First Century by Eugene Schwartz

The Common Vision: Parenting and Educating for Wholeness by David Marshak

Windows into Waldorf: An Introduction to Waldorf Education. An AWSNA publication

Renewal - the AWSNA journal