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Steiner Education - The Waldorf Approach by Kim Billington
The goal of all education is to assist each child to develop its inner capacities to the full, in order to become a person of initiative, compassion and insight, and to acquire skills and knowledge necessary to work and contribute to society. In the Waldorf Pre-School years, children are surrounded by an environment rich with the potential for free, imaginative play and homely tasks such as baking, sweeping, polishing, weeding, planting and caring for animals. The cycle of the year is introduced through seasonal festivals which grows in later years to awareness and responsibility towards the environment. At meal times, the children set the tables and decorate them with flowers. Gratitude is expressed by singing a blessing. The food is often grown in the kindergarten and prepared together. Every day there is a circle-time with singing and movement games, and the day concludes with a traditional story told. Because the young child has a powerful imitative nature, the teacher’s role is to strive towards self-mastery, so that her thoughts, feelings and gestures are permeated by goodness and provide the child with a worthy model to imitate. Each child is received with reverence, as a unique being from the Spiritual World.Formal instruction begins at a Waldorf Primary School when the children are 6 years old. At this stage, the formative-growth forces are considered to have completed their primary function of giving the inherited body a total ‘make-over’. The arrival of the second teeth is evidence of this culmination in bodily growth and reveals that the child is now developmentally ready to learn from and follow the guidance of a teacher, who becomes a natural authority of worldly knowledge for them. Every morning the teacher greets the children individually by name, with a handshake. The first two hours of each day is a ‘Main Lesson’, which incorporates the more intellectual activities of writing, reading and arithmetic. The teacher endeavours to welcome with warmth and love, the kaleidoscope of individuals whose soul faculties of ‘thinking, feeling and willing’ need to be artistically involved and balanced in every lesson. The ‘Class Teacher’ stays with their class for all the elementary years, and so comes to understand each child’s talents and weaknesses, their temperament and interests. The teacher’s mastery of each subject grows as they creatively enhance the extensive curriculum to meet the needs of the children. The curriculum follows mankind’s development from the Dreamtime and Fairy Tales, through to epic Bible stories in Grade 3, the Ancient Indian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman epochs in Grades 5 and 6, and to the Renaissance in Grade 7. It also reflects the inner developmental stages of the children. For example, when a child is about nine years old, they begin to experience themselves as a separate person in the family and become an ‘observer’ of nature rather than a ‘part of it’. This reveals a developmental readiness to divide unity into parts, and so they begin to learn fractions, the parts of grammar and to sing in rounds. Main Lessons in farming, house-building and school camps are then also introduced to foster confidence in this emerging self-sufficiency and balance it with the need for a co-operative social life. Rudolf Steiner maintained that in pupil-teacher interactions, ‘that which passes from soul to soul’ is far more important than any kind of intellectually contrived instruction or the mere passing on of information. In these primary years there is emphasis on presenting knowledge relevant to the human being and developing a sensitivity towards beauty and the arts, with ample poetry recitation, storytelling, drawing, painting, singing, recorder playing, drama, and specialist teachers taking classes in craft, string instruments, orchestra, and movement activities including eurythmy and bothmer gymnastics. By the time of puberty, Waldorf High School students have a foundation of broad knowledge to support and enrich their maturing intellectual thinking life. Specialist teachers guide students towards developing independent judgement and encouraging the examination of problems from many points of view. As they begin their quest for truth, these adolescents understand the difference between thinking about an issue and merely memorizing the ‘right answer’ for a test. The history curriculum has reached the Modern Civilization and the Industrial Revolution and so ‘Information Technology’ is then introduced around Class 9, beginning with such practical uses as bookkeeping spreadsheets and house design. Waldorf graduates are renown for their qualities:“Without exception, the Waldorf School graduates were caring people, creative students, individuals of identifiable values, and students who, when they spoke, made a difference.”Dr Warren Eickelberg, Prof of Biology, Director of Pre-Medical Curriculum – Adelphi University, Garden City, New York. (From ‘An Education for the 21st Century’, Novalis Press, 1995).
Kim Billington is a qualified Steiner kindergarten teacher, and enjoys bringing her insights to all realms of teaching. She has been an inspiration to many parents whose children have had the priviledge of being nurtured by her.
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