Waldorf is a successful holistic education model designed to provide the right stimulus at the right time and allow each child's abilities to fully unfold. Waldorf methods are designed to address the whole child: HEAD, HEART, and HANDS. It stimulates the mind with the full spectrum of traditional academic subjects and it nurtures healthy emotional development by conveying knowledge experientially as well as academically. It works with the hands every day, both in primary academic subjects and in a broad range of artistic handwork and craft activities.
ARE WALDORF SCHOOLS RELIGIOUS?
Waldorf schools are non-sectarian and non-denominational; they educate all children, regardless of their cultural or religious backgrounds. The pedagogical method is comprehensive, and, as part of its task, seeks to bring about recognition and understanding of all the world cultures and religions. Waldorf schools are not part of any church. They espouse no particular religious doctrine but are based on a belief that there is a spiritual dimension to the human being and to all of life. Waldorf families come from a broad spectrum of religious traditions and interests.
WHAT IS THE CURRICULUM LIKE IN A WALDORF SCHOOL?
Waldorf Education approaches all aspects of schooling in a unique and comprehensive way. The curriculum is designed to meet the various stages of child development. Waldorf teachers are dedicated to creating a genuine inner enthusiasm for learning that is essential for educational success.Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children learn primarily thorough imitation and imagination. The goal of the kindergarten is to develop a sense of wonder in the young child and reverence for all living things. This creates an eagerness for the academics that follow in the grades.
Kindergarten activities include:
storytelling, puppetry, creative play, theater
singing, eurythmy (movement)
games and finger plays
painting, drawing and beeswax modeling
baking and cooking, nature walks
foreing language and circle time for festival and seasonal celebrations
Elementary and middle-school children learn through the guidance of a class teacher who stays with the class ideally for eight years. The curriculum includes:
English based on world literature, myths, and legends
history that is chronological and inclusive of the world's great civilizations
science that surveys geography, astronomy, meteorology, physical and life sciences
mathematics that develops competence in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry
arts including music, painting, sculpture, drama, eurythmy, and sketching
handwork such as knitting, weaving, and woodworking
foreign languages
physical education
gardening
The Waldorf high school is dedicated to helping students develop their full potential as scholars, artists, athletes, and community members. The course of study includes:
a humanities curriculum that integrates history, literature, and knowledge of world cultures
a science curriculum that includes physics, biology, chemistry, geology, and a four-year college preparatory mathematics program
an arts and crafts program including calligraphy, drawing, painting, sculpture, pottery, weaving, block printing and bookbinding
a performing arts program offering orchestra, choir, eurythmy and drama
a foreign language program
a physical education program
DOES WALDORF EDUCATION PREPARE CHILDREN FOR THE "REAL" WORLD; AND, IF SO, HOW DOES IT DO IT?
It is easy to fall into the error of believing that education must make our children fit into society. Although we are certainly influenced by what the world brings us, the fact is, the world is shaped by people, not people by the world. However, that shaping of the world is possible in a healthy way only if the shapers are themselves in possession of their full nature as human beings.
Education in our materialistic, Western society focuses on the intellectual aspect of the human being and has chosen largely to ignore the several other parts that are essential to our wellbeing. These include our life of feeling (emotions, aesthetics, and social sensitivity), our willpower (the ability to get things done), and our moral nature (being clear about right and wrong). Without having these developed, we are incomplete—a fact that may become obvious in our later years, when a feeling of emptiness beings to set in. That is why in a Waldorf school the practical and artistic subjects play as important a role as the full spectrum of traditional academic subjects that the school offers. The practical and artistic are essential in achieving a preparation for lie in the "real" world.
Waldorf recognizes and honors the full range of human potentialities. It addresses the whole child by striving to awaken and ennoble all the latent capacities. The children learn to read, write, and do math: they study history, geography, and sciences. In addition, all children learn to sing, play a musical instrument, draw, paint, model clay, carve and work with wood, speak clearly and act in a play, think independently, and work harmoniously and respectfully with others. The development of these various capacities is interrelated. For example, both boys and girls learn to knit in grade one. Acquiring this basic and enjoyable human skill helps them develop a manual dexterity, which after puberty will be transformed into an ability to think clearly and to "knit" their thoughts into a coherent whole.
Preparation for life includes the development of the well-rounded person. Waldorf Education has as its ideal a person who is knowledgeable about the world and human history and culture, who has many varied practical and artistic abilities, who feels a deep reverence for and communion with the natural world, and who can act with initiative and in freedom in the face of economic and political pressures.
There are many Waldorf graduates of all ages who embody this ideal and who are perhaps the best proof of the efficacy of the education.
WHY DO WALDORF SCHOOLS TEACH READING SO LATE?
There is evidence that normal, healthy children who learn to read relatively late are not disadvantaged by this, but rather are able to quickly catch up with, and may overtake, children who have learned to read early. Additionally, they are much less likely to develop the "tiredness toward reading" that many children taught to read at a very early age experience later on. Instead there is lively interest in reading and learning that continues into adulthood. Some children will, out of themselves, want to learn to read at an early age. This interest can and should be met, as long as it comes in fact from the child. Early imposed formal instruction in reading can be a handicap in later years, when enthusiasm toward reading and learning may begin to falter.
If reading is not pushed, a healthy child will pick it up quite quickly and easily. Some Waldorf parents become anxious if their child is slow to learn to read. Eventually these same parents are overjoyed at seeing their child pick yup a book and not put it down and become from that moment a voracious reader. Each child has his or her own optimal time for “taking off.” Feelings of anxiety and inferiority may develop in a child who is not reading as well as her peers. Often this anxiety is picked up from parents concerned about the child’s progress. It is important that parents should deal with their own and their child’s apprehensions.
Human growth and development do not occur in a linear fashion, nor can they be measured. What lives, grows, and has its being in human life can only be grasped with that same human faculty that can grasp the invisible metamorphic laws of living nature.
