About the nature of Waldorf education

Waldorf education is the educational impulse for the 21^st century. Its purpose and aim has always been, since its foundation by Rudolf Steiner at the beginning of 20^th century, to develop the individuality of each single child to its full potential (for a good introduction we recommend our publication “Waldorf Education”).

Through its holistic approach Waldorf education develops all the forces and abilities of the growing child.

Waldorf education helps to unfold these qualities: an interest in the world, creativity, a healthy morality, artistic feeling, skills in craft, independent thinking, social responsibility and will power. Even Heraclites knew that education does not mean to fill a container but rather to enflame a fire. Although there is more and more a recognition that every human being is unique and that for this very reason schooling may not be a “filling up of knowledge”, it is today once again endangered in our modern “economised” thinking.

Human development has the task of developing individuality and a true creative freedom. Every tendency that works against this aim is proved as backward and paralysing to development.

Waldorf education has the potential to foster in each single child his individuality, because it is based on a true human knowledge. In order to unfold a person’s true potential education must recognise that every person has a spirit, soul and body with different needs at different times in its development. Every kind of education that does not have this aim in sight is doomed to failure.

The Waldorf impulse can unfold its potential at all times and towards every growing person because it is always able to individualise afresh and new. The Waldorf teacher stands before this challenge. Rudolf Steiner’s indications give the teacher an inexhaustible treasure of help. If it is penetrated with true understanding the teacher comes to recognise exactly what each child needs.

Where the expected work is not really being put into practice, one cannot really call it a Waldorf school – it mostly is better than “other schools”, but could also be worse. (See >> Challenges).

A social impulse for the future

The same can be said about the self-administration of the school, the cooperation and working together of all participating people. Self-administration is a truly futuristic impulse just like the Waldorf education itself. Here the freewill of each individual person is taken into consideration and is counted on. It is an ever increasing reality today that fixed roles, hierarchies; norms and other similar institutions are no longer sustainable, precisely because it hampers the creative potential of the individual.

The self administrative, free cooperation of people is the future principle of mankind as a whole. With such cooperative working of people new skills are required, self recognition, inner development, spiritual presence, a sense of reality, openness for what is new and uncomfortable, enthusiasm and will power.

All these qualities are being fostered in Waldorf education. It is said the children are our future, but mostly with a half hopeful, half sentimental resigned tone. Of course the children bring the future with them – it is only a question of how and if this impulse can be truly lived by them. Waldorf education helps the growing person to develop such qualities, which can in the wider sense of the word shape mankind’s future.

The self-administration of the Waldorf schools shows a first sign of the future human impulse: The free cooperation of free individuals. Of course many things are still not ideal and one can find much failure, but what is new and unknown does not come without research and experience. Thus decisive leaders are not to be discouraged by disappointments and must continuously keep the true aim in sight.

When one enthusiastically work with the Waldorf impulse and its deeper meaning then self-administration does not remain only an idea rather a reality that is highly modern and up to date.

Then Waldorf education will not only be looked at as an artistic school with “Waldorf atmosphere” rather recognised as an educational and social impulse with glowing examples of a common way into the future.

Holger Niederhausen

Citations from Rudolf Steiner

>> Rudolf Steiner with regard to the essence of Waldorf education.

Citations from other Authors

Even the questions what is Waldorf and what is not ? can’t be defined or regulated and can certainly not be answered in a catalogue with rules. This is a question that each school community must work through for themselves. Of course there are traditions that are to be found in all schools and somehow bring the desired continuity, but this is not to be confused with norms. Every school is free, in how it presents itself inwardly and outwardly. Someone once told me: without Rudolf Steiner’s idea of man a Waldorf school can´t be thought about. One will fully agree, but even in this idea there is nothing set in a norm. It is merely an eye opener for what the human being can become; its sole aim is to enable every single person.
Karl Martin Dietz: in dialogue with the college of teachers at Waldorf schools, p.20.

The interest in a person as a spiritual being is the foundation of Waldorf education. Attached to this is the question, who is the person, which aims does the person have, how can I as a teacher help that he/she can realise their aims? These issues live only in the quality of the individual and need methodical help. I see Anthroposophy as the stimulus that gives this method a frame – a self discipline.
Jürgen Jahn, primary school teacher of the Waldorf school Dietzenbach, in Doris Kleinau-Metzler: The future of the Waldorf schools. 2000. p.107.

It cannot be our aim to teach our children the right point of view, as we ourselves, if we are honest enough do not have it either. The aim of education can only be to bring the next growing generation to the point that they themselves must learn to create their own fruitful ideas. No one of us know exactly what the world will be like in the next ten or fifteen years – but we must put all our energies into the task of ensuring that our children actively and sensibly participate in the creation of their own future, in which they will become the responsible adults If this is our main aim then we have met the individual person as a being who is in continual development. Here we are dealing with the laws of mankind on the one hand and on the other hand have an eye on the individuality of the child. In order to do this one need to work jointly as parents and teachers in a common partnership as the main aim in a Waldorf school. For this work there is no model, it is based on relationships between individual people. Each school must find its own way through those people who are working in it.
Karl Martin Dietz: Parents and teachers at the Waldorf school. 2007. p.13.

Waldorf education was founded by Rudolf Steiner, it is however something that is constantly in a process of self renewal. These very obvious polarities do not exclude each other. Rudolf Steiner always highlighted the characteristic of Waldorf education as based on the individuality. Prescriptive principles and guidelines to Waldorf education cannot directly be traced back to Rudolf Steiner himself. Most of what stands there today clothed as principles is built on traditions. Rudolf Steiner’s practical advice to teachers was always for concrete people in concrete situations. Steiner never tired in pointing out the spiritual impulse character of Waldorf education. So he says the education for the youth must be an “awakening education”. The given “inner independence” at this age must always show itself as a constant awakening for the young person, he “constantly has the impression as if he evokes his own being.” The consequence of this means, that “one cannot teach him from the outside, for then he feels himself tyrannised and enslaved.” – Not only for the youth does this principle apply, also for the very young child. “At each level of development whether young or old the same educational principle applies. ... Each level of education is self-education, and we as teachers and educators are only the environment of the self-educating child”.

Waldorf education thus means: to help the unfolding of the own self of the human being. This requires a completely different duty from the teacher than the fulfilment of guidelines and curriculum. “The most important point in a human based education as is the case in Waldorf education is for example not to constantly give rules about the way one should or should not educate children, but to rather focus on warming the hearts of the teachers being trained, to deepen this feeling to such a point that from the depth of the inner self a deep love for the child is awakened. Of course it is easy to believe that one can learn such a deep love, a learned love may be of complete good will, but is unable to achieve anything on its own. Something can only be achieved when human love comes from a deep observation of the single individual.

The spiritual individuality of the child cringes away from methodical order and forms. Waldorf education shall therefore not be a “system of fundamentals, rather an impulse to awaken.” It should be life, not knowledge, not cleverness, it should rather be artistic, life filled doing, awakened deeds.” – May other Waldorf schools still aim to imitate such Waldorf education principles (main lesson teaching, written reports instead of notes in the lower classes, early foreign language teaching, age related class teaching etc.), the essence can in reality not be imitated. […] Even the explained qualities of self-administration cannot be formalised and ordered, for they are based on the individual will impulses, higher aims, formative abilities, and love for the matter, identification and responsibility for the whole. All of these are consequences that have to do with what is meant by “spiritual impulses“. Both Waldorf education and self-administration find their individual origin in a spiritual source. The one who – for reasons of comfort? – would like to dispute these issues, would threaten the roots of Waldorf education! – Let us summarise:

- The spiritual impulse makes our schools specific. Without it our school would be exchangeable, one could do without it.
- A spiritual impulse is not something that has cleverly been thought through; it is not something that is underlined on being proved. It does not exist in the shallow soil of theorising.
- A spiritual impulse is not pre-determined, rather lives in the individual teachers and parents and pupils in different ways. Behind these individual impulses could arise a common horizon and a common sunrise that one could experience as the “spirit of the school”. Based on this spiritual impulse the individual aims of a school can be developed. They don`t arise from abstract thinking but find its source in the work of active working people.
- Through the care of the spiritual impulse of each individual an unbreakable bond of community of all participants is developing, from which the school as a community can draw its energy, above all personal differences.

Karl Martin Dietz: Dialogical leadership in Waldorf schools, 2006. p. 40-51.

School education for an insecure future

[In the sense that life and work has no reliable structures and principles] It has become more and more individualised, and one comes to the recognition that educational institutions like schools are facing a fundamental crisis of legitimation. When the requirements and expectations of life and the working world the schools want to prepare pupils for are no longer clear and prescriptive, one runs the danger that requirements for learning in “later life” are completely failed.[…]

A school education that is circled with exact learning aims is put into question. At the same time it brings with it the need for a whole new learning system that could result in new orientation for schooling without having to negate the high structural change that individualisation in the work place and society has reached. Individualisation from this point of view of the single person being skilled to deal with individual situations for example to act out of his own inner being and his own decisions, to deal with ambivalences and to orientate himself to what each individual situation brings with it and requires from him. He must know his own personal intentions as well as the given facts of the situation and recognise what it requires from him; he must know what task he wants to make his own, what “I” truly want. Only a strong I, a strong willed personality will be able to succeed in such a task, and a lot will depend on how much room for own initiative and own activity can be found in connection to this, how far the person can be proactive rather than reactive.

The above mentioned qualities do not come by itself. One must honestly say that the skills needed today to deal with the changing conditions of the working world and the whole life – and to use it in the sense of growing freedom – in our time can´t be learnt as a “matter of fact” in life or at work itself. The same applies for the perceptional and will-related basis of independent “I” directed acting. The modern world is in urgent need of it, gives it much room but at the same time endangers the requirements and conditions under which these skills could be developed. Where the skills to independent self directed action are not being trained, individualisation in its different forms becomes a overwhelming demand for the individual threatening his further development and leading to new kinds of dependency and social chaos.

[…] It is decisive how many educational institutions – like schools – are able to prepare young people for the challenges facing them in a highly individualised future. It has absolutely nothing to do with the conveying of knowledge and definitely not with how to deal with the new techniques and media (this all will already be out dated by the time pupils will have left school). The core aim is to educate the personalities of young people to become independent, self-conscious and creative in their actions.

Schools are loosing more and more their learning aims as individualisation is growing, and at the same time it shows the enormous task which is training those skills needed to meet and master individualisation at every level of life. It is not about being able to do a certain thing well, rather to be able to develop an own independent way of dealing with uncertain situations – in the reality of dealing with others who are in any case constantly part of constructing my daily living reality.

Such skills that are central to the education in schools today can be described perfectly well. One of these is a well trained objective perception that is able to see an original situation, take it on and unlock its potential. This needs a high degree of intuition and fantasy. Needed are skills like a good balance between intimacy and distance, between being connected to the cause and stepping back to get an overview. It is about learning how to learn, and in its essence it means not having fixed ideas and expectations and getting to know the unknown, dealing with the situation getting to know the cause and the needs and out of such a process being able to (against all inner and outer obstacles) pull it through. Another per-condition for freedom is a broad social competence so that one could, without ruling social norms and role structures, meet and encounter each other on the basis of freedom and reach real understanding.

The modern impulse of Waldorf education.

[…] Waldorf education is built on a human ideal, according to Steiner’s “ethical individualism” with the aim of freedom. That means a person must be able to act independent from inner and external pressures out of his individual views. Every human being should as an adult be able to follow himself and his own personal destiny by his own measures. This is exactly what the future working world and economic sector requires. […]

The conveying of information and the testing of knowledge does not stand at the core of Waldorf education; it rather looks at educating capabilities. Unlike the formal education sector Waldorf education is selecting learning material with the question of which faculties and forces pupils could develop when dealing with this material. The main aim is not “qualification”, but rather strengthening of skills like independent action as well as reliable and active perception, patience, aptitude, endurance and self control. In the upper school there are also other skills like self criticism, problem solving, independent discovery and learning, balanced judgement and an exact fantasy.

The meaning of the artistic

A distinctive characteristic of Waldorf education is the strong emphasis on the artistic – not only in its wide offer of artistic subjects but also in its demand that the teaching itself should be artistic and lively.

Artistic activity is an action that does not come out of fixed ideas and given aims, but it is by contrast based on leaving away fixed ideas and to meet a given situation free from ones own intentions and to take on the given requirements and possibilities from the situation itself and act on it. Artistic activity is thus a condition-free, conscious act that has no external measure or aim. Its aim comes intuitively out of the process that must be taken on consequently. […] The same applies for the inner connection to ones own life, it can only be successful when one integrates the occurrences into a “work of art”. Artistic activity is the individualisation of appropriate action. […]

Many other details of Waldorf education confirm the impression that this education is exactly what is needed for modern life and work and insofar it is able to give many important indications for the general school life. Such an example is the foreign language teaching from the first class, where the children can learn another language than the mother tongue relatively easy. This is a prerequisite in our modern multicultural society. Practical subjects like arts and crafts which have no external learning aims and focus on the developmental needs of the pupils, work techniques that are not to be found in the modern working world (like spinning and weaving) compensates for the underdeveloped bodily senses present in our modern world today. The Waldorf specialty “eurhythmy” educates self-directed movement (this means not directed by external need rather looking at inwardly directed action) and works on increasing the social awareness with others.

One will more and more recognise that there is a connection between the specialties of Waldorf education and the griping changes in life and especially in the working world. One could say that Waldorf education offers differentiated and subtle learning for its pupils helping them to meet the challenges of individualisation in the world of tomorrow. [...]

Michael Brater, society for education and career development, Munich, in Doris Kleinau-Metzler: The future of Waldorf schools. 2000. p. 213-219.

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The Seven Year Cycles of growing up (Louise Oberholzer, ZAR, 2008).