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A Curriculum Study
103 pages
AWSNA Publications & Research Institute for Waldorf Education

Origins:
The foundation for much of modern thought was laid in the science and philosophy of ancient Egypt and classical Greece. The chapter will compare ancient and modern and address the changes that led from one to the other. In Egypt: the land of Chem, myth and legend, the three “gifts” of Hermes Trismegistus and the doctrine of “as above so below.” The times change but we share a need to understand the nature of substance with older cultures. The science of substance has a dark side: Frank Oppenheimer’s concern during the making of the first atomic bomb and the blind rush to “get this thing to go.” Contrasts in classical and modern thought, deductive and inductive reasoning. Greek philosophy and parallels to modern thought. Medieval alchemy and the Philosopher’s Stone. Paracelsus the man and scientist. The advent of experimental medicine begins to break free of the philosophical school of science. Becher and the last fires of alchemy. Mithridates, saturated with poison. The ever puzzling mystery of fire gives rise to the theory of phlogiston.

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Download the play:A Chosen Vessel

In four acts for the Sixth Grade, this play is offered by the author to any class teacher who wishes to produce it.

Keywords: plays, drama, 6th grade

Download the article: A Class as a Community

Published in Education as an Art Vol. 26, #4 – Fall/Winter 1967

A Talk to the Parents of the Fifth through Eighth Grades

Some time ago one of our students, who had gone abroad for a year, wrote me that she was with her class and their teacher on a 3-week sojourn in the mountains to learn what it means to live as a community. Her question to me was, "Why can't we do something like that in the Steiner School?" I would not tell tales out of school except to point up the fact that community spirit is hard to come by, for when later we did undertake a 3-day class trip, she was on hand and contributed several yards of paper toweling to wrap around and muffle the rising bell, and it was easy for her to misread the importance of promptness to meals and of not hiking off into the woods without a word to anyone.

Download the article: A Course of Lectures on Education and the Teaching of Religion

Published in the journal, Anthroposophical Movement, Vol. 12, #1, 1935 (England)
Given by DR. Karl Schubert (Stuttgart) at the Rudolf Steiner House, January 2nd-5th, 1935
Rudolf Steiner as Leader to a New Life of Art.

FROM Rudolf Steiner's Autobiography we learn that in his early youth he was surrounded by the beauty of Nature in Austria, and throughout his school life he strove for beauty. As a boy he already experienced a higher reality and knew that what he saw as Spiritual Activity must be found again in the world where he lived. In mathematics and geometry he first found a way; in the clearness of both these subjects is Living a Spiritual reality.
His great work came in connection with Schiller and Goethe; in Schiller he found a man striving to find the reality of a world of beauty; in Goethe the living spirit of Germany waiting for someone to continue the work he had begun; in Nietzsche a man striving for clearness of will, but without success.

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