Articles

By Manfred Klett
Published in Biodynamics, #160, Fall, 1986 (UK)
Download the Article: Thoughts on a Spiritual History of Agriculture


Editor's Note: This essay has been condensed from two lectures given at the Biodynamic Conference, at Emerson College, England, on January 2 and 3, 1986. Manfred Klett tried to show that something good can come from the human presence on the earth, and not only ecological deterioration. Given a deeper spiritual impulse, the beauty and ecology of the landscape can be improved. Klett indicates how the landscape has evolved in Europe, how it tends to disintegrate in the present and how the foundation for its future can be laid from a biodynamic point of view.
Manfred Klett is a co-founder of Dottenfelder Hof, a biodynamic farm community in West Germany. At present Dottenfelder Hofs establishing a biodynamic college at its farm. Klett himself is a widely traveled man, born in Tanzania, raised in Germany and for a year educated in England. His lectures were very deep and vivid. The text which follows has been corrected by Dr. Klett.

Imagine yourself walking on a hill overlooking familiar native countryside. You rest your senses on this landscape. Perhaps you notice your feelings. One impression that is so immediate, especially in Europe, is that all of what you see, the whole structure, the village, the trees, the single trees, the hedges, the islands of fields and forest - all is in a complete harmony. Nothing is separated. That is one fundamental impression, especially in Europe.

By Christof Wiechert
Translated by John Weedon
From the Rundbrief, the journal of the Pedagogical Section in Dornach, Volume 22, Easter 2005
Download the article:Thoughts on Testing and Being Tested

Life with its tests and trials
If we take a look at human life in general, we shall discover that crucial moments in a biography arc always subject to trials; these appear where the upholding of intentions of previous earthly lives is at stake, which determine the soul and ego substance of the human being. The significance of the life that has been completed comes down to the question whether life's trials have been mastered or not. Indeed, the laws of karma are composed from what has been achieved and what has not. In this sense, we may speak of the trials of life, thus touching on, so to speak, the great span of life.

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By Michael Miller
Download the article: Thoughts on the Christmas Plays

In autumn when the leaves on the trees change their color and begin falling, it is a signal that the year has reached its maturity and that a harvest is to be made. Each year, at the end of the season, the custom has been that the teachers of the Waldorf Schools around the world present their respective communities with a special gift. The teachers work together, combining their various talents and energies, to perform for their school community - for the students and their parents and friends - one or two of the three remarkable; medieval, mystery Christmas plays, commonly referred to as "The Christmas Plays."

By Peter Nitze
This article was first published in Renewal. A Journal for Waldorf Education Volume 1#1, 1991
click here for a pdf of the article

The following address was delivered at the high school commencement of the Rudolf Steiner
School in New York in June, 1991. Peter Nitze graduated from the Steiner school in 1976 after
thirteen years there. He attended Harvard College entered the business world, did graduate
engineering work at Stanford and presently works in Baltimore for a firm making industrial
machinery.
One of the comments often heard about Waldorf education is that it does not prepare the
young person for life in the cold cruel world, for achievement in a competitive and highly technological
society.
Mr. Nitze's case and testimony imply the contrary. In fact, Mr. Nitze credits to Waldorf
education qualities and attitudes which have served him well in career and life: intellectual curiosity;
the impulse to take the path less traveled by the belief in human freedom and in the potential for
growth through learning; the confidence in himself as integrated, and the love of making things and
making them well.
R.E.K.

When I graduated from the Rudolf Steiner School in 1976 1 did not have a clear sense of how
my experience at the school had shaped me. I can remember struggling to find some frame of reference
to help me sort out what had been valuable and what was lacking; but I had never attended
another school so I had no basis for comparison. It seemed to me then that what I had learned in thirteen years and
the way I had learned it was good enough - good enough to survive the SAT's and Achievement tests, good enough
to gain admission to an Ivy League college - so I did not agonize too long over what was special about the
education I had received.

By Henry Barnes
Published in Education as an Art, Vol. 33, No. 1 – Fall/Winter 1974/75
Download the article: To Become A Teacher

Where is that book to be found in which the teacher can read what teaching is? The children themselves are this book! We should not learn to teach out of any other book than the one lying before us and consisting of the children themselves; but in order to read in this book, we need the widest possible interest in each individual child. (3)    RUDOLF STEINER

Who is a Waldorf teacher? What distinguishes this education? How often have we asked ourselves this question! Is it teaching in blocks? Organizing the day around a main lesson? Continuing as a class teacher from year to year with the same group of children? Teaching in pictures? Knowing about reincarnation and karma? Teaching woodwork, painting, bookbinding, recorder, and eurythmy?

Rudolf Steiner says that "what is of most importance for the teacher is his conception of life and of the world . . . . The inspiration that flows to the teacher from a world conception inwardly and ever newly experienced is carried over into the soul constitution of the children entrusted to him." In other words, this means, he says, that we should learn to "read" the world and to "read" the riddle of man's being in quite new ways. "There must arise in the whole human nature of the teacher an intensive impression of the child, again as one whole being, and what is perceived in the child must awaken joy and vitality. This same spirit-awakening joy and vitality in the teacher must be able to grow and develop, till it becomes immediate inspiration, answering the question, 'What am I to do with this child or with that?'

by Henning Kullak-Ublick
Published online in Erziehungskunst, February 2019
Download the article: Trust, the miracle of being human


Trust is perhaps the most important condition to find our bearing in the world at all. That applies with regard to children but also our everyday practical life – and it does so to a far greater extent than its opposite, control. How else is it possible to move through traffic with millions of cars? What does this sibling of love, which can only be given as a gift but not demanded, mean for the growing child?

Anyone who has ever looked into the eyes of a few-days-old child will never forget the infinite depth and purity of their gaze in which the moment appears to turn into eternity and in which the most ancient knowledge of the world encounters the promise of an equally far-reaching future. “Who are you?”, “Where do you come from?”, “Where are you going?” are questions which pass through our soul more or less consciously.

What comes to meet us is complete and unmitigated trust. Already in the many months of pregnancy the child feels itself secure, supported, enveloped by the voice of the mother, her thoughts, feelings and actions as she passes through all the changes associated with pregnancy, until they finally together live through the birth, an experience which is as existential as death at the other end of our life on earth.