Articles

by Franklin Kane and Betty (Kane)Staley
Published in Education as an Art Vol.28, No. 3 – Spring-Summer 1970
Download the article: Earth, Who Gives to Us

The other evening a group of friends were discussing the pressing issues facing man in the decades to come. Was it drugs, war and peace, the younger generation, the racial crisis, political corruption, the changing moral standards, or the East-West confrontation which lay at the heart of the matter? Where could education best serve the future generation to lay a moral foundation to face these issues? Most of these problem areas are symptoms of a failure to respect and understand the human being and his relationship to the world around him. Thus, the current concern for ecology directly relates to the heart of the matter. Then Mrs. G., a professional educator, who had had many disillusioning years of supporting idealistic causes, turned to us and said, "As a teacher myself, I feel that I have never really gotten to the core of it. I have inward concerns which I want to share with the children. They share my emotional involvement, but somewhere there is still a split between the day-to-day teaching and the hard facts of reality. I feel it's wrong to overemphasize these problems to young children and yet how else do I develop the feeling of responsibility? If ecology is the basic issue, how does Waldorf education deal with it?"

by Caroline von Heydebrand
Published in Anthroposophy, #1, Volume 3, 1928 (England)
Download the article: Education as a Healing Agent

In the new teachings which Rudolf Steiner gave to those concerned with the education of children, he showed that teachers really have to administer a kind of general Therapy. He taught them to realize that everything proceeding from the spirit and soul of the teacher has an effect upon the spirit and soul of the children and can give rise to healthy life-processes or unhealthy deposits of the metabolic system. The foundations of health or disease, in short the physiological basis of the children's moral qualities and firm hold on life in the future, are thus laid by education. If, for instance, we lovingly help the little child who is learning to walk, we are laying the foundations for a healthy old age. If we force the child, if we try to make it stand upright and walk too soon, we are establishing the preliminaries of rheumatism and gouty troubles in later life. If we think untrue thoughts in the environment of children, if we speak insincerely or in foolish' baby language' to them, we are setting up incipient disorders of their breathing and digestive systems later on. And we are laying the basis of nerve troubles if, during the age when thinking is unfolding from out of speech, our actions are not consistent, if for instance, we tell the child one minute to do this and another minute to do something else.

by Wolfgang Wagner
Published in the Journal, Education as an Art, Vol. 20, No. 4, Spring, 1960
Download the article: Education of the Will in the Crafts Lesson

He who has had the opportunity of seeing. a class of children aged 9 to 10 tackling the task of driving a row of nails into each side of a wooden frame for the purpose of weaving, has had a living experience of that force we call "the will." It is here the still unspoiled, uncurbed will for the working into matter, activity uninhibited by ideas and reflections, the potentiality of the doing whilst the teacher or adult is naturally expected to give the answers to the "What do I do?" — "How do I do it?" —It is an experience that can make you aware in a rare way of the material the child brings to us to be educated, directed and harmonized until it can become activity in thinking, the most human of our human faculties.

by Valdemar W. Sezter
Download the article: Electronic Media and Waldorf Education


The original of this text, in Portuguese, was written in early 2016 as a new appendix for the new, 12th edition of the book by Rudolf Lanz, Waldorf Education: a path for a more humane education (Lanz, 2016, in Portuguese). My two old appendices on TV and video games, of the book's previous editions, did not consider the impact of the Internet, which has become perhaps the biggest current educational problem. Also, when I wrote them there were very few scientific papers investigating the effects of electronic media on children and adolescents; some of them are cited here.

Initially, an objective description of each device and its impacts on the user are presented. Then, specific problems they may cause are addressed, starting with two which I consider irrefutable and definitive, that is, taking them into account, one should come to the conclusion that electronic media should not be used by children and adolescents. Some other problems are then addressed, and a special section deals with the use of electronic media by children and adolescents from the point of view of Waldorf education. This section is directed to parents and teachers of Waldorf students, but also to the general public interested in knowing that distinct point of view – from my own understanding, that is, this text is by no means an official statement of Waldorf education about the questions covered here.

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The Waldorf School at Stuttgart (Freie Waldorfschule) was founded in 1919 by Dr. Emil Molt, General Manager of the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Factory, for the-children of his workmen. This was a social impulse and an action born out of the free life of the spirit.

While I stayed in his house for two and a half years, Emil Molt frequently told me of that time which had been the climax of his life.

In September 1919, when the School was opened, the 260 pupils were mainly children of proletarians, and some were children of Anthroposophists. Emil Molt had asked Rudolf Steiner to take over the School’s organization and guidance. Under his lead, the School obtained that spiritual foundation which became known as an education born out of Anthroposophy. An individual initiative thus led to the movement known as "Rudolf Steiner" or “Waldorf Pedagogy”, which has become a leading factor in the spiritual life of the 20th century.

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Keywords: founding first Waldorf school

by Claudia Grah-Wittich
This article was published on the website Waldorf Resources
Translated by Karin Smith
Download the article: Emmi Pikler's Educational Impulse and Waldorf Education

This paper explores the life and work of Emmi Pikler, one of the pioneers of Pediatrics. The author compares Pikler's and Steiner's views on child observation and education, and emphasizes their similarities.

Emmi Pikler's Impulse

Emmi Pikler was born in Vienna in 1902 and died 1984 in Budapest. She studied Medicine in Vienna and specialized in Paediatrics under Freiherr Clemens von Pirquet. He strongly influenced her future with his view that the most important task is to protect the child's health rather than to “focus only on the diagnosis and healing of illnesses. What matters most is not the illness but the child.” i Therefore, Pirquet was deeply concerned with questions of the child's upbringing.

One of the study modules at the Pirquet hospital was a practical training in the baby unit, studying infant care and nutrition. Her next teacher, the paediatric surgeon Hans Salzer, taught her how different a medical examination can be, if the consultant approaches the child kindly and establishes contact with the little patient. Both impulses, Pirquet's emphasis on salutogenesis as well as Salzer's empathic attitude towards the child, strongly influenced Emmi Pikler's own professional approach.

Her husband, a teacher and mathematician, shared her interest in child development and further influenced her professional progress. They decided to do everything they could to enable the healthy development of their own child. It was very important for them to respect their child, to be patient and not to restrict the free unfolding of its movements.

In 1935, Emmi Pikler started to work as a Paediatrician in Hungary and quickly earned the respect of her colleagues. She held lectures on the care and nutrition of infants and babies and, for ten years, ran her own practice as a family doctor. After the war, she cared for abandoned and malnourished children on behalf of a Hungarian organisation. This experience led her to found Lóczy, a care home for children, in 1946.