"It is a simple but essential principle: education aims at the
future, at a time that we as educators do not yet know and cannot
foresee. The challenges that will confront the children in the
future are not those of the past-of our past, of our life story and
our horizon. Times change, so do the realities of life, and in our
times they change quickly and dramatically. Education aims at the
future and that puts us as educators in a difficult situation: this
future is not-or is only to an extent-identical with our past, with
our life experiences. My youth, your youth: they are not identical
with the adolescent constitution and life reality toward which we
currently have to direct our educational efforts. Yet educate we
must, and educating means preparing for a future." -Peter Selg
(from the book) Schools reflect the state of society. If society is
materialistic, competitive, egoistic, technological, and without
concern for human values and long-term thinking, our schools will
tend to reflect those values. However, what if education were about
something else? What if education were about the future? What if
education were a about nurturing a new generation of human beings,
integrated in body, soul, and spirit and able to think for
themselves and have the capacity to love? Perhaps the world would
change. The Waldorf school, initiated and guided in 1919 by Rudolf
Steiner, was conceived with precisely such an end in view. In this
passionate, inspiring, and moving book, Peter Selg, speaks from a
deep knowledge of Anthroposophy and from his extensive experience
as a child psychiatrist. He returns to the original impulses behind
the first Waldorf school to show their continuing validity and how
they still respond to what we need. From this view, Waldorf
education is future-oriented, based on a holistic worldview and
cosmology that is humanistic, scientific, and spiritual, and
develops through a curriculum and a teacher-student relationship
based on love. Its focus is the miracle of the developing human
being. Recognizing the equal importance of thinking, feeling, and
willing, Waldorf education works through bodily movement and art,
as well as through intellect and mind. Waldorf Education is not a
theory but a living reality, and Selg brings this reality to life
before us through the biography of the first Waldorf school. Thus,
we learn to see it in a new way-in its essence, as a healing model
of what education might become if the primary relationship, the
inner core of a school, is the free relationship between teacher
and student. As Steiner wrote: "It is our task as teachers and
educators to stand in awe of the individuality of the student and
offer our help so that it can follow the laws of its own
development. We are merely called upon to remove any obstacles in
body or soul that might hinder the individuality from realizing its
potential freely." A verse given at the dedication of a building at
the Waldorf School in Stuttgart expresses the essence of Waldorf
Education in poetic form: May there reign here spirit-strength in
love; May there work here spirit-light in goodness; Born from
certainty of heart, And from steadfastness of soul, So that we may
bring to young human beings Bodily strength for work, inwardness of
soul, and clarity of spirit.
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