This useful volume presents a selection of Rudolf Steiner's writings on childhood, alongside supplemental essays on sensory development and imitation, suggestions for how to study Steiner's work, and a discussion of the future of childhood. This is the first time these texts have been collected together in English and the commentaries draw on the many years of experience as educators and teacher trainers of the editors.

Since 2006, specialists, doctors, psychologists, and therapists of Parzival-Zentrum Karlsruhe have taken part in emergency education crisis interventions, carried out by the organization Friends of Friends of Waldorf Education. They work with psychologically traumatized children and young people in war zones and disaster areas, including Lebanon, China, the Gaza Strip, Indonesia, Haiti, Kyrgyzstan, and most recently in Japan following the tsunami there and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Bernd Ruf, who heads these operations, describes in his book in various ways the basics of anthroposophically extended "emergency education," including the anthroposophic understanding of trauma itself. In addition, he describes processes and experiences, focusing on recent experiences in Japan at the center of his descriptions. Educating Traumatized Children offers much-needed insight into this little-known area of education and healing for traumatized children and young people. This book will be valuable not only for those working in areas of disaster and armed conflict, but also for any teacher or parent who is teaching or caring for a traumatized child.

This book collects lectures given in 2015 at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. 550 people from 46 countries, including Waldorf educators, scholars, and professionals in a wide range of fields, came together to work on current educational questions with the goal of deepening our understanding of child and human development. Claus-Peter Roeh of the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum summarised the mood at the end of the conference: 'We have tried, with great intensity and candour, to create a community of awareness around various areas of education. The desire to always keep the idea of a whole in mind while discerning the individual was clearly apparent . . . Now we stand before the challenge of further developing our collective work and newly gained insights into the future.' Contributors include Florian Osswald, Ursula Flatters, Susan Weber, Elizabeth Hall, Clara Aerts, Reinoud Engelsman and Claus-Peter Roeh. These texts will serve as a basis for further study activity and can contribute to a greater collaborative activity in the Waldorf kindergarten and school movement.

"Try to become one with the world--that will be the best and most important 'program.' It is something that cannot be contained in statutes but needs to burn in our hearts as a flame." --Rudolf Steiner Following the widespread destruction of World War I, Europe in 1918 was faced with political, economic, and social chaos, especially in Germany. In volume 5 of his seven-volume biography of Rudolf Steiner, Peter Selg focuses on the three years following the "Great War" and Steiner's efforts to help restructure society in a way that might avoid a recurrence of such a terrible calamity in the future. He saw the root sociopolitical and spiritual causes of the devastation and sought to change the flawed worldviews and impulses that led to the hubris behind the World War. Rudolf Steiner thus began to concentrate on various means to renew and invigorate society, both through immediate measures--especially in his plan for a "threefold social order"--and through the new form of pedagogy that came to fruition with the Waldorf education movement. Steiner saw that a renewed form of education was necessary to the development of peaceful and healthy social conditions in the future. This education was intended to help children grow into responsible, free, and imaginative adults. This was a time of intense work for Rudolf Steiner, including a full schedule of travel and lectures, reaching out to political leaders, training teachers for the new schools, and working with theologians and ministers toward religious renewal. Rudolf Steiner, Life and Work, Seven Volumes Vol. 1. (1861-1890): Childhood, Youth, and Study Years (ISBN: 9781621480822 Pbk - ISBN: 9781621480839 Hbk) Vol. 2. (1890-1900): Weimar and Berlin (ISBN: 9781621480853 Pbk - ISBN: 9781621480860 Hbk) Vol. 3. (1900-1914): Spiritual Science and Spiritual Community (ISBN: 9781621480884 Pbk - ISBN: 9781621480891 Hbk) Vol. 4. (1914-1918): The Years of World War I (ISBN: 9781621481577 Pbk - ISBN: 9781621481584 Hbk) Vol. 5. (1919-1922): Social Threefolding and the Waldorf School (ISBN: 9781621481935 Pbk - ISBN: 9781621481942 Hbk) Vol. 6. (1923): The Burning of the Goetheanum (ISBN: 9781621482192 Pbk - ISBN: 9781621482208 Hbk) Vol. 7. (1924-1925): The Anthroposophical Society and the School for Spiritual Science (ISBN: 9781621482321 Pbk - ISBN: 9781621482338 Hbk)