Freedom
Upper school: education to freedom?
“Receive the child in reverence, educate them in love, let them go forth in freedom.” That is a precise characterisation of Waldorf education as a whole as well as its focus in the first three seven-year periods. [more]
Publisher's View, Freedom
Stars in the sky
Have you heard of the “Democratic Voice of Youth”? It is an association of young people who have grown tired of waiting for us oldies finally to wake up. [more]
Living lessons, Freedom
Living concepts not definitions – botany in Waldorf school
Teachers preparing themselves for the botany main lessons in the fifth or sixth year of school face a major task because they should follow a new approach suggested by Rudolf Steiner. [more]
Waldorf worldwide, Freedom
Alexander Strakosch – the Waldorf engineer
When in the spring of 1920 it became clear that a group of class 8 pupils would not move up to class 9 but were seeking a transition to practical work, Rudolf Steiner suggested that a so-called continuation school be established for these pupils: “We would have to go for the practical and artistic above all. They should be taught concepts from life, from agriculture, from the trades, industry and commerce. They should do business essays and accounting, and in the artistic field visual arts, music and literature. That would be a task for Mr Strakosch. Life has to be looked at as a school. They can be told all the time that from now on they are being educated by life.” [more]
Series, Freedom
Leonore Bertalot – pioneer of the Brazilian Waldorf movement
When Rudolf Lanz, at the time a council member of the Escola Higienópolis school association in São Paulo, was looking for a “competent and all-round inwardly stable teacher”, he asked in many letters for support from Ernst Weißert at the German Association of Waldorf Schools. Finally, Leonore and Italo Bertalot joined the school in 1962 and supplemented the small faculty, she as a class teacher and he as an English teacher. [more]
Editorial, Freedom
Freedom is possible
Freedom can be experienced in different ways. On the one hand this is due to the fact that one person’s freedom need not necessarily be shared by another person, indeed, may even be experienced as a lack of freedom. On the other hand, there are various levels of the human being which determine the way that the experience of freedom comes to expression. [more]
Learning languages, Editorial
Listen and speak
It still works with adults, not just with children – I have tried it out myself: listen closely, repeat what you have heard – the meaning appears later by itself. [more]
Learning languages
News from the foreign language scene
The trend in foreign languages in Waldorf schools is towards main lessons. An overview. [more]
Learning languages
Ways to vocabulary
There is no dispute about the need to acquire a passive and an active vocabulary when learning a foreign language. In contrast to learning the rules of grammar, something about which there is a range of views among the theoreticians of foreign language teaching, no one questions that understanding and being able to use words is a primary concern in teaching a foreign language. Hence the focus is not on the “why” but rather on the “how”. Here we can use the threefold structure of the human being, which is of central importance in the whole of Waldorf education, as a productive foundation. [more]
Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen e.V.