Editorial
Freeing the mind
We don’t place our trust in anything much anymore today – and certainly not in our common sense and experience of life – if it hasn’t been rubber stamped by science, empirically backed up and based on facts. [more]
Editorial
Igniting the spirit
Adolescence is a time of transition – it turns the world on its head in order to give birth to the “inner human being”. The impetus for action should come not from outside but from within the person. But everything of an intellectual nature, all “rigidified, objective science which encompasses what is dead” – as Steiner says – thrusts a “stake into the heart” of youthful vitality. [more]
Editorial
Crafts and art
Everyone knows it – school practitioners, educational theorists, brain researchers, indeed entrepreneurs confirm it: the “creative forces of aesthetics”, the “emotional boost of artistic expression” belong to the basic prerequisites of education. [more]
Publisher's View
Wake-up call
Recently, when watching an old film, I have occasionally got the feeling: “Hey, don’t you realise you’re much too close to each other and standing in too large groups? Why aren’t you paying attention?” Only then my brain gets into gear and explains to me that a) it is a historical film, i.e. made before March 2020, b) we are all still learners and therefore c) the last word has not been spoken as to where this madness begins and ends. [more]
Publisher's View
Listen to …
Three years after his death, the album Thanks for the Dance by the Canadian poet, painter and musician Leonard Cohen was released in 2019. [more]
Editorial
Stress test
We look back on unusual weeks at the service public health. The restrictions on our freedoms as a result of the battle against the coronavirus are, looked at historically, not unique – except for the closure of the churches – but the enemy and setting have changed. [more]
Publisher's View
About life in action
Are we yet sufficiently machine-compliant? Do we educate our children with the necessary rigour to adapt to the requirements of a world which is increasingly being controlled by machines? Do we teach them early enough to see this world as their actual home? Do we educate them in good time to synchronise their life with artificial intelligence? Are we really doing everything we can so that they function optimally and are not left behind in the battle for the remaining well-paid jobs? [more]
Editorial
Climate matters
Before expecting others to do something, we could, if we wanted, start with ourselves – and right away. For example in protecting the environment, sustainability, reducing plastic waste, the use of resources and energy, CO2 emissions, food... [more]
Series, Transhumanism
Two sisters and a legacy. Waldorf education in New Zealand
Anthroposophy came to New Zealand as early as the second decade of the twentieth century through Emma Richmond. Her daughter, the teacher Rachel Crompton-Smith, together with her husband Bernard Crompton-Smith opened the small St George School in Havelock North in 1917 at which girls and boys were taught together, something extraordinary at that time. This impulse was taken up by Ethel Edwina Burbury and Ruth Nelson who founded the anthroposophical Taruna centre and a short time later the first Waldorf school in Hastings. [more]
Editorial
Deus in machina
The philosopher Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) wrote in his famous Oration on the Dignity of Man: “You yourself shall determine your [nature] without any restriction and limitation as you see fit. [...] We have created you neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that you by yourself, as your own creative fashioner, may give yourself the form you desire by your free and honourable choice. You may degenerate into brute bestiality; but you may also be reborn to something higher, to the divine if your soul thus resolves.” [more]
Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen e.V.