Editorial
An overdue change in direction?
Waldorf Schools are facing a challenge to their educational policy in terms of both their artistic and practical crafts teaching. Klaus-Peter Freitag, executive director of the German Association of Waldorf Schools, provided the impetus for one of the thematic focal points of this issue in preparation for a congress. [more]
Working and Learning
With good reason, Waldorf schools attach great importance to balance in terms of the development of varying competences: cognitive and intellectual, crafts and manual as well as artistic and aesthetic skills are taught in combination with social skills. And this is always done while paying attention to the balance between these sets of skills. At the very least it is something that underlies the foundations of Waldorf education, summarised in the words, “head, hand and heart”. However it all takes place under immense pressure of time because in all areas the abundance of material keeps growing. [more]
The educational significance of practical learning
Which skills and abilities should schools give to children and young people so that they are prepared to confidently confront the challenges of the future? On what basis can these increasingly bigger and more complex seeming tasks such as globalisation and digitalisation, peace and social justice, and responsibility towards the earth and its inhabitants be tackled? From the point of view of Waldorf education, the school’s contribution when it comes to overcoming these challenges can only arise through a human-centred understanding of education. [more]
From Stuttgart into the world. Waldorf schools acknowledge the cultural impulse of work
There is a hermeneutical key when it comes to dealing with Rudolf Steiner: the law of the question. In his memoirs, Herbert Hahn reports on a statement from Steiner that in work committed to the spirit it is not possible “simply to fling all knowledge that has already been gained onto the street”, but rather that the corresponding question has to be waited for. [more]
Publisher's View
Elective affinities
A sociologist from Quito reported on what had impressed him the most when he moved from Ecuador to Germany. “In Ecuador,” he said, “95 percent of my best friends are members of my family. This is how it is there, friends are often siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, members of the family. In Germany, it is a very different state of affairs. Here, many of your children have no siblings at all, as well as no cousins, aunts and uncles. And if it does happen to be the case that they do, then they live all over the place, completely separated.” [more]
Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen e.V.