The social mandate of Waldorf schools
Private schools are booming in Germany. As the confidence of parents in the state school system falls, we are heading straight for a two-tier system with private schools for the wealthy and state schools for everyone else. This model has long been established in the Anglo-Saxon countries with their great divide between rich and poor. [more]
Throwing traditions overboard. An experiment in state and Waldorf education in Hamburg
A unique school project has started in the socially deprived area of Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg: Waldorf teachers and teachers from the Fährstraße all-day state school intend to work together from the 2014/15 school year onwards. A corresponding cooperation agreement with the Intercultural Waldorf Initiative was signed by the Hamburg Senate on 24 October 2013. We spoke with project manager Christiane Leiste. [more]
The Sekem school in Egypt. A contribution to sustainable development
With the establishment of a kindergarten, a school, a vocational school and a university, Ibrahim Abouleish is attempting to promote sustainability in the future development of Egypt through the Sekem farm. The country is currently in a political transition process: after the glaring failure of elected President Mohamed Mursi and the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the people are calling for a strongman whom they see in the person of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The interim government consists largely of the old Mubarak clique and has sought to counter any protest through questionable arrests. There have also been constant acts of terrorism from Islamists directed primarily against the military and police. But political alertness has also increased. The forthcoming elections will show whether a new path can open up. [more]
A sleeping dragon dreams. The Waldorf movement in China
The so-called “Cultural Revolution” in China ended in 1976 – a ten year experiment in the systematic destruction of traditional culture and education with roots going back millennia. That set in train the economic development of the Middle Kingdom which has been unprecedented in its rapidity and which has led to the creation and rise of a growing middle class and the spread of values guided by consumerism. [more]
Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen e.V.