The Waldorf School Approach to History

...It was this principle that was so strongly emphasized by M.C...

...inner life of the teachers and of the whole organization and inspiration of the schools would run something like this: a habit (perhaps one should say a Goethean habit) of thinking in terms of metamorphosis rather than of cause and effect: If we want the child to understand metamorphosis in man, it is good to first introduce him to metamorphosis in nature...

...And there will only be more when it comes to be realized, not simply that education is an art, but just how it is an art...

...In other words, true education is not a science but an art...

...To give only one example, such a mental habit entails progressing beyond Emerson's intuitive perception of the significance for history of the "Lives of Representative Men" to a systematic emphasis on biographies in the teaching of history, an emphasis that is not merely anecdotal precisely because metamorphosis, as a thought-form, entails the wider principle of organicism...

...THOMAS P. WALTERS is supervisor of evaluations for the Religious Education Office of the Archdiocese of Detroit...

...It contains a chapter entitled "The Teacher," in the course of which the author observes, "In pondering Rudolf Steiner/Waldorf education in America for more than twenty years I have observed that it is the inner life of the teacher that gives the organism its uncommon energy and direction and humanity and substance and inspiration...

...There are enough poets around - enough at least in so far as the survival of civilization depends on them...

...Richards in her book...

...But it soon becomes evident from the whole treatment of the subject that the reader is in fact being invited to get beneath the skin of - well, let us say of the Waldorf teacher of any subject whatever...

...Owen Barfield IN THE April 4, 1981, number of Commonweal I had the privilege of reviewing M.C...

...The class seven curriculum concerns itself largely with such moments...

...The essential difference...

...It involves the habit of perceiving the Whole potentially existent in the part...

...The book itself must of course be consulted for details of the many features peculiar to Rudolf Steiner schools, as ' distinct from those based on other principles or none: for example, the practice by which all classes below the eighth grade begin the day with a "main lesson" of two hours' duration, taken by the same teacher and continuing with the same subject for a period measured by weeks...

...How many problems would begin to disappear if more and more people were becoming aware, not of the conflict between, but of "the polarity of the individual and the social community...

...but there are certainly not enough teachers...

...One does not need, in order to benefit from this book, to be a parent faced with the problem of choosing a school for his offspring, although for anyone in that situation it can be confidently recommended...

...This liberal, unpretentious, and wise little book contributes valuably towards the dawn of such a realization...

...The teacher does not teach an-throposophical concepts but without an anthroposophical background and an anthroposophical inner life he will not be able to move creatively...

...or the attention given to the successive steps of instruction that may well be given on the same day, and those for which consecutive days are better because of the night's sleep that intervenes...

...Must we say then, Doctor nascitur, nonfit...

...For this reason, the natural history period, a botany period, should precede the treatment of ancient civilizations...

...Poeta nascitur, nonfit, poets are born, not made...

...As the title suggests, it selects from a wide range of topics one particular one to concentrate on...

...But it is at this time that the calyx developed of that consciousness that is still spreading its petals in the flowering of the twentieth century...

...A similar book on the teaching of any other subject might perhaps succeed in doing something the same, but, as the author discloses, history is particularly apt for the purpose, because in the Waldorf curriculum, at least with the younger children, it reckons to permeate all the other subjects: Steiner encouraged historical work related to other subjects and specifically indicated that history should play its part in the elementary teaching of language, arts, biology, physics, crafts, art instruction, eurythmy and music...

...and in so doing it lays a foundation for that imaginative and creative thinking which is so badly needed today in almost all contexts - not least in the social one...

...OWEN BARFIELD'S most recent book is History, Guilt, and Habit (Wesleyan University...

...but by writing a careful account of one aspect of the teaching that goes on in these Rudolf Steiner schools he has, so to speak, laid their cards on the table for the kind of inspection such claims fairly invite...

...Werner Glas is of course not concerned to parade his "inner life," or that of Waldorf teachers in general, before the eyes of his readers, or to justify any such notable claims made on their behalf...

...We can also come across moments that take place quietly and then take centuries to flower in all their glory...

...But he is also - and this should particularly interest the prospective parent - being invited to get beneath the skin of any receptive pupil...

...If that is the whole truth, the outlook is poor...

...It deals with less than three hundred years: from 1413 to the seventeenth century...

...But is there any possibility of conveying in a few words some notion of the general impression a reader will take away with him of the difference between a Rudolf Steiner school and most, or perhaps all, others...

...Anyone who has had anything to do with education, even if only at the receiving end, will know that there is such a thing as a "born\teacher" - and vice versa...

...Richards's book Towards Wholeness:Rudolf Steiner Education in America...

...The nearest I can come to some such general impression both of the presumed REVIEWERS DAVID J. O'BRIEN teaches history at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester...

...When we actually observe how the glory of petals radiates out of a core point in the calyx, we can also gain an artistic impression of how history can move in leaps from moments of crisis...

...It is by no means inappropriate therefore that a book should now have appeared actually written by a Waldorf schoolteacher of maturity and experience...