The first Waldorf school
In 1919, at the request of Emil Molt, director of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany, Rudolf Steiner was asked to create for the children of the workers in this factory, a school that truly met the needs of the child and prepared them for life.
A pedagogy known around the world
Over 80 years after the founding of the first Waldorf school, there are now about 800 Waldorf schools, 2000 Waldorf kindergartens, many teacher training institutions and hundreds of centers that provide remedial education to thousands of children in over 50 countries, an education all based on the Waldorf pedagogy. The Waldorf school movement in North America (AWSNA) has a hundred schools and as many kindergartens.
What is Waldorf education?
The best general definition that can be given about Waldorf education is that its objective is "to produce capable individuals, in themselves and by themselves, who have meaning to their lives, and become free individuals." Waldorf education seeks to educate the whole child "head, heart and hands."
The school plan is as broad as possible in the allotted time and carefully balances the purely academic subjects with artistic lessons and practical activities.
Waldorf education is based on a thorough knowledge of the inner being of the child and its transformations over time. First, the child is brought to live things actively and then feel these things before understanding them.
Teaching is carried by live images. It seeks less to impart knowledge than to awake in children the full range of his faculties, so suited to his age, according to the rhythms of his development.
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner was a philosopher, scientist and visionary German but we cannot say it belongs to any country. Indeed, he was born in 1861 in a small village in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which later became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and Yugoslavia.
As a child, he lived in a village in Hungary and went to school in Austria. Later he worked in Germany, Switzerland, but also traveled tirelessly across Europe, from north to south, from east to west, exploring the world, and man's deep, profound nature. He tirelessly answered seekers of his philosophy who wished to renew their work as doctors, pharmacists, farmers, artists, scientists, politicians, economists, theologians, and educators.
He wrote nearly 30 books and gave over 6,000 lectures. All sectors of human activity received his input. This is particularly true for the art of education practiced in what is now called Waldorf schools.
Experience, reflection, comprehension
"The great power of concentration of Waldorf students is certainly reinforced by an ancient practice but increasingly neglected: time for observation and reflection. The science classes are an example.
In regular schools, teachers present first and foremost a principle and then illustrate it with a demonstration or an experiment. This deprives the child of any interest" said Mikka Bojarsky, science teacher at the Waldorf school in Sacramento.
Waldorf teachers proceed vice versa, making the experience before focusing on the principle. "We must let the child sleep on it ... ". He added that the next day, students usually have more questions than the day of the experiment. "(2)
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