Waldorf Schools - The Best Kept Educational Secret in the World

It was 1919: a time of war, turmoil, and economic devastation. The place was Stuttgart Germany, where the area's largest employer - Waldorf Astoria - asked a noted philosopher and scientist to found a school for the children of its factory workers. Rudolf Steiner agreed. But there were conditions.   He demanded that the school would be open to all children, male or female, and that all children would receive the same broad classical education for all twelve grades, whether the child be bound for a university…. or a factory.   No one could possibly have known that Steiner's philosophical and pedagogical approach would play an important role in education for the 21st century.   

Waldorf education has stood the test of time for a very important reason:   its approach is based on the understanding that humans are threefold beings, of thought, emotion, and will, whose spirit and soul long to be nourished. It may sound complex, but Waldorf can be summed up as this: a school where children are treated with love and respect, and educated…. head, heart, and hands.

In Waldorf schools art and practical work with the hands is set on par with academic studies.   Students master such crafts as knitting, crocheting, sewing, making shoes, and building musical instruments. All children sing, play instruments, paint with watercolors, draw, model with beeswax, and participate in eurythmy, an art of movement developed by Steiner.

Through the art of storytelling that begins in kindergarten, Waldorf students are nourished with tales, myths, legends, and biographies that comprise the world's great literature. Lessons are presented in artistic and imaginative form, by a teacher who knows that in order to engage their love of learning, one must reach their life of feeling.   These stories, together with the modeling of speech, behavior, and thought, guides each student toward developing strong moral character.

Waldorf is set apart from other schools in the strength of the social education that comes from staying with one class and one lead teacher, through 8th grade. A strong bond forms with the class teacher who knows everything about every child, because he has been with them… since first grade.  

The end result is a human being who is well balanced--not all intellectual head or all physical brawn, but rather an individual who can sew on a button and play a violin as well as fix a car and discuss Plato and Classical Greece.

Perhaps it is true that there is a time for everything. Now seems to be the time for Waldorf education, as there is no clear solution at hand to fix our nation's failing public schools.    More and more parents are delighted to discover Waldorf as they search for educational alternatives.

Many Waldorf schools throughout the world are also known as Steiner schools, but whether Waldorf or Steiner, they all spring from the same fountainhead of wisdom that gave rise to the now fastest growing independent school movement in the world.