The Waldorf Education Movement Around the World

Founded in Europe in 1919, Waldorf Education now includes schools on every continent and has grown to become the world's largest independent, non-denominational school system that goes through all the grades. By the end of the 20th Century there will probably be about 1000 Waldorf Schools.

A system that recognizes and meets the need for strong development of the intellect, Waldorf is committed to excellence in all basic academic skills. It provides a full introduction to the classics, foreign languages, history, geography, mathematics, science…the subjects today's child needs as a foundation for tomorrow's complex and challenging civilization.

Even though every Waldorf School is independent, all share a core of curriculum, methods and beliefs, including the idea that a fulfilled and creative life involves considerably more than mental development of the ability to earn a living. Important as these things are, every child also needs the balance provided by strong and healthy development in the life of will (the ability to get things done) and in the life of feeling (emotions, aesthetics, social sensitivity).

Waldorf's time-tested pedagogy is designed to address the whole child: head, heart, and hands. It stimulates the mind with the full spectrum of traditional academic subjects. It nurtures healthy emotional development by conveying knowledge experientially as well as academically. And it works with the hands throughout every day, both in primary academic subjects and in a broad range of artistic handwork and craft activities.

Waldorf schools strive to awaken and ennoble capacities, rather than to merely impose intellectual content on the child. Learning becomes much more than the acquisition of information…learning becomes an engaging voyage of discovery of the world, and of oneself.

A Waldorf education is meant to be the beginning of a life-long love of learning.

"A great deal is said today about the need for engineers and for scientists, and the point of view is taken that if you have better science courses and specialize sooner in the scientific branches of knowledge, you are going to get better scientists. I think that the best scientist is the best and most creative thinker and the task of education is first of all to educate human beings who then become scientists."

- Rudolf Steiner, founder of Waldorf education

"Those in the public school reform movement have some important things to learn from what Waldorf educators have been doing for many years. It's an enormously impressive effort toward quality education, and schools would be well advised to familiarize themselves with the basic assumptions that underlie the Waldorf movement."

- Ernest Boyer, President, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching