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Waldorf
Education: Goodness, Beauty & Truth
Parents can provide nothing of more lasting value than an education
which develops their child's full human potential. Waldorf education
emphasizes disciplined creativity, wonder and reverence and respect
for nature and for human existence.
A comprehensive academic, artistic, and physical education program
presented in a supportive, structured and non-competitive environment
is meant to help parents develop a child who will be balanced
in feeling, with initiative in action and clarity in thought.
We aim to strengthen the child to meet not only the challenges
of school, but those of life.
Waldorf is a successful holistic education model designed to provide
the right stimulus at the right time and allow each child's abilities
to fully unfold. The early childhood and elementary school curriculum,
based on the philosophy and methods of its founder, recognizes
that as children pass through three distinct developmental stages,
specific forces and capabilities are at work…and so children have
very particular needs from the adults around them.
In extremely brief terms, this approach could be described as
follows:
- In
the first seven or so years the child seeks to see that the
world is a place of goodness, and will learn primarily
by imitation and through activity. This is why Waldorf Early
Childhood programs emphasize creative play as a vital early
foundation for creative thinking.
-
In the next developmental phase (leading up to puberty) the
child most naturally learns through beauty, from adults
who merit being authorities. This is why storytelling and art
are employed as teaching vehicles throughout the elementary
curriculum.
-
And then, entering into the third developmental stage and ready
at last for true independent thinking, the teenager naturally
beings a quest for truth.
"Being
personally acquainted with a number of Waldorf students, I can
say that they come closer to realizing their own potential than
practically anyone I know."
Joseph
Weizenbaum, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
author, "Computer Power and Human Reason"
"In
linking their curriculum and schooling toward children's developmental
stages, Waldorf schools seem to have unique sense of what children
are ready for." They "promote creativity and critical thinking
in an interdisciplinary fashion…exactly the direction public education
needs to move."
Jack
Miller, professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,
University of Toronto
"The
true aim of education is to awaken real powers of perception and
judgment in relation to life and living. For only such awakening
can lead to true freedom."
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