Pws mariposa

Mariposa A Publication of the Pasadena Waldorf School

Updated Online Version Fall 2008

Preschool/High School Issue

(Originally Published Spring 2004)

Contents

In this issue of Mariposa, we take a look at what a number of people, some experts from our own midst, some with highly respected Waldorf and/or mainstream credentials, have to say on the subject.

Pasadena Waldorf School 209 East Mariposa Street Altadena, CA 91001

OK, so we have a preschool. Why do we need a high school?

1

In praise of early childhood.

3

Work and play in early childhood.

7

Waldorf high school: keeping ideals intact.

13

Waldorf high school curriculum guide.

19

Why it would be cool to have a high school.

23

Our thanks to the authors, the organizers, the faculty, our students, and PWS parent Ron Manzke.

OK, so we have a preschool. Why do we need a high school?

The original issue of this Mariposa was published in Spring of 2004 and asked, “Why do we need a Preschool and a High School?”

In this updated version of that same issue, we can now celebrate the completion of our early childhood program by revisiting some expert views of early childhood and what makes a Waldorf preschool so unique. Our gratitude for the completion of our early childhood program will only increase as we remind ourselves of the incredible value of the preschool program to our little ones and to us as parents. Also in this issue, we explore what some experts with highly-respected Waldorf credentials (one from our own midst) have to say on the subject of the Waldorf High School. As we look forward to the launch of our high school in the fall of 2012, we hope that these articles will provide ideas and values that will help our community carry out the exciting task before us.

Before the rainbow bridge – completing our early childhood program. After many years of fundraising, building, and hard work, the dream of a PWS preschool is now a reality. The beautiful new Poppy Preschool opened in September of 2007 and welcomed 19 charter families. Our new Poppy Preschool joins the Sweet Peas Parent-Toddler Group, the Lily Kindergarten, and the Rose Kindergarten to complete our early childhood program. A new building houses the Sweet Peas, Roses and Lilies, while the Poppy Preschool is located inside Scripps Hall. Our entire community came together to accomplish this task and fulfill this vision and it was with true joy and gratitude that we witnessed our preschoolers during their glorious first year. Hearts full, eyes brimming with anticipation, preschool parents appear with their eager young charges in tow at the gate of the preschool – the children’s garden. These parents know that this garden is a gift for their children. As parents, they will greatly benefit from this early learning about the tools of rhythm, ritual, and repetition. They will gain a better understanding of children at this age through participating in this holistic, developmentally appropriate environment. Thanks to loving, dedicated, and patient work from all corners of our community, parents who intuitively know that this is the right place for them, no longer have to say, “If PWS had a preschool, my child could have been at this incredible place even sooner.”

After the diploma. Just like children, schools themselves grow and mature. Over the years, our school has weathered numerous challenges and emerged the stronger for them, all the while blessed to have seen so many wonderful students pass through our doors. By now, PWS has graduated a number of eighth grade classes. Sometime in the middle school years, usually in seventh grade, PWS parents begin facing the task of finding suitable high schools. Wishing for secondary school environments that organically grow from their children’s grammar school experiences, parents examine local public and private schools only to find a paucity of choices. While Highland Hall is an option, many parents are daunted by the commute and cannot see how to make it work for their families. Seeking answers, they turn back to the place from whence they came: “Why doesn’t PWS start a high school?”

PWS High School- is exuberance enough? So it is that parent interest and enthusiasm have grown so much that the idea of a high school has commanded the attention of every group vested in this institution. Expanding our program to include a high school is now a goal identified in the PWS Long Range Plan developed in 2006-2007. The High School Initiative Group has been faithfully meeting since 2005, studying adolescent development and forming recommendations that will lead us to the launch of the program. Educational opportunities and speakers continue to help our entire community learn about the adolescent, the Waldorf high school curriculum, and the process of envisioning a healthy high school that meets the needs of its students. The Board of Trustees and the College of Teachers have resolved to begin the first ninth grade in the fall of 2012. The entire school is collaborating to form the vision that will guide the abundant work that is now ahead of us to achieve our goal. What elements are necessary for a successful transition? What makes Waldorf high schools unique and compelling? What are the pedagogical underpinnings of this initiative?

1

In the first seven years, the human body has a work to perform upon itself which is essentially different from its tasks during all other periods of life, namely to mold the physical organs into definite shapes. Growth continues of course in later periods of life, but is then based on the forms which were developed in this first life-period. If true forms are developed, true forms will grow; if misshapen forms are developed, misshapen forms will grow.

We can never repair what we may have neglected to do as educators during the child’s first six or seven years.

Rudolf Steiner

In praise of early childhood.

by Bronja Zahlingen

Bronja Zahlingen was born in 1912, the youngest child of a Polish Jewish family. During World War I, the family emigrated to Vienna, where Bronja met Anthroposophy through some of her classmates. Later she studied psychology and early childhood education. In 1933, Bronja was a founding teacher of the Waldorf Kindergarten and Rudolf Steiner school in Vienna. She worked there until Hitler’s troops invaded and closed the school in 1938.

During an 11-year exile and internment in England, she taught at Michael Hall Waldorf School.

Later in her life she began to travel to the USA to offer courses and seminars. She was active in the International Waldorf Kindergarten Association. She passed away on January 24, 2000.

Reprinted with permission from An Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten, published by the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America (WECAN) 1993.

For further information on WECAN’s publications, contact info@waldorfearlychildhood.org

...in their earliest years, children are endowed with an immense power of imitation which can also reveal the great trust and confidence they have in us and in the world around them.

What a privilege to be concerned with children during the first years of their lives! – to witness the gradual shaping of their features and expressions; to perceive how their movements and gestures begin to individualize that universal gift bestowed upon us all: the Human Divine Form, as William Blake called it. Innocence still weaves a transparent shining quality around the heads of these little ones, their very presence awakens reverence in the soul, and a feeling of wonder at the incarnation process of the individual.

Little children seem to be as if in the lap of the gods for their first 2-1/2 years, during which they achieve those essential human faculties: the upright walk, the power of articulate speech, and the first shaping of thought. Only then does the feeling of being an ego arise.

These are gifts of a creative world higher than ours: they well up from the inmost core of the child, revealing will activity from within. In this entire process we can only be helpers.

While the physical organs and their functions are being thus structured, we can glimpse how the individuality struggles between the two contributions of the physical world: between heredity on the one hand and environment on the other. Yet it is that unique entity’s task at this early age, to shape and transform these two influences to the best possible degree in order to create a more or less suitable instrument to serve the personality’s own free way of dealing with life and destiny later on.

Human beings can change and develop beyond their natural genetic and biological dispositions, on which their spiritual, soul, and moral qualities never entirely depend. Here we begin to understand the great responsibility that rests upon us adults, as parents and educators; in fact, upon the whole attitude and environment, which a particular place, culture or civilization has to offer.

In the presence of young children this responsibility is especially great because in their earliest years, children are endowed with an immense power of imitation, which can also reveal the great trust and confidence they have in us and in the world around them. They cannot yet distinguish values, and seem to assume that everything around them is good. During this period of life, body, soul and spirit still exist as a unity. (It is only the detachment of the adult that enables us to read the most horrendous reports in the newspaper while at the same time enjoying our lunch; the young child, on the contrary, will even eat up food he does not like as he, so to speak, opens himself heart and soul to something nice you are telling him – his open mouth follows! Children’s pleasure and displeasure are visible right down to the tips of their toes; they can seem to be twice their normal weight if they do not wish to be moved.)

While thus engaged in building and developing their bodies, children form tendencies toward good or ill health, depending on their physical and soul experiences. The very functions of their organs are influenced by the warmth and friendliness we offer, even by our inner striving and moral intentions. Somehow, little children seem to see right through us.

If we take seriously the fact that efficiently-functioning sense organs are established at this period of life, the need will be obvious to give full play to finer differentiations of the eye, the ear, the sense of touch and all of the other channels through which we perceive the world around us.

3

If we overstrain the senses too early through mechanical and technological experiences, they will of necessity harden and deteriorate prematurely, and will then be unfit for more intimate and varied perception.

If we overstrain the senses too early through mechanical and technological experiences, they will of necessity harden and deteriorate prematurely, and will then be unfit for more intimate and varied perceptions. This can even have serious social consequences.

Therefore, we must surround young children with the genuine quality of natural materials, such as cotton, silk, wood or stone; we must have clear, beautiful colors around them, spoken language, music directly through song or suitable instruments, and good honest playthings.

The play of children from the age of three is a most wonderful thing to watch. They will build up a little world of their own and be sovereigns in it. They can put a piece of wood in an upright position – thereby giving it the semblance of a person – or use a cooking spoon, which then must be wrapped up in pieces of cloth, for a doll. Even a knotted handkerchief will come alive and take on all kinds of shapes and forms in this gradually arising ability of imaginative play. But the child’s mind and intelligence can also be confined in narrow onetrack channels by too early intellectual information and explanation, and by most of the socalled teaching toys, which disregard the universal scope of the unfolding spirit at play, with which the unspoiled child is naturally blessed. Here again I would like to quote William Blake with the following lines from his “Auguries of Innocence”:

...the child’s mind and intelligence can also be confined in one-track narrow channels by too early intellectual information and explanation, and by most of the socalled teaching toys, which disregard the universal scope of the unfolding spirit at play, with which the unspoiled child is naturally blessed.

To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower’s, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.

Here lies one of the essential roots of the creativity for which everyone craves today. This free imaginative play undergoes many stages of varied development in the preschool years, which through the knowledge of the human being given by Rudolf Steiner we can learn ever better to understand.

With the advent of the second dentition, the living formative forces are released to some extent from their shaping, molding activities within the physical body, and appear also as artistic abilities, so necessary for true learning; they lead into a much wider field of fantasy with the help of the soul forces that are more strongly at work during the grade school years, and can eventually become living, constructive thought.

Our world will depend more and more on the creative spirit of the individual, who must emerge as an adaptable and open-minded person with social and moral initiative. This can never be achieved by demands or admonitions; it must grow and develop through all the stages of education and self-education. The foundations are laid and nurtured in the early years of childhood if the children experience love and joy and goodness in their environment.

If their power of imitation is given plenty of scope through meeting mature and active people doing constructive work and service, then their experiences can be freely taken over into the individual creative activity of play and artistic expression. By preserving something of the 4

If their power of imitation is given plenty of scope through meeting mature and active people doing constructive work and service, then their experiences can be freely taken over into the individual creative activity of play and artistic expression.

childlike qualities and forces for later life, as well as by experiencing all that we must undergo in life in order to become free and responsible men and women, we may well be helped to find answers to the urgent needs of our time.

So we close with another excerpt from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence to bring home to ourselves the quality of early childhood:

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, & bid thee feed By the stream & o’er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice?

Little Lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For he calls himself a Lamb.

He is meek, & he is mild; He became a little child.

I a child, & thou a lamb, We are called by his name.

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

Little Lamb, God bless thee!

5

There is no more wonderful spectacle in the whole world than to see how definiteness in the child’s nature gradually emerges out of indefiniteness, to observe how irrelevant fidgeting changes into movements dominated by the inner quality of the soul. More and more the inner being expresses itself outwardly, and the spiritual element in the body comes gradually to the surface.

This little human being, sent down from the divine to earth and becoming manifest in this body can be a true divine manifestation for us. The greatest divine revelation on earth is the evolving human being.

Rudolf Steiner

Work and play in early childhood.

by Freya Jaffke. Translated by Christian von Arnim

Freya Jaffke has been a Waldorf kindergarten teacher for over twenty years in Reutlingen, Germany. She has written several books and articles on the subject of early child development and education. Her words have been inspiring and invaluable for teachers and parents who wish to better understand the special needs of the young child.

Reprinted with permission from Anthroposophic Press, 1996 * Throughout this article, when Jaffke uses the term, “kindergarten”, she includes all children between the ages of 3 and 7, both preschool and kindergarten.

Life and Work in a Waldorf Kindergarten.* Life in the kindergarten can be compared to living and working in a large family. The group of children comprises on average twenty boys and girls between the ages of three and seven. The teachers ensure that the day is rhythmically structured and ordered, balancing caring for the house and its contents with handicrafts and creative activities. These are supplemented by activities connected with specific times of the year and leading into the celebration of festivals.

The rhythmical structure of the day. Before describing in detail the various types of work in the kindergarten, we shall look at the typical course of a day and the way time is divided up.

All the members of the staff come together for a brief meeting half an hour before the main school begins. Then, the kindergarten opens so that parents can bring older brothers and sisters to school at the same time. There is free play for a good hour with the children themselves deciding what they want to play. They might gather in small groups in the doll area or the building corner, for example, to build houses or play fire engines or fishing boats. Some might join in with what the adults are doing. The smallest ones might play by themselves or they might be included in the bigger ones’ games, for example, as patients in medical practice, guests at a dolls’ birthday party, or children at a make-believe school. Some smaller ones might prefer to sit close to an adult at first before starting to play.

At the end of playtime, the adults begin by tidying up their work place, putting tools and other equipment back in their places. Sometimes the floor will need to be swept. This heralds a general period of tidying up in which the children can participate in a number of ways depending on their age. Once this is finished, they all go to the toilet and wash their hands.

The ones who are back first begin to lay the tables for a morning snack, with spoons, place mats, and vases of flowers. Before starting to eat, everyone gathers for some simple rhythmical games based on songs and poems and appropriate to the time of year. The adult sings the song or recites the poem accompanied by calm movements, which the children can follow and copy.

Life in the kindergarten can be compared to living and working in a large family.

Everyone settles down together to eat breakfast, which will have been prepared beforehand.

The food is different for each day of the week. It might be home-baked honey-and-salt bread, millet porridge, wheat meal porridge, muesli or wheat grain and wholemeal rolls. These will be accompanied by herb tea and fruit, depending on the time of the year.

After breakfast there is a second period of free play for another hour. This might take place in the garden where there is a choice of the sand pit, buckets and spades, skipping ropes, balls, wheelbarrows, shovels, and rakes. If it is too cold to play outside, we go to the nearby park for a walk with plenty of games involving running and catching to keep everyone warm.

About half a hour before kindergarten finishes, when everything has been put away again, shoes have been changed and hands washed, all the children, some cradling dolls in their arms, gather in the story corner to hear a fairy tale. The same fairy tale is repeated over several days.

7

The story concludes the morning activities, and the children are then collected at lunchtime.

Some kindergartens also run afternoon groups lasting until four or five o’clock.

If we reflect on the day, which has just been described, we can see that it is divided into two great breaths. During the period of free play, the children are able to breathe out fully in that they are able to follow their own impulses. The time devoted to rhythmical play and breakfast, on the other hand, is a kind of breathing in, in other words, joining in a common activity. The second period of free play is another time for breathing out again, the fairy tale period for breathing in. The breathing out periods are very long to accommodate the needs of small children, but they balance the short breathing in periods.

Different artistic activities all have their places on respective days within the week, for example, painting with water colors during free play, eurythmy in place of the rhythmical games, modeling with beeswax during the winter months in place of the fairy tale. The last day of the week is always the day for cleaning the tables and shelves and polishing them.

The artistic activities do not in any way interrupt the children’s free play. This is never curtailed. On a painting day, for instance, the children can have a go at painting for as long or short a time as they want to. They decide for themselves when they want to start or stop an activity.

What the adults do and make. Various tasks arise for the adults during the course of the kindergarten day. These mainly include preparing breakfast for the children, caring for the room (for example, arranging flowers, dusting, keeping the seasons corner in order), and preparing for the festivals.

Toys must also be made and cared for. Most are homemade, sewn, carved, knotted, or woven from cane, and some may need to be repaired or washed and ironed. Because of all the different things they might need, the adults have to arrange their work places carefully so that they do not continually have to go and fetch things.

The education of small children is based on two very important aspects.

One of these is rhythm and repetition....The second... is that of role modeling and imitation.

Rhythm and repetition. The education of small children is based on two very important aspects. One of these is rhythm and repetition. The activities the children engage in are completely bound up with the seasons of the year. The teachers help the children to develop an increasingly deep and living relationship with the events of the year in many different ways. As well as the seasons themselves, this also includes a deeper understanding of the festivals as they occur throughout the year.

Observing the seasons and festivals each year offers children a wealth of activities and experiences without the pressure of questions, which require reflection or feats of memory.

Great importance is attached to the establishment of a happy, normal, creative atmosphere in which, unbeknownst to the children, the seeds of reverence and gratitude are being sown.

The second important aspect for the education of small children is that of role modeling and imitation. Since adults provide a model for the children until they begin school, they need to be particularly concerned with self-education.

8

All normally developing children receive their guidance and their impulses for their actions, their play and behavior from the adult world. In going about their work, teachers are aware of each individual child in their care. The children are left quite free to imitate. All of them may emulate the adult in their own time and in their own way as they complete their learning stages. If the adult activity around them is sufficiently broad and if it is repeated often enough, all children will find that they are unconsciously seeking for the stages of their development in relation to their own imitative capacity.

Imagination allows us to move beyond what surrounds us into the boundless realm of possibility.

The will and dawning imagination. The age of three sees the release of the formative life forces, which are mainly responsible for the work of the head in the formation of the main organs of the body. These now work together with the formative forces, which are gradually liberating themselves from the organs in the middle sphere of the child’s body. New abilities become evident in the child’s development. If up to this point the child’s will was directed mainly at objects used by the parents and around the house, it now begins to work more and more with the developing imagination, growing in strength all the time. Imagination allows us to move beyond what surrounds us into the boundless realm of possibility. The will present in the imagination is able to accept as real what might only faintly resemble reality; with innate joy and power it turns reality into what it wants it to be, using it to create something new. For example, in the middle of shoe cleaning, the mundane sight of the shoes being cleaned can suddenly inspire the child to see the shoe brush as a ship or an airplane. Or a mother might have wrapped a parcel and hung the rest of the string over the back of a chair.

Her child is reminded of a crane and ties a wooden spoon to one end of the string, slowly pulling it up by the other end.

So memory and recollection work simultaneously with the imagination. But memory can only offer us what we have already experienced. The imagination can recreate our experiences and observations straight away if it can focus on something similar to what we have already seen. The power of the will lights up in the imagination and the memory, turning it into action.

There are certainly children who do not take hold of their imaginations with their wills and who may behave erratically if they are not properly guided. For example, they will race around imitating engines, behave wildly in unfamiliar surroundings and be destructive. Or they may be completely inactive within themselves, lacking in drive and energy, for example, occupying themselves for hours with the way a tricycle works.

It is possible to distinguish between harmoniously active children, erratically or aimlessly active children, and children in whom the will is inhibited, or even paralyzed. For example, harmonious children might use an old cloth for dressing up or for building a house. The unpredictably active ones would throw it on the ground or slide across the floor on it, knocking over a vase of flowers.

If the will develops in a healthy way, children around three to five years of age will constantly develop new ideas as they play. For instance, two four-year-old girls placed all the chairs 9

Children experience what they ought to be doing by the example set by the adults around them.

they could find in rows of two, laid all their dolls and finally themselves on the chairs and said, “This is our sleeper train.” Then they placed the rows of chairs opposite one another, put all the dolls on one row and said, “Now it’s a baby-changing table.” Soon afterwards they arranged all the chairs so that their backs faced each other and spread a large cloth over them to build a puppet theater. A footstool became a motorbike, then a doll’s birthday table, then a letter box, and, finally, with other footstools piled on top of it, a waterfall with chestnuts cascading from one to another.

The example of adults and a sense of duty. Children experience what they ought to be doing by the example set by the adults around them. Children follow this example by imitating it according to their level of maturity. If, for instance, adults act conscientiously in doing their duties rather than spending too much time in self-indulgence, then this good example will influence the child.

Adults can demonstrate a sense of purpose and perseverance in their work. For example, they might take a long time over a piece of carving or embroidery. The children will be exposed to perseverance and care, and will follow the process with interest.

A sense of work ethic can be imparted to a child by our persevering with a task and endeavoring always to find pleasure in our work.

The things which the children ought to do and want to do might include work which is really part of the later school curriculum and which they always look forward to.

Indirect imitation (in other words, imitating something that has been described or explained) is particularly helpful in developing a sense of duty. It might consist of giving the children vivid descriptions of specific people and what their work involves. The children are able to use these descriptions to develop their ideas and can then transform them into action finding their direction through imitation.

The story of Ludwig the servant is a good example. He always waited on the guests, fetching everything they needed from the kitchen and the cellar. But he was only ever allowed to come as far as the doorway. The lady of the house then took the things from him and brought them to the guests.

Immediately after hearing the story of Ludwig the servant, a six-year-old boy was requested to distribute the cups to the children. He took one look at the whole tray and, having identified the fullest cup, placed it in front of himself with a look of great satisfaction. His eyes then met mine and I said, “Ludwig would not have done that; he always served the others first and himself last.” “Really?” said the boy, and he took the cup in front of him, put it in front of his neighbor and took the last one for himself.

The master embroiderer is another example: he always chooses the most beautiful threads and then simply goes for a walk with the needle; he never embroiders houses or trains. Or:

10

A real tailor Is cheerful and nimble And puts on his middle finger A thimble.

The things which the children ought to do and want to do might include work which is really part of the later school curriculum and which they always look forward to. It is not just the work itself which challenges the children to act as they ought, as they are free to choose what they want to do, but the sense of ought is experienced within the various stages of work.

[Steiner] says that life up to the age of seven is tied to the internally-developing will, which at this age is not guided by thoughts, but by imitating the people encountered by the child.

We allow children to make simple dolls, knotted from a cloth, with a few spots of ink for the face. After a few swaddling clothes are embroidered, the baby doll is born and elaborately dressed in whatever way the child wishes.

A sense of ought also means that children have to respond to admonitions. In doing this they have to learn to transform ideas created by words into actions. Before the age of five, the best way of preventing children from doing something is to distract them or guide their attention on to something else. Once children reach five, it is appropriate to set clear limits in words. For example, if children are mimicking shooting we can say, “We do not shoot.

I don’t like that. That is not what we do.� The words contain all the weight of conviction and the consistency of attitude. The teacher is the authority appropriate to this age, loved and respected, supplementing every prohibition with a positive proposition.

The guiding thoughts behind all that I have attempted to describe are based on the following words by Rudolf Steiner. He says that life up to the age of seven is tied to the internallydeveloping will, which at this age is not guided by thoughts, but by imitating the people encountered by the child.

11

When children come to the age of puberty, it is necessary to awaken within them an extraordinarily great interest in the worlds outside of themselves.

Through the whole way in which they are educated, they must be led to look out into the world around them and into all its laws, its course, causes and effects, into men’s intentions and goals…so that questions about nature, about the cosmos and the entire world, about the human soul, questions of history – so that riddles arise in their youthful souls.

Rudolf Steiner

The Waldorf high school: keeping ideals intact.

by David Sloan

David Sloan, a native Californian, received his Waldorf training at Emerson College in the early 1970s. After working in a San Bernadino Mountain therapeutic community for troubled teens, Mr. Sloan helped to launch the Shining Mountain Waldorf High School in Boulder, Colorado. Currently, he is on staff at the Green Meadow Waldorf School in New York and is on the faculty of the Summer Teacher Training program at the Center for Anthroposophy in Wilton, New Hampshire.

Some years ago I attended a Waldorf parent meeting at which parents were extolling the virtues of Waldorf education: the freshness, openness, and enthusiasm evident in their children; the unflagging devotion of the teachers; the artistic element weaving through every aspect of the curriculum; and the sense of community they had found for their children and for themselves. Then the discussion turned to the future and to how many students were continuing their education in the Waldorf high school. Many parents spoke ardently in support of the high school, but others raised heartfelt concerns:

Reprinted with permission from Genesis of a Waldorf High School, an AWSNA publication, 1997.

Only in the first years of life do children change more dramatically than in their teenage years.

My daughter has been in this school for ten years. She says she wants a change... you know, a bigger ‘pond’ where there’s more of a social whirl. If that’s what she wants, how can I say ‘no’?

I’m just not sure that a Waldorf high school will prepare my children for the real world.

My son has already received what Waldorf has to give. What can a Waldorf high school offer that another good private school couldn’t provide?

What indeed does the Waldorf high school have to offer today’s youth? Is it a quaint but outmoded relic of an earlier time, or is it a far-sighted antidote to the malaise sapping the energies and imagination of a whole generation?

How one educates teenagers depends largely on how one views this tumultuous phase of life.

Some mainstream educators see adolescence as less than it really is, as a simmering rebellion which needs to be quelled before it runs amok, or as an illness that only time can cure. Still others consider the high school years simply as a time of preparation for college or the workplace. It is not surprising, then, that our high schools begin to resemble armed camps, treatment centers, or obedience schools.

Waldorf high school teachers, however, view adolescence as something more than it appears.

They recognize it as an important state of human development. In the teenage years a profound transformation takes place and powerful inner forces for the future are unleashed. Only in the first years of life do children change more dramatically than in their teenage years. In adolescence, for the first time, young people consciously begin to forge their own identities and to fashion their own values. They have inklings of what may become a lifelong aspiration.

In adolescence alone do they awaken to feelings simultaneously painful and exhilarating, of something familiar dying within, and of a whole new interior world being born.

What is dying? It is the innocence of childhood. Adolescence is often represented in Waldorf circles by the Biblical image of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. This is indeed a true picture of the dying away of the “paradise consciousness” of childhood. It doesn’t happen all at once. William Blake describes the “prison bars” that begin to close around us already from the moment of birth. By puberty this paradise that was childhood, with its endless days of play, fertile fantasy life, and lack of self-consciousness, seems but a dream. The loss of the buoyancy and brightness of childhood can turn the teenage years into a period of intense mourning.

13

...Waldorf educators see in adolescence a convergence of two fundamental human experiences: the loss of childhood with its charmed innocence, and the birth of adulthood with its potential for creation.

What is being born? At a physical level, it is the ability to reproduce. The bodies of these young people change so that they are capable of conceiving children. Just as mysteriously, their consciousness transforms, deepens, and grows more sensitive so that they become capable of conceiving new thoughts. Quite suddenly their inner lives acquire dimensions they never knew existed. It is a bit like walking through one’s own old comfortable home and discovering a whole new floor or hidden wing of heretofore unknown rooms, with vast new vistas, as well as dark closets.

So Waldorf educators see in adolescence a convergence of two fundamental human experiences: the loss of childhood with its charmed innocence, and the birth of adulthood with its potential for creation. The high school teacher, then, must be both midwife and grief counselor, attending to the birth and to the dying away that are occurring within the students.

In the midst of these traumatic changes, ideals are welling up within the young person. These ideals maintain that the world has meaning, that one’s own life also has meaning, and that one can positively influence the world. Adolescents need to have these ideals recognized and affirmed. They need to have experiences that corroborate them. Hence, young people long for three fundamental experiences: - to find meaning in their lives, - to find human relationships and a sense of connectedness to the world, and - to feel they can make a difference in the world.

Unfortunately, today more than ever before, young people are starving for this very nourishment.

Adolescents whose ideals are affirmed and kept intact will, of course, survive adolescence and become functioning adults. But beyond this they are more likely to achieve mastery over themselves and their destiny. And they are more likely to become healthy adults who continue to grow inwardly long after the physical body has begun to deteriorate.

Unfortunately, today more than ever before, young people are starving for this very nourishment. The great tragedy of secondary schools in our country today can be traced to this single fact: the younger generation’s vision of life’s transcendent possibilities has shrunken and shriveled into a cynical, passive acceptance of the view that the individual doesn’t really count for much and certainly can’t make much of a dent in the grand corporate scheme of things. Their longing for inspiration, for affirmation of their ideals is not being met. Hence, they are becoming insufferably critical or withdrawn and self-absorbed.

John Taylor Gatto, New York City’s Teacher of the Year in 1991, writes after teaching in public schools for over 25 years:

14

We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from a lofty command center made up of “experts,” a central elite of social engineers. It hasn’t worked because its central premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education, but they will always fight back with weapons of pathology: drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference.

The Waldorf high school curriculum consciously aims to nurture and encourage adolescent ideals....

It seeks with clear intent to avoid...the destructive habits of mind and spirit so common among young people today.

Gatto then recites a litany of adverse effects that the public school system has had upon young people: lack of curiosity, weak powers of concentration, little sense of the future or of the past, lack of compassion, rampant materialism, and uneasiness with intimacy.

The Waldorf high school curriculum consciously aims to nurture and encourage adolescent ideals and to satisfy the longing for meaning in the world and self. It seeks with clear intent to avoid (and, if necessary, to heal) the destructive habits of mind and spirit so common among young people today.

In order to find meaning in the world, one must first awaken to the world, to its phenomena.

This requires the power of observation. Even adults are seldom observant enough to notice what their spouse or child is wearing on a given day. Adolescents can be almost unconscious of what is going on around them. I once asked my students to close their eyes and tell me the color of the shirt I was wearing. One fellow said, “I don’t even know what color shirt I’m wearing!”

So in the Waldorf high school we arouse and sharpen powers of observation. In a chemistry class the students must describe clearly and precisely what happens when heat is turned up under a beaker of water. In English they must portray an object as commonplace as a pencil or an acorn, noting its color, texture, shape. In art history and anatomy classes in the ninth grade, they study a Greek statue or draw the miracle of the skeletal system. Through this the human form, their human form, becomes a source of wonder and beauty, instead of a cheapened, soulless media image.

This training in observation transfers to the social and moral realm. The students learn to observe other people, and to be aware of their needs and problems. A student schooled in observation is more likely to notice that a classmate is feeling ill or “down” and to make a gesture of aid than is one who is lost in a cloud of adolescent self-absorption. Observing the world is a first and necessary step in making a positive impact upon it.

[Teenagers] can be as fragile as seedlings set out in the spring. The process of empowerment gives them the skills needed to meet the challenges that life is bound to present.

In a Waldorf high school, history is taught in such a way as to show the interrelatedness of all epochs, all cultures, and all areas of life. In the tenth grade study of Ancient Cultures, for example, students are often fascinated by the parallels between the Egyptians’ preoccupation with preserving the physical body through embalming, and our own culture’s obsession with staying young through exercise, cosmetics, and surgical procedures. Music is presented along with mathematics since one cannot be fully understood without the other. The artistic achievements of a Michelangelo are studied in relation to the anatomical discoveries of a Vesalius. Thus, for the Waldorf high school student, history is not a list of facts and dates, but a living, integrated tapestry of human activity and striving. Coming to know and to marvel at this tapestry, the student acquires a sense for the meaning and coherence of human history and culture.

Waldorf high school teachers also stress the power of individuals to shape their world.

History pulses with the blood of real, living people. The young people study the lives and achievements of the great personalities of human history: Socrates, Joan of Arc, Schweitzer, 15

Churchill, et al. They come to know them as real persons of flesh and blood with a spark of divinity. They see them as individuals who were able to make a positive contribution to the world. The young people learn that the individual can indeed help shape the world.

Rudolf Steiner realized the extraordinary therapeutic and pedagogic power of the arts. They are bearers and cultivators of thought.

A person able to express him or herself effectively is more likely to find meaning in life and more able to influence the world. In English classes, we work consciously to bring meaning and value back to words. As George Orwell predicted in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, there are today many forces at work that undermine the foundation of our humanity -- our language. To a terrifying degree, “Newspeak” has come into existence. Missiles are “peacekeepers,” taxes are “revenue enhancements,” and in certain circles, “bad” means “good” and “cool” and “hot” are used interchangeably.

Hence, through each part of the English curriculum of a Waldorf high school, the morning verse and the weekly writing assignment, the group recitation and the memorization of great poems and passages of prose the adolescent is enabled to express him or herself clearly and truthfully in speech and in writing. Teenagers are insecure almost by nature, unsure of who they are and what their limitations and possibilities are. For all their bravado, they can be as fragile as seedlings set out in the spring. The process of empowerment gives them the skills needed to meet the challenges that life is bound to present. These include, of course, the basic knowledge and skills in math, English, and the sciences, as well as the artistic and handwork skills. In most high schools today these are considered frills, secondary exercises in self-expression.

In a Waldorf high school, the arts and handcrafts are, as they were in the first eight grades, an essential part of the core curriculum. The students continue with their musical instruments, sing in a chorus, do eurythmy. They learn to bind a book, draw a figure in perspective, hammer out a silver bracelet, weave a scarf.

For the child who has had a Waldorf elementary education, the benefits of the high school experience are magnified. Seeds sown years before in the early grades grow and come to flower.

This training prepares students for the unlimited situations they will encounter in life. Also, it gives them a broad-based self-confidence in their ability to learn and to apply new skills.

In addition, the arts and handcrafts help the student in the academic side of learning. Rudolf Steiner realized the extraordinary therapeutic and pedagogic power of the arts. They are bearers and cultivators of thought. They create the power to think, reason, conceptualize and imagine. Modeling clay, doing eurythmy, weaving, all nourish the thought forces which allow a young person to comprehend poetry and grammar.

Thus, in a Waldorf high school, the adolescent is helped to make the transition from childhood to adulthood. The ideals which are emerging with such heat and passion are recognized and supported. The young person is helped to find meaning in the world, and in his or her own life. He or she is helped to understand and feel that he or she can make a difference in the world.

It should be noted here that, in addition, the Waldorf high school prepares its students for the wider world of college and career as well or better than other high schools, public and private. There has been as yet no study of Waldorf high school graduates as detailed as the 16

survey conducted in Germany some years ago. All indications, though, are that they do well on college boards, are admitted to and excel at quality colleges and universities, and are able to pursue successful careers and professions.

Rudolf Steiner recognized the high school years as a critical period of life. From the beginning he intended Waldorf education to be a twelve-year, not just an eight-year, experience.

For the child who has had a Waldorf elementary education, the benefits of the high school experience are magnified. Seeds sown years before in the early grades grow and come to flower. The tenth grader who came to know the saints and Old Testament figures in the second and third grades meets them again in the study of the Bible as literature. The eleventh grader finds that the freehand geometric drawing in the fifth grade is the basis for a new study, projective geometry.

Rudolf Steiner recognized the high school years as a critical period of life. From the beginning he intended Waldorf education to be a twelve-year, not just an eight-year, experience.

And indeed the high school years are too critical a period of life to leave to teachers and administrators who fail to recognize and honor adolescence for what it is. However, while there are today over a hundred Waldorf elementary schools in North America, there are still only about 20 Waldorf high schools. For the benefit of the adolescents of tomorrow, let us hope that this number will increase in the years ahead.

In the broader educational arena, most educators and administrators today are searching desperately for an approach, any effective approach, that will kindle adolescents. The Waldorf curriculum is just such an approach. For several decades it has been quietly educating young people and graduating them into the world with their ideals intact. The time has come for the Waldorf high school curriculum to be recognized and implemented in the wider arena.

17

As students mature, they engage themselves at new levels of experience with each subject...The purpose of studying a subject is not to make a student into a professional mathematician, historian, or biologist, but to awaken and educate capacities that very human being needs. In a Waldorf high school, older students pursue special projects and elective subjects and activities, but, nevertheless, the goal remains: each subject studied should contribute to the development of a well-balanced individual.

Henry Barnes Waldorf Education...An Introduction

Waldorf high school curriculum guide.

by Douglas Gerwin

Douglas Gerwin is the Director of the Center for Anthroposophy.

He has 21 years experience as a Waldorf high school teacher in subjects ranging from biology and history to German and music.

Gerwin has edited a number of books relating to Waldorf education.

In broad strokes, each of the four years in the high school curriculum embodies an underlying theme and method that helps guide students not just through their studies of outer phenomena but through their inner growth as well. Obviously, these themes and methods are adapted to each specific group of students and take account of the fact that teenagers grow at their own pace. Hence, the “broad strokes.” And yet, one can identify struggles common to most any teenager; even though adolescents pass through developmental landscape at varying speeds, they nonetheless have to cover similar terrain.

The curriculum guide that follows was written initially for parents at High Mowing School where the author teaches literature, history, and life science. It is reprinted here as a typical - but not meant as definitive - thematic outline of the Waldorf high school program.

Grade 9. As the freshmen plunge into the high school, they are also plunging with new intensity into the materiality of their bodies (with the unfolding of puberty) and into the immateriality of abstract thinking. There is tension in this opposition: often struggle, occasionally even revolt. The ninth grade curriculum is sensitive to these tremendous developmental changes and struggles. It allows the students to see their inner experience reflected back to them in outer phenomena. In physics, for instance, students study the opposition of heat and cold; in chemistry, the expansion and contraction of gases; in history, the conflicts and revolutions of France, Russia, and the U.S.; in geography, the collision of plate tectonics.

Reprinted with permission from Genesis of a Waldorf High School, an AWSNA publication, 1997.

Unlike other high school programs...our curriculum begins in the modern worlds. ...[The] ninth grader hungers for experiences of the “hereand-now”...

Through the chaos and tensions of these struggles, students are summoned to exercise powers of exact observation: in the sciences, to describe and draw precisely what happened in the lab experiments and demonstrations (without, as yet, an overlay of theoretical explanation); in the humanities, to recount clearly a sequence of events or the nature of a character without getting lost in the confusion of details. The objective here is to train in the student powers of exact observation and reflection so that they can experience in the raging storm of phenomena around them the steady ballast of their own thinking. Strong powers of wakeful perception form the basis for later years of study well beyond high school.

One may summarize the approach of this freshman curriculum with the seminal question: What? What happened? What’s going on here? What did you see and hear? A final note on the freshman year. Unlike other high school programs, which often start at the beginning of Western culture in Grade 9 and work their way steadily up to modern times, our curriculum begins in the modern worlds: 19th and 20th century in history, contemporary short stories in literature, recent discoveries in life sciences, etc. Again, we find that the ninth grader hungers for experiences of the “here-and-now”; the yearning to uncover the ancient beginnings of things has yet to stir.

Grade 10. From the turmoil of Grade 9, the tenth grader begins to discover a certain balance or midpoint between the violent collision of opposites. Physiologically, one may observe in boys a steadier gait as their legs grow to catch up with their oversized feet; in girls, greater measure of poise and self-assurance. Mentally, the sophomores may begin to seek a certain order in the confusion, a midpoint to opposition.

The curriculum responds to this search with subjects that incorporate balance: in chemistry, the study of acids and bases; in physics, the principles of mechanics; in earth sciences, the self-regulating processes of weather patterns; in astronomy, the coequality of centripetal and centrifugal forces; in embryology, the play of masculine and feminine influences.

19

[The] tenth grader begins to discover a certain balance or midpoint between the violent collision of opposites.

Through the study of balance in natural and human phenomena, students can begin to find their own fulcrum. In doing so, they are called to exercise powers of comparison, weighing in the balance contrary phenomena to determine their value and significance – and also their origin.

Students may discover that in this balancing of opposite, new forms can arise – whether in clouds and tides, planets and solar systems, male and female sexuality. This discovery may, in turn, prompt the desire to explore the origins of things and to find the source of their forms in the beginnings of the universe or of history or of human language. In other words, the study of ancient times can now begin at a deeper level.

One may summarize the themes of this grade with the seminal question: How? How does this relate to that? How do these contrasting phenomena interrelate? And how did they come about?

“Sweet Sixteen,” however, is a typical time of newfound depths to the inner life of thoughts, feelings, and deeds....The curriculum for the junior year allows the students to cut free to a greater degree from their peers and set off on their own uncharted course into the invisible recesses of life within.

Grade 11. As adolescents enter the second half of their high school career, generalizations about their development become increasingly difficult; the strokes must grow ever broader.

“Sweet Sixteen,” however, is a typical time of new-found depths to the inner life of thoughts, feelings, and deeds. Deeper – and more individualized – questions may begin to burn; often this is the year in which students feel the urge either to change schools or even to drop out of school altogether. In these inner promptings, a new and urgent voice speaks. “Leave behind what you have been given,” it says, “and get on with your own journey!” Outer statements of growing independence abound also: in dress, hair style, part-time jobs – and, perhaps most exciting, the driver’s license.

The curriculum for the junior year allows the students to cut free to a greater degree from their peers and set off on their own uncharted course into the invisible recesses of life within. In a way, the junior year curriculum could be characterized by this theme of invisibility: namely, by the study of those subjects that draw the student into areas not accessible to the experience of our senses. Such a journey requires a new type of thinking – thinking not anchored in what our senses give us – and a confidence that this type of thinking will not lead us astray.

In literature, this journey to an invisible source is captured in the block classes devoted to the Grail legends and to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Other subjects call upon similar power.

In chemistry, the students enter the invisible kingdom of the atom (invisible because, by definition, one cannot “see” atoms); in physics, they explore the invisible world of electricity (which we can see only in its effects, not in its inherent nature); in history, they relive the Medieval and Renaissance times in which men and women set off on their individual quests and journeys to destinations unknown (and, in some cases, unknowable); in projective geometry, they follow parallel lines to the point they share in the infinite – a point which can be through even though it cannot be seen.

In summary, like the horizon that beckoned Columbus, calling him to venture beyond its invisible edge, the dimensions of the classroom are vastly enlarged in the junior year to 20

[The] curriculum of the twelfth grade not only recapitulates the themes of the four years of high school but also returns to the place where the Waldorf curriculum began in grade 1: with the image of the whole.

embrace the furthest reaches of the student’s own imagination and interests. In all of these subjects, the student is launched into individual projects and research assignments. In addition, each student is required to undertake an individually conceived and executed science project.

These voyages to the invisible landscapes pose a central question intended to strengthen the student’s powers of independent analysis and abstract theorizing. The question is: Why? Why are things this way? Why did the events of history take this or that course? And even deeper “why” questions – those of destiny, life’s meaning, social responsibility – often find their way into the classroom at this stage.

Grade 12. The 12 years of Waldorf education have sometimes been compared to a giant tower set in a vast expanse of landscape. In first grade, one enters at the ground level of this tower and begins to climb a long spiral staircase. At each level (or floor) of the tower, one can look out through a window that gives a partial perspective on the surrounding landscape.

Some curricular “windows” are set above one another, though at different turns of the spiral (for example, the “windows” at the levels of grade 7 and 11, or of 8 and 9.) While it is beneficial, of course, to have climbed the full 12-year staircase, it is remarkable how swiftly students who join the climb catch up – thanks, in part, to periodic returns to the subject, though each time at a different level and with different purpose.

In short: Grade 9: trains powers of observation with the question: What?

Grade 10: trains powers of comparison with the question: How? Grade 11: trains powers of analysis with the question: Why? Grade 12: trains powers of synthesis with the question: Who?

Approaching the twelfth grade, the seniors push open a trap door in the roof of the tower, as it were, and step out onto an open turret. Now, for the first time, they survey the full panorama of the landscape that they had previously only glimpsed from eleven preceding perspectives.

In other words, the senior year is intended, on the one hand, to be the gradual synthesis of the education – the great stock-taking and preparation for the next stage in learning – and, on the other, the fully conscious placement of oneself in the center of this panorama. The senior curriculum serves both purposes by offering subjects that synthesize many themes – world history, architecture, Faust – and relate these themes to the centrality of the human being.

Additional examples: the students study our relationship to the varied animal kingdoms (zoology) or to the great thinkers (e.g., the Transcendentalists) and writers (e.g., the Russian novelists who have wrestled with the question of our place in this world).

Assignments increasingly call upon the students to pull together, to synthesize disparate disciplines in an attempt to address the central question of the senior curriculum: Who? Who is this being called human? And – who stands behind the outer play of events and natural phenomena, pulling them together into a synthesizing whole?

In this sense, the curriculum of the twelfth grade not only recapitulates the themes of the four years of high school but also returns to the place where the Waldorf curriculum began in grade 1: with the image of the whole. Now, however, the difference, one hopes, is that the student will “truly know the place for the first time.”

21

By the time they reach us at the college and university level, Waldorf students are grounded broadly and deeply and have a remarkable enthusiasm for learning. Such students possess the eye of the discoverer and the compassionate heart of the reformer which, when joined to a task, can change the planet.

Arthur Zajonc Professor of Physics Amherst College

Why it would be cool to have a high school.

by Sue Demanett

Sue Demanett, at the Pasadena Waldorf School since 1997, has taught for many years as a Waldorf teacher at the levels of elementary education, middle school, high school and adult education. She has been a social worker with teenagers and strives in earnest to parent one.

“We don’t need no education, We don’t need no thought control”

The goal of Waldorf education is to foster inner, not outer, freedom.

Waldorf education is unique, not because it is a developmental education, which it is, but because the picture of the human being, human development, and earth evolution that informs our philosophy and practice is a specific and distinct one. Whereas other defined developmental educations obviously present a course of human development (Gesell, Adler, etc), no other educator, to my knowledge, except Rudolf Steiner, first establishes what he thinks a human being is, and then describes the stages of development, which also correspond to stages of evolution of the earth. The most profound and fundamental of these precepts is the acknowledgement that human beings originate in a divine spiritual, not a physical world, and our task is to come into physical existence and leave it again healthily––in the course of each day, and over the course of our lifetimes. From deep understanding of this, and only this picture, can Waldorf education then be made manifest in a curriculum and style of teaching.

Without that foundation, all the beeswax crayons, main lesson books, stylized watercolor, and rainbows in the world would not and could not present Waldorf education.

What our education hopes to instill is an inner capacity, built on thinking, that will permit our students to be self-determining in outlook and attitude, regardless what circumstances may come to meet them, that they may act out of selfdirection, not pummeled by the storms of emotions, misfortune, catastrophe, or terrorist act of any kind.

When Waldorf schools try to express the benefit they offer to parents who choose it for their children, the phrase often used is education for freedom. What is meant by this is not free license to do or say or think anything, void of any artistic or academic discipline or social conscience. It means freedom as an active deed achieved through thinking–flexible, creative thinking, not bound by the limitations of tradition or opinion, or even of the senses, but as the most expansive form of cognition and discovery and simultaneously of creation. It means thinking which by necessity must wed science and art to become true, beautiful, and good all together. The goal of Waldorf education is to foster inner, not outer, freedom. We know that we cannot predict, in times of such rapid change, what outer circumstances our students may face as adults, and we cannot guarantee them that they will never become political prisoners, hostages, or subjects of oppressive governments. What our education hopes to instill is an inner capacity, built on thinking, that will permit our students to be self-determining in outlook and attitude, regardless what circumstances may come to meet them, that they may act out of self-direction, not pummeled by the storms of emotions, misfortune, catastrophe, or terrorist act of any kind.

Although clearly Pink Floyd may have benefited from a few more grammar lessons, this statement, which became something of an anthem of youth back in the day, is revealing in its clear expression of the unfortunate experience of education that many young people had.

Education was not expansion of thinking; it was thought-confining.

Sorrowfully this chant still sounds on the lips of today’s teenagers. It may not point with any astuteness to the solution to a problem, but it does wave a flag, soulfully, signaling for help.

People interested in the education of adolescents should perhaps consider in a heartfelt way what this means when we design our programs for secondary schools. We here at PWS, as educators, must not exclude ourselves.

As this education evolves developmentally in correspondence with the needs of the growing human being, we strive to work in the years of early childhood on fostering the forces of will.

23

[The] capacities to shape one’s own destiny are far from firm at the age of 14, 15, 16. In this phase of development Waldorf education seeks to educate the thinking. Yet in our present school, just as our students are ex-periencing the thinning of the protective sheath, just as they need to begin to achieve thinking as a path of freedom, they must leave PWS and seek another school.

This is largely accomplished through doing things by imitating adults worthy of such veneration, by building up a healthy body of habits that can carry them for life. The second phase fosters the forces of feeling, which are a bit more rarefied than the emotions we usually think of as feelings. These forces are fostered through engaging the imagination, by teachers presenting concepts imaginatively, and by ample uses of the arts as the primary teaching tool.

In this way we strive to keep our students open and fresh without the hardening that comes from pre-mature intellectualization. The third phase begins around puberty, more or less, and marks a significant turning point in the course of a person’s development. Whereas younger children are protected by a natural, almost divine sheath, as well as by their somewhat limited small worlds, by adolescence the sky-light opening to the former state of the divine begins to close, the radiant protective mantle to dissolve. Even the memory of the former innocence of childhood begins to dim. It does so for the very reason that unless those delicate threads can be severed, the young person cannot achieve full independence, which s/he needs to find his or her way, to become a true individual. But this path is rocky and tenuous, and the capacities to shape one’s own destiny are far from firm at the age of 14, 15, 16. In this phase of development Waldorf education seeks to educate the thinking. Yet in our present school, just as our students are experiencing the thinning of the protective sheath, just as they need to begin to achieve thinking as a path of freedom, they must leave PWS and seek another school.

There are options for education for adolescents, and many fine ones, available in the community. Over the past five years our students have demonstrated continuously that they are able to “get into” and to succeed in these schools. But none of those options presents an education based on the view of mankind that has guided their first eight years. Most programs, no matter how good, are essentially driven by textbook-oriented material, designed to reduce rather than expand idea. None but Waldorf schools can add cultivation of the kind of thinking that intentionally leads towards individual spiritual freedom. In addition, few, if any, offer the integration of the arts into all their program. Students may have access to arts but frequently have to select one to the exclusion of the other, rather than having the option of art, music, drama, and movement all within their day, not because we need them for college transcripts, but because we need them as human beings. We are missing an important option for our adolescents as they leave here. In other words, at present, we provide our students, at best, with 2/3 of a Waldorf education.

Perhaps it is time to offer our kids a new birthright in these darkening times, the birthright of adolescence to be fired by idealism, to be passionate, to have ideals.

As we have no high school yet, our students have had to undergo, in many cases, a grueling process of high school entrance, which, by standards of developmental needs, is totally counter-indicated. Young teenagers always feel vulnerable, viewed, scrutinized. They swing into exaggerated images of self-grandeur as the central point of the universe, or they become overly self-critical and demeaning. Neither of these conditions is particularly in need of undergoing a competitive scrutiny of testing, examination, or interviewing for acceptance, after which possible rejection could occur. Yet with demographics of the baby boomers’ baby boom, the competition for the places in local high schools is intense, and many parents, understandably, are reluctant to send their fourteen-year-olds off to boarding school.

24

Finally, the times now, of the millennium and after, are tinged with a darkness and intensity which diminishes certainty and confidence in the future. Our youth, even more than those for whom Pink Floyd was a mouthpiece, grow disenchanted, disappointed, and filled with formless longing, sometimes even critical and dissatisfied with what meets them.

Just as the hardening around us has made it necessary for early childhood teachers to teach children how to play again, it may be necessary to teach adolescents how to dream again, to enkindle passion, rather than cynicism, to give them the consent and security to become idealists.

What they long for is often not recognized. The questions they never speak out loud, but feel out loud, are too often not heard. They are presented with ideas, but ideas that do not become ideals burden the soul, while ideas that can become ideals give power for life. Perhaps it is time to offer our kids a new birthright in these darkening times, the birthright of adolescence to be fired by idealism, to be passionate, to have ideals. Do you ever wonder why we compliment things by calling them cool? Why not warm? Fiery? Inflamed? Just as the hardening around us has made it necessary for early childhood teachers to teach children how to play again, it may be necessary to teach adolescents how to dream again, to enkindle passion, rather than cynicism, to give them the consent and security to become idealists.

Waldorf Schools are not just institutions; they grow and evolve as people do, all with their own biographies. PWS, now nearing its 25th birthday, should be approaching, despite some fits and starts, a stage of maturity and organizational solidity in which we might consider our readiness to spawn an offspring––one that would complete the task we have started.

Only when the lower school has achieved the strength of securely established practice can it venture into founding something new. Could it be that, casting away all expectations from outside, brought by anything except our own integrity, honor, and immersion in sound understanding of child development in the light of Anthroposophy, we might offer some small measure of renewal? And wouldn’t that be the coolest thing!

25

The high school curriculum poses questions. How do I see the world in a non-fragmented way? Is there meaning in life? Who am I? Because Waldorf education requires inner responsiveness on the part of the students, graduates leave school with a clearer sense of who they are and what they believe to be important, making it possible for them to give direction to their own lives.

Jack Petrash Understanding Waldorf Education: Teaching from the Inside Out