About Steiner Education
"The soul needs nourishment as well as the body."
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner's educational philosophy must be set within the context of his main endeavor - to address the latent possibilities in human beings of advancing beyond the present-day accepted limits of cognition to an awakening, by self-discipline and exercise, to a knowledge of the spiritual worlds underlying outer existence - higher worlds. His method of work called upon each individual human being to face and outgrow him/herself - so as to be the active initiator of the future rather than someone who drifts upon the tides of world events.
World events make these very challenging times! The threat of global warfare with weapons of mass destruction, the economic and political unrest, the increasing incidence of child abuse, callous and violent crime, economic uncertainty in the wake of collapses of huge companies, changes to family structures and many more bring into our lives great insecurity and anxiety - and even more so for young people. Often adolescents particularly feel trapped and helpless, if not wounded, in a world which defies their natural idealism.
Children enter our world with such trust and of course childhood is the shaping of the instrument for the life of the adult. For adults to develop the strengths they need to live in a way that builds up hope rather than distrust, Dr. Steiner believed they needed as children to experience a form of education which addressed the full measure of a human being in will, feeling and thought - body, soul and spirit. Through a curriculum and methodology based on his understanding of the stages of child development, he believed that educators could help greatly in the journey of discovery and self-discovery which leads to conscious and responsible adulthood.
Too often today education appears to concentrate on superficial results and fails to support the hidden potential of childhood. The educational environment is often pressured, mechanized and devoid of imagination and compassion - focusing on memory rather than the development of understanding.
"An education which fails to feed the deeper-living forces of childhood represents not only the absence of a good but becomes a source of ill"
L.Francis Edmunds
Steiner education is designed to be a health-giving education, nurturing and balancing the human faculties of thinking, feeling and will.
The prime purpose of Steiner Education is to support and educate children such that their own innate and unique human qualities may come to greater fulfillment. This is the task of the educator in each Steiner school.