Whole to the Parts: A Reflection on Waldorf Education
We human beings like to compare and contrast. So that in order to talk about one type of education, I might do so in relation to another type of education. However, when it comes to Waldorf Education, I don't find these kinds of comparisons necessary.
That said, in order to talk about the unique, yet completely essential, foundation of Waldorf education, I must start by acknowledging that modern people like to compartmentalize things. So our children's education is in one bubble over here. Our work is in another bubble over there. Our social life is in another bubble over here, and our family life is another bubble. Most modern education teaches in relation to these compartments. This orientation to living and education is out of integrity of with the natural order of life on this planet and thus cannot lead to our thriving as human beings.
One of the foundational elements of Waldorf education, especially as you get into the grades, is to always teach from the whole to the parts. This concept is well illustrated by Steiner in his lectures that are now titled The Kingdom of Childhood. In these lectures he says if you're going to teach about the plant don't pick the plant and bring it to your home and look at it. Go to where the plant is. Look at the earth around the plant. Look at the stars over the plant. Look at the water that comes to the plant. Look at everything that makes the conditions for that plant to live and thrive first. That is how you introduce a child to that plant. From that wholeness, then you can come into observation, curiosity and reverence for the plant itself.
In this same way, a Waldorf school is not simply a place that you send your children to learn something separate from the entire environment and reality within which they find themselves. When we think of education as a whole, then all of life itself is the education. Waldorf education is not merely a pedagogy compartment, but an orientation life, an orientation to the reality of existence.
No longer are you sending your child off to a school separate from your social life, separate from your family life, separate from your everyday Walk of Life. The village from which all of humanity was birthed, is found within Waldorf education. The festivals, the plays, the parent meetings, the after school play dates, the attunement to the natural rhythms of the seasons, and so much more, comes into your home and resides within your family as your children undertake their journey through Waldorf education. Likewise, your family enters the Waldorf school and brings your traditions, your values, your orientation to life, and this informs and expands the reality of the school.
As all of the world is in transformation, so too, is Waldorf education. We are being called to meet our families in this moment of reality and grow, expand, and meet the children in the reality they inhabit. A strong connection to the natural rhythms of life, the seasons, the weather, animal husbandry, justice, gardening, and more allows children to be rooted in the same reality as every human who has ever walked this planet. With this foundation they can correctly orient to a industrial and technological reality that no human generation before them has had to interface with.
If we begin our children in a technological reality in which they are separate from everything and everyone else, they will have a harder time orienting to life--to the living breathing Earth upon which we walk. If we start with the whole, then through observation, wonder and reverence children come into relationship with the parts, then the foundation is strong. In this way, the technological realities of this time have a right place. They are neither to be worshiped nor feared. However when children are taught bits and pieces about this and that, the sense of right relationship to each piece of the whole is missing. Navigating the world in morality and clarity of thought becomes a monumental task in itself. Young adults the must, after years of piecemeal education, discover who they are without a solid foundation in what the whole of this creation is and their right place there within.
For this reason, as adults in this modern age, Waldorf education for our children can nourish us as much as, if not more than, it nourishes our children. We have an opportunity to learn alongside them an orientation to life that begins with the wholeness of being and, through observation, takes us on a journey into the little parts of what it means to be human. The goal of Waldorf education is to raise free-thinking, moral adults. When there is no doubt in regard to one's place and connection to the whole of life, and when this whole of life is presented in beauty and reverence, a child's sense of self and well-being is hardwired. From this foundation, morality and self-awareness can be shared in kind and gentle, loving ways.
Waldorf education is a remembrance of our place in the natural order of life on earth. It is education as an everyday walk of life. The teacher does not approach the child as a first grader, or fifth grader, but as a whole human being. From this wholeness, teachers feed the natural impulse of the child in each age they find themselves. In respect of each unique developmental stage the child enters and exits, the teacher facilitates a feeling of wholeness within the child through story, introduction of abstract concepts, science, math and more. The respect for each stage of development is not a question of, “When can a child learn this, or that?” Respect comes from the question, “When is this information most nourishing to a child's development?” This shift in orientation comes from seeing the child as a whole--mental, physical, spiritual and emotional--being rather than an empty vessel to be filled with information.
This is not an attempt at perfection, or any kind of freedom from suffering. However, it creates a kind of resilience in the face of hardship. For the entire education from early childhood through high school is rooted in the notion that this Earth is for you. You belong here. And when you belong somewhere, you have a profound responsibility. And when you understand that there is a whole of which you are one small part, your morality and free thinking become essential to what it is to be human.
It is in this context that we face life anew. Within this orientation children learn and grow and thrive. They will still have all of the normal challenges that children have. Their parents will still have all the normal challenges that parents have. Understanding who you are and your place in the world is accomplished through an everyday walk of life in the context of a living world and a human family. Thus the natural challenges of life are anticipated and embraced and held as essential to life itself. Their solutions are equally anticipated, embraced and held as essential.
Waldorf education is an orientation to the wholeness of life itself. The school lessons are embodied by the teachers, and the students create the text books. It is a process of becoming for the whole community as we live in service of the future generations and the profound hope and possibly they represent.
