Bonnie's Corner: Waldorf Core Principle #1
The use of the term “Waldorf” when designating a specific school, is granted to the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America. (AWSNA) They, in turn developed a MOU with the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education for use of the term “Public Waldorf School”. While this is the legal aspect of the use Waldorf in reference only to schools and Waldorf Teacher Training Institutes, a much deeper philosophical document exists to help the Worldwide Waldorf School Community identify the tenets of Waldorf Education. This document was adapted to Independent and Public Waldorf Schools and is variously titled “The Seven Core Principles of Waldorf Education”. In this short offering, I’ll offer one principle each segment using the Alliance for Public Waldorf Schools adapted document.
CORE PRINCIPLE #1 THE IMAGE OF THE HUMAN BEING
Public Waldorf education is founded on a coherent image of the developing human being.
Each human being is a unique individual who brings specific gifts, creative potential, and intentions to this life. Public Waldorf education addresses multiple aspects of the developing child including the physical, emotional, intellectual, social, cultural, moral, and spiritual. Through this, each child is helped to integrate into a maturing whole, able to determine a unique path through life.
Rudolf Steiner’s educational insights are seen as a primary, but not exclusive, source of guidance for an understanding of the image of the human being.
Tahoe School teachers take the relationship that they build with each child as primary to their effective teaching. Their training involves inner work, meditation and contemplative work to foster an ability to reach a student on an intangible level. They seek to use imagination to see the intention of the child’s spirit and to speak to this noble aspect. They exercise Presence as a way of enhancing awareness of deeper capacities of the other. In this way, they become inspired by the actions of this person. Finally, they begin to intuit their own right action in meeting the multiple aspects of the developing child. The meditative work creates a “pathway’ to the child and thus the teacher is affirmed in her transpersonal relating to the student. The fact that the teacher honors such a relationship, and that it is not a purely transactional one, is evidence of guidance by this first Core Principle.