Bonnie's Corner: Waldorf Core Principle #2
In our last post, we explored the idea that Waldorf is based on a set of principles called The Seven Core Principles of Waldorf Education. The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA) is an organization that oversees the Independent Waldorf Schools of this continent. Alliance for Public Waldorf Education has the task of oversight of the Public Waldorf School Movement. Both these organizations are joined by a mutual study of a philosophy called Anthroposophy (Anthropos=to be human and Sophy=the wisdom of… together they mean, the Wisdom of Being Human). This philosophy provides the guiding ideas of Waldorf Education.
Last week I talked of Core Principle #1 … the guiding Image of a Human Being. This week, I’ll briefly explore Core Principle #2
CORE PRINCIPLE #2 - Child Development:
An understanding of child development guides all aspects of the educational program, to the greatest extent possible within established legal mandates.
Human development proceeds in approximate 7-year phases. Each phase has characteristic physical, emotional, and cognitive dimensions and a primary learning orientation.
The Public Waldorf educational program, including the curriculum, teaching methodologies, and assessment methods, work with this understanding of human development to address the needs of the individual and the class in order to support comprehensive learning and healthy, balanced development.
Our developmental perspective informs how state and federal mandates, including curriculum sequence, standardized testing, and college and career readiness, are met.
The youngest children carry a strong force of imaginative play. In this critical first seven years, the child needs the room to experience rolls, activities, reciprocal imaginative play and literally creating their own worlds. Fostering such play and creativity in this stage develops a strong and trusting relationship to not only the world in general, but to teachers as guides. This child grows with a foundational mantra “The World is Good”. The child who has played well, will be a great problem solver in his/her adulthood.
The school-age children of the next phase are 7-14 years of age. During these most important years, the children need to experience the Beauty of Cultural Creativity. The Waldorf Curriculum takes them on two distinct journeys. One path leads from the farthest regions of the human story, fairytales and myths and spirals inward to the deepest inner awakenings when the eighth grader debates points of view about contemporary issues. This journey takes them through all the world’s major cultures and stories of leadership east and west, north and south. The second path spirals outward, the path of scientific inquiry. It begins with the sensory based experience of the natural world in the immediate place-based experience. This moves from a phenomenological approach to training in scientific method and an understanding of data and eco-theory in guiding policy.
I’ll approach the third phase, that of High School and the need for Truth, in another time as this community grows.