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by Craig Holdrege
Published in In Context, The Nature Institute

Introduction

In the fall and winter of 2010/2011 I participated in the development of an environmental science curriculum for the middle school (grades 6 through 8) for the Detroit Waldorf School. The school’s question was: Could a curriculum be developed that weaves together a phenomenological approach to science, environmental and social justice awareness, and service learning opportunities. The school felt that such a curriculum—which could be modified for other learning settings, such as urban summer camps—would be “an essential contribution that we could make to our community, especially to demonstrate to our young people how they can be instrumental in understanding and acting upon locally significant environmental issues. The central approach is to study topics around which the students can become passionate and can also fit into their understanding of the world at their age.”

Download the article: "And How Goliath Stamped..."

Fashioning the temperament through story telling so that it becomes a useful tool

Economy in teaching
Balancing my attention between the individual children and the whole class was one of the first challenges that I met in my first teaching experience. I found myself sucked into situations with one child and then another, and I would spend endless time in preparation at night thinking of these particular children. The more I tried to concentrate on the individuals and tried to 'solve' problems, the more little individuals reared their heads and demanded my undivided attention. I was losing the class. I needed to find a way to address the class as a whole while giving each individual child the sense that they were being recognized. A colleague suggested that I look at the children's temperaments and that I consciously address each temperament group in some individual way every day, even better every lesson.

Download the article with illustrations: Art and the Adolescent

The age of puberty has never provoked as much controversy as it does today; educationalists, sociologists, psychiatrists and parents are confronted with problems which become increasingly difficult almost day by day. Educationalists call for parent partici­pation, parents call for stricter guidelines from schooling establishments, sociologists complain about environmental conditions, psychiatrists research parent-child relation­ships and report the lack of care and under­standing. While opinions and advice differ greatly, the adolescent continues to bang more loudly and violently on the doors of established authority.

It is difficult within the context of a short article to discuss puberty and its problems in any detail. I hope within this brief description of the art curriculum in the upper classes of a Steiner or Waldorf school to show how the art teacher approaches these very urgent and complex difficulties of the adolescent.

Download the article: Artistic Feeling in the Art of Education - Part 2

by Michael Grimley
Published in the Rundbrief Journal/Pedagogical Section at the Goethanum
Christmas 2016, No. 59

Artistic feeling, Empathy and Reverence:
 
What differentiates the character and quality of artistic feeling in the art of education from its use in all other art forms isthat the medium we are concerned with is not a lump of clay to be molded, a string to be plucked, or a drum to dance to - but a growing young person. Artistic feeling in the ‘great art of life’ is, therefore, not only an artistic but also a moral-aesthetic imperative. The nurturing and development of this art is possibly the primary task of human culture in our time. The parameters of this task were outlined over 200 years ago by Friedrich Schiller, writing in response to the French Revolution. In a passage chiefly concerned with pointing out the ways artisans and artists approach their material, he contrasts these to the way things are for a third, the educational and what he calls the political artist:

With the pedagogical or political artist things are very different indeed. For him Man is at once the material on which he works and the goal towards which he strives. In this case the end turns back upon itself and becomes identical with the medium ...The consideration he must accord to its uniqueness and individuality is not merely subjective, and aimed at creating an illusion for the senses, but objective and directed to its innermost being’¹