Download the article: Emil Molt and the Waldorf School at Stuttgart

The Waldorf School at Stuttgart (Freie Waldorfschule) was founded in 1919 by Dr. Emil Molt, General Manager of the Waldorf-Astoria Cigarette Factory, for the-children of his workmen. This was a social impulse and an action born out of the free life of the spirit.

While I stayed in his house for two and a half years, Emil Molt frequently told me of that time which had been the climax of his life.

In September 1919, when the School was opened, the 260 pupils were mainly children of proletarians, and some were children of Anthroposophists. Emil Molt had asked Rudolf Steiner to take over the School’s organization and guidance. Under his lead, the School obtained that spiritual foundation which became known as an education born out of Anthroposophy. An individual initiative thus led to the movement known as "Rudolf Steiner" or “Waldorf Pedagogy”, which has become a leading factor in the spiritual life of the 20th century.

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Keywords: founding first Waldorf school

Download the article: Emmi Pikler's Educational Impulse and Waldorf Education

by Claudia Grah-Wittich
This article was published on the website Waldorf Resources

Translated by Karin Smith

This paper explores the life and work of Emmi Pikler, one of the pioneers of Pediatrics. The author compares Pikler's and Steiner's views on child observation and education, and emphasizes their similarities.

Emmi Pikler's Impulse

Emmi Pikler was born in Vienna in 1902 and died 1984 in Budapest. She studied Medicine in Vienna and specialized in Paediatrics under Freiherr Clemens von Pirquet. He strongly influenced her future with his view that the most important task is to protect the child's health rather than to “focus only on the diagnosis and healing of illnesses. What matters most is not the illness but the child.” i Therefore, Pirquet was deeply concerned with questions of the child's upbringing.

One of the study modules at the Pirquet hospital was a practical training in the baby unit, studying infant care and nutrition. Her next teacher, the paediatric surgeon Hans Salzer, taught her how different a medical examination can be, if the consultant approaches the child kindly and establishes contact with the little patient. Both impulses, Pirquet's emphasis on salutogenesis as well as Salzer's empathic attitude towards the child, strongly influenced Emmi Pikler's own professional approach.

Her husband, a teacher and mathematician, shared her interest in child development and further influenced her professional progress. They decided to do everything they could to enable the healthy development of their own child. It was very important for them to respect their child, to be patient and not to restrict the free unfolding of its movements.

In 1935, Emmi Pikler started to work as a Paediatrician in Hungary and quickly earned the respect of her colleagues. She held lectures on the care and nutrition of infants and babies and, for ten years, ran her own practice as a family doctor. After the war, she cared for abandoned and malnourished children on behalf of a Hungarian organisation. This experience led her to found Lóczy, a care home for children, in 1946.

Download the article: Encountering Sophia in the Classroom
by Kristin Agudelo

This article appeared in the Research Bulletin, Vol. 19 #2

      Over 200 years ago Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, asking him to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.” Since Abigail’s time, the necessity of “remembering the ladies” in various educational canons has been argued persuasively by a number of scholars in a variety of contexts. However, very little on women has been written in the Waldorf curriculum and how the issue of gender inclusion might unfold, both in theory and in practice, in the Waldorf high school classroom.

      This article will attempt to take some first steps towards rectifying this overlooked area of Waldorf pedagogy. First, I’ll address the more theoretical aspects of the question, focusing especially on Rudolf Steiner’s insights about gender and offering practical suggestions for Waldorf teachers based on his work. Then I will very briefly take a peek at a few major female figures who should find their way into every Waldorf high school curriculum—not only because they are fascinating and important historical figures in and of themselves, but more critically, because they played pivotal roles in the development of human consciousness as outlined by Rudolf Steiner. Looking ever so quickly at these women will give you a taste for just how rich our curriculum could be if we were to incorporate even just a few of the women who have contributed greatly to the evolution of consciousness.

      Let’s start with a fundamental question: Our curriculum is already very rich (some would say, already over-filled with content). Why, given all the many valuable elements already present in our Waldorf curriculum, should we make a special effort to teach about women?

Download the article: Entering Deeply into Foreign Language and Understanding it From Within

by Claus Peter Rðh
Originally published in Rundbrief, Journal of the Pedagogical Section, Goetheanum, Easter 2013, #47

When foreign language lessons were introduced in the first Waldorf School in 1919, Rudolf Steiner set new and revolutionary standards, such as introducing two foreign languages from Class 1. If we look back at these standards now, 93 years later, at a time when effectiveness and ever faster cognitive information processes prevail, we realize that Rudolf Steiner's comments are as innovative and topical as ever:

In these lectures I have mentioned that a certain genius lives in language. The genius of language is ... ingenious. We can learn much from the way language fits together and carries its spirit._¹

There is untold wisdom in these words ... Alt human characteristics are expressed in the way various cultures form their words. ...If you understand language in this inward way, then you will see how the organization works._²

The postulation “to allow the living power of language to play into the child soul’’_³ in the lesson so that pupils can experience the language in their feeling first, runs like a thread through Steiner’s instructions on language teaching:

“This is of special importance also with regard to the element of speech. Languages are the outcome of a direct human response to inner experiences. If one is able to immerse oneself in the quality of spoken sounds, one can still bear in them the important part which such inner responses have played in the formation of certain words. But in our abstract life, when the logical content of language plays the leading part, this perception of the artistic element almost has been lost. True, there is an inherent logic in language, but this represents only its skeleton, something which is dead. There is much else besides logic in language. Its breath and pulse can be felt only by those who have been touched b)’ the creative genius of language itself. ”_⁴

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