Articles
Articles in the Online Waldorf Library come from many sources. Quite a number are from the archives of journals and publications published over the past 50+ years. When possible we have noted the specific source although this is not always possible.
Included in the "article" search database are all articles in currently in print journals: Gateways, the Research Bulletin and the Waldorf Journal Project.
The Online Waldorf Library includes:
Education as an Art, the first widely circulated journal about Waldorf education in the United States. It began in 1940 as the Bulletin of the Rudolf Steiner School Association. The purpose of the journal was to inform Americans about Rudolf Steiner's pedagogy. In 1969 the journal became known as Education as an Art: A Journal for the Waldorf Schools of North America.
To search for articles specifically from Education as an Art, please enter the journal name into the search box "with the exact phrase".
Lectures from the 2002 AWSNA National Teacher's Conference, to search for the 8 lectures presented, please enter AWSNA lecture in the search box and click "exact phrase"
Foreign Languages in American Waldorf Schools
Download the article: Foreign Languages in American Waldorf Schools
by Michael Navascués
Originally published in Renewal, A Journal for Waldorf Education, Fall/Winter 1993
For many of us involved in the foreign language field, it is clear that adolescence is an inappropriate time to begin foreign language study. The pervasive American practice of cramming language learning into two to four years of high school and college has not proven effective for many students. It is obvious that too much is attempted in too short a time at an age when most teenagers have lost a good deal of the child's natural imitative capacities, and moreover have become engrossed in the distracting problems of personal and social identity. Why not begin at a much earlier age, as most other countries do? In our still largely monolingual society, the antipathy that many Americans feel toward language learning could surely be countered by a sympathetic, living experience of another tongue during the flexible, formative years of childhood. Waldorf schools, with their developmental concept of education, have for many years offered a viable approach to this problem.
Form Drawing
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by Rosemary Gebert
Published in Child and Man, Volume 21 , #1, 1987 (UK)
One of the remarkable subjects introduced by Rudolf Steiner in the first Waldorf school in 1919 is still being explored and utilized. This account of how form drawing is used in grades 1 to 5 in the Waldorf school is helpful for both aspiring teachers and parents.
Form drawing is taught in Classes 1 to 5, and consists essentially of freehand drawing of non-representational forms. It was an entirely new subject when Rudolf Steiner introduced it in the first Waldorf school in 1919. Today it is still new, in the sense that we are still discovering fresh aspects of it, and different applications.
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From Beauty to Truth in Mathematics
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by Ron Jarman
Published in Child and Man, Vol. V., #2, Winter 1965(UK)
TWINKLE, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.” Trite, but the search for truth in any
branch of knowledge always begins with a sense of wonder. Nowhere is this more evident than in the child and the teacher counts upon it as his, greatest helper.
From Playing to Thinking
From millennialchild.com
How the Waldorf Kindergarten Provides a Foundation for Scientific Understanding
by Eugene Schwartz
How do we educate the child in accordance with principles that ask us to honor and work with the soul and spiritual nature of the youngster? Must teachers be clairvoyant in order to be certain that they are teaching in the proper way? Clairvoyance is needed, but at first we need only the “clairvoyant” faculties that we are always using without being aware that we are using them. For example, a mother can always tell when her child is not feeling well; with some experience, she can usually tell in what way the child is not feeling well. And every teacher knows the “glow” radiated by a child who is healthy and, as we say, “full of life.” All of these judgments are based on perceptions of the activities of the child’s etheric body, whether we know it or not.
Please click here to read the entire article