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IPerspectives Gained from a Life Working with Steiner Education

It came as a ringing endorsement of Brien Masters’ analysis of the situation when the June 2005 Times Educational Supplement reviewed his Adventures in Steiner Education, stating that his rationale behind the Waldorf approach to literacy taught unhurriedly, with lots of stories and drawing, followed by writing and leading to reading at around age seven should be placed on the desks of all those critics who are so concerned with hastening small children toward the mechanics of it all.

In these collected essays, the theme of literacy takes its place alongside other essential Waldorf practices. They include a section on test-free assessment, written for the Israeli Government. These, and other topics express the conviction that, through attitudes cultivated in education, remedies for current social issues are forthcoming. The author does not deny short-term fixes in society, of course—whether in the sphere of global ecology, economics, quality of life, healthcare, the fragile pillar supporting democracy, human relationships, and so on. Rather, he emphasizes that the essence of education is a vital key to our future.

Brien Masters worked with Rudolf Steiner's ideas for more than half a century, focusing his perspectives by placing each one beside a feature that played significant roles in the eleven seven-year phases of his life. In doing so, he explores avenues that opened up as a result of his personal, lifelong learning—for example, his studies of Beethoven, Oliphant, and Shakespeare. Apart being a well-known author, he is known as a teacher in the Waldorf educational world, a teacher trainer, a poet, a sought-out consultant, a musician, and a lecturer. His doctoral thesis investigated how Steiner's ideas have fared as the Waldorf movement grew into its present worldwide dimension.

Available from Steiner Books