Research Bulletin

By Joan Almon

Download the article: The Vital Role of Play in Early Childhood Education

“The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.”
Ashley Montagu

Over thirty years of working with children, families, and teachers in Waldorf kindergartens all over the world, I have observed one overwhelming similarity: creative play is a central activity in the lives of healthy young children. It helps children weave together all the elements of life as they experience it. It allows them to digest life and make it their own. It is an outlet for the fullness of their creativity, and it is an absolutely critical part of their childhood. With creative play, children blossom and flourish; without it, they suffer a serious decline.

These articles are a part of a Special Section: The Push for Early Childhood Literacy, Taking a Careful Look
Download the articles

Included are:

Editorial Note
Moving in Slow Motion by Barry Sanders
The Push for Early Childhood Literacy: A Risk Factor in Child Psychopathology by Sharna Olfman
The Push for Early Childhood Literacy: Critical Issues and Concerns by Nancy Carlson-Paige
The Push for Early Childhood Literacy: The Loss of Nature by William Crain
The Push for Early Childhood Literacy: A View from Europe by Christopher Clouder

Keywords: oral tradition, reading, media, technology, play, testing, school readiness

By Georg Kühlewind

Download the article:In What Respect are Star Children Different?

Studies concerning the extension of childhood*

People from different cultures often experi­ence difficulties understanding one another; they are often intolerant or hostile toward one another. We can hardly stand it when people are different. Many exterminated groups of people were not inferior to their executioners, just differ­ent and, above all — less egotistical.

By Christof Wiechert

Download the article: Rudolf Steiner and the New Educational Paradigm

I read the article by Stephen Keith Sagarin, “No Such Thing: Recovering the Quality of Rudolf Steiner’s Educational Work” {Research Bulletin, January 2003,Volume VIII, Number 1) with great interest. I would like to make a few comments about it, as Stephen Sagarin’s work raises an important issue. Isn’t it true that every active teacher confronts again and again the questions, “What is truly authentic in my work?” “ What is original and new?” Often these questions manifest only as a feeling that our own work is not authentic and original enough, because we know that authenticity and honesty are needed in teaching. I can understand Stephen Sagarin wanting to call our attention to this, because Waldorf schools as institutions do not provide a guarantee for quality; for quality is found only in teachers.

By Christopher Clouder

Download the article: Teaching as Learning in a Steiner Waldorf Setting

“The importance of the role of the teacher as an agent of change, promoting understanding and tolerance, has never been more obvious than today. It is likely to become even more critical in the twenty-first century.”

This bold statement from the 1996 UNESCO report underlines the crucial role of the teacher in our contemporary societies and also its formidable professional responsibilities_^.1 To be able to live up to such a task, it is clear that on-going professional development is a sine qua non, and that schools themselves have to be valued and constructed as learning institutions for all involved in them. This perception has also been a basic principle of Waldorf education since the founding of the first Steiner school in Stuttgart in 1919 and it is integrated in various forms in all the present 870 schools worldwide. As a whole, the report is based on the moral values explicitly stated in the authors’ introduction as their perspective of education as “an indispensable asset in its attempt to attain ideals of peace, freedom and social justice.”_² The teacher’s role is delineated within a cultural context where:

The need for change, from narrow nationalism to universalism, from ethnic and cultural prejudice to tolerance, understanding and pluralism, from autocracy to democracy in its various manifestations, and from a technologically divided world where high technology is the privilege of the few to a technologically united world, places enormous responsibilities on teachers who participate in the molding of the characters and minds of the new generation,_³

By Johannes Denger

Download the article: Education Towards Health Is Education Towards Freedom: Salutogenesis as A Measure for the Quality of Our Work

Editor’s Note: In this article, Johannes Denger reflects on the concept of “salutogenesis” as providing a grounding and guide for a truly human and health giving education. As we discuss in the section “From the Editor” in this issue, the concept of salutogenesis has begun to emerge in Europe as a new foundational paradigm in both medicine and education. The combination of two words-Latin salus or salis. meaning health, and the Greek genesis, meaning origin or beginning-directs primary attention to that which promotes health. Johannes Denger reflects on the concept in its significance for education.

This lecture is an edited version of a lecture held at die international kindergarten conference in Hannover, Germany, on the 11th of June 2003. It was connected to the author’s article “Sinn macht Gesund” (Meaning Makes Healthy) which appeared in the magazine Erziehungskunst [The Art of Education] of May 2003.

Is freedom still a topic of discussion today?

Is education towards freedom still a meaningful aim in our time, an aim from which we can derive much-needed motivation and strength for the daily practice of our profession as educators? As teachers, we find ourselves faced with an interesting challenge: in all areas-in science, politics and the social sphere-meaning is increasingly being eroded in all possible ways, yet the teacher is supposed to transmit to the children that learning is good, makes sense and leads to success! Norbert Bolz pointedly puts it as follows: “Searching for meaning is in fact an attempt to escape from complexity. Hence looking for meaning is the same as turning away from postmodern society.”

By Jaimen McMillan

Download the article: The Stranger in the Mirror: Reflections on Adolescence in the Light of Movement Education

Lethargic, languid, lackluster. .. Excited, explosive, electrified ... Ill at ease, embarrassed, mortified ... Secure, confident, cocksure... 

These qualities will be familiar to anyone who has lived or worked with teenagers. The teenage years can be bewildering and trying times for adolescents and for the parents and teachers who accompany them through this challenging juncture of their
lives. Finding the proper relationship between the individual's growing inner self-awareness and his or her ability to be consciously active in the outer world is a daunting task. Creating a healthy rela­tionship between consciousness and movement will affect every thought, feeling, and action in every stage of life to come. Movement Education (M.E.) can playa vital role in the formation of the adoles­cent's self-image and social identity.

In The Marionette Theater, a little-known short story by Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) written at the turn of the nineteenth century, Kleist identi­fies consciousness as a key factor in the mystery of human movement. Kleist's imaginations ofa mari­onette, a mirror, and a bear will be explored here using the discipline of Spacial Dynamics® in an attempt to view the adolescent predicament in a new way. It is my hope that decoding the spatial components of Kleist's narrative may supply parents and educators with hints towards solving the age ­old puzzle of puberty and the riddle of the relation­ship between self-awareness and action.

Keywords: planes of space, movement programs

By Gerald Huether

Download the article: Pulling the Grass Doesn't Make it Grow any Faster

“Will our children become smarter when we start to increase the pressure in kindergartens and schools by introducing more evaluations, learning programs and reforms? asks Gerald Huether, brain researcher at the University of Gottingen.

Editor’s Note: Early this year the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced the results of its Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA. The results of PISA were particularly upsetting to the German public, for in the assessment German students placed well-below the OECD average in the three subjects studied-reading, mathematics, and science-and only 21 among the 32 leading industrial nations studied. Predictably, German politicians began to propose legislation aimed at reforming German education. Much of this proposed educational reform bears a strong resemblance to educational policies now in vogue in this country-among them, earlier and more academics and more standardized testing.

By Renate Long-Breipohl

Download the article: A New Generation of Children

This article arose from a lecture given at the Vital Years Conference in Sydney in July 2003. The conference dealt with the qualities of the young child and how educators can meet them and nurture them. This lecture marked the end of the conference with a look at issues of the debate on the modern child.

There has been a new phenomenon of change in children recently documented in several books.
These books include: The Indigo Children by Jan Tober and Lee Carroll, Millennial Child by Eugene Schwartz, Star Children by Georg Kuhlewind., Did Michel of Loenneberga have Attention Disturbance? The ADD Myth by Henning Koehler, and Siegfried Woitinas’s book Who are the Indigo Children ? All of these publications deal with the question of whether there is an observable evolutionary change in this new generation of children, or are we observing the result of damage caused by growing up under the conditions of our time?

By Scott Olmsted

Download the Book Review: Mysteries of the Social Encounter

Mysteries of the Social Encounter by Dieter Brüll
Published by AWSNA Publications, 2002
Reviewed by Scott Olmstead

By Lowell Monke

Download the Book Review: Extraordinary Lives: Disability and Destiny in a Technological Age

Extraordinary Lives: Disability and Destiny in a Technological Age
By Steve Talbott, Published by The Nature Institute, 2003
Reviewed by Lowell Monke

By Douglas Sloan

Download the article: From the Editor

Nearly every article in this issue of the Research Bulletin deals with central aspects of Waldorf education as embodying what is referred to by some of the authors as a “new educational paradigm.” Christof Wiechert, leader of the Pedagogical Section of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, addresses the nature of this new paradigm directly in the first article, “Rudolf Steiner and the New Educational Paradigm.” A year ago in the January, 2003, issue of the Bulletin, an article by Stephen Sagarin explored the question of what is, if anything, the unique nature and substance of Waldorf education.

Download the Book Review: All Work and No Play...How Educational Reforms Are Harming Our Preschoolers

All Work and No Play...How Educational Reforms Are Harming Our Preschoolers
By Sharna Olfman
Published by Praeger, 2003

Download the article: Evolution of Consciousness, Rites of Passage, and the Waldorf Curriculum

I would like to broaden the context in which "rites of passage" may be discussed and, in this article, will approach an exploration from two perspectives: the developments in human conscious­ness over long periods and a relevant approach for gaining spiritual knowledge today. I believe that a discussion of rites of passage will be more fruitful if considered in the light of longer-term evolutionary developments and their recapitulation in each indi­vidual’s biography.

Firstly, I want to recall Rudolf Steiner’s view that developments in the post-Atlantean epochs have resulted in the diminution of people’s awareness of the spiritual world. He points out, further, that this gradual loss has occurred in parallel with both an increased capacity to perceive the sensory world and the development of intellectual thought.1 Initiation training in the Mystery centers in different cultures aimed to re-establish awareness of the spirit.2 A distinction must be made between initiation and rites of passage. The former refers to an experiential relation to the spiritual world, while the latter refers to one of many developmental passages in one’s lifetime, of which one could be an initiation into the Mysteries.

Download the article: The Teaching of Science

Stimulation of the Senses
Astute Observation
Rigorous Training in Thinking
Phenomenological Thinking

Waldorf education works with the develop mental stages of growth in children. The harmonious unfolding of the personality depends on the healthy maturation of each developmental stage, and each progression builds upon the one before it. Strengthening a child’s later cognition in science begins with the building of a strong foundation in the early years, initially by parents and family and later by teachers.

Preschool children are informed about the world through their bodily or sense impressions. The wonder in the world passes directly into their physi­cal, sensory organization through every experience they encounter. Impressions are stored as cellular memory as the organs of the body are being sculpt­ed. Young children have a feeling of "oneness" with the world, and the world is their teacher.  These sensory engravings later become the basis upon which scientific cognition is founded.

Download the article: The Kindergarten Child

Editor’s Note: Last year the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced the results of its Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA. One of the results of PISA has been a demand on the part of politicians to call for the increased teaching of academic subjects and imposition of standardized testing at every age level.  The kindergarten has espe­cially been subject to these pressures.  In contrast to these demands, Peter Lang addresses the unique needs of the preschool and kindergarten child.

The kindergarten has come into the public arena. In the political debate about the consequences of the conclusions of the PISA study, the kindergarten is, in many cases, not understood as a place of development in which children acquire the essential, vital, basic skills needed as a foundation for future school learning. Time spent in kindergarten is often char­acterized as "cuddly education" and "wasted time." According to a series of articles about the new edu­cation catastrophe in Germany in Der Spiegel (a German weekly news magazine), the dogma remains that kindergarten involves only playing and no learning, and, that as a result, a kind of cultural malnutrition takes place. The call for beginning school earlier is becoming louder, and, at first glance, may even appear logical. However, logical does not always mean appropriate or just.  For this reason, it is more urgent than ever that, in the immediate future, the developmental needs of young children be highlighted and examined in order to see what requisites for kindergarten educa­tion emerge. At the same time, it can be shown that in Waldorf education, kindergarten is a time of thorough preparation for future learning in school and in life. Children are individuals who develop and who, with their talents, inclinations, interests, and also handicaps, want to go their own ways.

Download the article with illustrations: Discovering the True Nature of Educational Assessment

Testing and particularly standardized tests are increasingly identified as sources of a host of ills that afflict contemporary education. The ills have been widely cataloged and discussed.1 Testing and standardization are not, however, in themselves, the causes of these ills; to think so would be an error and a distraction, because the real problem is far deeper and more widespread. It lies in the non-educational uses of tests, an almost universal, unhealthy practice.

The key to solving many of the problems that we associate with testing is the adoption of sound test­ing practices, in particular the use of what I will call educational assessment. In addition, I believe that the adoption of sound assessment practices by Waldorf educators can contribute to a renewal of mainstream education in the 21st century. In order to assume such a leadership role, we must first understand how tests are currently misused and how tests could be used to support teaching and learning.

Download the article:Wellsprings of the Art of Education: Three Reversals in the Work of the Waldorf Teacher

This is a translation of an article that appeared in the German journal, Erziehungskunst, Vol. 11 (November 2003) and is published here by permission of the

From the very beginning, much depends upon our ability to correctly address our work and to understand that we must give ourselves a particular direction appropriate to our time,” says Rudolf Steiner in the first lecture of Foundations of Human Experience._¹ He then gives a picture of the prevalent role which egotism has to play in the development of humanity now. At this point in evolution, he explains, inner atten­tion and self-realization are necessary. At the end of the lecture he returns to this, painting an unusu­al situation: “There can be a great difference, and it does not depend simply upon whether one teacher is more clever than another in superficial pedagogi­cal techniques. Rather, the main difference in the effectiveness of teaching comes from the thoughts the teacher has had during the entire time of his or her existence and brings into the classroom.”_² He goes on to point out how thoughts which are directed towards a child’s development, for exam­ple, work differently on the child than thoughts which do not.

Download the article: From the Editor

The lead article in this issue addresses a concern of all committed Waldorf teachers, one that is painful and, at the same time, if faced unflinchingly, full of promise for creative breakthroughs; namely, the high potential for social conflict in Waldorf schools. The author, Dutch Waldorf educator, Christof Wiechert, is leader of the Pedagogical Section of the Anthroposophical Society.  In his article, Christof Wiechert looks at the most common con­fusions that often lie behind conflict in the school, and points to what can be done to reverse them.  In doing so, he brings out the rich resources also pres­ent in Waldorf education for teachers’ inner renewal and development and for their building together genuine, supportive community.  It is an article that will lend itself to contemplation and discussion among schools everywhere.

Download the article: What Studies Have Been Published on Waldorf Education?

Studies done up to 2004, this is a list that will continually be added to.

Download the article: The Lowering of School Age and the Changes in Childhood: An Interim Report

This is a translation of an article that appeared in the German journal, Erziehungskunst, Vol. 5 (2004), and is published here by permission of the authors.

In December of 2003 the magazine Erziehungskunst (The Art of Education) pub­lished an article on the salutogenetic project “Gesundheitsförderende Pädagogik” (Pedagogy Promoting Health), which was undertaken that autumn (2003) by the pedagogical research section of the Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen (Association of Waldorf Schools in Germany) and the Institute for Pedagogy, Ecology of the Senses, and Media Studies in Stuttgart.  The project was commissioned by the German Association of Waldorf Schools, the International Association of Waldorf Kindergartens, the Society for Anthroposophical Physicians in Germany, the Medical Section, and the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum.

The impetus for the project was given by the impending lowering of the school age in various states in Germany.  Both school doctors and Waldorf teachers are worried about this because the anthroposophical view of the human being is quite specific in this matter. Academic learning is not to be started at an arbi­trary point: when one starts too early, growth forces are used up which should in fact still be used to form the physical constitution.  Starting earlier is done at the expense of these vital forces and thus jeopardizes the further development of the child. With the health of many modern children being taxed enough as it is, a further threat could be formed by the additional stress of lowering the ele­mentary school age by a full year. Therefore an initiative group, consisting of physi­cians, scientists, and people working out of Waldorf pedagogy, set itself the task to engage in scientific research on young children to investigate the connection between the development of a healthy constitution and the development of learn­ing. Reports in three areas were planned from the inception; the work has progressed in the mean­time, and in this article we would like to report how far we have come.

Download the article with all illustrations: Organic Functionalism

Waldorf education was intended not only to be an effective, holistic, child-centered approach to the education of children but also to be a force for larger cultural change. Do we who work in Waldorf schools ever think of ourselves as cultural revolutionaries? One of Rudolf Steiner’s often-overlooked ideals for Waldorf education in this connection was the development of a certain harmony between the approach to teaching applied visual arts—handwork and crafts—and the approach by which the forms and spaces of the surrounding classrooms were designed and built. The same ideals were to guide both kinds of form-creating activity.

Steiner envisioned the development of a new cooperation between crafts/handwork, manual training, and artistic feeling.1 His indications for the teaching of crafts in the Waldorf schools aimed to lay the foundation for this direction in the students’ developing will and feeling, so that the combining of utility and beauty could gradually become a practical habit, both within school graduates and, through their influence, in society in general.2 Following an identical principle of design, school architecture and crafts instruction would together serve a new vision of the spiritual renewal of the design elements in our everyday environment.

To continue download the article, above

Keywords: embroidery design, clothing design, woodwork, book design, interior design, school architecture

Download the article: Non-Verbal Education: A Necessity in the Developmental Stages

It is not moral preaching and not reasoned instruction that work on chil­dren in the right way: that which works is what the adults in their surround­ings do visibly before their eyes. — Rudolf Steiner

Typically, human beings never finish learning, and even when getting older they will keep adding new things to what has already been attained. At the same time, it is obvious that the degree and manner of learning changes during the course of life. Every stage of life is specially adapted to certain learning processes. This shows most sig­nificantly in the first twenty years when, along with bodily growth, the soul-spirit’s ability to take things in and readiness to learn are buoyant. With this sketch as background, we may focus our attention on the preschool years.

The Development of Learning Ability up to the Beginning of Adulthood
During the course of their development children learn in different ways.  In the first years it happens through imitation: e.g., walking, talking, thinking, the handling of objects, getting dressed and undressed, eating habits, shaking hands when meet­ing people, and much more. What lies behind this?

Download the article: Can Meditation Take the Place of Exercise?

This article is a translation of an article that appeared originally in Das Goetheanum, No. 33/34 (August 15, 2004): 1, 3.

Only a Differentiated Picture of the Human Being Gives Us the Key to the Different Levels of Health

Editorial Note: When the Olympic games are held, the human body receives a lot of attention. There is a relationship between movement and health.  And it behooves especially those who are on a spiritual path to "guard their physical and mental health." (Rudolf Steiner) Meditation cannot replace physical movement; by the same token, contemplative practice is indispensable. Michaela Glöckler makes this clear in the following article which focuses especially on the stages of life and the different members of the human being.

Physical exercise is a central concern in our time. The word exercise has come to include all manner of movement exercises today; the term either refers to outer techniques which are akin to gymnastics or to inner work grounded in meditative practice. The latter implies forms of exercise involving highly refined types of movement that are hardly perceptible from the outside, move­ments that can lead over into directing forces and currents inside the body.  The aim of this work is to bring about a change within one’s own constitu­tion, and to promote harmony and health.  The human body is more and more recognized as changeable, vulnerable, unique, and irreplaceable.

Download the article: Science and the Child

Author’s note: This is a revised version of an article that appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of The New Atlantis. I had been invited to write a response to a report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness”—and specifical­ly to the chapter entitled “Better Children.” The chapter deals with attempts to improve children through genetic engineer­ing and through the use of drugs to control behavior. You will find the report at www.bioethics.gov.

Why do leaves turn red? Where does the sun go at night? What made Whiskers die? Will Mommy die sometime, and, Daddy, will you die, too? Children are notorious for posing naïve and per­plexing questions. When one of our sons was four years old, he asked, “Why did God make poisonous snakes?” I do not recall our answer, but very much doubt whether it was helpful. And who among us can do justice to the most perplexing question of all—the one incarnated in every newborn child: “Who are you, and for what purpose have you entered our lives?” The child’s large and difficult questions arise, not from complex theoretical constructions, but from simplicity—“childish simplicity” we are tempted to say, with a slightly patronizing smile. We need, after all, to defend serious discourse against fruitless inquiries about God and the moral significance of poisonous snakes. This is why our more child-like questions have, over the past few hundred years, disappeared from science. They are anachronisms, echoing hollowly off the instrument panels and sur­gically precise tools of the laboratory.