Here are some quotes from various educators and Intelligensia at large on the subject of Waldorf Education

Date:   7/18/2005 11:51:08 AM ( 19 y ago)

WHY WALDORF?


I believe that Waldorf Education posses unique educational features that have considerable potential for improving public education in America. The time is well ripe for the public schools to explore the ways in which ideas in Waldorf education might be explored in their own settings.

Eliot Eisner, PHD professor of Education and Art, Stanford University, Author Curriculum and Cognition, Educating Artistic Vision.


The Waldorf approach is nothing if not purposeful and structured- from the arrangement of the school day to focus on the academic work in the morning when children are most alert and on physical activity than later in the day when energy levels are higher but attention span lapse

Jeremy Schlosberg from his article ‘The Waldorf Way in Family Life’ magazine.

Imagination is important. It remains a tremendous mystery and remains incredibly neglected I schools…Waldorf people have obviously done a lot of thinking about it and have developed many educational methods that relate to it.

Todd Openheimer from ‘A conversation with Todd Oppenheimer, Renewal’


Once committed to a Waldorf education, we seldom remain as we were. The education of our children~ and within that, our own education~ is often life changing. The gift of Waldorf education must have a living value and connection to our own life to be truly received by our children.

Mary Roscoe, parent, teacher, and administrator, Waldorf School of the Peninsula.

To the extent that students feel good about themselves, feel productive, have an opportunity to be critical and creative in the arts, these can have positive spin-off in the class and in the school.

Howard Gardner, Psychologist, Harvard University author ‘The Unschooled Mind’

Implicit in the Waldorf philosophy is the belief that everyone~ assuming no obvious handicap~ has the ability to do everything well, though that ability often has to be discovered, or rediscovered. We can all do music, do art, do mathematics.

David Ruenzel in this article ‘The Waldorf way’ in Teacher Magazine.

Steiner was very ahead of his time. What he recognized about learning in the early 1900’s is gradually being substantiated by new discoveries in brain research. The need for each individual to recreate his own meaning, mind-body relationships, and the involvement of emotions, play a critical role in truly effective learning. Waldorf Education has been working with these principles for more than 80 years and is only now being recognized. It has been putting into effect what major brain researchers and educators are discovering about the human brain/mind. What Rudolf Steiner envisioned is only beginning to be part of the educational consciousness of the last two decades.

Dr Gabriele Rico, Professor of English and Creative Arts, San Jose University

Waldorf Schools include powerfully the arts as a teaching tool. Art as it helps to reveal the use of language, art as it can be revealed in numbers, and certainly in nature.

Ernest Boyer, former president, Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Teaching.

Whereas postmodern schools are struggling to develop integrated curricula and a battling the identification of teachers with their disciplines, Waldorf teachers have always taught math, science, literature, and the arts as part of an organized whole.

David Elkind from Waldorf Education in the Postmodern World, Renewal,
Author of the Hurried Child, All grown up and no place to go, Miseducation, Ties that Stress: The new family imbalance and the same and different: Young Children in the Postmodern World.

With Waldorf education there is an integration of subject matter so that the children use heart, head, and hands in their education~ a complete education if you will.

Dr Robert Peterkin, Director, Harvard Superintendent Program, former Milwaukee Superintendent of Schools


…The Waldorf Schools with its unique understanding of the child, and with its years of teaching practice and institutional experience, deserves the informed consideration of those genuinely concerned with education and the development of human wholeness.

Douglas Sloane, Professor Emeritus, Columbia University






 

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