The letter ‘S’ highlights the unique way in which Waldorf education honors the human spirit. In Waldorf language, we say we educate "the hands, the heart and the head", referring to the curriculum's reach to the doing (our hands), the feeling (our heart) and the thinking (our heads). We strive to honor and recognize (rather than instruct) each child's soul, each child's developing inner life, as they grow and mature, as well as those of our classmates, our teachers and the cultures and civilizations that we study throughout elementary and middle school.
Chalkboards from the grade school classrooms in 2019.
Embedded in this liberal arts non-parochial education is a profound sensibility that there is a spiritual element to our humanity, and an innate capacity in all of us for reverence and wonder. What does this recognition look like on a daily basis? In his book, "The Way of the Child", AC Harwood writes: "It is perhaps this life of feeling, this soul life, which is least understood in education today. We instruct our children in the classroom -- or in the more modern fashion we allow printed books to instruct them -- and then when they are tired we send them out to play games. But between knowledge and activity lies a whole world of wonder and reverence, pity, joy tenderness and sorrow….Everything they learn must be transformed into wonder and beauty, there must be no 'ordinary' lessons. Painting, modeling, acting, rhythmical movement, these must become for these young children the very way of knowledge. If you succeed in teaching in this way, you are uniting what is nowadays divided -- the forces of the head with the forces of feeling and of movement."
There is an element of mindfulness in the way we begin each morning. The grade school children begin each day with a morning verse, calling out for strength in body, mind and spirit. For example, in 1st through 4th grades, they stand and say together: "The sun with loving light, makes bright for me each day. / The soul with spirit power, gives strength unto my limbs. / In sunlight shining clear, I do revere, Oh God, the strength of humankind that thou hast so graciously planted in my soul. / That I with all my might, may love to work and learn. / From thee come light and strength, to thee rise love and thanks." God, as referred to in this verse, can stand for those higher aspirations we all possess, including honor, truth, beauty and nobility. This moment is just one way we offer a sense of reverence, a call to purpose in order to begin the day.
And, by the time a student graduates the 8th grade, they've not only spent years honoring their own inner life, but they've also learned something about the religious and spiritual traditions of Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and many other cultures around the world. This reinforces the basic humanity of our soul life, the importance of being fully human and alive.
This is, of course, a glancing skim over this topic in Waldorf education. But, at the core, what a gift it is to honor a child's spirit, to help them to grow with the full recognition of the importance of their own humanity, and the necessity of respecting that of people around them -- truly something wonderful to take into adulthood.
If you are curious to learn more, please talk with your child(ren)’s teacher(s)!
— adapted from our school newsletter
