Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A collection of Steiner's early writings and lectures on Waldorf education including his essential essay, Education of the Child in Light of Spiritual Science.
Synopsis
As early as 1884, while tutoring a boy with special needs, Steiner began a lifelong interest in applying spiritual knowledge to the practical aspects of life. Steiner originally published the essay at the core of this book in 1907. It represents his earliest ideas on education, in which he lays out the soul spiritual processes of human development, describing the need to understand how the being of a child develops through successive "births," beginning with the physical body's entry into earthly life, and culminating in the emergence of the I-being with adulthood.
Synopsis
Opening address, Stuttgart, August 20, 1919
14 lectures, Stuttgart, August 21-September 5, 1919 (CW 293)
2 lectures, Berlin, March 15 and 17, 1917 (CW 66)
"Although we can physically see children only after their birth, we need to be aware that birth is also a continuation. We do not want to look only at what the human being experiences after death, that is, at the spiritual continuation of the physical. We want to be aware that physical existence is a continuation of what higher beings have done without our assistance. Our form of educating can have the correct attitude only when we are aware that our work with young people is a continuation of what higher beings have done before birth." --Rudolf Steiner
This course on education contains some of the most remarkable and significant lectures ever given by Rudolf Steiner. Because these lectures were given to teachers, however, they have suffered the misconception that they are useful only to teachers. Any teacher who wants to teach in a way that encompasses the whole child certainly needs a functional understanding of what Steiner presents here, but these lectures will also greatly benefit parents, psychologists, counselors, or anyone else involved with child development.
Steiner gives his most concise and detailed account of human nature in these lectures, which are absolutely essential for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of Steiner's spiritual science. Those who are willing to work through this work will discover here a new, powerful, convincing, and profoundly phenomenological "anthropology" of human spiritual psychology.
In these lectures, Steiner laid out for the first time the principles that form the basis for renewing the art of teaching. The Foundations of Human Experience is the most important text for studying and understanding the human developmental and psychological basis for Waldorf education.
Translated from the German editions: Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der P dagogik (GA 239); appendix from Geist und Stoff. Leben und Tod (GA 66).
A previous translation was titled Study of Man.