The aim of Steiner schooling is to educate the whole child, “head, heart and hands”. The curriculum is as broad as time will allow and balances academic subjects with artistic and practical activities.
Steiner teachers are dedicated to creating a genuine love of learning within each child. By freely using arts and activities in the service of teaching academics, an internal motivation to learn is developed in the students, doing away with the need for competitive testing and grading.
Some distinctive features of Steiner education include the following:
- Academics are de-emphasised in the early years of schooling. There is no academic content in the Steiner kindergarten (i.e. pre-class 1) experience (although there is a good deal of cultivation of pre-academic skills), and minimal academics in class 1. Letters and numbers are introduced artistically in class 1, with the children learning to read from their own writing in class 2.
- During the primary school years (classes 1-8) the students have a class (or “main lesson”) teacher who stays with the same class for (ideally) the first eight years of their schooling.
- Certain activities which are often considered “frills” at mainstream schools are central at Steiner schools: art, music, gardening, and foreign languages (usually two in primary grades), to name a few. In the younger grades, all subjects are introduced through artistic mediums, because the children respond better to this medium than to dry lecturing and rote learning. All children learn to play instruments and to knit and weave in crafts.
- There are no “textbooks” as such in the first through fifth grades. All children have “main lesson books”, which are their own workbooks that they fill in during the course of the year. They essentially produce their own “textbooks” which record their experiences and what they’ve learned. Upper grades use textbooks to supplement their main lesson work.
- All children learn a stringed instrument from class 3 onward. This often includes one-on-one tuition as well as class orchestra.
- Learning in a Steiner school is a non-competitive activity. There are no grades given at the primary level; the teacher writes a detailed evaluation of the child at the end of each school year.
- The use of electronic media, particularly television, by young children is strongly discouraged in Steiner schools.
The Steiner curriculum is designed to be responsive to the various phases of a child’s development. The era of human history being studied corresponds in many ways with the stage of development of the child. For example, pre-class 1 children are presented with fairy stories matching their dreamy state of consciousness, class 4 study the Vikings and Norse mythology which suit their war-like feelings, class 5 learn of the Greeks at the time their intellect is awakening and their sense of fair play is becoming obvious, and so on.
The main subjects, such as history, language arts, science and mathematics are, as mentioned, taught in main lesson blocks of two to three hours per day, with each block lasting from three to five weeks.
The total Steiner curriculum has been likened to an ascending spiral: subjects are revisited several times, but each new exposure affords greater depth and new insights into the subject at hand.
A typical Lower School curriculum would likely look something like the following:
- Primary Grades 1 – 3
- Pictorial introduction to the alphabet, writing, reading, spelling, poetry and drama.
- Folk and fairy tales, fables, legends, and Old Testament stories.
- Numbers, basic mathematical processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
- Nature stories, house building and gardening.
- Middle Grades 4 – 6
- Writing, reading, spelling, grammar, poetry and drama.
- Norse myths, history and stories of ancient civilisations (e.g. Greek, Indian).
- Review of the four mathematical processes, fractions, percentages, and geometry.
- Local and world geography, comparative zoology, botany and elementary physics.
- Upper Grades 7 – 8
- Creative writing, reading, spelling, grammar, poetry and drama.
- Medieval history, Renaissance, world exploration, history and biography.
- Geography, physics, basic chemistry, astronomy, geology and physiology.
- Special subjects also taught include:
- Handwork: knitting, crocheting, sewing, cross stitching, basic weaving, toy making and woodworking.
- Music: singing, recorder, string instruments, wind, brass and percussion instruments.
- Foreign Languages (varies by school): Spanish, French, Japanese and German.
- Art: wet-on-wet watercolour painting, form drawing, beeswax and clay modelling, perspective drawing.
- Movement: eurythmy, gymnastics, group games.
- The school should be open to all children;
- It should be coeducational;
- It should be a unified twelve-year school;
- The teachers, those who would be working directly with the children, should take the leading role in the running of the school, with a minimum of interference from governmental or economic concerns.
Molt agreed to the conditions and, after a training period for the prospective teachers, die Freie Steinerschule (the Free Steiner School) was opened on September 7, 1919.
The main reason is that Steiner schools honour and protect the wonder of childhood. Every effort is expended to make Steiner schools safe, secure and nurturing environments for the children, and to protect their childhood’s from harmful influences from the broader society.
Secondly, Steiner education has a consistent philosophy of child development underlying the curriculum. All subjects are introduced in an age-appropriate fashion.
Finally, Steiner schools produce graduates who are academically advantaged with respect to their public school counterparts, and who consistently gain admission to top universities.
His background in history and civilisations coupled with his observation in life gave the world the gift of Steiner Education. It is a deeply insightful application of learning based on the Study of Humanity with a developing consciousness of self and the surrounding world.
Reading instruction, as such, is deferred. Instead, writing is taught first. During the first grade, the children explore how our alphabet came about, discovering, as the ancients did, how each letter’s form evolved out of a pictograph. Writing thus evolves out of the children’s art, and their ability to read likewise evolves as a natural and, indeed, comparatively effortless stage of their mastery of language.
Steiner teachers are not, by the way, alone in this belief. Several books have been written in recent decades expressing concern with the effect of television on young children. See, for instance, Endangered Minds by Jane Healy, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander, or The Plug-In Drug by Marie Winn.
Rudolf Steiner, speaking in Oxford in 1922, defined “three golden rules” for teachers: “to receive the child in gratitude from the world it comes from; to educate the child with love; and to lead the child into the true freedom which belongs to man.”
With this approach, the students and teachers come to know each other very well, and the teacher is able to find over the years the best ways of helping individual children in their schooling. The class teacher also becomes like an additional family member for most of the families in his/her class.
It’s worth noting that this approach was the norm in the days of the “little red schoolhouse”.
Transitions in the lower grades, particularly between the first and fourth grades, can potentially be more of a problem, because of the significant differences in the pacing of the various curriculums. A second grader from a traditional school will be further ahead in reading in comparison with a Steiner-schooled second grader; however, the Steiner-schooled child will be ahead in arithmetic.
A child having difficulty with the material might be given extra help by the teacher or by parents; tutoring might also be arranged. Correspondingly, a child who picked up the material quickly might be given harder problems of the same sort to work on, or might be asked to help a child who was having trouble.
Eurythmy is usually taught by a specialist who has been specifically trained in eurythmy, typically for at least four years. In addition to pedagogical eurythmy, there are also therapeutic (“curative”) and performance-oriented forms of art.