Sophia Services has been busy this year in Israel and France on private tours. There was serious interest earlier in the year for the trip to Assisi to study St Francis and the Goethean Safari in Kenya but, sadly, not enough participants to make them happen. We are trying again with both of them. Find info and the updated brochure for the Goethean Safari with Mark Riegner which I am happy to say we have been able to reduce considerably in price - by about $2000. Accommodation will be mostly in tented safari camps - not camping as we think of it, but permanent camps with tents, under cover, and with full bedrooms and bathrooms with toilets and showers. The local wildlife often wanders past :-) You can google these places listed in the brochure. Flights from the West Coast are only $1000 Nairobi return; from the East Coast only $800! There has never been a better time to get acquainted with an elephant, a giraffe, a rhino - you'll be able to touch each of them - as well as see them in their natural groups in their own environment. Mark will bring deeper studies of the animals, birds, plants and the topography with activities, beyond photography, to help us 'see' them more clearly. This is a fabulous opportunity! Take advantage of the low airfares! Details for the visit to Assisi in the last half of July are still being finalized and will be coming shortly. Please do check the website from time to time for updates. Hoping to see you next year on one of these worthwhile trips. If you would like to be taken off this email list please let me know. Thank you, Sarnia Guiton, Sophia Services
By Karen Davis-Brown The twentieth century was a watershed time for humanity — scientifically, economically, socially, spiritually, morally. Eastern and Central Europe began and ended that century in turmoil; the United States asserted and consolidated its economic and military power.
Hartmut von Jeetze was part of a cohort committed to bring humanity to these times for the most vulnerable of children and adults, and to the land. His parents, Joachim and Dorothea von Jeetze, attended the Agriculture lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in 1924, and later gave their family lands near Breslau as a place for biodynamic agriculture and for Doctor Karl Koenig to establish a school for children with special needs. From the beginning, Hartmut was immersed in the teachings and work that were to shape the rest of his life. When the Nazis drove Doctor Koenig and his work out of Germany and to the British Isles, Hartmut followed with his wife Gerda. He continued to work as a biodynamic farmer and in curative education. In Britain in the early years of the curative schools and therapeutic communities that came to be known as Camphill, Hartmut again made a deep and lasting contribution to both curative and agricultural work in its most formative years. By Samantha Turnbull. Steiner schools are rising in popularity across Australia with three new schools built in as many years, lengthy waiting lists, and the introduction of a degree in Steiner education at a Queensland university. Australia's first Steiner, also known as Waldorf, school opened in 1957 at Castlecrag in Sydney. The 1970s saw most of the country's 43 Steiner schools built, but Steiner Education Australia CEO Tracey Sayn Wittgenstein Piraccini said the system was experiencing another rise in popularity. "Many of the schools are 30 or 40 years old now, and quite well established in their communities ... and three years ago we had three new schools start, and next year we have another school starting, so there's growing interest in what we're doing." The most recent schools were built at Queensland's Moreton Bay, Victoria's Bairnsdale and Bowral in New South Wales. Another is planned for Agnes Waters in Queensland next year, while several state schools in South Australia and Victoria have introduced Steiner-based streams to their classrooms. Ms Sayn Wittgenstein Piraccini said she believed the system's rise in popularity was because of a combination of parents being drawn to the holistic approach of Steiner education, as well as being dismayed with many aspects of traditional, mainstream institutions. "I think parents are really investigating what they want for their children," she said. "Many years ago parents just sent their children to the school down the road ... because the world is changing at such a rapid rate, the old forms of schooling just aren't working. The demand has also resulted in the introduction of a Graduate Certificate and Masters in Steiner education at the University of the Sunshine Coast next year. "Our plan is to really engage with mainstream education and work alongside our peers in education to try and actually bring impulses from Steiner education into all aspects of education," Ms Sayn Wittgenstein Piraccini said. "We want to have good dialogue so that all children benefit from an excellent education and are engaged in their learning and are lifelong learners. "That will bring about a better country for Australia — not narrow standardized testing and data-driven policy that is just impacting on teachers at every level." She said the demand for Steiner education was particularly high in the Byron Shire, in northern New South Wales. There are currently two kindergarten to year 12 Steiner schools in the region and waiting lists that could justify the establishment of a third. Cape Byron Steiner School principal Nerrida Johnson said there were 370 students at her school and a waiting list of more than 500. "We do encourage people to stay on our lists, stay in touch with us and stay involved with the school." Ms Johnson said expansion was not an option for her school because of land restrictions, but there may be a case for starting a new school. "We love the fact we know each of our students, so it works well for us to be a single stream school and to have the lower number of students, but I also know there's a lot of pressure in this shire for more," she said. "I don't know what the future is going to hold — maybe at some point there might be a possibility of opening a senior campus or something like that so we can provide more opportunities for students.' Tanja Nelson has two children at Cape Byron Steiner and a third who has graduated. She said she began investigating the system after being impressed by work experience students from a Steiner school who had volunteered at her graphic design business. "Those kids were so much more capable of being independent in their roles in our business," she said. "By that stage we only had a one-year-old child and we said 'that's a really interesting system, where are these kids coming from, why are they so different?'" She said the best way to describe the Steiner approach was as "holistic". "It's very hard to realize with one little snapshot what actually goes on, but when you watch these children move from kindergarten all the way to year 12 and you see them grow holistically," Ms Nelson said. "And I really mean holistically — the whole person is educated and supported." "There's this backwards and forwards between the community and teachers, and this co-operative process to educating the child that makes these amazing people at the end of the journey. "That constant communal approach to educating the child has very profound impacts for the children. "This is something that I think parents from other schools or education systems will look at and they can see there's something different in our kids, but not understand what it is or why it is." From abc.net.au
New View is a quarterly magazine published in the UK, but posted out to readers in over 40 countries. New View began life within the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain in 1996 and became an independent initiative in 2004. It is not an in-house magazine for the Anthroposophical Society, but is a self-funding initiative, which goes out to the general public as well as Society members and survives by way of subscriptions, advertising and donations.
Tom Raines has been Editor of New View for 18 years and it has always been his guiding intention that the magazine should be an agent of outreach, bringing Steiner’s world-view to a wider readership. This it does by presenting anthroposophical ideas, insights and contemporary experiences to not only those well versed in Steiner’s work but also in an accessible way to new explorers. New View’s contributors have their finger on the pulse as to what is happening in the world, and what could make a difference in the future, with articles encompassing all areas of endeavour and, through anthroposophical insights, offering a deeper picture of affairs unfolding in the world and ourselves. Whilst New View is currently well known in the English-speaking world we urgently need to increase sales of the magazine if we are to survive. The overseas subscription cost for the magazine includes a postage contribution (as overseas mailing is very expensive) and this has proved to be a prohibitive factor for many for whom finances are tight, so it may be of interest to learn that New View is now available in a DIGITAL, DOWNLOADABLE PDF format that can be bought on the website for just £20 for an annual subscription – or £6 for single issues – and accessed on mobile phones, tablets and computers. We hope this new service will encourage more people to support New View – and through it a thoughtful view of the world – by way of a regular subscription. Please visit our website to see what options are now available: www.newview.org.uk by David Mitchell How can we create new festivals that give life-long strength to the children we teach? Today's children require tactile experiences. Those incarnating today have strong social awareness and they long to 'touch" the world with their full beings. Considering the twelve senses allows us to facilitate this need.
The festivals help us to mark time. They give us reference points both to look forward to and to look back upon. They help us to breathe from a cosmic perspective of contraction and expansion, and all this helps us to psychologically to put things in order. From the perspective of a teacher, my colleagues and I and our students journey through the three major seasons of nature, autumn, winter, and spring. Wise people in the past ascribed festivals to these nodal points and called them, amongst other names Michaelmas/Yom Kippur, Hanukkah/Christmas, and Passover/Easter. These seasons within the year present us with the opportunity of bringing a living meeting with nine-fold man through the activities we create. They also afford us the possibility to specifically educate the twelve senses of the children we teach. |
Sophia Institute offers a variety of programs, courses, publications and other resources to anyone interested in Anthroposophy and Waldorf/Steiner inspired education. Currently there are students from all over the world enrolled in the Sophia Institute online courses. Sophia Institute publications are available worldwide. The Sophia Institute newsletter and blog provide insights and information concerning the work of Anthroposophical initiatives, Waldorf/Steiner Schools, the Camphill Movement, and related endeavors. More ...
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