Waldorf Methods/SciencesIntroduction
" ... ancient wisdom contained no contradiction between body and soul or between nature and spirit; because one knew: Spirit is in man in its archetypal form; the soul is none other than the message transmitted by spirit; the body is the image of spirit. Likewise, no contract was felt between man and surrounding nature because one bore an image of spirit in one's own body, and the same was true of every body in external nature. Hence, an inner kinship was experienced between one's own body and those in outer nature, and nature was not felt to be different from oneself. Man felt himself at one with the whole world. He could feel this because he could behold the archetype of spirit and because the cosmic expanses spoke to him. In consequence of the universe speaking to man, science simply could not exist. Just as we today cannot build a science of external nature out of what lives in our memory, ancient man could not develop one because, whether he looked into himself or outward at nature, he beheld the same image of spirit. No contrast existed between man himself and nature, and there was none between soul and body. The correspondence of soul and body was such that, in a manner of speaking, the body was only the vessel, the artistic reproduction, of the spiritual archetype, while the soul was the mediating messenger between the two. Everything as in a state of intimate union. There could be no question of comprehending anything. We grasp and comprehend what is outside our own life. Anything that we carry within ourselves is directly experienced and need not be first comprehended. ... Precisely because man had lost the connection with nature, he now sought a science of nature from outside." - Rudolf Steiner in "The Origins of Natural Science."
In Waldorf education, the science subjects do not start with nor are built from theories and formulas. Rather they start with the phenomena and develop in an experiential way, by first presenting the phenomenon, having the students make detailed observations, then guiding the students to derive the concepts that arise from the phenomena, and finally deriving the scientific formulas and laws behind the phenomena.This methodology reflects the way basic science actually has been developed by scientists and trains the pupils stepwise in basic scientific thinking and reflection on the basis of personal experience and observation of the phenomena of nature and the history of science. In kindergarten and the lower grades, the experience of nature through the seasons is brought to the children through nature walks, nature tables and observation of nature around. In later grades, there are specific main lesson blocks dealing with Man and Animal, and other themes. In grade 5, scientific ideas may be taught historically through the study of the Greeks, for example, Aristotle, Archimedes and Pythagoras. In grades 6-8 the science curriculum becomes more focused with blocks on physics (optics, acoustics, mechanics, magnetism and electricity), botany, chemistry (inorganic and organic), and anatomy. In high school, science is taught by specialists who have received college level training in biology, chemistry and physics and these three subjects are taught in each of the 4 years of high school. Course OutlineSophia Institute Waldorf Courses: The Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 6
Lesson 1 / Waldorf Curriculum / Introduction Lesson 2 / Waldorf Curriculum / Grades 4 - 6 (Part 1) Lesson 3 / Waldorf Curriculum / Grades 4 - 6 (Part 2) Lesson 4 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Introduction Lesson 5 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Reading / Grade 6 Lesson 6 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Math / Grade 6 Lesson 7 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Chemistry / Introduction Lesson 8 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Physics / Introduction Lesson 9 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Life Sciences / Introduction Lesson 10 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Geography / Introduction Lesson 11 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Geography / Grades 1 - 8 Lesson 12 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Gardening and Sustainable Living |
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Tasks and Assignments for Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 6 /AoT610
Please study and work with the study material provided for this lesson. Use additional study material as wanted/needed. Then please turn to the following tasks and assignments listed below.
1. Find and comment on 5 additional resources for the subject in question.
2. Additionally submit comments and questions, if any.
Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email.
1. Find and comment on 5 additional resources for the subject in question.
2. Additionally submit comments and questions, if any.
Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email.
Study Material for this Lesson
Geography/Earth Sciences/Environmental Studies/Human Geography and Economics/Introduction
The child shows a motivation and striving to go out over the environment, to form a unique world image as a part of achieving a singular identity. This is part of humankind's yearning and capacity for individualisation. Every child must integrate a world image with a corporal awareness, in order to know where she is and who she is.
Geography, in all its various aspects, forms a key integrating subject within the whole curriculum. Defined at its broadest it encompasses many aspects of the world around us. Learning about the world around us is a complex subject covering many fields that relate to many other subjects. Essentially though, the methodology of geography teaching in Steiner- Waldorf schools has fundamental themes:
* Physical or natural geography
* Social geography
* Inner or developmental geography
The first systematically describes the phenomena of the earth, its surface, interior and atmosphere. The second considers the human influence on the environment, its economic consequences and the relationship between the particular character of a geographical region and the social and cultural development of the people who live there. The third refers to how individuals' awareness of their environment is reflected in how they see the world and experience themselves within it and follows how this process evolves through the child's development. The methodology of the Waldorf curriculum seeks to integrate these three approaches.
The core of this method is to proceed from the whole to the inter-related parts and to start in the known world and proceed to the unknown before returning to the known. It is a voyage of discovery.
The regions of the earth are not to be studied as mere divisions of the earth's surface, but rather that the areas of the earth's surface are to be studied for their particular character which is a product of their phenomena. It is their inter-relationship with each other which fills the areas with their content ... Geography in Steiner- Waldorf education entails the use of a comparative method?
Furthermore, as Alexander von Humboldt pointed out, geography must contain something aesthetic, which proceeds from a premonition of the inter-relation of the sensual with the intellectual towards a feeling of universality.
Descriptions of nature can be sharply limited and scientifically exact without thereby losing the living breath of the power of imagination.
This aspect is fundamental to geographical education.
The basis for geography teaching is the concept of the earth as morphological and physical totality, or the earth as an organism. This implies a consciousness both of the inter-relationships of the parts within the whole and also of the whole as a developing being. This highlights the importance of climatic geography in which we can readily see the parts as aspects of a whole earth climatic system (ocean currents are another related example). Exploring the characteristic phenomena of the different climatic zones can be done either generically, as types regardless of location (tundra or equatorial zones) or by specific reference to actual regions. Both methods belong within the Waldorf curriculum.
The relationship to true regional diversity is also important. It is important for the pupils to be able to visualise both the similarities with what they know and the differences in distance and scale of unfamiliar parts of the earth. Steiner stressed this:
In dealing with space we densify the spirit and soul of the child, we drive it down to the ground. By teaching geography in such a way that the child sees what we are telling him we bring about this consolidation in him. But there must be the true seeing in space. The child must, for example, be conscious that the Niagara Falls are not the river Elbe! We must help him to realise that a vast space stretches between the two.4
Geography is a subject that can lead the children 'down to earth' and thus prepare them for earthly maturity. Before they go to school and even during their first two years at school, children have a rather dreamy awareness of the world as a totality. Learning about the environment leads them to more wakeful and differentiated perceptions. Up to the age of seven or eight this unity exists of its own accord; thereafter it needs cultivating by means of ever more contact with the world. This includes vivid and colourful descriptions of the archetypal professions, crafts and the locality. Such descriptions are complemented by practical activities such as farming, processing cereals, house-building, gardening. How this is done will vary in ways that depend on the nature of the locality. The production and processing of natural materials is the basis of human economy and this relationship to nature is an important aspect of geography.
If we want to help the children enter into a partnership with nature we must enable them to go beyond mere intellectual knowledge of the kind gained by learning of nature indirectly, such as through electronic media, and penetrate to real feelings for the natural world, feelings that will always lead to activity and a responsible relationship between human beings and nature.
For Classes 1 to 3 the general aim of learning about the environment might be formulated as: getting to know and feeling connected with one's surroundings and with the work human beings do. In Class 4 differentiation begins to be more pronounced. Local knowledge of the immediate area widens spatially (to include geography, simple astronomy, and the study of human beings, animals and plants) and temporally (history). From Class 4 onwards the differentiated subjects are named accordingly, but they ought to remain integrated within an overall experience of the world around us.
Environmental studies would thus be part of history lessons, for example, how the consequences of the Greco-Latin culture, of the Middle Ages and of recent history, as well as the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution's inventions, still influence our life and environment today. Similarly, environmental studies in geography lessons would show how climate and soil are related to the transport and trade, the economy and way of life of different societies. Environmental studies also relate to English lessons in the form of business essays and to arithmetic lessons in the form of commercial arithmetic. Steiner even considered that religion lessons would also be a part of environmental education, as his suggestions that the steam engine or something astronomical might be included in them.
The general educational aim for the children's ninth to twelfth year is thus to meet the children's need to experience reality, i.e. the overall meaning of the realities of nature and the world, so that they can develop their love for the world. This is a cross- curricular aim.
Environmental studies also play an essential part in the sciences of nature (physics and chemistry). Steiner considered it important for the youngsters in Classes 7 and 8 to have physics lessons about life, lessons that give them an understanding of their relationship with their surroundings:
We are living in a world made by human beings, shaped in accordance with human thoughts, a world that we use while knowing nothing at all about it. That we do not understand something made by human beings, something that is, to all intents and purposes, human thought, is a fact that is of great Significance in connection with people's mood of soul and spirit ... The worst thing of all is to share in the experience of this world made by human beings without taking trouble over it.5
This leads, from the pupils' twelfth year onwards, to the formulation of the general educational aims with regard to the way in which 'the world and the life around us' influences all lessons: the children should attain elementary concepts, knowledge and skills with regard to the more important functions of life. This is not only to give them confidence but also to give them the longing to know all about what is going on around them.
In summary one can say that up to the age of twelve, the task of the geography curriculum is to bring the child down to earth; to awaken them to the world around them. From this point on the curriculum moves through cultural geography in Classes 7 and 8 to relating to the world as a whole living organism in the Upper School.
In some schools, Class 8 pupils carry out year-long projects in connection with which environmental studies offers them opportunities to deepen their knowledge of life subjects, thus satisfying their curiosity, or developing it further.
We should point here to environmental studies within the curriculum in the Upper School, as practised in the various practical projects, and also the subject 'technology and life' which Steiner introduced as early on as 1921. Some Steiner- Waldorf schools have made this integrated environmental approach as the basis for developing quite new forms of the Upper School.
Geography, in all its various aspects, forms a key integrating subject within the whole curriculum. Defined at its broadest it encompasses many aspects of the world around us. Learning about the world around us is a complex subject covering many fields that relate to many other subjects. Essentially though, the methodology of geography teaching in Steiner- Waldorf schools has fundamental themes:
* Physical or natural geography
* Social geography
* Inner or developmental geography
The first systematically describes the phenomena of the earth, its surface, interior and atmosphere. The second considers the human influence on the environment, its economic consequences and the relationship between the particular character of a geographical region and the social and cultural development of the people who live there. The third refers to how individuals' awareness of their environment is reflected in how they see the world and experience themselves within it and follows how this process evolves through the child's development. The methodology of the Waldorf curriculum seeks to integrate these three approaches.
The core of this method is to proceed from the whole to the inter-related parts and to start in the known world and proceed to the unknown before returning to the known. It is a voyage of discovery.
The regions of the earth are not to be studied as mere divisions of the earth's surface, but rather that the areas of the earth's surface are to be studied for their particular character which is a product of their phenomena. It is their inter-relationship with each other which fills the areas with their content ... Geography in Steiner- Waldorf education entails the use of a comparative method?
Furthermore, as Alexander von Humboldt pointed out, geography must contain something aesthetic, which proceeds from a premonition of the inter-relation of the sensual with the intellectual towards a feeling of universality.
Descriptions of nature can be sharply limited and scientifically exact without thereby losing the living breath of the power of imagination.
This aspect is fundamental to geographical education.
The basis for geography teaching is the concept of the earth as morphological and physical totality, or the earth as an organism. This implies a consciousness both of the inter-relationships of the parts within the whole and also of the whole as a developing being. This highlights the importance of climatic geography in which we can readily see the parts as aspects of a whole earth climatic system (ocean currents are another related example). Exploring the characteristic phenomena of the different climatic zones can be done either generically, as types regardless of location (tundra or equatorial zones) or by specific reference to actual regions. Both methods belong within the Waldorf curriculum.
The relationship to true regional diversity is also important. It is important for the pupils to be able to visualise both the similarities with what they know and the differences in distance and scale of unfamiliar parts of the earth. Steiner stressed this:
In dealing with space we densify the spirit and soul of the child, we drive it down to the ground. By teaching geography in such a way that the child sees what we are telling him we bring about this consolidation in him. But there must be the true seeing in space. The child must, for example, be conscious that the Niagara Falls are not the river Elbe! We must help him to realise that a vast space stretches between the two.4
Geography is a subject that can lead the children 'down to earth' and thus prepare them for earthly maturity. Before they go to school and even during their first two years at school, children have a rather dreamy awareness of the world as a totality. Learning about the environment leads them to more wakeful and differentiated perceptions. Up to the age of seven or eight this unity exists of its own accord; thereafter it needs cultivating by means of ever more contact with the world. This includes vivid and colourful descriptions of the archetypal professions, crafts and the locality. Such descriptions are complemented by practical activities such as farming, processing cereals, house-building, gardening. How this is done will vary in ways that depend on the nature of the locality. The production and processing of natural materials is the basis of human economy and this relationship to nature is an important aspect of geography.
If we want to help the children enter into a partnership with nature we must enable them to go beyond mere intellectual knowledge of the kind gained by learning of nature indirectly, such as through electronic media, and penetrate to real feelings for the natural world, feelings that will always lead to activity and a responsible relationship between human beings and nature.
For Classes 1 to 3 the general aim of learning about the environment might be formulated as: getting to know and feeling connected with one's surroundings and with the work human beings do. In Class 4 differentiation begins to be more pronounced. Local knowledge of the immediate area widens spatially (to include geography, simple astronomy, and the study of human beings, animals and plants) and temporally (history). From Class 4 onwards the differentiated subjects are named accordingly, but they ought to remain integrated within an overall experience of the world around us.
Environmental studies would thus be part of history lessons, for example, how the consequences of the Greco-Latin culture, of the Middle Ages and of recent history, as well as the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution's inventions, still influence our life and environment today. Similarly, environmental studies in geography lessons would show how climate and soil are related to the transport and trade, the economy and way of life of different societies. Environmental studies also relate to English lessons in the form of business essays and to arithmetic lessons in the form of commercial arithmetic. Steiner even considered that religion lessons would also be a part of environmental education, as his suggestions that the steam engine or something astronomical might be included in them.
The general educational aim for the children's ninth to twelfth year is thus to meet the children's need to experience reality, i.e. the overall meaning of the realities of nature and the world, so that they can develop their love for the world. This is a cross- curricular aim.
Environmental studies also play an essential part in the sciences of nature (physics and chemistry). Steiner considered it important for the youngsters in Classes 7 and 8 to have physics lessons about life, lessons that give them an understanding of their relationship with their surroundings:
We are living in a world made by human beings, shaped in accordance with human thoughts, a world that we use while knowing nothing at all about it. That we do not understand something made by human beings, something that is, to all intents and purposes, human thought, is a fact that is of great Significance in connection with people's mood of soul and spirit ... The worst thing of all is to share in the experience of this world made by human beings without taking trouble over it.5
This leads, from the pupils' twelfth year onwards, to the formulation of the general educational aims with regard to the way in which 'the world and the life around us' influences all lessons: the children should attain elementary concepts, knowledge and skills with regard to the more important functions of life. This is not only to give them confidence but also to give them the longing to know all about what is going on around them.
In summary one can say that up to the age of twelve, the task of the geography curriculum is to bring the child down to earth; to awaken them to the world around them. From this point on the curriculum moves through cultural geography in Classes 7 and 8 to relating to the world as a whole living organism in the Upper School.
In some schools, Class 8 pupils carry out year-long projects in connection with which environmental studies offers them opportunities to deepen their knowledge of life subjects, thus satisfying their curiosity, or developing it further.
We should point here to environmental studies within the curriculum in the Upper School, as practised in the various practical projects, and also the subject 'technology and life' which Steiner introduced as early on as 1921. Some Steiner- Waldorf schools have made this integrated environmental approach as the basis for developing quite new forms of the Upper School.