Waldorf Curriculum 2
Introduction
A curriculum could be compared to the list of ingredients
for a recipe. However good the recipe, the quality of the ingredients is crucial
but to make a start the components also need to be available. When they are to
hand, the next question is whether the cook is skilled enough to combine and
adjust flavors so that each item plays its part without overwhelming the others.
An experienced cook may be able to substitute one ingredient for another, even
to improvise in such a way that something new is created. But we should not
forget that emotion, even love, goes into the preparation of food and this will
influence how it is received. And, of course, the expectations, health and
culinary experience of the diners also makes a difference.
A curriculum guides an entire learning process. It should not, like a dish into which a chef has thrown every possible taste, explode in an overwhelming, sensation-bursting blowout; it should bring to the table ingredients that are well- balanced, digestible and nutritious, that promote health and stimulate, not stupefy, the senses. Over time, as with diet, a curriculum can introduce items that may not be immediately appealing, stronger tastes or more subtle and complex ones: intellectual chillis, subjects initially sour or astringent, as well as flavors, textures and scents that help to educate the palate. A primary school curriculum, in particular, sets out ingredients for the hors d'oeuvres of lifelong learning. Of course, many school curriculums share common ingredients, but the distinctive qualities of the Steiner-Waldorf curriculum framework are, we believe, unique:
Course Outlines
Waldorf Curriculum 1
Lesson 1: Introduction Lesson 2: Preschool and Kindergarten Lesson 3: Grades 1 - 3 (Part 1) Lesson 4: Grades 1 - 3 (Part 2) Lesson 5: Grades 4 - 6 (Part 1) Waldorf Curriculum 2 Lesson 1: Grades 4 - 6 (Part 2) Lesson 2: Grades 7 and 8 (Part 1) Lesson 3: Grades 7 and 8 (Part 2) Lesson 4: Grades 9 - 12 (Part 1) Lesson 5: Grades 9 - 12 (Part 2) Lesson 6: Evaluations and End of Year Reports |
Tasks and Assignments for Waldorf Curriculum 2.4.
Please study and work with the study material provided for this lesson. Then please turn to the following tasks and assignments listed below.
Summarize the study material in your own words and add comments and questions. Create curriculum examples that address the developmental profile, and aims and objectives for one sample class, for instance grade 10. Create 1 week of sample Waldorf Main Lesson curriculum plans or 1 week of sample subject class using the info and template provided, and applying the following format: 1.A. Class 9/Developmental Profile 1.B. Class 9/Aims and Objectives 2.A. Class 10/Developmental Profile 2.B. Class 10/Aims and Objectives Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email. 
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Study Material for Waldorf Curriculum 2.4.
The Upper School: Introduction
Rather than provide developmental profiles for each Upper School class, we will describe educational aims for each age group. This seems more appropriate given the increasing individual differentiation that occurs during adolescence. Nevertheless one can identify an overall progression through the years of the Upper School that can be characterised as follows.
The Class 9 student (fifteen years old) has reached a point in his or her development when the inner life of feeling in its search for independence can take extreme forms. Steiner once characterised the feeling life of the fifteen year old as akin to having been 'spat out' of the spiritual world. That means a radical distancing of the individual not only from the sense of being embedded in a secure world of certainties provided by family as much as by childhood innocence, but also from what that individual has learned. It requires the inner equivalent of re- learning how to walk, talk and think.
Thinking, feeling and willing as activities are often entirely at odds with each other. This can manifest in great clarity of intellectual argument and total inability to act out the consequences of those ideas; fierce assertion of emotional independence (don't tell me what to do, think or feel!) with an almost childlike dependency and need for emotional comfort.
On the other hand there is a strong will to engage in life, which needs equally strong ideals as orientation. The Class 9 age student seeks and welcomes clarity of explanation, sympathetic understanding from the adults around them and much open-hearted humour, the balm which smooths and makes bearable the inconsistencies of life. We can summarise the situation of the student on entry to the Upper School as follows:
* The awakening of a stringent logic and thinking potential that requires distance from one's own self and other people
* The search for balance between intellectuality and the realm of passion and urge-driven will. * The experience of the emergence of a higher ideal humanity
* The search for a new harmony with the world, but one that should not be gained at the loss of the new-found and still tentative identity and personal freedom
The Class 10 age student (sixteen years old) often appears after the summer holidays as different in marked ways. The often tumultuous nature of Class 9 has given way to a desire to know outer facts, information and details, which requires of them a new intellectual focus. Previously students have mostly been satisfied to know how it is, now they wish to know how we know how it is. In other words they seek not only information but insight. Thus behind every question of what, is the question of how, of origins. How have things come to be as they are? Above all the students want to know how facts relate to them personally.
At this age young people experience their "I" strongly in harsh judgements of sympathy and antipathy, especially the conventional world of parents, authorities, routines and rules. The facades of 'bourgeois' existence need to be torn down to expose what lies naked behind them. They can be rigorous in their pursuit of perceived injustice. Class 9 students are rarely quite so ready to fight and argue and yet the individual is never so prone to being hurt as at this age. Dialogue with adults acquires a sharper, more existential tone. It is no longer merely an intellectual sport, as in Class 9. Now it is for real.
Class 10 students become in many ways the modern equivalent of medieval knights or warriors. They adopt many elaborate rituals in their behaviour, their clothing becomes their armour. Depending on fashion, this can be quite literal with the tendency to leather, chains, pins, studs, insignia, motor-cycle helmets, heavy boots, layers of clothing etc. These warriors are, however, not graced with the arts of chivalry. There is often a sense of imprisonment in their own inner lives, with a corresponding urge to break out. There is deep pain to endure and slow-healing wounds to bear. The clothing is not only protective armour, it is camouflage, disguise and mask. There is a heightened consciousness, a kind of double awareness that the adolescent is quite aware of what he does, how it appears and just how transparent the disguise is.
The sheer unbridgeable gulf between appearance and reality is often experienced as truly tragic. This age is highly prone to suicide and other lesser acts of self-destruction. They seek groups in which to hide among those who feel the same way, speak the same language, enjoy the same irony, who understand each other. If Class 9 was still lit by the remaining glow of the class teacher period, by Class 10 the light has entirely faded. This is one of the most decisive points in the whole maturation process. The individual has arrived and is in grave danger of diffusing. The temptation to flight in inner or outer 'emigration' is strong, to run away from the world of challenges, to hang onto childhood's certainties, to blot out the light of day.
Two powerful new forces, that of burgeoning sexuality and that of physical power, now further destabilise inner uncertainty. These tendencies have been there for a long time, for some individuals since Class 7. Yet in Class 10 most students have arrived at a certain low point in their overall development. Anthroposophical psychology recognises the significant 'Rubicon' experience of the child in his or her ninth year. This is taken account of in many ways through the curriculum. A further significant Rubicon challenge occurs in the sixteenth year, in Class 10. The students are confronted with a Significant threshold experience in their inner development. Those who successfully negotiate the transition over this threshold will have taken a major step in the individuation process. Those who don't, run the risk of falling prey to their own unredeemed soul forces. Much adult behaviour that we deem anti-social and immature is a reflection of these unredeemed adolescent forces perpetuated into adult life in often pathological ways. In men this generally takes outwardly threatening forms, in expressions of power. In women, it often takes the form of dependency and self-denial, even self- destruction. The gender differences have many cross-overs.
The question of the 16 year old is 'who am I?'; it will find an answer when the individual discovers that who I am is not solely determined by what I have inherited and what has happened to me in my life so far, but also by something that has to do with me? The Class 10 student can begin to explore new territory using the new powers of judgement that can be developed during this year.
Life begins at 17. This popular conception certainly highlights the fact that this age marks a significant new beginning. If the interest of the Class 9 student is strongly directed outwards into the world, and the interest of the Class 10 student is strongly focused internally, the Class 11 student's interest is a synthesis of both these directions, namely in insight. The young person at this age wishes to understand the inner principles that determine not only the human being's inner life and configurations but also those of the wider world. It is a question of finding the balance between inner and outer.
This balance is especially critical in social life. Social conscience awakens with the ability to empathise with the other person. What has previously been acutely experienced within one's own soul can be recognised in the other. Deeper dimensions to life now begin to reveal themselves. The young person has to find an inner orientation between appearance and reality, between what is said and what is meant. Above all the seventeen year old is called upon to find his or her own way, to make personal and binding decisions, to consider the full consequences of their actions. Polarities in life have to be resolved, have to find a higher synthesis to a new oneness. The choices to be made highlight that most characteristic experience of this age-doubt. Throughout the curriculum, the question of polarities requires an inner engagement from the student.
The student in Class 12 seeks an overview in which to reconcile two opposing forces that have become increasingly apparent through all he or she has learned, namely the tension between increased individualisation and ever growing global consciousness. These two trends will have become apparent through studies of science, the humanities and through practical experience. The curriculum has led the students to find inner and outer connections and correspondences between important phenomena in the world. Hopefully they have learned how to make an inner personal connection to that which they have learned. Now the question is turned round. The question is no longer how does the world affect me in my life, but how can I influence the world? This question needs to be asked in very concrete terms, in terms of economics, in social and personal life, in politics or in science. Am I a pawn or a King, a performer or a spectator? Where is my position in the world?
School has to become a place in which the student can find his or her own place in the world and actively cultivate it. The students should at last have the opportunity to define, create and live their own learning space, not alone but in partnership with fellow students and teachers. The emphasis should be on self-determination of objectives and pathways towards those objectives. This level of independence will be denied most individuals once they have left school for many years of further professional training or career-building. Perhaps some will never again have such freedom and at the same time such youthful geniality, untrammelled by life's responsibilities. It is a moment when students can give back to their education freely of themselves. It is fatal to the cultivation of true individuality if this twelfth school year is determined by the wishes of teachers or parents, or indeed society at large in the form of examinations and the like.
Gaining an overview is a last chance to remain a generalist before plunging into the specialisation that profession and university life entails. A balance between independent working, choosing themes and projects which express a personal interest and seeking the linking, integrating overview between all fields of knowledge and experience is the challenge the eighteen year old demands. Recognising, even at this relatively young age, something of one's individual destiny is the corollary of recognising the global aspects of the destiny of humankind. Ultimately the Class 12 student wants a useful answer to the question, can the world be changed and am I worthy of being an instrument of change?
Learning to form judgements
The periods leading up to and following puberty (Steiner's own phrase erdenreife means 'being ready for the earth') tend to make one want to look at puberty as a separate phase in itself. The nature of puberty has to be understood in the context of what goes before and comes after it. It makes itself known in advance both psychologically and physically, culminates in an obvious physiological process that is often felt to be quite dramatic, and then continues to have after-effects. These after-effects are not limited by the achievement of biological maturity (which has already passed its culmination as soon as the capacity to reproduce has been attained) but include the process of psychological maturation that goes hand in hand with it.
Steiner summarised this process as a 'new, third birth', the birth of the independent body of soul forces (the sentient body) in the individual. The first birth is the one we normally regard as such, the beginning of the path of life. The second is when the organic development reaches a culmination at the change of teeth, when the forces hitherto used to build the body become free to form and structure memory and imagination.
Prior to this 'third birth', feelings were the source of the child's inner life, but from now on they reach a new stage of independence. An individual's inner life confronts the outer world in a relationship that still has to find a form. Among other things, this relationship is created by the capacity to form judgements. The content of all lessons should respond to this need by challenging it and by providing a context in which the individual can develop his or her faculties. This means that the task of education is to provide learning opportunities in which objective laws that are accessible to thought can be experienced and made conscious. Real judgement can only be based on recognition of the true nature of phenomena.
This also provides a basis for doing things that are recognised to be necessary even if the personal part of one's feelings doesn't feel like it. This is where duty as a voluntary act can be discovered, together with responsibility for one's own actions. Adopting one's own standpoint becomes important, as does finding one's own voice, both of which lead to having one's own opinions. Once the first stages of this process have been achieved both physically and psychologically, and when the often tumultuous phase has died down, the young person achieves a new plateau of development.
By the end of the sixteenth year the crisis or transition of puberty can be regarded as completed. Bodily proportions reach a new harmony. There is a greater inclination for serious work. On the other hand there is also a danger of becoming eccentric:
In all modesty, the young person assumes that he has a significant part to play in saving humanity, and plans his life accordingly. 11
Teachers can help in such cases by setting an example of how judgements are formed. The youngsters must learn how to handle judgements in an appropriate way. It is clear that they are feeling and seeking for 'ideals', in their own selves as well as in others and in the world.
What they find in their search rarely comes up to expectation, and their comments are all too plain and often merciless. They can easily become sceptical. The science the teacher presents must be seen to have been successful in the steps it has taken towards knowledge. Pessimism about knowledge is not good for young people's psychological state at this age, though what they themselves say often expresses it. When they do this they are actually challenging the adult world to 'show me that this is not so: There is an entirely objective tragic element in young people of this age, for only rarely do they find others living in the way they seek to live, namely as self-determining adults.
School is no longer acceptable if it is felt to be running alongside rather than within real life. It must offer possibilities that lead to surefootedness in the here and now. The pupils will detect anything speculative or masquerading as reality. Their search for authenticity and truth is a more concrete version of their search for an unattainable ideal. It is the teachers' task to provide positive experiences in this search. If they fail, the young people will not find a foundation for their existence which can give them firmness and direction. They will remain empty, standing without a foothold in the stream of time. Adolescents who find only inadequate answers among their teachers and the adults around them may, later in life, struggle to overcome selfishness and insecurity. As adults themselves, they may be unable to find the altruism and confidence a healthy society needs.
Values: meeting real needs
An education that takes its orientation from life questions of this kind can never be value-free. When the children were younger it was the task of the teacher to assess and choose what he or she told the children. Now the teacher must let the youngsters experience the teacher as a person with real questions. What encourages and develops the young people now are not results but rather the processes of the teachers' own self-education. Those teachers will be successful who can lay aside their own ingrained attitudes and remain 'life-long learners' themselves.
The third seven-year period does not end with Class 12 or even Class 13. The urge to enter professional or other specialist training makes itself felt. Aims become clearer. Faced with external influences such as the pressure to gain places in higher education or the possibility of unemployment, young people may become restless and gradually lose the will to learn. The challenges of public examinations can, in their one-sidedness, lame initiative and narrow the scope of interest.
The real needs of modern society for people of initiative, energy, flexibility, creativity and social competence, demand that Upper School students learn to learn, learn to work, learn to transfer skills from one realm to another, develop problem- solving abilities, be creative and above all have a fine sense of social responsibility.
For this reason many Steiner- Waldorf schools have developed integrated Upper School programmes offering a variety of practical training in such fields as carpentry, environmental studies, electronics, metalwork, design and clothing, catering, child care and so on, alongside the usual range of subjects. There is an emphasis on project work and this is combined with a range of practical work experience opportunities. Such activities cultivate transferable skills in learning through making, team work and social competence. School in this sense becomes a real preparation for life if it provides opportunities for individuals to become free personalities capable of recognising and accepting the tasks life presents them with and whose soul faculties of thinking, feeling and willing are integrated by the activity of their T
In countries such as the UK, where the public examination system permeates the whole Upper School, or even into the Middle School, the question of life skills and developing real engagement and motivation is often subsumed by the narrowing effect of exams on the young person's horizon. Such schools work hard to find the right balance, not least in the consciousness of the students, who too often see the exams as the 'real' task. The challenge to awaken genuine ideals should not be underestimated. The real task of a Waldorf Upper School is to work with adolescents in such a way that they can ask: what do I need to do to be useful in society? rather than asking: what do I need to do to get what I want?
There are several aspects to this task. The young people must:
a) become familiar with the world and the tasks it sets them;
b) develop a range of skills that equip the individual to be creative and adaptable in fields beyond what they have specifically learned;
c) discover their own individuality;
d) develop powers of judgement and discernment;
e) develop a moral and ethical will based on insight.
Prepared in this way, young people will be able to contribute freely and responsibly as self- dependent individuals to the society and the times in which they find themselves, learning to take part in shaping the future.
Educational competence
Steiner- Waldorf education aims to combine schooling the intellect with caring for imaginative qualities and character building. Therefore artistic and practical activities are seen as being of equal value to the provision of knowledge. Each of these fields of experience should be integrated. Education is not solely a matter of intellectual training: it is a holistic process. Nor should education be restricted to specialist knowledge but should seek to engage the whole human being. Both pupils and teachers can regard themselves as 'successful' if they succeed in developing intellect, a rich emotional life and will in equal measure and if they bring about a feeling for freedom, equality and fraternity. People will then not reject the challenges life offers, nor will resignation be their reaction to crisis. Instead they will help to find meaning and seek and follow new ways. Shaping every lesson will be an 'art of education' which presupposes a creative teacher who is him or herself continuously in the process of developing. Education in this sense means teaching the right subject in the right way at the right time.
If the teachers succeed in working with and understanding the laws of human development, then they will become capable of 'reading' the human being. The various physiological and psychological phenomena that occur as a young person matures need to be linked with the overall human being. Comparison can be made to the plant whose totality can only be observed in the whole sequence of its life cycle. When a person has learnt to read the human being well enough to be able to base their educational actions on this insight, thus helping young people in the whole of their being, then he or she can be said to have gained educational competence. They can take on full responsibility for education in school. The curriculum is then no longer merely a syllabus to be ticked off item by item, for the curriculum then arises out of the conditions necessary for development at each specific stage.
The Class 9 student (fifteen years old) has reached a point in his or her development when the inner life of feeling in its search for independence can take extreme forms. Steiner once characterised the feeling life of the fifteen year old as akin to having been 'spat out' of the spiritual world. That means a radical distancing of the individual not only from the sense of being embedded in a secure world of certainties provided by family as much as by childhood innocence, but also from what that individual has learned. It requires the inner equivalent of re- learning how to walk, talk and think.
Thinking, feeling and willing as activities are often entirely at odds with each other. This can manifest in great clarity of intellectual argument and total inability to act out the consequences of those ideas; fierce assertion of emotional independence (don't tell me what to do, think or feel!) with an almost childlike dependency and need for emotional comfort.
On the other hand there is a strong will to engage in life, which needs equally strong ideals as orientation. The Class 9 age student seeks and welcomes clarity of explanation, sympathetic understanding from the adults around them and much open-hearted humour, the balm which smooths and makes bearable the inconsistencies of life. We can summarise the situation of the student on entry to the Upper School as follows:
* The awakening of a stringent logic and thinking potential that requires distance from one's own self and other people
* The search for balance between intellectuality and the realm of passion and urge-driven will. * The experience of the emergence of a higher ideal humanity
* The search for a new harmony with the world, but one that should not be gained at the loss of the new-found and still tentative identity and personal freedom
The Class 10 age student (sixteen years old) often appears after the summer holidays as different in marked ways. The often tumultuous nature of Class 9 has given way to a desire to know outer facts, information and details, which requires of them a new intellectual focus. Previously students have mostly been satisfied to know how it is, now they wish to know how we know how it is. In other words they seek not only information but insight. Thus behind every question of what, is the question of how, of origins. How have things come to be as they are? Above all the students want to know how facts relate to them personally.
At this age young people experience their "I" strongly in harsh judgements of sympathy and antipathy, especially the conventional world of parents, authorities, routines and rules. The facades of 'bourgeois' existence need to be torn down to expose what lies naked behind them. They can be rigorous in their pursuit of perceived injustice. Class 9 students are rarely quite so ready to fight and argue and yet the individual is never so prone to being hurt as at this age. Dialogue with adults acquires a sharper, more existential tone. It is no longer merely an intellectual sport, as in Class 9. Now it is for real.
Class 10 students become in many ways the modern equivalent of medieval knights or warriors. They adopt many elaborate rituals in their behaviour, their clothing becomes their armour. Depending on fashion, this can be quite literal with the tendency to leather, chains, pins, studs, insignia, motor-cycle helmets, heavy boots, layers of clothing etc. These warriors are, however, not graced with the arts of chivalry. There is often a sense of imprisonment in their own inner lives, with a corresponding urge to break out. There is deep pain to endure and slow-healing wounds to bear. The clothing is not only protective armour, it is camouflage, disguise and mask. There is a heightened consciousness, a kind of double awareness that the adolescent is quite aware of what he does, how it appears and just how transparent the disguise is.
The sheer unbridgeable gulf between appearance and reality is often experienced as truly tragic. This age is highly prone to suicide and other lesser acts of self-destruction. They seek groups in which to hide among those who feel the same way, speak the same language, enjoy the same irony, who understand each other. If Class 9 was still lit by the remaining glow of the class teacher period, by Class 10 the light has entirely faded. This is one of the most decisive points in the whole maturation process. The individual has arrived and is in grave danger of diffusing. The temptation to flight in inner or outer 'emigration' is strong, to run away from the world of challenges, to hang onto childhood's certainties, to blot out the light of day.
Two powerful new forces, that of burgeoning sexuality and that of physical power, now further destabilise inner uncertainty. These tendencies have been there for a long time, for some individuals since Class 7. Yet in Class 10 most students have arrived at a certain low point in their overall development. Anthroposophical psychology recognises the significant 'Rubicon' experience of the child in his or her ninth year. This is taken account of in many ways through the curriculum. A further significant Rubicon challenge occurs in the sixteenth year, in Class 10. The students are confronted with a Significant threshold experience in their inner development. Those who successfully negotiate the transition over this threshold will have taken a major step in the individuation process. Those who don't, run the risk of falling prey to their own unredeemed soul forces. Much adult behaviour that we deem anti-social and immature is a reflection of these unredeemed adolescent forces perpetuated into adult life in often pathological ways. In men this generally takes outwardly threatening forms, in expressions of power. In women, it often takes the form of dependency and self-denial, even self- destruction. The gender differences have many cross-overs.
The question of the 16 year old is 'who am I?'; it will find an answer when the individual discovers that who I am is not solely determined by what I have inherited and what has happened to me in my life so far, but also by something that has to do with me? The Class 10 student can begin to explore new territory using the new powers of judgement that can be developed during this year.
Life begins at 17. This popular conception certainly highlights the fact that this age marks a significant new beginning. If the interest of the Class 9 student is strongly directed outwards into the world, and the interest of the Class 10 student is strongly focused internally, the Class 11 student's interest is a synthesis of both these directions, namely in insight. The young person at this age wishes to understand the inner principles that determine not only the human being's inner life and configurations but also those of the wider world. It is a question of finding the balance between inner and outer.
This balance is especially critical in social life. Social conscience awakens with the ability to empathise with the other person. What has previously been acutely experienced within one's own soul can be recognised in the other. Deeper dimensions to life now begin to reveal themselves. The young person has to find an inner orientation between appearance and reality, between what is said and what is meant. Above all the seventeen year old is called upon to find his or her own way, to make personal and binding decisions, to consider the full consequences of their actions. Polarities in life have to be resolved, have to find a higher synthesis to a new oneness. The choices to be made highlight that most characteristic experience of this age-doubt. Throughout the curriculum, the question of polarities requires an inner engagement from the student.
The student in Class 12 seeks an overview in which to reconcile two opposing forces that have become increasingly apparent through all he or she has learned, namely the tension between increased individualisation and ever growing global consciousness. These two trends will have become apparent through studies of science, the humanities and through practical experience. The curriculum has led the students to find inner and outer connections and correspondences between important phenomena in the world. Hopefully they have learned how to make an inner personal connection to that which they have learned. Now the question is turned round. The question is no longer how does the world affect me in my life, but how can I influence the world? This question needs to be asked in very concrete terms, in terms of economics, in social and personal life, in politics or in science. Am I a pawn or a King, a performer or a spectator? Where is my position in the world?
School has to become a place in which the student can find his or her own place in the world and actively cultivate it. The students should at last have the opportunity to define, create and live their own learning space, not alone but in partnership with fellow students and teachers. The emphasis should be on self-determination of objectives and pathways towards those objectives. This level of independence will be denied most individuals once they have left school for many years of further professional training or career-building. Perhaps some will never again have such freedom and at the same time such youthful geniality, untrammelled by life's responsibilities. It is a moment when students can give back to their education freely of themselves. It is fatal to the cultivation of true individuality if this twelfth school year is determined by the wishes of teachers or parents, or indeed society at large in the form of examinations and the like.
Gaining an overview is a last chance to remain a generalist before plunging into the specialisation that profession and university life entails. A balance between independent working, choosing themes and projects which express a personal interest and seeking the linking, integrating overview between all fields of knowledge and experience is the challenge the eighteen year old demands. Recognising, even at this relatively young age, something of one's individual destiny is the corollary of recognising the global aspects of the destiny of humankind. Ultimately the Class 12 student wants a useful answer to the question, can the world be changed and am I worthy of being an instrument of change?
Learning to form judgements
The periods leading up to and following puberty (Steiner's own phrase erdenreife means 'being ready for the earth') tend to make one want to look at puberty as a separate phase in itself. The nature of puberty has to be understood in the context of what goes before and comes after it. It makes itself known in advance both psychologically and physically, culminates in an obvious physiological process that is often felt to be quite dramatic, and then continues to have after-effects. These after-effects are not limited by the achievement of biological maturity (which has already passed its culmination as soon as the capacity to reproduce has been attained) but include the process of psychological maturation that goes hand in hand with it.
Steiner summarised this process as a 'new, third birth', the birth of the independent body of soul forces (the sentient body) in the individual. The first birth is the one we normally regard as such, the beginning of the path of life. The second is when the organic development reaches a culmination at the change of teeth, when the forces hitherto used to build the body become free to form and structure memory and imagination.
Prior to this 'third birth', feelings were the source of the child's inner life, but from now on they reach a new stage of independence. An individual's inner life confronts the outer world in a relationship that still has to find a form. Among other things, this relationship is created by the capacity to form judgements. The content of all lessons should respond to this need by challenging it and by providing a context in which the individual can develop his or her faculties. This means that the task of education is to provide learning opportunities in which objective laws that are accessible to thought can be experienced and made conscious. Real judgement can only be based on recognition of the true nature of phenomena.
This also provides a basis for doing things that are recognised to be necessary even if the personal part of one's feelings doesn't feel like it. This is where duty as a voluntary act can be discovered, together with responsibility for one's own actions. Adopting one's own standpoint becomes important, as does finding one's own voice, both of which lead to having one's own opinions. Once the first stages of this process have been achieved both physically and psychologically, and when the often tumultuous phase has died down, the young person achieves a new plateau of development.
By the end of the sixteenth year the crisis or transition of puberty can be regarded as completed. Bodily proportions reach a new harmony. There is a greater inclination for serious work. On the other hand there is also a danger of becoming eccentric:
In all modesty, the young person assumes that he has a significant part to play in saving humanity, and plans his life accordingly. 11
Teachers can help in such cases by setting an example of how judgements are formed. The youngsters must learn how to handle judgements in an appropriate way. It is clear that they are feeling and seeking for 'ideals', in their own selves as well as in others and in the world.
What they find in their search rarely comes up to expectation, and their comments are all too plain and often merciless. They can easily become sceptical. The science the teacher presents must be seen to have been successful in the steps it has taken towards knowledge. Pessimism about knowledge is not good for young people's psychological state at this age, though what they themselves say often expresses it. When they do this they are actually challenging the adult world to 'show me that this is not so: There is an entirely objective tragic element in young people of this age, for only rarely do they find others living in the way they seek to live, namely as self-determining adults.
School is no longer acceptable if it is felt to be running alongside rather than within real life. It must offer possibilities that lead to surefootedness in the here and now. The pupils will detect anything speculative or masquerading as reality. Their search for authenticity and truth is a more concrete version of their search for an unattainable ideal. It is the teachers' task to provide positive experiences in this search. If they fail, the young people will not find a foundation for their existence which can give them firmness and direction. They will remain empty, standing without a foothold in the stream of time. Adolescents who find only inadequate answers among their teachers and the adults around them may, later in life, struggle to overcome selfishness and insecurity. As adults themselves, they may be unable to find the altruism and confidence a healthy society needs.
Values: meeting real needs
An education that takes its orientation from life questions of this kind can never be value-free. When the children were younger it was the task of the teacher to assess and choose what he or she told the children. Now the teacher must let the youngsters experience the teacher as a person with real questions. What encourages and develops the young people now are not results but rather the processes of the teachers' own self-education. Those teachers will be successful who can lay aside their own ingrained attitudes and remain 'life-long learners' themselves.
The third seven-year period does not end with Class 12 or even Class 13. The urge to enter professional or other specialist training makes itself felt. Aims become clearer. Faced with external influences such as the pressure to gain places in higher education or the possibility of unemployment, young people may become restless and gradually lose the will to learn. The challenges of public examinations can, in their one-sidedness, lame initiative and narrow the scope of interest.
The real needs of modern society for people of initiative, energy, flexibility, creativity and social competence, demand that Upper School students learn to learn, learn to work, learn to transfer skills from one realm to another, develop problem- solving abilities, be creative and above all have a fine sense of social responsibility.
For this reason many Steiner- Waldorf schools have developed integrated Upper School programmes offering a variety of practical training in such fields as carpentry, environmental studies, electronics, metalwork, design and clothing, catering, child care and so on, alongside the usual range of subjects. There is an emphasis on project work and this is combined with a range of practical work experience opportunities. Such activities cultivate transferable skills in learning through making, team work and social competence. School in this sense becomes a real preparation for life if it provides opportunities for individuals to become free personalities capable of recognising and accepting the tasks life presents them with and whose soul faculties of thinking, feeling and willing are integrated by the activity of their T
In countries such as the UK, where the public examination system permeates the whole Upper School, or even into the Middle School, the question of life skills and developing real engagement and motivation is often subsumed by the narrowing effect of exams on the young person's horizon. Such schools work hard to find the right balance, not least in the consciousness of the students, who too often see the exams as the 'real' task. The challenge to awaken genuine ideals should not be underestimated. The real task of a Waldorf Upper School is to work with adolescents in such a way that they can ask: what do I need to do to be useful in society? rather than asking: what do I need to do to get what I want?
There are several aspects to this task. The young people must:
a) become familiar with the world and the tasks it sets them;
b) develop a range of skills that equip the individual to be creative and adaptable in fields beyond what they have specifically learned;
c) discover their own individuality;
d) develop powers of judgement and discernment;
e) develop a moral and ethical will based on insight.
Prepared in this way, young people will be able to contribute freely and responsibly as self- dependent individuals to the society and the times in which they find themselves, learning to take part in shaping the future.
Educational competence
Steiner- Waldorf education aims to combine schooling the intellect with caring for imaginative qualities and character building. Therefore artistic and practical activities are seen as being of equal value to the provision of knowledge. Each of these fields of experience should be integrated. Education is not solely a matter of intellectual training: it is a holistic process. Nor should education be restricted to specialist knowledge but should seek to engage the whole human being. Both pupils and teachers can regard themselves as 'successful' if they succeed in developing intellect, a rich emotional life and will in equal measure and if they bring about a feeling for freedom, equality and fraternity. People will then not reject the challenges life offers, nor will resignation be their reaction to crisis. Instead they will help to find meaning and seek and follow new ways. Shaping every lesson will be an 'art of education' which presupposes a creative teacher who is him or herself continuously in the process of developing. Education in this sense means teaching the right subject in the right way at the right time.
If the teachers succeed in working with and understanding the laws of human development, then they will become capable of 'reading' the human being. The various physiological and psychological phenomena that occur as a young person matures need to be linked with the overall human being. Comparison can be made to the plant whose totality can only be observed in the whole sequence of its life cycle. When a person has learnt to read the human being well enough to be able to base their educational actions on this insight, thus helping young people in the whole of their being, then he or she can be said to have gained educational competence. They can take on full responsibility for education in school. The curriculum is then no longer merely a syllabus to be ticked off item by item, for the curriculum then arises out of the conditions necessary for development at each specific stage.
The Upper School: Classes 9 and 10 - Curriculum
Class 9
In history, attention returns to the period spanning the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The aim is to make the pupils acquainted with the leading ideas of this period. Great ideas and ideals bring about new developments (the French Revolution, the American Wars of Independence and Constitution, the Russian Revolution). Ideas can also be powerful instruments of evil, as the history of the Third Reich demonstrates. These exemplify the problems young people themselves have at the Class 9 stage: that the journey from ideal to realisation presupposes a perception of reality, that violence and failure can be a consequence of moral rigour and fanatical idealism.
The last 'blank spots' disappear from the European map of the world, and consciousness begins to encompass the whole globe. This history main -lesson is intended to awaken the youngsters' interest in the world. They also need to understand the historical forces that come to expression in the current global situation. At the start of a new millennium, the end of the Cold War and its proxy conflicts in Asia and Africa as well as the lingering forces of disintegration that followed the end of Colonialism have left a complex world, one in which the young person needs to find an orientation. The globalisation of both the world economy and communications systems is creating a new phase in world history, one for which the students have a keen interest. Their increasing familiarity with electronic media and in particular the internet needs to be put in a global context.
Important aspects of human invention and discovery are treated in physics, including the steam engine, locomotive, combustion engine, electric motor, light bulb, telephone, calculator, television, laser and computer (some of these may be dealt with in Class 8). The pupils in Class 9 come to grips with the rationally planned technology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many of these technologies have revolutionised people's mobility and ability to communicate. The relationship between the machines themselves and the kind of consciousness that accompanies their use is an important topic. The impact such inventions had on everyday life is important, as is their replacement through even more modern tools and systems. The post-industrial age is the world the students are growing into and this needs to be put into perspective.
It is also important for the pupils to get to know the individuals whose ideas and intentions led to specific inventions. Through such examples they can grasp technology as human thought which has become actual reality. A glance into the workshop of these thought processes and into the biography of the inventors provides the pupils with pictures that can rouse their enthusiasm while as yet avoiding the moral implications and cultural pessimism of today.
In mathematics, equations right up to probability calculations take centre stage. This provides good practice in formal, logical thinking. All kinds of quadratic equations and surface and volume calculations are done.
In geometry, Platonic solids with plane surfaces provide the opportunity to make inner pictures of processes before drawing them. The manner of depiction is chiefly that of diagonal section with vertical parallel projection which is easy to construct and easy to see spatially. Conic sections now also make their appearance. This is new as compared with Class 8. Ellipse, parabola and hyperbola are developed using dynamic exercises.
In biology, the subject begun in Class 8 in human biology continues; the human skeletal and muscular system and the sense organs, i.e. those systems by means of which human beings experience themselves in physical existence. Carrying on from Class 8, the pupils can now be led much further into the shape and functions of the bones. Taking hold of these and overcoming gravity with them is what young people are unconsciously occupied with the whole time. The whole theme of uprightness has a central place at this age. This complements the experience of the sense organs. These enable the young person to reach out beyond his or her own body, which is often experienced as being 'too small:
In geography in the Upper School an understanding of the earth as a whole entity begins in Class 9 with the study of the earth's mineral crust. The students' newly awakened but as yet disorderly personality forces and the growing capacity to form judgements are directed towards geological phenomena. A thorough understanding of the physical ground on which our existence is built with its tectonic and geomorphological processes can provide orientation and a sense that the structure of the landscape is the result of largely subterranean dynamic forces. The contrast between imperceptible yet inexorable processes of erosion and the dynamic of volcanic activity offer the students a picture of extreme forms of change. The levelling and up-building process of sedimentation offers a stabilising middle between these two poles. The extremes of forces and time scales are polarities which mirror the young person's way of experiencing the world.
In chemistry, the way substances come into being is studied: combustion processes, results of carbonisation, the decomposition of organic matter leading to the formation of humus, how fossil fuels are formed and metabolic processes in plants. Distillation allows the pupils to experience how substances evaporate and then become tangible once again, a process of clarification and purification like those they are experiencing inwardly at this time.
The study of art becomes a subject in its own right in the Upper School, and is very important for Class 9. It provides a balance for the inorganic, lifeless worlds of physics and chemistry with their strict laws, showing the pupils a different world, one in which human beings are free to create their own order. Getting to know great paintings and sculptures will awaken their enjoyment of art and teach them that it is a realm in which human beings can experience freedom. In European schools, the origins of the Western tradition are explored from Ancient Egypt, through Greece to Rome and Early Christian art leading to the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. The main theme is, art as a reflection of changing human consciousness.
Drawing is now exclusively chiaroscuro, black- and-white (possibly also lino cutting and printing), which mirrors the polarity in which Class 9 pupils find themselves. By dealing with this polarity consciously in shaping their work they experience what their soul now needs. Particularly important are the exploration of the transition from dark to light and the crucial transitional 'grey areas' of life.
English studies also involve two main elements." One main-lesson period is concerned with the origins and history of drama and theatre. From sacred beginnings both tragedy and comedy have their spiritual aspects. The transition from sacred to secular and profane is an important one to experience at this age. Drama should have both a theoretical, historical aspect and of course be a practical skill to be learned, in drama workshops and plays. Shakespeare is a high point of this study. Key elements in studying Shakespeare are on the one hand his theatre and the structure of his dramas but on the other the quality of the language. Shakespeare's leading characters provide studies in personality of the highest order. In wrestling with Shakespearean language the students discover the many levels of subtlety and meaning in the images and metaphors, which open them to the whole meta-level oflanguage and human thought. In this they are able to make an inner connection to the spirit of language and thus consciously re-form a connection to spirituality which puberty has clouded or even separated them from entirely.
Humour is another theme. The subj ect of humour enables the pupils to stand back a little from their situation and see things from a variety of different perspectives. This involves an exploratory study of human nature and psychology. It also reduces to a bearable level the sharpness of criticism and self-knowledge. Laughter is an individual's way of beginning to cope with what happens to one. The varying emotions of empathy, compassion and weeping, laughing at and laughing with, can also be discussed from a social and psychological point of view. When these soul qualities are stimulated in an aesthetic way, Class 9 pupils can experience the all-pervading tension of polarities and the possibilities of resolution and redemption.
Finding their own voice requires practice, as do the practical skills of literacy. Book reports, study skills, essays, use of syntax and style all help the students master their written and oral skills and find a new conscious relationship to language. The process of distancing oneself from one's cultural environment also involves the mother tongue. This can lead to an 'in' -language or slang amongst young people in which expressions taken from other less- than-obvious lexical sources are often preferred. The shock effect of such language on adults is very much part of the process.
This tendency to become estranged from one's own inherited language can come as a bonus for foreign languages. The pupils get to know ways of thinking and expression that are not customary in their own language, and they enjoy being able to step back from things by this means. Texts for reading can be biographies of inventors, engineers, artists and other great personalities of the era with which the history lessons are concerned. In admiring individuals who have gone ahead of their fellow human beings along the path towards conquering the earth, the young people gain a degree of maturity in their own ideals and aims. Learning about the issues facing other cultures also helps broaden adolescents' perspectives. Indeed in our times the need to understand the other person, the foreigner, the refugee from another culture, gives the teaching of foreign languages a special significance. The entire cultural aspect of modern language teaching is very important at an age when youngsters are especially drawn into their own folk soul element, adopt more strongly their local regional accent, and begin to identify with the 'laddish' tendencies that come to expression in the adolescent culture that is often anchored in local prejudices, support of the local football team and so on.
Grammar is repeated systematically in a broad overview, and elements the pupils have been practising, open the way for new possibilities of comprehension. The path in foreign language learning has moved from immersion and imitation, through usage and learning by heart and has now led to the need to understand. Thus a systematic review of all aspects of grammar in Class 9 is very much from the aspect of consciously working with rules, structures, comparison of idiom and so on. This is the age when a grammar textbook becomes a useful tool in teaching. Earlier, such textbooks are more useful as points of reference and reminders of things already learned. Now the systematic, tabulated, abstract structure of a good textbook really comes into its own. As in the English lessons a balance of humour, biographies, everyday useful usage and exactness of expression is needed. It is crucial that language lessons remain at heart experiences of orality in language. Literature and grammar both serve the primary aim of providing resources to support the students speaking and communicating in the foreign language. This is a major challenge for teacher and student alike but one that is amply rewarding when successful, and tedious when not.
Music lessons take their departure from a similar viewpoint. By getting to know the biographies of great musicians the pupils begin to develop an interest in their immortal compositions. It is a good idea to place two great composers side by side e.g. Mozart and Beethoven, or Handel and Bach for Baroque music. Listening to the works of the great composers can lead to discovering the differences between the Baroque and Classical styles. In working through such compositions, either vocally or instrumentally, the pupils are guided to discover not only new depths of feeling but also the 'grammar of music's language', to hear and show how keys modulate, and thus to understand the metamorphosis from the Baroque to Classical style.
The youngsters are willing to understand anything to do with metamorphosis, and if this is coupled with art, it can help them find clarity in their own 'rebuilding process'. From Class 9 onwards the pupils sing in the Upper School choir and/or play in the Upper School orchestra.
In eurythmy, through poems and musical compositions from the twentieth century and contemporary artists, Class 9 pupils are led into movement and choreography in a thoughtful and businesslike way. The students should become conscious of the formal elements in eurythmy, learn how to choreograph appropriate forms for the different styles of music or poetry, for the grammatical and linguistic elements, for the different keys and so on. There should also be the opportunity to experience other forms of dance, including both formal ballroom dancing, Latin styles, jive, line dance, folk and morris dancing as well as contemporary dance. In all this the youngsters must be fully aware of the artistic element, and a good leavening of humour should also be included. For eurythmy to really engage the students there must be regular opportunity to see professional performances as well as being motivated by regularly seeing Classes 11 and 12 students performing to a high standing. The students should be able to experience that other people take eurythmy seriously.
Gardening in Class 9 can either take the form of a long main-lesson or project block (work experience on the land, landscaping, laying paths and building flights of steps, putting up fencing etc.) or lead to a practical period of agricultural or forestry work. For two to three weeks the pupils live with farming families and share whatever work is going on in farmyard and field. Apart from many other new things, they experience nature as the element that shapes each day and the whole of life.
The tasks depend on the locality and opportunities available to the school. The important element is the encounter with real physical hard work and the necessary practical wisdom of tools, the work and safety procedures and the teamwork that accompany such activities. The economics of farming are an important topic too, not least in revealing the true value of work and stewardship of the environment.
In carpentry and joinery, simple joints are studied and applied. In dressmaking, the pupils make their own patterns and then sew skirts, jackets, etc. Copper beating and basket-making lead to similar objects by very different means of manufacture, e.g. bowls or vases on the one hand and baskets of all sorts on the other. An inner space is created from the outside by hard work. In all these crafts, the student learns to experience the nature of the material, how it is won, processed and worked. The economic and ecological aspects of craftwork should always be integrated into the practical work and especially the link between landscape, raw material and work process. Above all, objects should be produced that meet a real need in the world and not merely be a demonstration of practice pieces. The same is true for information technology. All pupils should learn basic word processing and use this for practical purposes such as the presentation of work, designing and laying out magazine pages and so on.
Pupils who do not participate in the full aca- demic programme for some reason are offered al- ternative lessons of a practical and social nature. Such students should be given the opportunity to develop a specialist interest with specific responsi- bilities within the school. This may include help- ing in the kindergarten, kitchens, maintenance department, school theatre and so on. Whatever programme the school is able to offer, it is important that the students experience that their work is valued and that they are increasingly to take re- sponsibility for it.
Educational aims for Class 9
By the end of Class 9 the students should begin to:
* show self-motivated interest in the world around them; acquire knowledge about what interests them through independent gathering of information and facts;
* show structure in their thinking and be able to make logical, causal deductions; move from judgement based on feeling (Class 8) to judgement based on observation and understanding. Apply analytical processes to an overall nexus and discover the underlying principles;
* know how to make the transition from idea to ideal, and from ideal to applied practice and move from discovery (Classes 7 and 8) to creation and invention. Engage their will in the realm of ideals;
* appreciate technology as the 'fifth kingdom', the kingdom of culture, created by the human being; discover in technology the thought become worldly reality;
* understand the transitions between polarities in many different realms of life and especially the arts;
* understand that art and science reflect historical changes in cultural consciousness and that artists and scientists have world views that are expressed in their work;
* learn to work and be able to learn through work. Have hands-on experience of as many areas of practical life as possible;
* be able to work in a team and to solve problems together.
Class 10
How does a Class 10 differ from a Class 9? Personalities become more individualised through the work. Steps need to be taken so that the pupils' own activity helps them find themselves. Clarity of thought and an increasing ability to form judgements should help pupils extricate themselves from the unstable nature of the forces of emotional sympathy and antipathy. Hence the effort to come to grips analytically with laws that can be understood through thought.
Steiner's curriculum suggestions for biology were:
To make the human being as a Single entity comprehensible ... The physical human being with his organs and organic functions in connection with soul and spirit. 13
The point of departure is morphology, from which a physiological and psychosomatic consideration of the organs can follow step by step. This could include a comparison of the brain and nervous system with a study of the heart and circulation. The brain's relationship to perception, thought and memory provides a basis for discussing consciousness and moral aspects of conscience. The relationship of the heart and circulation system to emotional experience is important. In this way the young people come into contact with a part of themselves where there is interplay of those developmental processes to which they are so intensely exposed at this age.
In geography the holistic view now expands to include the earth's mantle of water and air and also the climatic zones and further spheres including the earth's core and the outer spheres, together with their varied interactions and movements. In this way we continue to build a foundation for an understanding of the biosphere and ecology. The aim is to enable the pupils to become more aware of the earth as a living organism that reacts with the utmost sensitivity to interference in its rhythms and cycles.
In gardening, cultivation and propagation now come to the fore. If gardening as such is given in Class 10, then the mysteries of grafting are taught. But just as in Class 9, where a practical period in agriculture can take the place of gardening, so can Class 10 have a practical forestry period. This period need not necessarily be regarded as an alternative; it can equally well be complementary to gardening, deepening understanding. It is also important at this age that the students have direct experience of work in a variety of professions. A period of practical work experience may replace the forestry practical.
The history main-lesson brings to the fore an aspect that is obviously linked to geography: human and cultural evolution governed by the earth and the landscape. This is an opportunity to explore human prehistory, from the emergence of modern homo sapiens and the Paleolithic Revolution around 40,000 years before the present. This can include a study of the high culture of Ice Age art, followed by the Mesolithic period of transition at the end of the last Ice Age. The development of agriculture and the founding of the first permanent settlements shows not only a major shift in the economy of prehistoric peoples but a fundamental shift in human consciousness. From there, the establishment of the urban civilisations, with their theocracies, temples, use of writing, bureaucracies, laws and hierarchical social structures, can be described. Significant developments in technology as well as the consequences of urbanisation, such as the transference of diseases from animals to humans can also be discussed. The main focus of these studies should be a comparison of the specific ways the various cultures reflected their natural geographical circumstances, and the ways in which complex human societies were structured. The links between human beings and the earth are experienced, as is the evolution of the human being who increasingly becomes an individual emerging from the group, be it clan, tribe or nation.
The English main-lesson has similar aspects to the history in handling the transition from myth to literature, from pre-literate cultural forms such as myth, saga, and religious ritual to the origins of literature with its shift from collective to individual experience. Another theme combines linguistics with poetic diction and aesthetics, in which both the origin and structure of language are explored.
The study of art has so far involved mainly the visual arts. Now poetry and language as an art, is added thus shifting the emphasis from art in space to art in time. The formal laws of poetry - rhythm, sound, and image - are investigated and practised in epic, lyric and dramatic examples (the 'poetry and metre' main-lesson). A second main-lesson can be devoted to a continuation of the study of painting with a discussion of art to the north of the Alps (from Durer, Holbein, Grunewald, van Eyck to Rembrandt). Overall, formal composition and principles of shaping a picture come to the fore, to correspond with Class 10 pupils' need to grasp things with their understanding. In practical art, painting is reintroduced with colour exercises designed to develop a vocabulary of colour and then developed into motifs in which atmosphere and mood can be expressed. Print-making can also be fruitfully explored at this age. The logic involved in planning pictures or designs that may need to be drawn in mirror form, or in which a composite picture is built up using several plates or blocks, challenges the students' powers of thinking as well as the precision involved in the work. Print-making can be applied in a range of media.
Eurythmy supports poetry and the use of language through the use of suitable examples in which the group moves as a whole. The pupils should work out their own eurythmy forms.
In foreign languages humour also comes into its own. It is fun to get the point through a direct understanding of the language (without translation). A study of humorous texts, jokes and idiomatic expression can broaden the adolescents' social, psychological and cultural horizons. The pupils also begin to develop a feeling for style. Unabridged literature is increasingly used. The use of grammar as a tool can be appreciated through the pupils' enjoyment of clear thinking. Comparative studies of grammar using English and the foreign languages can heighten awareness of how the spirit of language expresses itself through the genius of the different folk souls. The history of the development of the various languages can enhance this insight into the changing consciousness which underlies language evolution. Being able to present arguments for and against various propositions in the foreign language calls for the ability to think in that language.
In music lessons the endeavour is to give the pupils a foundation on which they can develop a genuine appreciation of music. Examples are practised in choir work and a chamber orchestra. Harmony is explored through musical examples. Main-lessons in mathematics, physics, chemistry, geometry and surveying have similar points of departure. In physics the formative principle is particularly obvious. Nowhere else are the laws of nature so obvious or clearly followed as in classical mechanics. The pupils can proceed from experiment to observation and on to the laws, the formula and the calculation without loss of clarity. Clarity in observing, logic in drawing conclusions, the ability to relate cause to effect, and analytical thinking are all schooled.
One of the aims for Class 10 is to enter into practical life. The use of the right angle has wide- ranging application in Class 10. The relationship of the perpendicular to the horizontal provides a conceptual framework for many practical tasks involving both accurate observation and common sense judgement. In surveying, the right angle forms the framework for the theoretical calculations, as it does in technical drawing. In woodwork, as in most constructions, it provides the concepts of plumb, square and true. In dressmaking and tailoring all individual patterns relate to the rectangular shape of the woven cloth. Even in throwing a pot on a wheel, the process of centring the clay requires an awareness of the perpendicular in relation to the horizontal plane of the plate. In metalwork the forging of iron and the work at the anvil in transforming the metal through the rhythmical application of the hammer, into a range of shapes requires the exact application of force and knowledge of the material.
The surveying main -lesson provides a wonderful opportunity to come to grips with the earth - or a tiny part of it - by measuring and drawing it. After this one or two-week practical period, the pupils know this 'tiny part' like the back of their hand! Surveying requires three levels of measurement, common sense estimation, ground measurement using rods, chains and tape measures, and theoretical calculations based on the readings taken with theodolite and measures. All three systems require to be integrated in order to create a three-dimensional understanding that will be expressed in a series of section drawings. Having applied these technical skills to geography, they know exactly what is there and have also learnt how to work with accuracy. The main content of the first mathematics main -lesson in Class 10 is trigonometry, which is applied in surveying. The cosine also belongs to physics when calculations are needed.
Further work on mathematical laws is given by rhythmical calculations, raising to higher powers and logarithms. In Class 10 mathematics should be related to practical matters of everyday life. The realm of irrational numbers and incommensurability, from which the law of the Golden Mean can be derived, points to a different type of formative law applicable to the human being, and is more appropriate for Class 11.
In chemistry the pupils work on the polarities of acid and alkali and on the crystallisation of salts. This main -lesson is directly related to the geometry main-lesson in which the regular and semi-regular solids and their laws of symmetry are worked out and drawn.
In technology the transition from raw material to processed material to product is explored, for example in the path from fibre via thread to textile. This principle applies also to wood, where the whole timber cycle from tree planting and cultivation, to felling, sawing, drying, planing etc. comes to a culmination in joinery in Class 10. As in surveying and the other practical subjects, the objects the students make correct the pupils simply by being objective proof of what they have done. It is important that useful objects are made. In addition many other technical applications in practical life can be discussed, e.g. the gears of a bicycle, how the toilet flush works, vehicle maintenance and information technology. Class 10 is the best point to explore the technology of recycling in which the cycle from raw material to finished product begins again.
Information technology is a part of technology that needs responsible discussion of how these things affect the human being. Understanding what information is, how it is (and has been) stored, and the social aspects of access belongs to this theme. A brief history of the recorded word and mathematical calculations is a part of this. The basic principles of how a computer works are described. On the basis of what they have learnt in physics and mathematics, it is useful for Class 10 pupils to work with the basic building blocks of circuits to produce adding machines in which the principle of computer hardware can be learned.
A practical period in first aid fits in with the pupils' need to be engaged in meaningful, practical activities. Inner confidence grows when you can react on the spur of the moment and know what is the right thing to do.
Educational aims for Class 10
The students should begin to:
* achieve objectivity and clarity in thinking; draw conclusions logically and causally; be able to form common sense judgements as well as formulating concepts;
* recognise natural laws using analytical thinking; apply conceptual tools to practical situations;
* understand how complex processes come about by studying their origins and basic principles;
* work with accuracy and apply what they have learned to respond to the practical needs of those around them;
* take increasing responsibility for their own work and behaviour, and be able to make and follow through choices based on their own insight; form their opinions and be able to explain and justify them.
In history, attention returns to the period spanning the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The aim is to make the pupils acquainted with the leading ideas of this period. Great ideas and ideals bring about new developments (the French Revolution, the American Wars of Independence and Constitution, the Russian Revolution). Ideas can also be powerful instruments of evil, as the history of the Third Reich demonstrates. These exemplify the problems young people themselves have at the Class 9 stage: that the journey from ideal to realisation presupposes a perception of reality, that violence and failure can be a consequence of moral rigour and fanatical idealism.
The last 'blank spots' disappear from the European map of the world, and consciousness begins to encompass the whole globe. This history main -lesson is intended to awaken the youngsters' interest in the world. They also need to understand the historical forces that come to expression in the current global situation. At the start of a new millennium, the end of the Cold War and its proxy conflicts in Asia and Africa as well as the lingering forces of disintegration that followed the end of Colonialism have left a complex world, one in which the young person needs to find an orientation. The globalisation of both the world economy and communications systems is creating a new phase in world history, one for which the students have a keen interest. Their increasing familiarity with electronic media and in particular the internet needs to be put in a global context.
Important aspects of human invention and discovery are treated in physics, including the steam engine, locomotive, combustion engine, electric motor, light bulb, telephone, calculator, television, laser and computer (some of these may be dealt with in Class 8). The pupils in Class 9 come to grips with the rationally planned technology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many of these technologies have revolutionised people's mobility and ability to communicate. The relationship between the machines themselves and the kind of consciousness that accompanies their use is an important topic. The impact such inventions had on everyday life is important, as is their replacement through even more modern tools and systems. The post-industrial age is the world the students are growing into and this needs to be put into perspective.
It is also important for the pupils to get to know the individuals whose ideas and intentions led to specific inventions. Through such examples they can grasp technology as human thought which has become actual reality. A glance into the workshop of these thought processes and into the biography of the inventors provides the pupils with pictures that can rouse their enthusiasm while as yet avoiding the moral implications and cultural pessimism of today.
In mathematics, equations right up to probability calculations take centre stage. This provides good practice in formal, logical thinking. All kinds of quadratic equations and surface and volume calculations are done.
In geometry, Platonic solids with plane surfaces provide the opportunity to make inner pictures of processes before drawing them. The manner of depiction is chiefly that of diagonal section with vertical parallel projection which is easy to construct and easy to see spatially. Conic sections now also make their appearance. This is new as compared with Class 8. Ellipse, parabola and hyperbola are developed using dynamic exercises.
In biology, the subject begun in Class 8 in human biology continues; the human skeletal and muscular system and the sense organs, i.e. those systems by means of which human beings experience themselves in physical existence. Carrying on from Class 8, the pupils can now be led much further into the shape and functions of the bones. Taking hold of these and overcoming gravity with them is what young people are unconsciously occupied with the whole time. The whole theme of uprightness has a central place at this age. This complements the experience of the sense organs. These enable the young person to reach out beyond his or her own body, which is often experienced as being 'too small:
In geography in the Upper School an understanding of the earth as a whole entity begins in Class 9 with the study of the earth's mineral crust. The students' newly awakened but as yet disorderly personality forces and the growing capacity to form judgements are directed towards geological phenomena. A thorough understanding of the physical ground on which our existence is built with its tectonic and geomorphological processes can provide orientation and a sense that the structure of the landscape is the result of largely subterranean dynamic forces. The contrast between imperceptible yet inexorable processes of erosion and the dynamic of volcanic activity offer the students a picture of extreme forms of change. The levelling and up-building process of sedimentation offers a stabilising middle between these two poles. The extremes of forces and time scales are polarities which mirror the young person's way of experiencing the world.
In chemistry, the way substances come into being is studied: combustion processes, results of carbonisation, the decomposition of organic matter leading to the formation of humus, how fossil fuels are formed and metabolic processes in plants. Distillation allows the pupils to experience how substances evaporate and then become tangible once again, a process of clarification and purification like those they are experiencing inwardly at this time.
The study of art becomes a subject in its own right in the Upper School, and is very important for Class 9. It provides a balance for the inorganic, lifeless worlds of physics and chemistry with their strict laws, showing the pupils a different world, one in which human beings are free to create their own order. Getting to know great paintings and sculptures will awaken their enjoyment of art and teach them that it is a realm in which human beings can experience freedom. In European schools, the origins of the Western tradition are explored from Ancient Egypt, through Greece to Rome and Early Christian art leading to the Middle Ages and the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. The main theme is, art as a reflection of changing human consciousness.
Drawing is now exclusively chiaroscuro, black- and-white (possibly also lino cutting and printing), which mirrors the polarity in which Class 9 pupils find themselves. By dealing with this polarity consciously in shaping their work they experience what their soul now needs. Particularly important are the exploration of the transition from dark to light and the crucial transitional 'grey areas' of life.
English studies also involve two main elements." One main-lesson period is concerned with the origins and history of drama and theatre. From sacred beginnings both tragedy and comedy have their spiritual aspects. The transition from sacred to secular and profane is an important one to experience at this age. Drama should have both a theoretical, historical aspect and of course be a practical skill to be learned, in drama workshops and plays. Shakespeare is a high point of this study. Key elements in studying Shakespeare are on the one hand his theatre and the structure of his dramas but on the other the quality of the language. Shakespeare's leading characters provide studies in personality of the highest order. In wrestling with Shakespearean language the students discover the many levels of subtlety and meaning in the images and metaphors, which open them to the whole meta-level oflanguage and human thought. In this they are able to make an inner connection to the spirit of language and thus consciously re-form a connection to spirituality which puberty has clouded or even separated them from entirely.
Humour is another theme. The subj ect of humour enables the pupils to stand back a little from their situation and see things from a variety of different perspectives. This involves an exploratory study of human nature and psychology. It also reduces to a bearable level the sharpness of criticism and self-knowledge. Laughter is an individual's way of beginning to cope with what happens to one. The varying emotions of empathy, compassion and weeping, laughing at and laughing with, can also be discussed from a social and psychological point of view. When these soul qualities are stimulated in an aesthetic way, Class 9 pupils can experience the all-pervading tension of polarities and the possibilities of resolution and redemption.
Finding their own voice requires practice, as do the practical skills of literacy. Book reports, study skills, essays, use of syntax and style all help the students master their written and oral skills and find a new conscious relationship to language. The process of distancing oneself from one's cultural environment also involves the mother tongue. This can lead to an 'in' -language or slang amongst young people in which expressions taken from other less- than-obvious lexical sources are often preferred. The shock effect of such language on adults is very much part of the process.
This tendency to become estranged from one's own inherited language can come as a bonus for foreign languages. The pupils get to know ways of thinking and expression that are not customary in their own language, and they enjoy being able to step back from things by this means. Texts for reading can be biographies of inventors, engineers, artists and other great personalities of the era with which the history lessons are concerned. In admiring individuals who have gone ahead of their fellow human beings along the path towards conquering the earth, the young people gain a degree of maturity in their own ideals and aims. Learning about the issues facing other cultures also helps broaden adolescents' perspectives. Indeed in our times the need to understand the other person, the foreigner, the refugee from another culture, gives the teaching of foreign languages a special significance. The entire cultural aspect of modern language teaching is very important at an age when youngsters are especially drawn into their own folk soul element, adopt more strongly their local regional accent, and begin to identify with the 'laddish' tendencies that come to expression in the adolescent culture that is often anchored in local prejudices, support of the local football team and so on.
Grammar is repeated systematically in a broad overview, and elements the pupils have been practising, open the way for new possibilities of comprehension. The path in foreign language learning has moved from immersion and imitation, through usage and learning by heart and has now led to the need to understand. Thus a systematic review of all aspects of grammar in Class 9 is very much from the aspect of consciously working with rules, structures, comparison of idiom and so on. This is the age when a grammar textbook becomes a useful tool in teaching. Earlier, such textbooks are more useful as points of reference and reminders of things already learned. Now the systematic, tabulated, abstract structure of a good textbook really comes into its own. As in the English lessons a balance of humour, biographies, everyday useful usage and exactness of expression is needed. It is crucial that language lessons remain at heart experiences of orality in language. Literature and grammar both serve the primary aim of providing resources to support the students speaking and communicating in the foreign language. This is a major challenge for teacher and student alike but one that is amply rewarding when successful, and tedious when not.
Music lessons take their departure from a similar viewpoint. By getting to know the biographies of great musicians the pupils begin to develop an interest in their immortal compositions. It is a good idea to place two great composers side by side e.g. Mozart and Beethoven, or Handel and Bach for Baroque music. Listening to the works of the great composers can lead to discovering the differences between the Baroque and Classical styles. In working through such compositions, either vocally or instrumentally, the pupils are guided to discover not only new depths of feeling but also the 'grammar of music's language', to hear and show how keys modulate, and thus to understand the metamorphosis from the Baroque to Classical style.
The youngsters are willing to understand anything to do with metamorphosis, and if this is coupled with art, it can help them find clarity in their own 'rebuilding process'. From Class 9 onwards the pupils sing in the Upper School choir and/or play in the Upper School orchestra.
In eurythmy, through poems and musical compositions from the twentieth century and contemporary artists, Class 9 pupils are led into movement and choreography in a thoughtful and businesslike way. The students should become conscious of the formal elements in eurythmy, learn how to choreograph appropriate forms for the different styles of music or poetry, for the grammatical and linguistic elements, for the different keys and so on. There should also be the opportunity to experience other forms of dance, including both formal ballroom dancing, Latin styles, jive, line dance, folk and morris dancing as well as contemporary dance. In all this the youngsters must be fully aware of the artistic element, and a good leavening of humour should also be included. For eurythmy to really engage the students there must be regular opportunity to see professional performances as well as being motivated by regularly seeing Classes 11 and 12 students performing to a high standing. The students should be able to experience that other people take eurythmy seriously.
Gardening in Class 9 can either take the form of a long main-lesson or project block (work experience on the land, landscaping, laying paths and building flights of steps, putting up fencing etc.) or lead to a practical period of agricultural or forestry work. For two to three weeks the pupils live with farming families and share whatever work is going on in farmyard and field. Apart from many other new things, they experience nature as the element that shapes each day and the whole of life.
The tasks depend on the locality and opportunities available to the school. The important element is the encounter with real physical hard work and the necessary practical wisdom of tools, the work and safety procedures and the teamwork that accompany such activities. The economics of farming are an important topic too, not least in revealing the true value of work and stewardship of the environment.
In carpentry and joinery, simple joints are studied and applied. In dressmaking, the pupils make their own patterns and then sew skirts, jackets, etc. Copper beating and basket-making lead to similar objects by very different means of manufacture, e.g. bowls or vases on the one hand and baskets of all sorts on the other. An inner space is created from the outside by hard work. In all these crafts, the student learns to experience the nature of the material, how it is won, processed and worked. The economic and ecological aspects of craftwork should always be integrated into the practical work and especially the link between landscape, raw material and work process. Above all, objects should be produced that meet a real need in the world and not merely be a demonstration of practice pieces. The same is true for information technology. All pupils should learn basic word processing and use this for practical purposes such as the presentation of work, designing and laying out magazine pages and so on.
Pupils who do not participate in the full aca- demic programme for some reason are offered al- ternative lessons of a practical and social nature. Such students should be given the opportunity to develop a specialist interest with specific responsi- bilities within the school. This may include help- ing in the kindergarten, kitchens, maintenance department, school theatre and so on. Whatever programme the school is able to offer, it is important that the students experience that their work is valued and that they are increasingly to take re- sponsibility for it.
Educational aims for Class 9
By the end of Class 9 the students should begin to:
* show self-motivated interest in the world around them; acquire knowledge about what interests them through independent gathering of information and facts;
* show structure in their thinking and be able to make logical, causal deductions; move from judgement based on feeling (Class 8) to judgement based on observation and understanding. Apply analytical processes to an overall nexus and discover the underlying principles;
* know how to make the transition from idea to ideal, and from ideal to applied practice and move from discovery (Classes 7 and 8) to creation and invention. Engage their will in the realm of ideals;
* appreciate technology as the 'fifth kingdom', the kingdom of culture, created by the human being; discover in technology the thought become worldly reality;
* understand the transitions between polarities in many different realms of life and especially the arts;
* understand that art and science reflect historical changes in cultural consciousness and that artists and scientists have world views that are expressed in their work;
* learn to work and be able to learn through work. Have hands-on experience of as many areas of practical life as possible;
* be able to work in a team and to solve problems together.
Class 10
How does a Class 10 differ from a Class 9? Personalities become more individualised through the work. Steps need to be taken so that the pupils' own activity helps them find themselves. Clarity of thought and an increasing ability to form judgements should help pupils extricate themselves from the unstable nature of the forces of emotional sympathy and antipathy. Hence the effort to come to grips analytically with laws that can be understood through thought.
Steiner's curriculum suggestions for biology were:
To make the human being as a Single entity comprehensible ... The physical human being with his organs and organic functions in connection with soul and spirit. 13
The point of departure is morphology, from which a physiological and psychosomatic consideration of the organs can follow step by step. This could include a comparison of the brain and nervous system with a study of the heart and circulation. The brain's relationship to perception, thought and memory provides a basis for discussing consciousness and moral aspects of conscience. The relationship of the heart and circulation system to emotional experience is important. In this way the young people come into contact with a part of themselves where there is interplay of those developmental processes to which they are so intensely exposed at this age.
In geography the holistic view now expands to include the earth's mantle of water and air and also the climatic zones and further spheres including the earth's core and the outer spheres, together with their varied interactions and movements. In this way we continue to build a foundation for an understanding of the biosphere and ecology. The aim is to enable the pupils to become more aware of the earth as a living organism that reacts with the utmost sensitivity to interference in its rhythms and cycles.
In gardening, cultivation and propagation now come to the fore. If gardening as such is given in Class 10, then the mysteries of grafting are taught. But just as in Class 9, where a practical period in agriculture can take the place of gardening, so can Class 10 have a practical forestry period. This period need not necessarily be regarded as an alternative; it can equally well be complementary to gardening, deepening understanding. It is also important at this age that the students have direct experience of work in a variety of professions. A period of practical work experience may replace the forestry practical.
The history main-lesson brings to the fore an aspect that is obviously linked to geography: human and cultural evolution governed by the earth and the landscape. This is an opportunity to explore human prehistory, from the emergence of modern homo sapiens and the Paleolithic Revolution around 40,000 years before the present. This can include a study of the high culture of Ice Age art, followed by the Mesolithic period of transition at the end of the last Ice Age. The development of agriculture and the founding of the first permanent settlements shows not only a major shift in the economy of prehistoric peoples but a fundamental shift in human consciousness. From there, the establishment of the urban civilisations, with their theocracies, temples, use of writing, bureaucracies, laws and hierarchical social structures, can be described. Significant developments in technology as well as the consequences of urbanisation, such as the transference of diseases from animals to humans can also be discussed. The main focus of these studies should be a comparison of the specific ways the various cultures reflected their natural geographical circumstances, and the ways in which complex human societies were structured. The links between human beings and the earth are experienced, as is the evolution of the human being who increasingly becomes an individual emerging from the group, be it clan, tribe or nation.
The English main-lesson has similar aspects to the history in handling the transition from myth to literature, from pre-literate cultural forms such as myth, saga, and religious ritual to the origins of literature with its shift from collective to individual experience. Another theme combines linguistics with poetic diction and aesthetics, in which both the origin and structure of language are explored.
The study of art has so far involved mainly the visual arts. Now poetry and language as an art, is added thus shifting the emphasis from art in space to art in time. The formal laws of poetry - rhythm, sound, and image - are investigated and practised in epic, lyric and dramatic examples (the 'poetry and metre' main-lesson). A second main-lesson can be devoted to a continuation of the study of painting with a discussion of art to the north of the Alps (from Durer, Holbein, Grunewald, van Eyck to Rembrandt). Overall, formal composition and principles of shaping a picture come to the fore, to correspond with Class 10 pupils' need to grasp things with their understanding. In practical art, painting is reintroduced with colour exercises designed to develop a vocabulary of colour and then developed into motifs in which atmosphere and mood can be expressed. Print-making can also be fruitfully explored at this age. The logic involved in planning pictures or designs that may need to be drawn in mirror form, or in which a composite picture is built up using several plates or blocks, challenges the students' powers of thinking as well as the precision involved in the work. Print-making can be applied in a range of media.
Eurythmy supports poetry and the use of language through the use of suitable examples in which the group moves as a whole. The pupils should work out their own eurythmy forms.
In foreign languages humour also comes into its own. It is fun to get the point through a direct understanding of the language (without translation). A study of humorous texts, jokes and idiomatic expression can broaden the adolescents' social, psychological and cultural horizons. The pupils also begin to develop a feeling for style. Unabridged literature is increasingly used. The use of grammar as a tool can be appreciated through the pupils' enjoyment of clear thinking. Comparative studies of grammar using English and the foreign languages can heighten awareness of how the spirit of language expresses itself through the genius of the different folk souls. The history of the development of the various languages can enhance this insight into the changing consciousness which underlies language evolution. Being able to present arguments for and against various propositions in the foreign language calls for the ability to think in that language.
In music lessons the endeavour is to give the pupils a foundation on which they can develop a genuine appreciation of music. Examples are practised in choir work and a chamber orchestra. Harmony is explored through musical examples. Main-lessons in mathematics, physics, chemistry, geometry and surveying have similar points of departure. In physics the formative principle is particularly obvious. Nowhere else are the laws of nature so obvious or clearly followed as in classical mechanics. The pupils can proceed from experiment to observation and on to the laws, the formula and the calculation without loss of clarity. Clarity in observing, logic in drawing conclusions, the ability to relate cause to effect, and analytical thinking are all schooled.
One of the aims for Class 10 is to enter into practical life. The use of the right angle has wide- ranging application in Class 10. The relationship of the perpendicular to the horizontal provides a conceptual framework for many practical tasks involving both accurate observation and common sense judgement. In surveying, the right angle forms the framework for the theoretical calculations, as it does in technical drawing. In woodwork, as in most constructions, it provides the concepts of plumb, square and true. In dressmaking and tailoring all individual patterns relate to the rectangular shape of the woven cloth. Even in throwing a pot on a wheel, the process of centring the clay requires an awareness of the perpendicular in relation to the horizontal plane of the plate. In metalwork the forging of iron and the work at the anvil in transforming the metal through the rhythmical application of the hammer, into a range of shapes requires the exact application of force and knowledge of the material.
The surveying main -lesson provides a wonderful opportunity to come to grips with the earth - or a tiny part of it - by measuring and drawing it. After this one or two-week practical period, the pupils know this 'tiny part' like the back of their hand! Surveying requires three levels of measurement, common sense estimation, ground measurement using rods, chains and tape measures, and theoretical calculations based on the readings taken with theodolite and measures. All three systems require to be integrated in order to create a three-dimensional understanding that will be expressed in a series of section drawings. Having applied these technical skills to geography, they know exactly what is there and have also learnt how to work with accuracy. The main content of the first mathematics main -lesson in Class 10 is trigonometry, which is applied in surveying. The cosine also belongs to physics when calculations are needed.
Further work on mathematical laws is given by rhythmical calculations, raising to higher powers and logarithms. In Class 10 mathematics should be related to practical matters of everyday life. The realm of irrational numbers and incommensurability, from which the law of the Golden Mean can be derived, points to a different type of formative law applicable to the human being, and is more appropriate for Class 11.
In chemistry the pupils work on the polarities of acid and alkali and on the crystallisation of salts. This main -lesson is directly related to the geometry main-lesson in which the regular and semi-regular solids and their laws of symmetry are worked out and drawn.
In technology the transition from raw material to processed material to product is explored, for example in the path from fibre via thread to textile. This principle applies also to wood, where the whole timber cycle from tree planting and cultivation, to felling, sawing, drying, planing etc. comes to a culmination in joinery in Class 10. As in surveying and the other practical subjects, the objects the students make correct the pupils simply by being objective proof of what they have done. It is important that useful objects are made. In addition many other technical applications in practical life can be discussed, e.g. the gears of a bicycle, how the toilet flush works, vehicle maintenance and information technology. Class 10 is the best point to explore the technology of recycling in which the cycle from raw material to finished product begins again.
Information technology is a part of technology that needs responsible discussion of how these things affect the human being. Understanding what information is, how it is (and has been) stored, and the social aspects of access belongs to this theme. A brief history of the recorded word and mathematical calculations is a part of this. The basic principles of how a computer works are described. On the basis of what they have learnt in physics and mathematics, it is useful for Class 10 pupils to work with the basic building blocks of circuits to produce adding machines in which the principle of computer hardware can be learned.
A practical period in first aid fits in with the pupils' need to be engaged in meaningful, practical activities. Inner confidence grows when you can react on the spur of the moment and know what is the right thing to do.
Educational aims for Class 10
The students should begin to:
* achieve objectivity and clarity in thinking; draw conclusions logically and causally; be able to form common sense judgements as well as formulating concepts;
* recognise natural laws using analytical thinking; apply conceptual tools to practical situations;
* understand how complex processes come about by studying their origins and basic principles;
* work with accuracy and apply what they have learned to respond to the practical needs of those around them;
* take increasing responsibility for their own work and behaviour, and be able to make and follow through choices based on their own insight; form their opinions and be able to explain and justify them.