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 2.5.
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 11. 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 11/Developmental Profile 1.B. Class 11/Aims and Objectives 2.A. Class 12/Developmental Profile 2.B. Class 12/Aims and Objectives Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email. 
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Study Material for Waldorf Curriculum 2.5.
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 11 and 12 - Curriculum
Class 11
An overview of the subjects suggested by the curriculum for Class 11 shows that the themes of going beyond the sense perceptible, finding the inner balance between polarities, 'processes' and 'renewal' are common to all the content given in the different subjects. If Class 9 was concerned with expanding horizons, Class 10 with seeing where things come from, Class 11 is about gaining insight.
Themes of this kind come into the mathematics lessons, e.g. in analytical geometry, in the concepts of infinity and counter space and in the integration of geometry with algebra and arithmetic with geometry. The laws of Euclidean geometry are integrated into projective geometry. By considering the 'infinitely distant elements' (point at infinity, line at infinity, plane at infinity) the pupils learn to learn to think about infinity. In the study of vibrations, the content of Class 10's trigonometry is brought into movement, creating a base for understanding wave theory as the background to all varieties of wireless data transmission in the Class 11 physics block. Spherical trigonometry extends and enhances planar trigonometry. As with many subjects in Class 11, subjects experienced and worked on separately are combined: links begin to appear.
Similar aspects show up in biology where the study of cells and microscopy is the subject, as well as in the study of ecology. Here any insights into microscopically-small elements are always complemented by views of the macroscopically- large biosphere. The pupils probably already know this process of 'turning inside out' from their projective geometry work.
In chemistry the task is to provide a general overview by looking at the individual character of the elements in the way the chemical substances interact. The periodic system can also be dealt with in this connection. It is presented not as a pre-existing principle of order but as a particular conceptual model that opens the way to describing various laws and relationships.
Similar aspects can be found in physics. In Class 10 the observable forces of mechanics were the focus of study. In Class 11 we move on to electromagnetic fields, radiation and radioactivity and the theories on the nature of matter. Seen logically as separate systems these appear to be contradictory, yet which also point to the unimaginable realm of reality. Physics and chemistry can now be seen as a coherent unit.
The cycles and processes of progression and renewal are also themes in the history lessons, which are now concerned with the heritage from antiquity that contributed to the development and spread of Christianity and Islam. Questions about the meaning of life and of suffering as depicted, for example, in the Parzival epic can be found again not only in the cultural history of the Middle Ages (which is discussed in Class 11) but also in the pupils' own inner mood. The essential elements in this history main-lesson are antitheses as well as processes in the struggle to overcome them. One can see such polarities in the conflicts between Pope and Emperor, Church and State, Christianity and Islam, monarch and barons, peasant and lord, town and country etc.
Literature asks questions of the individual and society in ways that often challenge the existing, conventional world view. Great literature is always in some sense prophetic and original, though it rarely provides answers. Rather it stimulates the reader to go beyond himself or herself. It opens the soul to extraordinary experience. This is exactly what the young person in Class 11 needs.
The late medieval text of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal is a text, though only accessible through translation, which takes the reader on a journey through individual failure, pain and inflicted hurt, lost opportunity, guilt and disintegration, and leads to atonement and redemption. It is a unique story of a quest for selfhood which matches the adolescent's inner path. Precisely because it is formally based in an unfamiliar cultural context, the psychological archetypes portrayed stand out.
The themes alluded to in the Parzifal myth can be taken up in nineteenth and twentieth century literature. The questions of the imagination, the individual between nature and nurture, the source of the artistic and the sublime and the threat of materialism are themes which the Romantic period brought to expression. This period in art and literature strikes a chord in the souls of young people of Class i r-age. The biographies of Blake, Shelley, Coleridge, Clare, Hawthorne and Keats are of great interest in this respect.
In foreign languages, great poets and playwrights also take the foreground. Themes from the English lessons can also be taken up in a suitable form, and perhaps the class will perform a play in one of the foreign languages.
There are two aspects to consider in the geography main-lesson in Class 11. On the one hand the pupils can now be led beyond the bounds of what they have so far been able to imagine. This can be served by going back over older traditions of cartography and letting them calculate and draw various projections of the globe. (Astronomy is sometimes given as a separate main-lesson. Again, this goes beyond the bounds of what can be imagined for the earth.) On the other hand, the youngsters in Class 11 begin to search for their own psychological and social position, their 'inner home: This can be helped by a study of geography from the point of view of world economics. This makes them aware of yet another 'mantle' that humanity as a whole creates for itself. As cultural and economic creatures, human beings shape space and develop an ever increasing awareness of this space. Global economic relations and the principles underlying them can equally reveal blind, egotistical and exploitative forces as well as the concept of mutuality, ecological consciousness and co-operation.
Technology lessons have the theme of energy and matter'. The various means of energy production (solid fuel generators, nuclear generators, water and wind generators, solar energy) are thought through in detail and the consequences of irresponsible energy production discussed. The inalienable need for the world in which we live to continue, is nowhere more obvious than in the realm of energy production. Links with physics, chemistry and ecology are obvious. The 'matter' element of technology is taken up in the topics such as the study of paper manufacture and processing, including everything to do with the paper industry (including the media that use print) and also the recycling question.
The step from Class 10 to Class 11 in information technology comes in, going into processes that can no longer be detected with the senses. The relation between cause and effect that was discussed in Class 10 by following work processes step-by-step is now directed to situations that can only be understood in thought. Observations in electrostatics take place in a realm that is not sense-perceptible but has to be imagined. Semi-conductors and their technologies provide the background in physics and technology.
Art lessons also bring links into the foreground.
Similarities and dissimilarities in the different arts lead to a confrontation between painting and sculpture on the one hand with music and poetry on the other. Opposite concepts such as Apollonian/Dionysian qualities or stylistic trends such as Impressionist/Expressionist become motifs for consideration of the underlying role of art in expressing the struggle for human consciousness and truth. This exploration can be made in an interdisciplinary way by relating developments in literature, the visual arts and music.
In sculpture and modelling as well as in eurythmy the students endeavour to express attitudes or moods of soul (question, answer, conversation, joy, sorrow, anxiety) in gestures of the human body. The body as the mirror of the soul, is discovered through gesture. The task is to try to discover the objective in the realm of the subjective.
In the eurythmy lessons these explorations involve practising examples of Apollonian and Dionysian moods in poetry and music, discussing stylistic characteristics and encouraging the pupils to form judgements. Poetry and music should combine to form a single element. The way children live in their own movement was lost at puberty. Now it can be won back at a new level and formed into gestures and movements that express each youngster's own identity.
A period of practical social work can form an important culmination for Class 11. For three weeks the pupils work in hospitals, clinics, homes or schools for the disabled. This opportunity enables them to experience others whose needs are greater than their own. It can also show them how they as individuals can bring a ray of light into the gloom of another person's life, though it is often the case that those receiving the care have in fact far more to offer. A new level of social perception can be developed. One of the most fundamental qualities learned through such work is tolerance, both of the weakness and failings of others but more importantly for one's own limitations. Long- term developmental possibilities can arise from such experiences.
Educational Aims for Class 11
By the end of Class 11 the students should begin to:
* attain objectivity in their feelings and thus increasing capacity to form judgements of taste, style and social tact;
* bring mobility into their thinking, which goes beyond the logical causality of their thinking in Class 10 and can now synthesise and correlate different factors within a holistic view. This also means being able to think about infinite and non-sense-perceptible phenomena;
* have a self-directed sense of social responsibility;
* be able to correlate and integrate related phenomena in a more holistic understanding.
Class 12
The inner question of eighteen and nineteen year olds differs from that of a seventeen year old. They want to know: how can I, as an individual human being, make an impact on social, economic, technical or political affairs? What is my place in the world?
The curriculum for Class 12 brings together what has developed over the twelve years of school. It is intended to integrate, within an overall picture, the most important aspect of Steiner-Waldorf education, the evolving nature of the human being and humanity's place in the world.
In biology all the knowledge and skills built up over the years are brought together in an overview.
In this, biology has a special position in relation to the inorganic sciences. There are usually two biology main -lessons in this final year at school: botany of the higher plants, and zoology of the whole animal kingdom culminating in a view of the human being. On their journey through the Lower and Upper School the pupils have travelled a path that began with the familiar human being and went step by step into the kingdoms of nature as far as the mineral kingdom. In the later part of the Upper School the opposite path is travelled, from the simplest forms of life through the kingdoms of nature to the human being. This enables the idea of development as a motif for life to be discovered.
Geography also leads to a uniting overview. The pupils are on the brink of adult maturity and they naturally turn their attention to the current world situation and their personal future. They are ready to take another look at some of the questions of rights that have been touched on in earlier years, including those arising in the context of other subjects. The centrepiece of the lessons might be the cultural diversity of humanity, its races, cultures and socio-political realities. In this way the themes of Classes 7 and 8 are taken further, this time leading to an understanding of the cultural, spiritual forces that have shaped the earth . One could call this a 'cultural mantle' of the earth.
In a similar way the pupils in Class 12 should grasp the individual styles of speech and thought in the foreign languages they are learning, and get to know the important cultural impulses expressed in those languages, especially through original literature. This brings about a fundamental, qualitative understanding for the contribution each culture brings to world history, and in consequence also leads to a better understanding of the pupils' own culture and language.
One of the aims of the music lessons is to recognise, understand and describe the intrinsic language of twentieth century music. The pupils will need to form their own judgement as regards contemporary music. The range of different types of music in our time reflects the present situation of humanity, as expressed by many different individualities and cultural streams.
English lessons provide an opportunity to experience examples of contemporary literature in the English language and also translations of world literature. Central to this exploration is the aspect of how literature reflects changing individual and cultural consciousness. Classics of world literature can be taken which exemplify both the universal and the personal/cultural experience of our times.
Steiner's curriculum suggestions offer something for history that corresponds with the suggestions for geography. The pupils work towards achieving a qualitative understanding of the inner structure and periodic evolution of cultures. This asks questions such as: What characterised the Greco- Roman age? How did the Middle Ages differ from modern times? How are historical periods defined? Can one find the same stages of cultural evolution in geographical regions, such as the Far East in comparison to Europe? It is important in this main-lesson to show how historical events are an external aspect of internal processes of evolution.
This leads to an awareness of one's own point of view and also to the knowledge that by his or her own good or bad deeds, every individual makes history. In seeing how individuals can influence their own surroundings, one becomes aware of the individual responsibility. History teaching in Class 12, complemented by sociology, undergoes a change of viewpoint. Earlier in the school the structure has been chronological. Now different perspectives, processes and themes are studied that span large periods of time. This change of position enables the pupils to gain some understanding of the philosophy and methods of history as a science.
Social studies should now lead to political education in a way that is not merely theoretical. Given the general distrust young people have today in the world of politics, it is important to stress the necessity of awakening an active interest in political processes. One point of departure can be group work on various situations (e.g. a high court case, collective wage bargaining, putting a bill before parliament), and also excursions to visit political institutions and where possible have the opportunity to speak with politicians about their work and ideals. The material to be covered includes the development of the state, law and economy from the French Revolution up to the end of the twentieth century. One can study, for example, the development of citizens' rights and human rights. The East-West and the North-South conflicts are analysed. By taking examples and studying them in more depth, the pupils gain an overall picture of human civilisation and culture. (These studies can also take the form of specialist lessons beginning in Class 9, outside of the main-lesson structure.)
By introducing and discussing various models of chemical procedure, the chemistry main- lesson endeavours to lead on from the traditional analytical approach to a more process-oriented form of chemistry in which metamorphosis is central through, for example, phenomenological and qualitative study of the different kinds of protein. The pupils learn to observe and understand qualitative aspects alongside the measurable quantitative ones. Biochemistry is particularly important, and provides opportunity to present chemistry as something that can bring healing to humanity instead of poisoning the environment.
Technology can either continue on from the results of the chemistry lessons with an emphasis on chemical technology, or take further the computer technology begun in Class 11. For the former, one example would be the study of plastics, their manufacture and use in industry, or laboratory work on the problems of pollution, removal of waste, recycling of waste etc. If a practical period in industry is arranged in Class 12, it can be followed with discussions on health in the workplace. In connection with this, new technologies can be investigated and tested for efficiency. If the emphasis is on computer technology, the pupils write programs that must be usable in industrial situations. This allows them to experience how the human being is not the slave of the machine but the spirit who shapes it.
As with chemistry, physics is also treated phenomenologically. Having entered the non- sense-perceptible realms of physics in Class 11, the pupils in Class 12 now investigate new paths in the realm of optics. The applicability of quantum theory to the microcosm and of the theory of relativity to the macrocosm are combined in relation to human experience. Beginning with the sense of Sight and by bringing thought to bear on the known facts concerning light, an attempt is made to find a relationship to the real nature of light. Parallel with this, art lessons can involve working through Goethe's Theory of Colour through painting. The question of one's standpoint becomes central. The questions that arise include the unique position of the human being in the world.
In both painting and modelling, art lessons also provide the opportunity for working with that part of the human body that most clearly expresses the individual: the head. Painting, modelling or sculpting in stone, the pupils give their head an unmistakable shape and facial expression. Such work can lead to questions such as: is the human body an expression of soul and spirit?
A similar direction is followed in eurythmy. Here the task is to find a suitable form for the basic gesture in a piece of music or a poem, so that the depiction as a whole demonstrates the inner characteristics and quality of the work of art. In a eurythmy performance for the school community the young people are to show that they can express their own personality through movement and gesture.
In Class 11 in analytical geometry the path taken was from geometry as a depiction to geometry as an algebraic calculation. Now, in Class 12 mathematics, the class goes in the opposite direction. Through analysis the pupils begin with pure calculation and move towards an experience of integral and differential calculus. By learning the concept of 'differential quotient' the pupils come to understand a new dimension in mathematics. In addition to being able to apply this, the pupils should also understand and experience it. Only when this has happened can the drawing be added to the calculation. By deriving the form from the equation and the equation from the form we endeavour to generate an inner activity in the pupils as well as an understanding of what is qualitative in mathematics. This is essential for an understanding of applied physics. In this connection one can also show that equations of the same type can be applied in all kinds of different ways in applied physics: in optics, electricity, mechanics, space travel. By coming to understand the basics of integral calculus the pupils will recognise that in the realm of higher mathematics one mathematical process can correspond to an opposite one which opens up a yet further level of mathematical comprehensibility of the world.
Depending on what was done in Class 11, there can be a second projective geometry main- lesson, built either on perspective or on spherical geometry. If taken in this way, projective geometry would lead to an understanding of the application of perspective drawing in the architecture main- lesson and on the art trip. Spherical geometry can lead more towards astronomy or more towards the earth.
Another possibility for a second mathematics main-lesson would be to combine mathematics, botany, astronomy, embryology and geometry in an overall panorama, in a study of the principles of form. This depends very much on the general stage of maturity of the class.
During the industrial practical period in Class 12 the pupils are concerned with an entirely different concept of 'tolerance' from the one they met during their social practical period in Class 11. In industry the 'tolerance' met with might concern the exactitude of machine tooling in the production process of a metalworking industrial factory. During this practical period in industry (several weeks), the pupils have many different experiences to do with the work, with the people they are working with and, also, with themselves. The purpose of this practical period is to get to know economic and industrial life 'from the bottom up: The pupils experience what it means to work with others towards a common industrial goal. They learn about the opportunities and problems of our modern world with its division of labour. They can observe how a mistake in one part of the process affects the whole production process. They may also have the opportunity to learn how to use an industrial machine accurately, how to check materials and carry out other controls. By their own experience they learn how much strength it takes to make a space between the polarities of work and leisure for conscious, creative mental work. This practical period thus fulfils many different educational tasks. An alternative to the industrial practical would be a work placement in a business or part of the service industry. The heart of such projects is to experience the moral aspect of work and serving the needs of others.
The Class 12 play demonstrates the responsibility of each for the whole and shows how efforts towards a common goal can bring about more than can be imagined by taking the sum of individual capacities. For the last time the class experiences its potential as a whole in putting on a big play, an opera, a musical, a cabaret, etc. Speech, gestures, music, singing (possibly eurythmy), direction, scenery, lighting, making the programme and posters - all this has to be managed, in addition to putting on several performances, perhaps with double casting.
Some Steiner-Waldorf schools round off the twelve years with major individual projects. Each pupil takes on a year-long project consisting of a practical/artistic theme and a theoretical theme (encompassing several subjects). This is worked on throughout the year, in addition to normal school work, with the help of a tutor or project supervisor. The practical results of these projects are displayed in an exhibition or performed during an afternoon or evening performance. The pupils speak in public to the theoretical parts and this is followed by a discussion. Giving these presentations in appropriate form is another aspect of Class 12'S work.
In keeping with the element of Class 12 work that calls for a combination of many viewpoints and subjects, the main theme in art is architecture as the universal art, in which all the arts can work together to form a comprehensive work of art. An important theme in Class 12 is to philosophise about art and aesthetics. A history of philosopy and a comparative study of world religions can offer an overview of mankind's spiritual endeavours.
The work in Class 12, representing twelve years of Steiner- Waldorf education, is intended to contribute to the aim of getting to know the human being in the sense formulated by Rudolf Steiner in 1920:
Knowing the world, the human being finds himself, and knowing himself, he finds the world revealed to him.
Educational aims for Class 12
By the end of Class 12 the students should be able to:
* have an integrated view of the nature of the human being, human society and nature;
* articulate, explain and relate their own views on a wide range of topics which concern them;
* show a good degree of social competence;
* show interest in questions of human destiny;
* recognise and be able to characterise qualities through sensory observation and reviewing the facts;
* move from the parts to a perception of what is whole in practical, social and conceptual contexts;
* show the inner mobility of thought to move forwards and backwards within a process so as to be able to understand the whole and be able to articulate the idea behind the process;
* begin to make connections and inner links between phenomena which express the activity of the underlying formative, creative principles in the world and thus reveal the interplay between spirit, visible form and matter;
* understand the distinction between causal, analytical observations and teleological ones;
* consider the relationship between law, necessity, freedom and responsibility;
* think for themselves, and act out of their own insight whilst carrying responsibility for their actions.
An overview of the subjects suggested by the curriculum for Class 11 shows that the themes of going beyond the sense perceptible, finding the inner balance between polarities, 'processes' and 'renewal' are common to all the content given in the different subjects. If Class 9 was concerned with expanding horizons, Class 10 with seeing where things come from, Class 11 is about gaining insight.
Themes of this kind come into the mathematics lessons, e.g. in analytical geometry, in the concepts of infinity and counter space and in the integration of geometry with algebra and arithmetic with geometry. The laws of Euclidean geometry are integrated into projective geometry. By considering the 'infinitely distant elements' (point at infinity, line at infinity, plane at infinity) the pupils learn to learn to think about infinity. In the study of vibrations, the content of Class 10's trigonometry is brought into movement, creating a base for understanding wave theory as the background to all varieties of wireless data transmission in the Class 11 physics block. Spherical trigonometry extends and enhances planar trigonometry. As with many subjects in Class 11, subjects experienced and worked on separately are combined: links begin to appear.
Similar aspects show up in biology where the study of cells and microscopy is the subject, as well as in the study of ecology. Here any insights into microscopically-small elements are always complemented by views of the macroscopically- large biosphere. The pupils probably already know this process of 'turning inside out' from their projective geometry work.
In chemistry the task is to provide a general overview by looking at the individual character of the elements in the way the chemical substances interact. The periodic system can also be dealt with in this connection. It is presented not as a pre-existing principle of order but as a particular conceptual model that opens the way to describing various laws and relationships.
Similar aspects can be found in physics. In Class 10 the observable forces of mechanics were the focus of study. In Class 11 we move on to electromagnetic fields, radiation and radioactivity and the theories on the nature of matter. Seen logically as separate systems these appear to be contradictory, yet which also point to the unimaginable realm of reality. Physics and chemistry can now be seen as a coherent unit.
The cycles and processes of progression and renewal are also themes in the history lessons, which are now concerned with the heritage from antiquity that contributed to the development and spread of Christianity and Islam. Questions about the meaning of life and of suffering as depicted, for example, in the Parzival epic can be found again not only in the cultural history of the Middle Ages (which is discussed in Class 11) but also in the pupils' own inner mood. The essential elements in this history main-lesson are antitheses as well as processes in the struggle to overcome them. One can see such polarities in the conflicts between Pope and Emperor, Church and State, Christianity and Islam, monarch and barons, peasant and lord, town and country etc.
Literature asks questions of the individual and society in ways that often challenge the existing, conventional world view. Great literature is always in some sense prophetic and original, though it rarely provides answers. Rather it stimulates the reader to go beyond himself or herself. It opens the soul to extraordinary experience. This is exactly what the young person in Class 11 needs.
The late medieval text of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal is a text, though only accessible through translation, which takes the reader on a journey through individual failure, pain and inflicted hurt, lost opportunity, guilt and disintegration, and leads to atonement and redemption. It is a unique story of a quest for selfhood which matches the adolescent's inner path. Precisely because it is formally based in an unfamiliar cultural context, the psychological archetypes portrayed stand out.
The themes alluded to in the Parzifal myth can be taken up in nineteenth and twentieth century literature. The questions of the imagination, the individual between nature and nurture, the source of the artistic and the sublime and the threat of materialism are themes which the Romantic period brought to expression. This period in art and literature strikes a chord in the souls of young people of Class i r-age. The biographies of Blake, Shelley, Coleridge, Clare, Hawthorne and Keats are of great interest in this respect.
In foreign languages, great poets and playwrights also take the foreground. Themes from the English lessons can also be taken up in a suitable form, and perhaps the class will perform a play in one of the foreign languages.
There are two aspects to consider in the geography main-lesson in Class 11. On the one hand the pupils can now be led beyond the bounds of what they have so far been able to imagine. This can be served by going back over older traditions of cartography and letting them calculate and draw various projections of the globe. (Astronomy is sometimes given as a separate main-lesson. Again, this goes beyond the bounds of what can be imagined for the earth.) On the other hand, the youngsters in Class 11 begin to search for their own psychological and social position, their 'inner home: This can be helped by a study of geography from the point of view of world economics. This makes them aware of yet another 'mantle' that humanity as a whole creates for itself. As cultural and economic creatures, human beings shape space and develop an ever increasing awareness of this space. Global economic relations and the principles underlying them can equally reveal blind, egotistical and exploitative forces as well as the concept of mutuality, ecological consciousness and co-operation.
Technology lessons have the theme of energy and matter'. The various means of energy production (solid fuel generators, nuclear generators, water and wind generators, solar energy) are thought through in detail and the consequences of irresponsible energy production discussed. The inalienable need for the world in which we live to continue, is nowhere more obvious than in the realm of energy production. Links with physics, chemistry and ecology are obvious. The 'matter' element of technology is taken up in the topics such as the study of paper manufacture and processing, including everything to do with the paper industry (including the media that use print) and also the recycling question.
The step from Class 10 to Class 11 in information technology comes in, going into processes that can no longer be detected with the senses. The relation between cause and effect that was discussed in Class 10 by following work processes step-by-step is now directed to situations that can only be understood in thought. Observations in electrostatics take place in a realm that is not sense-perceptible but has to be imagined. Semi-conductors and their technologies provide the background in physics and technology.
Art lessons also bring links into the foreground.
Similarities and dissimilarities in the different arts lead to a confrontation between painting and sculpture on the one hand with music and poetry on the other. Opposite concepts such as Apollonian/Dionysian qualities or stylistic trends such as Impressionist/Expressionist become motifs for consideration of the underlying role of art in expressing the struggle for human consciousness and truth. This exploration can be made in an interdisciplinary way by relating developments in literature, the visual arts and music.
In sculpture and modelling as well as in eurythmy the students endeavour to express attitudes or moods of soul (question, answer, conversation, joy, sorrow, anxiety) in gestures of the human body. The body as the mirror of the soul, is discovered through gesture. The task is to try to discover the objective in the realm of the subjective.
In the eurythmy lessons these explorations involve practising examples of Apollonian and Dionysian moods in poetry and music, discussing stylistic characteristics and encouraging the pupils to form judgements. Poetry and music should combine to form a single element. The way children live in their own movement was lost at puberty. Now it can be won back at a new level and formed into gestures and movements that express each youngster's own identity.
A period of practical social work can form an important culmination for Class 11. For three weeks the pupils work in hospitals, clinics, homes or schools for the disabled. This opportunity enables them to experience others whose needs are greater than their own. It can also show them how they as individuals can bring a ray of light into the gloom of another person's life, though it is often the case that those receiving the care have in fact far more to offer. A new level of social perception can be developed. One of the most fundamental qualities learned through such work is tolerance, both of the weakness and failings of others but more importantly for one's own limitations. Long- term developmental possibilities can arise from such experiences.
Educational Aims for Class 11
By the end of Class 11 the students should begin to:
* attain objectivity in their feelings and thus increasing capacity to form judgements of taste, style and social tact;
* bring mobility into their thinking, which goes beyond the logical causality of their thinking in Class 10 and can now synthesise and correlate different factors within a holistic view. This also means being able to think about infinite and non-sense-perceptible phenomena;
* have a self-directed sense of social responsibility;
* be able to correlate and integrate related phenomena in a more holistic understanding.
Class 12
The inner question of eighteen and nineteen year olds differs from that of a seventeen year old. They want to know: how can I, as an individual human being, make an impact on social, economic, technical or political affairs? What is my place in the world?
The curriculum for Class 12 brings together what has developed over the twelve years of school. It is intended to integrate, within an overall picture, the most important aspect of Steiner-Waldorf education, the evolving nature of the human being and humanity's place in the world.
In biology all the knowledge and skills built up over the years are brought together in an overview.
In this, biology has a special position in relation to the inorganic sciences. There are usually two biology main -lessons in this final year at school: botany of the higher plants, and zoology of the whole animal kingdom culminating in a view of the human being. On their journey through the Lower and Upper School the pupils have travelled a path that began with the familiar human being and went step by step into the kingdoms of nature as far as the mineral kingdom. In the later part of the Upper School the opposite path is travelled, from the simplest forms of life through the kingdoms of nature to the human being. This enables the idea of development as a motif for life to be discovered.
Geography also leads to a uniting overview. The pupils are on the brink of adult maturity and they naturally turn their attention to the current world situation and their personal future. They are ready to take another look at some of the questions of rights that have been touched on in earlier years, including those arising in the context of other subjects. The centrepiece of the lessons might be the cultural diversity of humanity, its races, cultures and socio-political realities. In this way the themes of Classes 7 and 8 are taken further, this time leading to an understanding of the cultural, spiritual forces that have shaped the earth . One could call this a 'cultural mantle' of the earth.
In a similar way the pupils in Class 12 should grasp the individual styles of speech and thought in the foreign languages they are learning, and get to know the important cultural impulses expressed in those languages, especially through original literature. This brings about a fundamental, qualitative understanding for the contribution each culture brings to world history, and in consequence also leads to a better understanding of the pupils' own culture and language.
One of the aims of the music lessons is to recognise, understand and describe the intrinsic language of twentieth century music. The pupils will need to form their own judgement as regards contemporary music. The range of different types of music in our time reflects the present situation of humanity, as expressed by many different individualities and cultural streams.
English lessons provide an opportunity to experience examples of contemporary literature in the English language and also translations of world literature. Central to this exploration is the aspect of how literature reflects changing individual and cultural consciousness. Classics of world literature can be taken which exemplify both the universal and the personal/cultural experience of our times.
Steiner's curriculum suggestions offer something for history that corresponds with the suggestions for geography. The pupils work towards achieving a qualitative understanding of the inner structure and periodic evolution of cultures. This asks questions such as: What characterised the Greco- Roman age? How did the Middle Ages differ from modern times? How are historical periods defined? Can one find the same stages of cultural evolution in geographical regions, such as the Far East in comparison to Europe? It is important in this main-lesson to show how historical events are an external aspect of internal processes of evolution.
This leads to an awareness of one's own point of view and also to the knowledge that by his or her own good or bad deeds, every individual makes history. In seeing how individuals can influence their own surroundings, one becomes aware of the individual responsibility. History teaching in Class 12, complemented by sociology, undergoes a change of viewpoint. Earlier in the school the structure has been chronological. Now different perspectives, processes and themes are studied that span large periods of time. This change of position enables the pupils to gain some understanding of the philosophy and methods of history as a science.
Social studies should now lead to political education in a way that is not merely theoretical. Given the general distrust young people have today in the world of politics, it is important to stress the necessity of awakening an active interest in political processes. One point of departure can be group work on various situations (e.g. a high court case, collective wage bargaining, putting a bill before parliament), and also excursions to visit political institutions and where possible have the opportunity to speak with politicians about their work and ideals. The material to be covered includes the development of the state, law and economy from the French Revolution up to the end of the twentieth century. One can study, for example, the development of citizens' rights and human rights. The East-West and the North-South conflicts are analysed. By taking examples and studying them in more depth, the pupils gain an overall picture of human civilisation and culture. (These studies can also take the form of specialist lessons beginning in Class 9, outside of the main-lesson structure.)
By introducing and discussing various models of chemical procedure, the chemistry main- lesson endeavours to lead on from the traditional analytical approach to a more process-oriented form of chemistry in which metamorphosis is central through, for example, phenomenological and qualitative study of the different kinds of protein. The pupils learn to observe and understand qualitative aspects alongside the measurable quantitative ones. Biochemistry is particularly important, and provides opportunity to present chemistry as something that can bring healing to humanity instead of poisoning the environment.
Technology can either continue on from the results of the chemistry lessons with an emphasis on chemical technology, or take further the computer technology begun in Class 11. For the former, one example would be the study of plastics, their manufacture and use in industry, or laboratory work on the problems of pollution, removal of waste, recycling of waste etc. If a practical period in industry is arranged in Class 12, it can be followed with discussions on health in the workplace. In connection with this, new technologies can be investigated and tested for efficiency. If the emphasis is on computer technology, the pupils write programs that must be usable in industrial situations. This allows them to experience how the human being is not the slave of the machine but the spirit who shapes it.
As with chemistry, physics is also treated phenomenologically. Having entered the non- sense-perceptible realms of physics in Class 11, the pupils in Class 12 now investigate new paths in the realm of optics. The applicability of quantum theory to the microcosm and of the theory of relativity to the macrocosm are combined in relation to human experience. Beginning with the sense of Sight and by bringing thought to bear on the known facts concerning light, an attempt is made to find a relationship to the real nature of light. Parallel with this, art lessons can involve working through Goethe's Theory of Colour through painting. The question of one's standpoint becomes central. The questions that arise include the unique position of the human being in the world.
In both painting and modelling, art lessons also provide the opportunity for working with that part of the human body that most clearly expresses the individual: the head. Painting, modelling or sculpting in stone, the pupils give their head an unmistakable shape and facial expression. Such work can lead to questions such as: is the human body an expression of soul and spirit?
A similar direction is followed in eurythmy. Here the task is to find a suitable form for the basic gesture in a piece of music or a poem, so that the depiction as a whole demonstrates the inner characteristics and quality of the work of art. In a eurythmy performance for the school community the young people are to show that they can express their own personality through movement and gesture.
In Class 11 in analytical geometry the path taken was from geometry as a depiction to geometry as an algebraic calculation. Now, in Class 12 mathematics, the class goes in the opposite direction. Through analysis the pupils begin with pure calculation and move towards an experience of integral and differential calculus. By learning the concept of 'differential quotient' the pupils come to understand a new dimension in mathematics. In addition to being able to apply this, the pupils should also understand and experience it. Only when this has happened can the drawing be added to the calculation. By deriving the form from the equation and the equation from the form we endeavour to generate an inner activity in the pupils as well as an understanding of what is qualitative in mathematics. This is essential for an understanding of applied physics. In this connection one can also show that equations of the same type can be applied in all kinds of different ways in applied physics: in optics, electricity, mechanics, space travel. By coming to understand the basics of integral calculus the pupils will recognise that in the realm of higher mathematics one mathematical process can correspond to an opposite one which opens up a yet further level of mathematical comprehensibility of the world.
Depending on what was done in Class 11, there can be a second projective geometry main- lesson, built either on perspective or on spherical geometry. If taken in this way, projective geometry would lead to an understanding of the application of perspective drawing in the architecture main- lesson and on the art trip. Spherical geometry can lead more towards astronomy or more towards the earth.
Another possibility for a second mathematics main-lesson would be to combine mathematics, botany, astronomy, embryology and geometry in an overall panorama, in a study of the principles of form. This depends very much on the general stage of maturity of the class.
During the industrial practical period in Class 12 the pupils are concerned with an entirely different concept of 'tolerance' from the one they met during their social practical period in Class 11. In industry the 'tolerance' met with might concern the exactitude of machine tooling in the production process of a metalworking industrial factory. During this practical period in industry (several weeks), the pupils have many different experiences to do with the work, with the people they are working with and, also, with themselves. The purpose of this practical period is to get to know economic and industrial life 'from the bottom up: The pupils experience what it means to work with others towards a common industrial goal. They learn about the opportunities and problems of our modern world with its division of labour. They can observe how a mistake in one part of the process affects the whole production process. They may also have the opportunity to learn how to use an industrial machine accurately, how to check materials and carry out other controls. By their own experience they learn how much strength it takes to make a space between the polarities of work and leisure for conscious, creative mental work. This practical period thus fulfils many different educational tasks. An alternative to the industrial practical would be a work placement in a business or part of the service industry. The heart of such projects is to experience the moral aspect of work and serving the needs of others.
The Class 12 play demonstrates the responsibility of each for the whole and shows how efforts towards a common goal can bring about more than can be imagined by taking the sum of individual capacities. For the last time the class experiences its potential as a whole in putting on a big play, an opera, a musical, a cabaret, etc. Speech, gestures, music, singing (possibly eurythmy), direction, scenery, lighting, making the programme and posters - all this has to be managed, in addition to putting on several performances, perhaps with double casting.
Some Steiner-Waldorf schools round off the twelve years with major individual projects. Each pupil takes on a year-long project consisting of a practical/artistic theme and a theoretical theme (encompassing several subjects). This is worked on throughout the year, in addition to normal school work, with the help of a tutor or project supervisor. The practical results of these projects are displayed in an exhibition or performed during an afternoon or evening performance. The pupils speak in public to the theoretical parts and this is followed by a discussion. Giving these presentations in appropriate form is another aspect of Class 12'S work.
In keeping with the element of Class 12 work that calls for a combination of many viewpoints and subjects, the main theme in art is architecture as the universal art, in which all the arts can work together to form a comprehensive work of art. An important theme in Class 12 is to philosophise about art and aesthetics. A history of philosopy and a comparative study of world religions can offer an overview of mankind's spiritual endeavours.
The work in Class 12, representing twelve years of Steiner- Waldorf education, is intended to contribute to the aim of getting to know the human being in the sense formulated by Rudolf Steiner in 1920:
Knowing the world, the human being finds himself, and knowing himself, he finds the world revealed to him.
Educational aims for Class 12
By the end of Class 12 the students should be able to:
* have an integrated view of the nature of the human being, human society and nature;
* articulate, explain and relate their own views on a wide range of topics which concern them;
* show a good degree of social competence;
* show interest in questions of human destiny;
* recognise and be able to characterise qualities through sensory observation and reviewing the facts;
* move from the parts to a perception of what is whole in practical, social and conceptual contexts;
* show the inner mobility of thought to move forwards and backwards within a process so as to be able to understand the whole and be able to articulate the idea behind the process;
* begin to make connections and inner links between phenomena which express the activity of the underlying formative, creative principles in the world and thus reveal the interplay between spirit, visible form and matter;
* understand the distinction between causal, analytical observations and teleological ones;
* consider the relationship between law, necessity, freedom and responsibility;
* think for themselves, and act out of their own insight whilst carrying responsibility for their actions.