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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:
  • The curriculum unfolds over time, is wide and richly experiential: not merely designed towards narrowly-defined 'achievement', but intended to promote capability for the art of living
  • The curriculum is really only a series of 'indications', as Steiner described them, pointers inviting interpretation and free rendering, i.e. it calls on and encourages the creativity ( or artistry) of teachers
  • The importance of content is fully recognized (young people need certain skills and useful knowledge), but as a creative framework, the Steiner- Waldorf curriculum is embedded within a developing practice and method. The curriculum outline takes its cue from the development of the child: subject, or content, provides a medium for a meeting and collaboration of teacher and learner. Thus, since meaning and knowledge are built over  time, this is co-constructive learning in which understanding unfolds as a process of learning to learn encompassing both students and teacher
  • Subject content and necessary competence are always relative to the child: the curriculum is midwife to the emerging individuality, rather than suit of clothes into which the child must be made to fit
  • The shaping principles of the curriculum are extraordinarily robust and resilient. Many independent educators recognize this fundamental coherence, which has stood the test of time and many generations of children
  • The creative freedom within the Waldorf curriculum framework enables it to be successfully adapted for a variety of settings, languages and cultures. Schools founded on the principles and example of the first Waldorf School (Stuttgart 1919), can be found around the world, including every inhabited continent. What started as a central European curriculum has been modified by applying its essential principles to the education of children in -the Americas, many parts of Africa, the Middle East, India and the Far East, as well as most of the rest of Europe.

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
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    Submission Form for Waldorf Curriculum 25

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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 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.

Copyright by Sophia Institute