The Waldorf approach to education is a vital and dynamic process designed to develop free, confident human beings who have the creativity, discipline, and moral strength to meet the challenges of our changing world. The imagination, joy, and wonder essential to childhood are cultivated to foster a natural love of learning in which the whole child is engaged: body, mind, and spirit.
Waldorf education is committed to competence in all the basic academic skills, but goes far beyond that goal, and therein lies its great and growing popularity. Some activities develop a child's intellectual faculties, others develop artistic and moral faculties, still others instill strength, skill, and courage for action. The art of Waldorf education lies in recognizing the unfolding capacities in each individual child, and presenting each subject in such a way as to help the child awaken and integrate all of his or her powers.
Waldorf teachers believe that the human being is not just a brain, but a being with heart and limbs, a being of will and feeling, as well as of intellect.
To ensure that education does not produce one-sided individuals, these less-conscious aspects of our human nature must constantly be exercised, nourished, and guided.
Here the arts and practical skills make their essential contribution, educating not only heart and hand but, in very real ways, the brain as well.
When the Waldorf curriculum is carried through successfully, the whole human being, head, heart, and hands, has been truly educated.
