{"id":48613,"date":"2023-06-29T20:19:58","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T18:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/?p=48613"},"modified":"2023-06-29T20:20:03","modified_gmt":"2023-06-29T18:20:03","slug":"the-school-for-spiritual-science-and-its-pedagogical-section","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/the-school-for-spiritual-science-and-its-pedagogical-section\/","title":{"rendered":"The School for Spiritual Science and Its Pedagogical Section"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At the recent World Teachers\u2019 Conference, there was an event devoted to themes on the tasks of the School for Spiritual Science, its inauguration through Rudolf Steiner, and the meaning of the Sections\u2014the Pedagogical Section in particular. This Section, along with the General Anthroposophical Section, was led personally by Rudolf Steiner. Another theme was the pedagogical course given by Steiner one hundred years ago in the Dornach carpentry shop\u2014the first professional training course after the destruction of the building (The Child\u2019s Changing Consciousness<\/em>, April 15\u201322, 1923, CW 306).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The society for anthroposophy that Rudolf Steiner tried to initiate at the beginning of the twentieth century represented a new picture of the human being. Steiner was thoroughly convinced that this new picture held profound meaning for the future of civilization\u2014indeed, for humanity as a whole. Steiner knew this understanding of the human being was also of significance for education, and so he wrote down and published the lecture he had given in various cities in 1906 on \u201cThe Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science.\u201d When, in 1911, Steiner described the idea of a \u201cFree School for Spiritual Science\u201d as a \u201cnecessary consequence\u201d of the Age of Michael\u2014a place where new spiritual insights could be taught and learned, deepened and carried over into practical endeavors\u2014he already had in mind the different faculties belonging to a university\u2014among them, very likely, a pedagogical faculty. Steiner\u2019s remarks during the laying of the Foundation Stone of the First Goetheanum in September 1913 also touched on the conditions surrounding the life and development of the human being in the age of technological materialism, and he spoke of a necessary initiative, an urgent and necessary new beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Surroundings of the First Building<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Steiner was pleased that teachers from Basel, in the immediate vicinity of the building, began to take an interest in the work of the Stuttgart Waldorf School soon after it opened. At the end of November 1919, he was invited by the Basel Department of Education to give a lecture on \u201cSpiritual Science and Education.\u201d It was so well received that a subsequent fourteen-day course, attended by sixty teachers, took place in April 1920 at a high school in Basel (The Renewal of Education<\/em>, CW 301). This proved to be another great success\u2014one of the teachers even wanted Steiner to take on the leadership of a Swiss teachers\u2019 seminar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pedagogy also played an important role in the opening of the Goetheanum as a \u201cFree School for Spiritual Science\u201d through lectures of various Waldorf teachers on individual fields of study and through the pedagogical presentations of Caroline von Heydebrand, which Steiner valued highly and which soon appeared in book form. In the winter of 1920\/21, the first international professional training course took place at the Goetheanum, again in the field of education. Over one hundred interested teachers traveled to the new School from Great Britain, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Germany. The course, held in both German and English, was well received, and Steiner was pleased with the whole initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Millicent Mackenzie, a professor of education from Wales (Cardiff University) who had helped plan the event, ensured that Steiner gave two big, widely publicized educational courses in 1922 in Stratford-upon-Avon and at Oxford University (\u201cSpiritual Values in Education and Social Life\u201d). The response of the participants and the media, especially to the high-profile Oxford event at Manchester College (with over two hundred audience members, including many university professors and pedagogical seminar leaders) was overwhelmingly positive and stood in stark contrast to the defamation of Rudolf Steiner and anthroposophy in the German media.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Through the pedagogical teachers\u2019 course, a first \u201cfaculty\u201d of the Dornach School stepped onto the international stage in exemplary fashion\u2014researching, teaching, and practicing in a model institution, the Stuttgart Waldorf School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Fire<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

After the destruction of the Goetheanum, the Teachers\u2019 Course of April 1923 was held in the carpentry shop (the \u201clarge barracks next to the empty, burnt concrete base\u201d.) It was again the first specialized course to take place on the Dornach hill, with about thirty foreign participants and fifty parents\u2014a total of 160 people in all. It took place in the context of efforts to found a first Waldorf school in Switzerland in connection with the \u201cAssociation for Free Education and Teaching.\u201d At this time, Rudolf Steiner was campaigning with all his might to make the building of the second Goetheanum possible\u2014which involved struggles with the local authorities and the insurance company, and with leaders and members of the Anthroposophical Society, from whom he had expected far greater commitment, greater awareness of tasks and of the wider world, and a greater sense of responsibility and of a common purpose.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During Holy Week, at the end of March 1923, shortly before the \u201cTeachers\u2019 Course at the Goetheanum,\u201d Steiner participated in a public \u201cartistic-pedagogical conference\u201d at the Stuttgart Waldorf School. He was very happy with the contributions in the subsequent Stuttgart teachers\u2019 conference, although he felt the \u201cspecifically anthroposophical element\u201d was missing. What Steiner meant by this can perhaps be understood by looking at his own lecture activity at this time. In the second week of March 1923, he began his presentations in the carpentry shop on the human being\u2019s relationship to the third hierarchy. On Holy Saturday, three months after the burning, he spoke for the first time about the \u201cbreathing of the earth\u201d and the spiritual cycle of the year. On April 5, 1923, he gave the public lecture, \u201cWhat Did the Goetheanum Want and What Is Anthroposophy For?\u201d at Bern City Hall, and shortly thereafter in Basel, Zurich, Winterthur, and St. Gallen. The \u201cTeachers\u2019 Course\u201d in the carpentry shop\u2014with morning lectures and contributions from the Stuttgart faculty, working groups, eurythmy exercises, painting, etc.\u2014was also developed further by Steiner in five lectures (on the evening before the course and on four evenings during the course) on the foundations of anthroposophical spiritual science and its method of knowledge. There, he showed what had been missing in Stuttgart and what absolutely belonged to the School for Spiritual Science as a \u201cgeneral anthroposophical element.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In answer to a question at the end of the \u201cTeachers\u2019 Course,\u201d Steiner also expressed his conviction that Waldorf education as \u201cpure pedagogy\u201d could be practiced in all countries of the world, adapted to all external conditions, and introduced \u201ctomorrow in every school throughout the world.\u201d The possibility of a \u201cWorld School Association\u201d was set in motion. Steiner\u2019s vision was of a cosmopolitan, active School for Spiritual Science\u2014an open and effective institution whose activity would reach far beyond anthroposophical circles, to all members of society, regardless of worldview and religion, economic and social status, ethnicity and nationality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Meaning of the Human Being and of Humanness<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ita Wegman, who took part in and was inspired by the \u201cTeachers\u2019 Course\u201d in April 1923, spoke afterward in her letters about the necessity of a new building. At the end of 1923, with Wegman\u2019s active support, Steiner refounded the Anthroposophical Society and School for Spiritual Science. \u201cThe Anthroposophical Society considers the School for Spiritual Science in Dornach as a center of its activity. . . .\u201d The School, the new Society, and the future building were to become places of hope, light, empowerment, and trust in the future, in the Pentecostal sense: in the experience of the true community of the spirit\u2014places for education and training, for the meaning of the human being and of humanness, places for a new Society in the sense described by Gustav Landauer.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translation<\/strong> Clifford Venho
Image<\/strong> View from the school garden of the first Waldorf School in Stuttgart 1923\/24<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the recent World Teachers\u2019 Conference, there was an event devoted to themes on the tasks of the School for Spiritual Science, its inauguration through Rudolf Steiner, and the meaning of the Sections\u2014the Pedagogical Section in particular. This Section, along with the General Anthroposophical Section, was led personally by Rudolf Steiner. Another theme was the pedagogical course given by Steiner one hundred years ago in the Dornach carpentry shop\u2014the first professional training course after the destruction of the building (The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9186,"featured_media":48336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8846,8812],"tags":[11352,8814],"class_list":["post-48613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-pedagogy","tag-2023-24-en","tag-musings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dasgoetheanum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}