Waldorf 101: The Essentials Part 2, A Living Curriculum
“Forest health has been defined by the production of forest conditions which directly satisfy human needs and by resilience, recurrence, persistence, and biophysical processes which lead to sustainable ecological conditions.” - Nationalforests.org
The COVID-19 Pandemic shocked our educational systems much the way a natural disaster shocks and alters a landscape. This moment in education history, marked by inevitable change and potential for renewal, sparked a conversation, a “radical reimagining” of what school is. Ideas and opinions, like seeds, sought to populate the marred landscape, to regrow the forests of our educational system with something new, maybe better, but every article I read seemed somehow to be missing the point. More equitable distribution of resources and inter-district collaborations seemed like great ideas, clear improvements to the status quo, and made me excited about the new energy and enthusiasm around education but still, I wanted more. It wasn’t enough to know more information and to teach more information and to find different ways to share more information. Could this approach ever answer the imperative question being asked of us all: How can education save our fractured world? The education itself seemed fractured. The developing child was absent from the conversation. It reminded me of another trend arising from the time of quarantine, that of the backyard gardener. Overwhelmingly, an increase in backyard gardening is filled with positivity - mental, emotional, and physical health all benefit from the practice, and these are laudable and necessary goals for our society. However, this does little to address the concerns that sparked the trend, namely, the overall health of our food supply or the cracks in our supply chain exacerbated by the pandemic, leading to fears of food insecurity for some and real food insecurity for many others. Here, on our campus, the farm and gardens thrived, and as we returned to in person schooling, I noted as well the overall health of our educational ecology, allowing us to survive, to regenerate, to grow stronger.
“Typically, species that regenerate by re-sprouting after they’ve burned have an extensive root system. Dormant buds are protected underground, and nutrients stored in the root system allow quick sprouting after the fire.” - Nationalforests.org
Waldorf Education, rooted in human development, is now in its 101st year, but these strong roots support a living curriculum that is perpetually new and necessarily future oriented. Even as mainstream educational systems strive to create process- and learner- based curriculums, to provide individualized instruction, and to meet the diverse learners coming towards us, education policy is still overwhelmingly driven by data, an amalgam of numbers that provide a relative picture of performance based upon a variety of demographic information. Even utilizing data better and even with increased collaboration, these systems will always rely on incomplete information and never be in real time to say nothing of meeting future needs. New curriculums will continue to be written to respond to the newest information and still it will be lagging. A curriculum that seeks to know, fully, the human being, however, a curriculum kept alive by teachers who see lifetimes of possibility in each student’s eyes, will always be relevant and will always work in the present and for the future. The Waldorf Curriculum, not determined by external factors, was said by Steiner to be an education for everyone. But it is essential that the curriculum be allowed to live, to hold its truth and relevance by each teacher meeting each student.
“May the love of putting into practice what is willed to become a way of teaching for all human beings be turned into light that shines for those who feel it their duty to care for the education of all humankind!” - Rudolf Steiner