Special Character

THE PHILOSOPHICAL BASIS

Teaching at our schools is based on the educational principles and indications of Rudolf Steiner. The indications are founded on Anthroposophy which is a spiritual view of the world, which is non-sectarian, and which when applied to education encompasses the whole human being: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. It unites the approaches of the sciences, arts and religion.

It is not a set of religious beliefs.

Anthroposophy is not taught directly to the children. Rather, it guides and stimulates the educational activities of the teachers. Cultivated and developed by the teachers as an art of education, it provides the background to their individual interpretation of subject matter and method and provides the psychology and physiology of child development.

Thus our basic tenet and most important ‘special characteristic’ is that the school is staffed with staff who strive to understand and apply the educational aims and ideas of Anthroposophy.

The College of Teachers

In accordance with the Special Character, the school is administered with regard to educational matters by the College of Teachers. The College of Teachers consists of those permanent teachers of the school who accept joint and collective responsibility for the guidance and operation of the school, for ensuring the maintenance of special character, for the educational development of each child in the school and for representing the school to the parents and the community.

THE CURRICULUM

The Curriculum has a universal quality and is capable of successful application across cultural, national and social boundaries. The curriculum of the Rudolf Steiner Schools is founded upon a detailed understanding of the child as a being of body, soul and spirit.

  • Body, soul and spirit in this context mean:
  • Body: the active physical/physiological organism (Te Taha Tinana)
  • Soul: thinking, feeling and willing (Te Taha Hinengaro)
  • Spirit: self/identity (Te Taha Wairua)

The kindergarten teaching and the 12-year curriculum in Steiner Schools is based firmly on an understanding of the development of the child, not just intellectually, but emotionally and physically and in relation to the growing awareness of Self.

Through the curriculum the child is led to experience knowledge in ways that parallel and support the child’s development at every stage of school life. The child experiences the development of humankind’s consciousness from antiquity to the present day. Thus both the specific content and the methods of presentation of the curriculum are selected according to the age and developmental stage of the child. This is true for all subject areas of the curriculum.

Rudolf Steiner’s educational writings and lectures form the basis of the curriculum. These have since been elaborated by numerous educators and researchers and there now exists a substantial international literature covering curriculum theory, methodology and content.

KINDERGARTEN 4-6 YEARS

The Kindergarten is an integral part of a Rudolf Steiner School.
Play is the child’s work.

In a child’s first seven years, it is the physical body, which is the focus of growth and development.

Through play and story-telling the teacher stimulates the child’s imagination. Play and guided activities are developed using the child’s propensity for imitation. All this is in an environment of simplicity and harmony, reflected in:

  • a thorough, developed, rhythm of daily activities
  • the warmth of relationships with children and their families.
  • the balance of activities from free play, music, story telling, painting, drawing, modelling, baking
  • the building design and materials
  • the careful choice of colour scheme and esthetic environment.
  • the selection of wooden and soft toys
  • the selection of other equipment, all of which help create the harmonious environment
  • the natural outdoor environment and organic vegetable gardens

The Michael Park Kindergarten provides a situation where the environment is conducive to the healthy development and unfolding of the capacities of the child. This environment, physical and spiritual, is created by the teachers in charge out of their understanding of child development in the first seven year period based on the picture of the human being developed by Dr Rudolf Steiner and given in his science of the spirit – Anthroposophy.

The Kindergarten teacher aims to work out of the following principles as particularly appropriate for the first seven years:

The children need a warm, homely atmosphere and a cared-for physical environment.

“With physical birth the physical human body is exposed to the physical environment of the external world. Before birth the protecting envelope of the mother’s body surrounded it. What the forces and fluids of the enveloping mother-body have for it hitherto, must from now onward be done for it by the forces and elements of the external physical world. Now before the change of teeth in the first seventh year, the human body has a task to perform upon itself which is essentially different from the tasks of all the other periods of life. In this period the physical organs must mould themselves into definite shapes. Their whole structural nature must receive certain tendencies and directions. In the later periods also, growth takes place; but throughout the whole succeeding life, growth is based on the forms which were developed in this first life-period. If true forms were developed, true forms will grow; if mis-shapen forms were developed, mis-shapen forms will grow. We can never repair what we have neglected as educators in the first seven years. Just as nature brings about the right environment for the physical human body before birth, so after birth the educator must provide for the right physical environment. It is the right physical environment alone, which works upon the child in such a way that the physical organs shape themselves alright.”

- Rudolf Steiner, ‘The Education of the Child in the light of Anthroposophy’

This physical environment – all that which the child takes in through the senses – is of underlying importance.

The little child learns primarily through imitation, not instruction. The adults in whose care the child is placed strive to be worthy of imitation – in thought, word and deed.

The child in this first seven-year period is like a sponge soaking up its environment – there is no capacity for discrimination between what is good and bad. It is therefore incumbent upon the adults responsible for the pre-school environment to make it worthy of this trust. Kindergarten teachers involve themselves in meaningful activity such as domestic tasks, crafts, gardening etc and thereby provide the children with the impulses for their play. The development of the imagination is nurtured and encouraged.

This is achieved both through the programme and through the choice of play materials and equipment. The toys in the Kindergarten consist largely of raw materials from which the child is able to create through imagination whatever he or she needs for play. A child who has been allowed to use the faculty of imagination as a pre-schooler is more likely to develop into a fluid creative thinker than one whose early years are poor in this respect.

Young children are will-oriented and need, primarily, to be doing. Rudolf Steiner Education recognises three periods of seven years in the development of the child and the school is organised accordingly. For the first seven years of a child’s life the will faculty dominates.

Michael Park School Kindergarten is organised into three groups of mixed ages (4-6+). The mixed composition of the group age-wise helps retain something of a family atmosphere. The older child is able to help the younger children and the approach to play of the different age groups contribute to a social balance.

The child remains at Kindergarten until the seventh year by which time the organism has developed to the stage of readiness for formal education, i.e. certain maturity in social, physical, neurological and cognitive faculties has been attained.

The attitude of wonder, natural to early childhood, should be nurtured and encouraged throughout the kindergarten years.


THE LOWER SCHOOL YEARS 6+ - 14+ YEARS

With the continuous development of the education of the child there are two threshold points of transformation: the first between the kindergarten and the lower school, and the second between the lower school and the upper school.

During the class teacher years the arts provide a medium for learning. An artistic approach is applied to all subjects. Writing, reading and mathematics are introduced through pictures, stories and activity. Through art the curriculum works into the child’s life and the content is made living and interesting.

The understanding of and respect for all life and nature evoked by a combined artistic/scientific approach, followed from Class 1 to 12, nurtures the child’s inner feelings of reverence.

The curriculum is broad and comprehensive. Already in the first class the 6-7 year old begins playing an instrument, is learning form drawing, knitting and eurythmy and at least one new language. Main lessons cover English, Mathematics, geology, geography, chemistry, physics and biology, the main cultures of humanity and a historical perspective stretching back from the present day through Renaissance, Middle Ages, Roman, Greek, Ancient Egyptian and Indian ages.

Subjects and activities are taught in a non-competitive environment. The child is encouraged to do his/her best for the love of learning and work.

In the ‘morning circle’ which begins each day, the wholeness of the child is encouraged through exercises in speech, music and rhythmic activities – all harmonising the child and the class.

The Main Lesson

The Main Lesson is given by the class teacher and is a lesson block of 3-4 weeks. An in-depth study fosters in the child a deep appreciation of the subject.

A central focus in a Steiner school is that children experience all the subjects which forms the curriculum, itself an organically interrelating whole, as of strong personal interest to them. The ‘main lesson’ system of structuring both the morning and the whole teaching year is a vital tool in achieving spread of interest. We find that children become deeply involved in a subject if their natural tendency to develop a passion for a topic is allowed full scope rather than if they are confronted with a different subject every morning of the week.

The Class Teacher

The role and position of a class teacher in the Lower School is of central importance. The class teacher may stay with the same class taking them through from Class 1 (6-7 years) to Class 7 (13-14 years) some classes have more than one teacher through this time. The teacher gives the ‘Main Lesson’ in the first nearly two hours of the morning.

Specialist teachers take some of the other lessons, for example Eurythmy, languages and crafts and in classes 6-7 specialist teachers carry English, Maths and Science. The continuity given by the class teacher has a number of functions. The children in the early years should have a model worthy of imitation and later a person whose authority they can respect and trust. It is this person who assists them in their own growth towards freedom and autonomy. A corollary to this is that the teachers themselves must actively pursue a path of self-development and self-education and this is expected of Steiner teachers.

A second consequence of the continuity given by the class teacher is that it allows for the development of a deepening understanding of the temperament, the growth and evolution and the essential individuality of each child.

Continuity enables an on-going, accurate assessment of each child’s abilities, progress and needs.

An essential part of the work of all class teachers, including kindergarten teachers and upper school sponsors, is the development of close contacts with parents including home visits and termly parent meetings at school.

Teachers are not limited to specialising in one area of a school but share a concern for all the children. Since Steiner Schools are fully unified, teachers may take classes at any level from kindergarten to upper school.

‘Rudolf Steiner Life, Work, Inner Path and Social Initiatives’, by Rudi Lissau, Chapter 7, page 118:

“At a Steiner school the teacher feels responsible for establishing a relationship of trust to each of his pupils, for building up her class into a well-integrated social group and for being a mediator between the class and the world. At every stage one will endeavour to bring the full reality of the world – natural as well as social – to one’s children, but to do so in a way which corresponds to their emotional and intellectual development. One relates them to the world and knows that an education bereft of human values leads to alienation and lack of purpose.

In order to mediate properly between the given world and a group of children it is necessary to enter fully into each subject under consideration. No longer is it enough to find a suitable text book and then issue work sheets to one’s pupils to test how far the subject matter has been understood. In this way only a superficial contact with the subject matter in hand is established, and this only on the intellectual level. The Steiner school teacher will attempt to involve the class emotionally and practically with the study in hand and so arouse interest and active involvement. To this end many subjects are taken in block periods, extending over the first two hours each school day for three or four weeks. This would make it possible in a block period on China to cook, serve and eat a Chinese meal, to use Chinese brush strokes in writing or to paint landscape the Chinese way. So the class gets a taste of a different way of life and form of experience, and is not fobbed off with abstract facts and statistics.”

UPPER SCHOOL 14+ - 18+ YEARS

L. Francis Edmunds: ‘Rudolf Steiner Education. The Waldorf Schools’
Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1975
Chapter 5, pages 75-76:

“To take the adolescent through the history and development of art as the revelation of evolving manhood; to educate him into the meaning and appreciation of poetry as the medium wherein the centre in man finds kinship with the heart of all creation; to unfold the nature of love, by way of the great sagas and literatures of the human race, as the search of man for his own kingdom; to show that the ideals man carries are the earnest he has of his true estate, that there is conception in the spirit as well as in the body, that moral imagination is not a chimera of the mind but a power for renewing life; to discover that history follows a mighty plan of promise and fulfilment, that it leads from a state of moral and spiritual dependence towards the goal of self-mastery and self-determination, from community by descent in the past to community by assent; to demonstrate that nature has depth as well as surface and that as man grows in insight so will the ultimate goal of science be attained, the rediscovery of the divine; to come to an understanding of the spiritual heritage of the East and to an appreciation of the spiritual promise of the West; to see that men are made different in order that they may grow more greatly united; to perceive mankind, with Paul, a many-membered, but One Body filled with One spirit; to learn to see warmly and to think humanely; to recognise the meaning of ‘to die in order to live’ and to see the many deaths that man must die to gain his immortality; to educate youth along such ways, positive towards others, resolute in oneself, careful in study, thoughtful in observation and self-expression, to pursue all this with enthusiasm and with faith in the attributes and striving qualities of man – to do this to ennoble the mind, to fire the imagination, to fortify the will and to quicken initiative for life. To lay such seeds as may produce new vision and discovery in the years to come, this we regard as the primary task, the duty and the aim of an education worthy of its name. The task of the teacher is not to mould the mind but to enable it to grow to new dimensions – dimensions, perhaps, beyond his own reach. It is thus he serves the present for the future.”

There is a cohesive, planned curriculum that carries from lower to upper school. In the upper school a class sponsor is linked to each class.

High School teachers are subject specialists.

The young person is taught from a broad-based curriculum in which all students participate. Besides traditional subjects and those already begun in the lower school the curriculum can include such topics as History of Art, Drama, Philosophy, Projective Geometry, Surveying, First-Aid, Nutrition, Architecture and Metalwork.

Pupil progress is continually assessed, the emphasis being on the development of skills rather than purely a retention of knowledge. Personal development is seen as the main purpose of study and learning.

In a conscious way the teacher seeks to present the inter-relationships between subjects and their relationship to the human being. For example, limestone would never be considered in its chemical sense without a consideration of the biological development of the limestone also being presented to the class. The biological, geological and finally, chemical significance of limestone would be given a full appreciation. The holistic view of subjects is carried into every classroom.

Main Lessons continue to be given. They have the same intent behind them of deepening appreciation through intensive experience and concentrated effort.

The rhythmic quality of teaching continues and is reflected in the daily, weekly and annual timetable.

During the final years at school (Class 11 & 12) the students are internally assessed for NZQA approved NCEA. While they may choose specific subjects for this assessment, they still continue to participate in the full school programme of main lessons. All high school students work towards the Steiner Certificate.

During the upper school years students may participate in such public examinations as Goethe Society exams. However, there is no compromise in the curriculum. To accommodate these directions the students participate in the normal school programme and supplement their studies as necessary.

SUBJECTS SPECIAL TO A RUDOLF STEINER SCHOOL

  • Eurythmy is an art of movement developed by Rudolf Steiner taught from Kindergarten to Class 12
  • Form Drawing taught from Class 1 to 8
  • Projective Geometry taught from Class 9
  • Bothmer Gymnastics taught from Class 3 to 6
  • Handcraft taught from Class 1 to 12
  • Languages (German, Maori)

Eurythmy is an art of movement designed by Rudolf Steiner, which in a highly disciplined way brings the sounds of speech and tones of music into form and gesture. It is used as an art form and as a therapy.

Form drawing as designed by Rudolf Steiner is an artistic activity, which develops the child’s eye/hand co-ordination and spatial appreciation. It has many applications in practical and artistic endeavours.

Projective geometry as practical experience of modern synthetic geometry in 2 and 3 dimensions, as developed by such people as Olive Whicher, is taught in the High School. We do this to develop clear creative thinking.

Bothmer gymnastics was developed by Graf Bothmer in the original Waldorf School. Through conscious movement it brings about spatial awareness and a balance of tension and relaxation.

Just as there is a curriculum for classwork so there is also for handwork. Basic skills are learned in knitting, sewing, crochet, clothing and machine sewing. Natural fibres are used extensively in the school. Much is gained after the initial struggle of grasping a process through the ongoing work and achieving the finished result.

The Rudolf Steiner schools also have a comprehensive and detailed art curriculum as well as a well-developed artistic approach to woodwork and metalwork.

Special consideration is given to appropriate building facilities. The above mentioned subjects do not stand alone and separate from the curriculum but are intimately woven into the whole. All pupils take these subjects.

The full effect of these subjects will not be seen until adulthood.

FESTIVALS AND RHYTHM

We have referred to the daily and seasonal rhythm. The festivals celebrated in the school are also part of this rhythm. Not only are the well-known religious festivals celebrated but special festivals are also given significance. They include Michaelmas, Matariki and Mid-winter, special end-of-term presentations and seasonal festivals. Many festivals are celebrated as part of the school day, but certain festivals are more appropriately celebrated in the evening.

Michael Park School celebrates four seasonal festivals. Several weeks are spent preparing the children through singing, music and stories for the coming event. The same preparation occurs for Christian festivals like Easter and Christmas.

All festival celebrations are approached with a blend of traditional activities and a contemporary perspective.

WORK FESTIVALS

During the year parents of the school are invited to attend a presentation of the children’s work. It is an important part of the life of the school.

Once a year we have an Open Day on a Saturday when the childrens’ work is displayed and all the teachers are present to explain the education to the public. Some classes may perform some aspect of their work, e.g. recitation, drama, singing or instrumental work.

THE SCHOOL COMMUNITY

Besides the College of Teachers, our school has a variety of supporting groups. These include the proprietors or trustees, the Board of Trustees and other subgroups all of which contribute to the social, economical and administrative life of the school.

Michael Park School is a member of the Federation of Rudolf Steiner Waldorf Schools Inc.