Edinburgh Steiner School

Author: Edinburgh Steiner School

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Edinburgh Steiner School

What is the purpose of education? Is it to prepare young people for one specific role or job when they leave school? Surely not, and especially in a rapidly changing world where people can expect to pursue several different careers over the course of a lifetime.

As one of the most famous teachers of all time, the Greek philosopher Socrates, pointed out: ‘education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel’. The job of educators is to nurture the growth of a human being, not to construct an automaton.

And yet, that’s what many schools have been doing for decades - very often against their better instincts - hemmed in by systems which prioritises a narrow range of content-heavy knowledge and superficial skills; much of which is out of date by the time the learners enter further education or the workplace.

Whereas mainstream curricula tend to progress in a linear fashion, with one topic explicitly laying the groundwork for the next, the Steiner Waldorf curriculum is more usually imagined as a spiral. A subject like chemistry might not be taught as ‘chemistry’, per se. Instead, the subject’s foundations will be established for younger children through experiential learning: they will explore chemical processes by feeling them, using their senses and emotions, via experiments and stories - but without any mention of chemistry as a discipline, or any of the abstract theory. The theory will emerge later - even many years later- on another arm of the spiral, when the child is mature enough to truly comprehend it; thus integrating ‘feeling’ with ‘thinking’.

The core of the Steiner curriculum is the programme of Main Lessons, which engage pupils for up to two hours a day. Uniquely, this continues through the senior phase as well: it doesn’t matter which exam subjects a pupil has chosen to pursue, they will still get their Main Lessons in everything from ‘Mechanics’ to ‘Romanticism’.

“More than ever nowadays, where things are changing, where the way we interact with the world has become so much more indirect because of new technologies, where we need to cope with a completely different sensory environment, this type of education is more important than ever,” notes Nobel Laureate in Neuroscience & Waldorf graduate, Dr Thomas Sudhöf.

The crucial difference is not so much in the content, but in the way each subject is taught, when it is taught and how the topics are taught in relation to each other.

In this way, Steiner schools allow a young person to develop in multiple dimensions: physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.

This is freedom. Because a flame, once kindled, casts its own light.

Join us: edsteiner.org

Prospective pupils and parents can visit our campus, situated within the protected conservation area of South Edinburgh.

Meet pupils and experience lessons ‘in action’ during one of our Open Tours, which run on the below first Fridays of the month, from 9am to 11am: 3rd October & 7th November