Future Human Image (Sep 2017)
Humanistic Approach to Early Childhood Education in the Educational Philosophy of Rudolf Steiner
Abstract
The unassailable empirical fact that Waldorf education has existed, endured and evolved for almost a century. It provides one with a legitimate propensity to engage and research into humanistic aspects of early childhood education in Steiner’s philosophical and pedagogical inclinations. In that respect, the first development cycle, which refers to the education of children in early years of development, represents the foundation of any further growth, as well as of structuring a healthy qualitatively-voluntaristic personality aspect. The essential feature of early childhood can be observed in a complex interplay of a myriad of holistic and integrative elements of a child’s sensitive nature during this period. The paper aims to provide humanistic insights into Steiner’s pedagogical oeuvre that, as a methodological basis, reflects in a rather explicit and applicable manner the necessity of a pedagogical conception of the uniqueness of childhood and children, whose forces ought to be preserved. It is concluded that a genuine global social renaissance, starting from a given present as a relative uncertainty towards a better future as a possible certainty, i.e. towards the humanised and humanistic, is possible only if education is understood as a true social power with reformed and revalued educational system. Steiner perceived exciting prospects for human beings in the absolute freedom that is inherent in every human being as a spiritual power, so in early childhood years it is necessary to model temporal and spatial circumstances which support and generate a child’s practice as a sensitive organ of a complex field of interactive exchange.
