Living Education is a journal for Steiner Waldorf Schools. It is a more modest form of Steiner Education magazine which itself was the successor to Child and Man.
We are limiting its size to three longer items and some short items for the time being. We welcome feedback. The first issue has articles on the class teaching cycle, Montessori and Steiner and architecture for Waldorf pedagogy.
To obtain a regular copy simply email the SWSF office at le@swsf.org.uk and place LE in the subject box and you will automatically receive issues as they appear three times a year. If anyone would prefer a hard copy the office can despatch this to you on application at a cost of £1.50 plus postage per copy.
Issues are also available from the documents section of this website
Friday, November 24, 2006
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Family who've been at school for 50 years
Family who've been at school for 50 years
FELIX LOWE
WATCHING your child start school for the first time is a special day for any parent.
But when little Michael Maclean walks through the school gates on Wednesday it will be a momentous occasion for the entire family.
The six-year-old will be the 24th Maclean to attend Rudolf Steiner School, in Morningside, continuing a family tradition that has stretched back 50 years.
Since 1956, not a year has passed when the name did not feature on one class register or another.
Michael will be joining six cousins, Sophia, Lisbeth, Christina, Herman, Olga and Brenda, and his step brother, Duncan, who are already at the school.
"I am very excited to be starting in Class One," said Michael. "The teachers are nice and I will be at school with my cousins, which will be fun. I am not nervous about Wednesday and am lucky as I live near to the school."
Michael is keeping alive a tradition started by his uncle Christian Maclean.
Christian, 56, was sent to the special independent school after his mother attended a Steiner school in Germany during her childhood. He said: "She loved it so much that she never doubted which school she would choose for us."
Christian became the first member of the Maclean Steiner dynasty at Edinburgh after he joined the school in 1956. He was soon joined by his six siblings, three of whom - including Michael's father Iain - decided their children should follow in their footsteps.
Christian, whose own three children attended the school too, added: "We all shared [my mother's] enthusiasm because the style of education that you receive at a Steiner school is unique."
Andrew Farquharson, head of management at the school, said: "We are looking forward to the next 50 years of the Maclean family."
This article: http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=1268482006
Last updated: 28-Aug-06 12:53 BST
Family who've been at school for 50 years
©2006 Scotsman.com contact
FELIX LOWE
WATCHING your child start school for the first time is a special day for any parent.
But when little Michael Maclean walks through the school gates on Wednesday it will be a momentous occasion for the entire family.
The six-year-old will be the 24th Maclean to attend Rudolf Steiner School, in Morningside, continuing a family tradition that has stretched back 50 years.
Since 1956, not a year has passed when the name did not feature on one class register or another.
Michael will be joining six cousins, Sophia, Lisbeth, Christina, Herman, Olga and Brenda, and his step brother, Duncan, who are already at the school.
"I am very excited to be starting in Class One," said Michael. "The teachers are nice and I will be at school with my cousins, which will be fun. I am not nervous about Wednesday and am lucky as I live near to the school."
Michael is keeping alive a tradition started by his uncle Christian Maclean.
Christian, 56, was sent to the special independent school after his mother attended a Steiner school in Germany during her childhood. He said: "She loved it so much that she never doubted which school she would choose for us."
Christian became the first member of the Maclean Steiner dynasty at Edinburgh after he joined the school in 1956. He was soon joined by his six siblings, three of whom - including Michael's father Iain - decided their children should follow in their footsteps.
Christian, whose own three children attended the school too, added: "We all shared [my mother's] enthusiasm because the style of education that you receive at a Steiner school is unique."
Andrew Farquharson, head of management at the school, said: "We are looking forward to the next 50 years of the Maclean family."
This article: http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=1268482006
Last updated: 28-Aug-06 12:53 BST
Family who've been at school for 50 years
©2006 Scotsman.com contact
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Waldorf volunteers rescued from Lebanon
Waldorf volunteers rescued from Lebanon
KARLSRUHE (NNA) - Three German volunteers undertaking voluntary service at the Rudolf Steiner School in Beirut and on a social therapy farm in Baalbek were dramatically rescued from war-torn Lebanon earlier this month.
According to the Karlsruhe office of the international organisation Friends of Waldorf Education (“Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners e.V.”), the three volunteers, Marie Pfister, Tabea von Verschuer and Matthias Galle, had at first been taken to various places of safety in Lebanon when the fighting began.
When a village close to the Rudolf Steiner School’s summer camp had been bombed, the Lebanese partner organisation of the Friends of Waldorf Education, FISTA, decided to move the two volunteers working there to the German Evangelical Church’s community centre in Beirut. From there they were taken by bus convoy organised by the German embassy to Damascus airport, where tens of thousands of refugees from many different countries were already waiting to leave.
The third volunteer working in Baalbek was taken to Damascus by secret routes by a FISTA member of staff after the roads and buildings in and around the town had been bombed and there was a risk that escape would no longer be possible.
After their 16-hour rescue, the three young people were received by the Friends of Waldorf Education team in Damascus and flown to Stuttgart via Italy on the next day.
In Stuttgart they met up with a group of Lebanese pupils from the Beirut Rudolf Steiner School who had attended the UNESCO Peace Festival in the city and had subsequently been given asylum in the Karl Schubert School in Stuttgart since it is currently too dangerous for the children to return to Lebanon.
The successful evacuation was planned and executed in close collaboration between Friends of Waldorf Education, the German foreign ministry, the German embassies in Beirut and Damascus and the Lebanese partner organisation FISTA.
Some 400 young people are currently undertaking voluntary service in anthroposophical institutions in 50 countries all over the world through Friends of Waldorf Education. The organisation has appealed for financial support for the expensive rescue action.
Photos can be requested from Friends of Waldorf Education.
Account details for donations: name: Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners e. V., bank: Badische Beamtenbank Karlsruhe, bank sort code: 66090800, account number: 1014250, purpose: „Aktion Libanon“
Link:
www.freunde-waldorf.de
Item: 070631-01EN Date: 31 July 2006
Copyright 2006 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See http://www.nna-news.org/copyright/
More NNA reports at: http://www.nna-news.org/
KARLSRUHE (NNA) - Three German volunteers undertaking voluntary service at the Rudolf Steiner School in Beirut and on a social therapy farm in Baalbek were dramatically rescued from war-torn Lebanon earlier this month.
According to the Karlsruhe office of the international organisation Friends of Waldorf Education (“Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners e.V.”), the three volunteers, Marie Pfister, Tabea von Verschuer and Matthias Galle, had at first been taken to various places of safety in Lebanon when the fighting began.
When a village close to the Rudolf Steiner School’s summer camp had been bombed, the Lebanese partner organisation of the Friends of Waldorf Education, FISTA, decided to move the two volunteers working there to the German Evangelical Church’s community centre in Beirut. From there they were taken by bus convoy organised by the German embassy to Damascus airport, where tens of thousands of refugees from many different countries were already waiting to leave.
The third volunteer working in Baalbek was taken to Damascus by secret routes by a FISTA member of staff after the roads and buildings in and around the town had been bombed and there was a risk that escape would no longer be possible.
After their 16-hour rescue, the three young people were received by the Friends of Waldorf Education team in Damascus and flown to Stuttgart via Italy on the next day.
In Stuttgart they met up with a group of Lebanese pupils from the Beirut Rudolf Steiner School who had attended the UNESCO Peace Festival in the city and had subsequently been given asylum in the Karl Schubert School in Stuttgart since it is currently too dangerous for the children to return to Lebanon.
The successful evacuation was planned and executed in close collaboration between Friends of Waldorf Education, the German foreign ministry, the German embassies in Beirut and Damascus and the Lebanese partner organisation FISTA.
Some 400 young people are currently undertaking voluntary service in anthroposophical institutions in 50 countries all over the world through Friends of Waldorf Education. The organisation has appealed for financial support for the expensive rescue action.
Photos can be requested from Friends of Waldorf Education.
Account details for donations: name: Freunde der Erziehungskunst Rudolf Steiners e. V., bank: Badische Beamtenbank Karlsruhe, bank sort code: 66090800, account number: 1014250, purpose: „Aktion Libanon“
Link:
www.freunde-waldorf.de
Item: 070631-01EN Date: 31 July 2006
Copyright 2006 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See http://www.nna-news.org/copyright/
More NNA reports at: http://www.nna-news.org/
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Teacher Talk
Roxana Bibi, a class teacher at St Paul's Steiner School in London has been interviewed by Emily Elias for the Independent, 08 September 2005
Download the article here
Download the article here
Friday, July 08, 2005
Media
State schools 'could learn from Steiner principles' Polly Curtis, education correspondentThursday June 30, 2005
Ministers should consider adopting Steiner school principles of putting pupils' spiritual and social awareness ahead of test results, a government-backed study recommended today.
The Steiner schools movement was started by Rudolph Steiner, an Austrian educationalist, who a century ago developed a curriculum that advocates developing pupils' spirituality and sense of social justice to help them learn.
There are 23 independent Steiner schools in the UK, charging between £1,000 and £4,000 a term. Most other European countries have Steiner state schools. Last month, the government announced it was conducting a feasibility study to see whether it could set up a state-funded Steiner school, and today's report, based on research at 21 of the schools, will fuel speculation that the government is considering introducing more of them.
Today it emerged that the government is to fund the introduction of Montessori teaching at a Manchester primary school. Although often compared with Steiner schools, Montessori schools differ in that they do not follow a strict curriculum, instead they give pupils total control over their education, deciding the pace at which they learn and advocating learning through play.
Philip Woods, of the University of West of England, who led today's research, said Steiner schools were successful in teaching foreign languages at an early age, getting pupils enthusiastic about learning and involving them in choosing what they wanted to learn about.
"We also found that the emphasis given to the non-hierarchical, collegial form of running schools, offers a contrast to current practice in the maintained sector and may prove relevant for mainstream schools," he said.
Pupils at Steiner schools take GCSEs and A-levels, but they do not sit other national tests, such as Sats, which have been widely criticised by teachers for restricting the curriculum in mainstream schools.
But the report also highlighted the problems children have in adjusting when they move between Steiner and non-Steiner schools and points out that while state schools could learn a lot from Steiner schools, the independent schools could also learn from government-run schools.
Prof Woods said: "We see a great potential benefit from mutual dialogue and professional interaction between Steiner and mainstream educators. As well as the good practices we have identified from Steiner schools there are also areas in which Steiner schools could benefit from maintained sector practices such as management skills, organisational and administrative efficiency, classroom management, working with older secondary school children and record-keeping and assessment."
For Steiner schools to be state-funded the government would have to bend the rules to allow them to opt out of the national curriculum. But with the government increasingly encouraging schools to take more control over how they are run and what they teach, and with moves towards giving parents more choice of different kinds of schools, the report suggests ministers might support such a move.
The independent report was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills, which today said it was considering its findings. A DfES spokesman said: "The government is committed to widening diversity in education provision in the interests of raising standards and offering parents a choice of schools for their child."
The DfES has been working with the Steiner fellowship of schools since 2001 to discuss how the schools could be introduced into the state system.
Ministers should consider adopting Steiner school principles of putting pupils' spiritual and social awareness ahead of test results, a government-backed study recommended today.
The Steiner schools movement was started by Rudolph Steiner, an Austrian educationalist, who a century ago developed a curriculum that advocates developing pupils' spirituality and sense of social justice to help them learn.
There are 23 independent Steiner schools in the UK, charging between £1,000 and £4,000 a term. Most other European countries have Steiner state schools. Last month, the government announced it was conducting a feasibility study to see whether it could set up a state-funded Steiner school, and today's report, based on research at 21 of the schools, will fuel speculation that the government is considering introducing more of them.
Today it emerged that the government is to fund the introduction of Montessori teaching at a Manchester primary school. Although often compared with Steiner schools, Montessori schools differ in that they do not follow a strict curriculum, instead they give pupils total control over their education, deciding the pace at which they learn and advocating learning through play.
Philip Woods, of the University of West of England, who led today's research, said Steiner schools were successful in teaching foreign languages at an early age, getting pupils enthusiastic about learning and involving them in choosing what they wanted to learn about.
"We also found that the emphasis given to the non-hierarchical, collegial form of running schools, offers a contrast to current practice in the maintained sector and may prove relevant for mainstream schools," he said.
Pupils at Steiner schools take GCSEs and A-levels, but they do not sit other national tests, such as Sats, which have been widely criticised by teachers for restricting the curriculum in mainstream schools.
But the report also highlighted the problems children have in adjusting when they move between Steiner and non-Steiner schools and points out that while state schools could learn a lot from Steiner schools, the independent schools could also learn from government-run schools.
Prof Woods said: "We see a great potential benefit from mutual dialogue and professional interaction between Steiner and mainstream educators. As well as the good practices we have identified from Steiner schools there are also areas in which Steiner schools could benefit from maintained sector practices such as management skills, organisational and administrative efficiency, classroom management, working with older secondary school children and record-keeping and assessment."
For Steiner schools to be state-funded the government would have to bend the rules to allow them to opt out of the national curriculum. But with the government increasingly encouraging schools to take more control over how they are run and what they teach, and with moves towards giving parents more choice of different kinds of schools, the report suggests ministers might support such a move.
The independent report was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills, which today said it was considering its findings. A DfES spokesman said: "The government is committed to widening diversity in education provision in the interests of raising standards and offering parents a choice of schools for their child."
The DfES has been working with the Steiner fellowship of schools since 2001 to discuss how the schools could be introduced into the state system.
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