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Education as a Force for Social Change: (CW 296, 192, 330/331) (Volume 4)
10 lectures, Dornach & Stuttgart, Apr. 23 – Aug. 17, 1919 (CW 296, 192, 330/331) These illuminating lectures were given one month before the opening of the first Waldorf school, located in Stuttgart, following two years of intense preoccupation with the social situation in Germany as World War I ended and society sought to rebuild itself. Well aware of the dangerous tendencies present in modern culture that undermine a true social life―psychic torpor and boredom, universal mechanization, and growing cynicism―Steiner recognized that any solution for society must address not only economic and legal issues but also that of a free spiritual life. Steiner also saw the need to properly nurture in children the virtues of imitation, reverence, and love at the appropriate stages of development in order to create mature adults who are inwardly prepared to fulfill the demands of a truly healthy society―adults who are able to assume the responsibilities of freedom, equality, and brotherhood. Relating these themes to an understanding of the human as a threefold being of thought, feeling, and volition, and against the background of historical forces at work in human consciousness, Steiner lays the ground for a profound revolution in the ways we think about education. Also included here are three lectures on the social basis of education, a lecture to public school teachers, and a lecture to the workers of the Waldorf Astoria Cigarette Company, after which they asked him to form a school for their children. German Die Erziehungsfrage als soziale Frage (GA 296); lectures 4, 5, and 6, the "Volkspädagogik" lectures in Geisteswissenschaftliche Behandlung sozialer und pädagogischer Fragen (GA 192); lectures 2 and 11, Neugestaltung des sozialen Organismus (GA 330–331).
272 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1997
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About the author
Rudolf Steiner
4,353 books1,100 followersAuthor also wrote under the name Rudolph Steiner.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian occultist, social reformer, architect, esotericist, and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained initial recognition at the end of the nineteenth century as a literary critic and published works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the twentieth century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy. His teachings are influenced by Christian Gnosticism or neognosticism. Many of his ideas are pseudoscientific. He was also prone to pseudohistory.
In the first, more philosophically oriented phase of this movement, Steiner attempted to find a synthesis between science and spirituality. His philosophical work of these years, which he termed "spiritual science", sought to apply what he saw as the clarity of thinking characteristic of Western philosophy to spiritual questions, differentiating this approach from what he considered to be vaguer approaches to mysticism. In a second phase, beginning around 1907, he began working collaboratively in a variety of artistic media, including drama, dance and architecture, culminating in the building of the Goetheanum, a cultural centre to house all the arts. In the third phase of his work, beginning after World War I, Steiner worked on various ostensibly applied projects, including Waldorf education, biodynamic agriculture, and anthroposophical medicine.
Steiner advocated a form of ethical individualism, to which he later brought a more explicitly spiritual approach. He based his epistemology on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's world view in which "thinking…is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas." A consistent thread that runs through his work is the goal of demonstrating that there are no limits to human knowledge.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 27, 2018
Well now, this is a Steiner book (er, um, more accurately: series of lectures) that I can really get behind. I listened to the audiobook twice in a row, and I'm gonna go ahead and commit to giving it a go in its written form. I have deemed it worthy of the sacred practice of annotating in the service of personal growth.
The first half of the lectures do some general anthroposophical things in regards to the nature of human development, and, predictably, Steiner reaffirms that we can empirically observe spiritual phenomena if we have the right training. The second half addresses the "actual" needs of people, the class struggle, the "morally bankrupt" system of state-sponsored education, the "absurd practices" of the modern university, and the kowtowing to the economic realm in which the Western world so fully engages. WE MUST HAVE A THREEFOLD SOCIAL ORDER!
The first half of the lectures do some general anthroposophical things in regards to the nature of human development, and, predictably, Steiner reaffirms that we can empirically observe spiritual phenomena if we have the right training. The second half addresses the "actual" needs of people, the class struggle, the "morally bankrupt" system of state-sponsored education, the "absurd practices" of the modern university, and the kowtowing to the economic realm in which the Western world so fully engages. WE MUST HAVE A THREEFOLD SOCIAL ORDER!
May 22, 2008
The basis for the Waldorf education.
July 3, 2008
Need to delve deeper into Steiner. Next is his biography by the former bassist of Blondie.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews