Curriculum of the Waldorf schools
[1] These blocks are supported by on-going classes in subjects such as music, art and crafts, and foreign languages that continue throughout the year.
The structure of the lesson will include activities that "call upon the child's powers of listening, of body movement, of thinking, and of feeling.
"[4] These activities could include mental math, hand-clapping games and jumping rope, folk dances, poetry recitation, singing, and writing and drawing in unlined "main lesson books".
The entire curriculum, which is often discussed as an ascending spiral - or "spiral curriculum" - has been described in the following way: The presentation of different subjects may be as follows: In Waldorf education writing and reading are introduced at age six or seven; Beginning with oral storytelling, a Waldorf child listens to and summarizes oral language.
The literary themes of the first through fourth grades are: fairy tales, fables and saints stories, Hebrew Testament, and Norse mythology.
The secondary curriculum generally includes intensive courses focusing on the works of Shakespeare, Dante's Inferno, the Parsifal saga, Goethe's Faust, and the American transcendentalists.
Attentive dwelling on the observations of the senses enhances the potential of immediate experience to break through the armour of preformed conceptions or ready-made thoughts.
Dahlin describes the process as "aesthetically rich knowledge formation"[9] which "allows the children’s judgement to mature without 'jumping to conclusions'" and "teaches openmindedness, flexibility, truthfulness, and exactitude in dealing with phenomena of nature.
[10] A 2007 German study found that an above-average number of Waldorf students become teachers, doctors, engineers, scholars of the humanities, and scientists.
[11] A study conducted by California State University at Sacramento researchers outlined numerous theories and ideas prevalent throughout Waldorf curricula that were patently pseudoscientific and steeped in magical thinking.
[7] Throughout elementary school, history is primarily taught through biography, allowing for a human context for historical events.
[6] In the elementary years, drawing is practised daily and painting weekly; in addition, children are taught modelling and sculpture with beeswax or clay.
Waldorf pupils are generally required to take private music lessons when a class orchestra is formed, usually at age 9-10.
[1] Eurythmy is a movement art, usually performed to poetry or music, created by Steiner and "meant to help children develop harmoniously with mind, body and soul".
[7] Physical Education, or Movement Education as it is called in many Waldorf schools around the world, begins in the early grades with rhythmical activities, then proceeds to various games, the circus arts, the Greek pentathlon, and on to more competitive athletics and team sports as the student moves towards high school.
