Develop a flexible and vigorous knowledge

The quality of teaching and learning is conditioned by epistemological aspects. This conditioning is considered as a vital aspect of Waldorf pedagogy. The epistemological principles of Rudolf Steiner are based on the premise that «it is only actual experience that gives knowledge»¹. This foundation is expressed in a phenomenological approach to teaching and learning.

Waldorf pedagogy acknowledges that knowledge consists of different forms of knowing. The forms of knowing span from tacit, intuitive, experiential and preconceptual forms, via explicit, abstract, and theoretical forms to practical forms of knowledge. Waldorf pedagogy seeks to cultivate these forms as equally important, and to facilitate a creative and synergic interplay between them.

Through a range of experiences with phenomena and materia, teaching styles, artforms and practical skills, Waldorf pedagogy aims to develop a flexible and vigorous apparatus of knowledge in the pupils.

The importance of art in Education

Art as an equalizer

In art there are no right or wrong answers. In fact, the authentic human expression will always be a quality of art. Hence, art provides pedagogical contexts where skills and achievements are subordinated to exploration and the genuine expression of individuality.

Parallelly art is vital in practicing and acquiring generic techniques and practical skills, such as painting, drawing, handwriting, sculpturing, body movements, singing and playing instruments.

With the individual expression as a foundation, empowered by practical skills and techniques, art offers pupils and teachers an unequalled possibility to process and express encounters with the world and express their individuality. 

Art as a meaning

Art is essential in providing pupils experiences of meaning, and the possibility to create meaning out of their life experiences. A sense of meaningfulness is vital to emotional and psychological health, and art is a key arena to make meaning of the world. Art is directed and springs out of the middle area of the soul forces — feeling. Thinking without feelings will be cold, calculating and can even be cruel. Acting without feelings can be uncontrolled, excessive, or even violent. Hence, the feeling area is peculiar because it has a harmonizing task, where thoughts and actions must be tempered by the feeling capacity.

As instrumental notions are affecting society on all levels, encouraging and valuing product over process, and effectivity over presence, an important task for schools is to provide pupils with autotelic activities. Autotelic points to how an activity is meaningful in itself; auto – telia, not to attain some future goal or lead to a product. This characteristic is necessary in order to facilitate a state of flow for pupils, and promote the ability to rest within one’s own being in a present and attentive manner.

Art as science

Waldorf pedagogy supposes the intrinsic relation between art and science. Steiner, deeply inspired by Goethe, understood art and science as the two ways of interpreting the mysteries of the world², and «art as practical science»³. Furthermore, it is essential to realize the close relation art and science has, as artistic activities must not be taken as a mere expressive or emotive activity, but that it has profound scientific dimensions. The task is to scientifically grasp the phenomena of the world «and give it artistic form».⁴

Art as knowledge

Working artistically is essential to cultivate the richness of knowledge forms. Through art the preconceptual and intuitive knowledge⁵ forms are nourished and disclosed. Creation comes from a direct form of knowing, which in fact is a way of cultivating qualitative relations with the world. The ability to cultivate qualitative knowledge is important, as we live in a time where we have limitless access to quantitative knowledge about the world. A qualitative knowledge can be characterized by a heartfelt, artistic and profound connection with the world. It is also recognized by its contextualizing quality, by promoting the ability to unveil the interconnectedness of the phenomena of the world.   

Art as spiritual practice

As the role of religiosity has altered profoundly throughout the last decades, the individual’s need and search for existential meaning has lost essential support. It is necessary to develop new ways of exploring and practicing spirituality.

Artistic activities can be integral in this quest⁶. It can enable deeper self-knowledge and reconnection (hence the etymological foundation of the word re-ligion) through the cultivation of the bodily, social, and spiritual dimensions of experience that art involves. Music, movement, and dance can be particularly resourceful in this context, as they are all characterized by immediacy, are practice based and can be performed collectively.

Art as moral

Waldorf schools has taken on the task of providing an upbringing for freedom. In Steiner’s meaning of the concept of freedom, it is understood as a deeply responsible way of relating to the world. Freedom must not be understood as something egoistic or individualistic in contradiction to the greater good. Because «what we call good is not what a man must do but what he will want to do if he develops the true nature of man to the full.»⁷ Hence, moral development is fundamental in Waldorf education. In the current landscape of policy, health and philosophy much emphasis is put on rationalistic causalities when moral choices are to be made. The concept of moral has certain dogmatic connotations for the modern individual, but it is vital that we keep working consciously with the foundations for moral, as described in Steiner’s ethical individualism.  

Through practicing artforms, both collectively and individually, pupils are nurtured spiritually so that the moral development can be connected to the spiritual realities of the world.

Josefin Winther