Dear Indigenous Nations of North America: My Introduction to Waldorf Education and its Potential to Heal.
My passion and dream from a young age has been to bring Waldorf Education to the inner city, to Native reservations, to migrant children, to juvenile delinquency, to special needs, to the poor.
When I research the beautiful, ancient, and often harrowing landscape that is the reality of Indigenous North American Nations, I sense deeply that the rifts in education, due to the fallouts of colonization and racism, have had a very difficult time healing. The way in which Indigenous cultures view and understand children, growth, learning and their struggle is too often vastly different from the Western culture that the public school systems are cut from.
I have had a recent inspiration, whose seeds actually have been growing in me since I was about eighteen years or younger.
Although for most of my life I grew up in poverty and oppression, because my Western family were legacy in a specialized education known as Waldorf Education, founded by Rudolf Steiner; I received this education for thirteen years, taught, and helped build and sustain its community for another fifteen years, which brings me to the present.
In recent years, like so many places, Waldorf Education in North East America and various places in North America, has seen extreme ruptures, political unrest and fragmenting. However, the Flame of Waldorf Education's Original Essence will forever be part of my blueprint, and so can not be corrupted or changed, no matter the unrest and disunity that invades outer society.
The premise of this remarkable education makes it unique in the West, and in the developed world because Rudolf Steiner taught that human beings are in essence Spiritual, rather than in essence intellectual, or physical. His whole teaching, pedagogy, and curriculum spring from this pivotal premise.
Rudolf Steiner was originally from Austria, and was a Mystic, Religious Leader, Teacher, and what he called a "Spiritual Scientist," and a bit of an outcast in his time, and to a certain extent, his ideas are still today by mainstream.
The Waldorf Curriculum strives to meet children Spiritually, which is at the core of understanding them developmentally. For this reason, it can be, and is used as a healing modality rather than just "an education." Over the years I have had the blessings of being able to witness Waldorf Teachers from around the world, bring Waldorf Education on varying levels, including starting full-fledged schools, to situations such as: Post-war Sierra Leone Africa, Israel/Palestinian Peace Work and Muslim-Jewish coeducation, and I've heard testimonials of Waldorf Teachers bringing Waldorf grade school curriculums into adult prisons; and the results being remarkable: The inmates were more often than not people who had never experienced a childhood, and had grown up on the streets. They testified that the Grade School Waldorf curriculum did not make them feel ashamed, but helped take them through developmental steps they'd never taken fully, or at all. They said that they felt whole for the first time in their lives.
The reason the inmate's testimonials were so complete in essence, and inspiring, is because the Grade School curriculum in Waldorf Education is focused in facilitating activities and learning that honor the child's imagination. Rudolf Steiner was deeply upset that Western education even in his time, during the early 20th century was already clobbering children over and over with adult interpretations of information, rather than understanding education from the child's point of view. For example, in First and Second Grade, the children are guided through singing, simple poetry recitations, movement that often is paired with the poetry, and they learn to play a simple instrument called the pentatonic flute. At the center of the childhood education is the power of the Ancient Storytelling Tradition (that many of you know well) and Waldorf Teachers are expected to have practiced seriously in this Art. For the Art of Storytelling is what transmits the essence of the curriculum to the children. For example, every letter in the Alphabet is paired with a story, a beautiful picture, and often movement and simple phonics/poetry.
My passion and dream from a young age has been to bring Waldorf Education to the inner city, to Native reservations, to migrant children, to juvenile delinquency, to special needs, to the poor. And the beauty of Waldorf Education is that: There is a reason why there are schools on every Continent, and that is, Waldorf Education can be applied to any culture, tradition and situation. It can be used in such a way that meets the needs of any community regardless of background. Any adult from any background and tradition can train in it, and take what they need from it to their particular demographic.
I aim to continue to publish in regards to what Waldorf Education is, and hopefully help to open the doors to fresh, new, healing and ideas for your communities.
Thank you, and God Bless.
Anshin B. Hope Kelly
