An Approach to Waldorf Pedagogy
Our world has made great progress in all fields of technology.. Fifty years ago many of the elements that we have today were almost unimaginable and thanks to which tasks have been greatly facilitated, have been refined and made faster and much simpler.
All these creations have helped man in his relationship with the environment and also in his relationship with others and have been spreading in all fields of life..
The technology, the world of technology and science have revealed their ability, its worth and its inexhaustible potential. Without underestimating in all this the imagination of man who is always the driving force behind all these creations.
If we recreate a little in the observation of this image of a technological and scientific society, it becomes evident to us that it is an adult society, abstract, intellectual and mechanical.
These elements beat in our society and surround us, although unconsciously and little by little, they leave their mark on us.. So our way of acting, of thinking and feeling is impregnated with these elements, causing others to fall into oblivion; helping it lack of time.
If we now analyze the repercussions that these elements have had (adult society, abstract, intellectual and mechanical) in the field of education and more specifically in the periods of infant and primary education, we find ourselves in tremendous situations of misunderstanding.
We find ourselves before two opposite worlds unable to communicate. One part is made up of children., boys and girls with their own qualities of admiration, fantasy, imaginative and full of life, who live in a natural world that is unknown to them but causes them great interest.
The other part is made up of adults and teachers, all of them imbued with that adult and intellectual conception of the world..
Throughout the school period both worlds coexist, one trying to educate the other. Never before has this coexistence been so tragic, and it is that never before have these worlds been so opposite.
It will be up to the adult to change if he wants to establish an educational contact with the child. And more specifically, the educational community must consider an authentic educational reform. Get rid of the intellectual thinking typical of the adult being, move away from all mechanical and dead tendencies, lacking in imagination and creative fantasy, and impregnate oneself with emotional and artistic life in such a way that the conceptual ceases to be abstract.
Only if the adult world, parents and teachers, carry out a pedagogical transformation in this direction, it will be possible to re-establish the pedagogical activity between the two parties.
For years a different pedagogical method has put its roots working in this direction to restore the educational bridge: Waldorf Education.
The fundamentals of this pedagogy give the teacher and the adult the necessary bases to accompany the child in his future.. To be able to create, on the one hand, a concrete and clear image of the child and, on the other hand, a living and artistic image of the natural world and thus awaken in the teacher the creative capacities that allow him to build the bridges of union stripping him of the intellectual tendency typical of the adult being.
In our modern civilization this is what we lack. we have theories, but not a vivid view of the world, nor of man.
The important thing now is that we don't keep sleeping, above all in the educational and teaching field; that we recognize the importance of an education that focuses on man integrated by body, soul and spirit.