T H E
F O U N D A T I O
N S
O F W
A L D O R F E D U C A T I O N
THE FIRST FREE WALDORF SCHOOL
opened its doors in Stuttgart,
Germany, in September, 1919, under the
auspices of Emil Molt, the Director of the Waldorf Astoria
Cigarette Company and a student of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual
science and particularly of Steiner's call for social
renewal.
It was only the previous year
— amid the
social chaos following the end of World War I
— that
Emil Molt, responding to Steiner's prognosis that truly human
change would not be possible unless a sufficient number of
people received an education that developed the whole human
being, decided to create a school for his workers' children.
Conversations with the Minister of Education and with Rudolf
Steiner, in early 1919, then led rapidly to the forming of the
first school.
Since that time, more than six hundred
schools have opened around the globe — from Italy, France,
Portugal, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Great Britain, Norway,
Finland and Sweden to Russia, Georgia, Poland, Hungary,
Romania, Israel, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Peru,
Argentina, Japan, etc. — making the Waldorf
School Movement the largest independent school movement in the
world. The United States, Canada, and Mexico alone now have
more than 120 schools.
Although each Waldorf school is
independent, and although there is a healthy oral tradition
going back to the first Waldorf teachers and to Steiner
himself, as well as a growing body of secondary literature, the
true foundations of the Waldorf method and spirit remain the
many lectures that Rudolf Steiner gave on the subject. For five
years (1919-24), Rudolf Steiner, while simultaneously working
on many other fronts, tirelessly dedicated himself to the
dissemination of the idea of Waldorf education. He gave
manifold lectures to teachers, parents, the general public, and
even the children themselves. New schools were founded. The
movement grew.
While many of Steiner's foundational
lectures have been translated and published in the past, some
have never appeared in English, and many have been virtually
unobtainable for years. To remedy this situation and to
establish a coherent basis for Waldorf education,
Anthroposophic Press has decided to publish the complete series
of Steiner lectures and writings on education in a uniform
series. This series will thus constitute an authoritative
foundation for work in educational renewal, for Waldorf
teachers, parents, and educators generally.
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