Waldorf Education: An Artistic Approach and the Intriguing Connection with the Breath

If I had to choose the one thing that is the major distinguishing factor of Waldorf education in the elementary years it would be the fundamental principle that education must take an artistic form. It is not a matter of providing a little sugar to help the medicine go down. It is a matter of understanding in a profound way the quality of consciousness of children in this 2nd seven year cycle. Between the ages of 7 and 14 children are most awake or aware in the feeling realm. They have a picture consciousness and a rhythmical memory.

The mandate of the teacher in a traditional/mainstream approach is to make sure that the children come away from a lesson having learned certain key concepts that can later be recalled and tested. This is very much the case today with the emphasis on accountability via testing.

Steiner (the founder of Waldorf Education) points out that such methods are very convenient because they allow the teacher to verify that the child has absorbed what has been taught in the previous lesson. Unfortunately, such an approach misses the heart of the matter regarding the actual nature of children at this stage of life.

The mandate of the Waldorf main lesson approach is to immerse the children in a lively experience, one that gives them a feeling for things. This holds true for all academic subjects. In teaching Roman history in sixth grade, for example, the teacher prepares by first immersing herself/himself in the subject and then choosing the elements they want to bring to the children. The challenge is to then take this background knowledge and present it in such a way that it appeals to the imagination and feelings of the children and evokes rich inner imagery. As Eugene Schwartz (a seasoned Waldorf Educator) describes ” Through the biographies of noble Romans of the Republic and scheming politicians of the Empire, through the study of the details of constructing aqueducts and the Via Appia, or Roman methods of building a navy and waging war with Carthage, the life of Rome comes alive.” The main lesson format allows the children to be absorbed in that era of history over a period of weeks.

Steiner writes that, “All instruction given to children between approximately seven and thirteen must be permeated with pictures.” The Waldorf teacher’s mandate is to transform the intellectual content so that it speaks to the artistic nature of the child. Facts are still learned, but in a way that does not overtax the intellect and speaks to where the child is developmentally. While providing the children with a lively artistic experience is the objective of the Waldorf approach, a by-product, as it were, is that the children do recall key elements of the lessons.  Research shows that memory is tied to emotion so that experiences that touch us emotionally and evoke inner images are more easily recalled and have more staying power. On the other hand, lessons that lack any feeling connection result in memories that are generally short lived.

Steiner makes the intriguing point that if “we overemphasize the intellect and are unable to move into a mode of imagery, the child’s breathing process is delicately and subtly disrupted. The child can become congested, as it were, with weakened exhalation. You should think of this as subtle, not necessarily obvious.” Further on he writes about how when feelings are cultivated that tend toward imagery it expresses as a “buoyant capacity.”

We overemphasize the intellect when the focus is on having children assimilate sharply outlined ideas and definitions. Such ideas are set and rigid. Lifeless concepts have a restricting effect on the breath. On the other hand, when we teach through the medium of flexible and artistic forms we give children ideas in a pictorial form that has an element of growth. Concepts can grow and metamorphose as the inner life of the child grows. Such an approach has a harmonizing effect on the breath.

I always feel a certain joy when I visit Madrone Trail when the children are present. They have a noticeable liveliness and exuberance that cheers me up and makes me so grateful that this charter school option exists. Visitors often also make a similar observation about the students.

A regular volunteer in the kindergarten, who had many years of experience in numerous other educational settings, told me that when she first visited Madrone Trail she was struck by the quality of the students. She observed that there was something especially vibrant and fresh, something open and friendly, about them. She said she knew right away that this was her place and what she had long been searching for. Another example was told to me by a former Madrone Trail director. He said an electrician spent the day doing repair work at the school. He had no previous knowledge of the charter school or Waldorf education. When he finished his work he went to the director to find out how to enroll in the school. He was so impressed by the cheerfulness and enthusiasm of the children that he wanted to send his children to the school when they were old enough. It seems that the effect on the breath of an artistic approach in education has much to do with this subtle, yet quite palpable, exuberant nature of the students.

Success or Fulfillment?

The below excerpt is from a Wonder With Us Vol.4 interview with the current U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Vivek makes an insightful distinction between success, and fulfillment. He attributes the triad of fame, fortune, and power to the generally understood idea of success. He attributes the triad of relationship, service, and purpose to fulfillment. It is a distinction that has important ramifications for education:

“You’ve mentioned that Mister Rogers is a role model to you. Can you tell us more about that?”

Fred Rogers was, and continues to be, an inspiration. He reminded us what really matters in life — the stuff that we perhaps don’t think about as much, or that just gets papered over sometimes in the busyness of day-to-day life.

One of the things that has been on my mind as I talk to young people around the country is that they feel like they’re caught in the proverbial rat race. I ask students: “What is the version of success that society is telling you you have to pursue? What defines it?” And they usually say some combination of money, fame, and power. If you’re able to acquire all three of those in your life — well, you’ve really made it.

But if you think about it, what all of us want for our kids is that at the end of the day — regardless of what profession they choose or how much money they make, — we want them to be fulfilled. We want our kids, ultimately, at the end of their lives, to be able to say, “That was a good life.” And that triad of success that society has told them to focus on — fame, fortune, power — I think is actually the wrong triad. I think there’s a different triad for fulfillment: relationships, purpose, and service.

Our engagement in these three things is what fundamentally drives whether or not we are fulfilled or not in our life. And one of the things I love about Fred Rogers is that he helped us see that relationships really do matter, that helping other people is important, and that building your life — even as a child — around the notion that you can contribute something to other people’s lives or the world really can make a difference.

I actually think this is what kids — fundamentally, at a deep level — want, too. They know the value of service. When kids engage in service to each other, a lot of times, they will say they feel better doing it. When they have friendships where they can really be themselves and be there for other people, they know that feels good, too. So, I would love for us to think collectively about how that can be a more explicit part of the culture that we build, the initiatives that we create, and the curricula that we design.”

(Excerpt link:

The fulfillment triad is explicitly at the heart of the cultural renewal that is the mission of Waldorf education. When I came across Vivek’s interview it brought to mind observations made by teachers who regularly taught Waldorf graduates who moved on after 8th grade to local high schools. The comments below were published by AWSNA, The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America.

“A 2005 survey of some Waldorf graduates indicated that the typical Waldorf student goes into the world with a love of learning, the ability to think independently, a commitment to human relations, an interest in and concern for other human beings and for the natural environment, and a desire to make the world a better place.”

“Waldorf students share certain common characteristics. They are often independent and self-confident self starters. They have genuine optimism for the future. They also tend to be highly ethical and are compassionately intelligent. They keep their sense of wonder about learning and the interdisciplinary sense that everything is connected.  They seem to have a healthy measure of emotional intelligence. They are both artistic and practical. They seem to know intuitively how to do many things.”

“Marin, Ca. Waldorf students to me are interesting people. They can converse intelligently on almost any issue because they have been taught to examine. They can be enormously sympathetic to almost anyone’s plight because they have been taught to tolerate. They can gracefully dance or score a goal because they have been taught to move. They can circulate among the various groups on campus and engage in a variety of activities because they have been taught to harmonize.”

What makes Waldorf education so enduring and relevant more than 100 years after its inception?