We should in the strictest sense retain the attitude that the Waldorf School is not a school where a specific view of the world is to be taught. What we have gained from our worldview, which we have been presenting during the past decades, should never be brought as dogma. It should only be used – because it can be used – to improve and reform the didactic methodology, the pedagogical technique.
Our times require it of us to completely relinquish the idea of handing on the content of our worldview to the children. The Catholic Child should have a Catholic religion teacher and be taught the Catholic doctrine; his religious exercises should be led by the Catholic religion teacher. The same holds good for the Protestant child. What must be brought about through the Waldorf schools we want to establish, is not to be found in the dissemination of a view of the world, but we want a new educational method, a new approach to teaching, a new didactic system sprouting from what we are able to bring.
Source (German): Rudolf Steiner – GA 297 – Idee und Praxis der Waldorfschule – Stuttgart, August 31, 1919 (page 86-87)
Translated by Nesta Carsten-Krüger
Previously posted on August 25, 2016
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