Continually Correct Your World-Pictures 5. Rightly Apply Concepts To World 6. Obey The Impulse Of Freedom Envision Purpose Into Your Life Then each chapter becomes an introduction that expresses the chapter theme and Mood followed by 12 worldviews or 12 different perspectives on the chapter theme.
If one goes out beyond man in himself, as one must go out to Sun and Moon for an explanation of the phenomenon of the Earth — something that present-day science does not do — then one comes to recognize three different things, Theism, Intuitionism and Naturalism side by side and each with its justification.
For it is not by insisting on one of these tones, but by letting them sound together, that one arrives at the truth. And just as our intimate corporeal relation with Sun, Moon and Earth is placed in the midst of the seven planets, so Anthropomorphism is the world-outlook nearest to the harmony that can sound forth from Theism, Intuitionism and Naturalism, while this harmony again is closest to the conjoined effect of the seven psychic moods; and these seven moods are shaded according to the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
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Contact Tom for help with study or other questions, comments and suggestions. Study Group information here. Google hates freedom so is censoring Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy and this site. Read article here. Peace Based on Freedom, Not Social Justice and its use of Force "Freedom is the only word which has a ring of immediate truth today… If, instead of such slogans as peace founded on justice, or peace imposed by force, people would only speak of peace based on freedom, then this word would echo round the world and kindle in the hearts of all a sense of security.
The time of decision is around the end of the Twentieth Century when we will either stand at the grave of civilization in a War of All against All or turn toward a spiritualized culture. Rudolf Steiner GA This means that concepts arise from within, rather than being abstracted or generalised from observations. He distinguishes four increasing levels of spiritual freedom that may result in action: 1 perceiving through the senses, where a perception is immediately linked to an action.
In summary then, spiritual freedom requires the development of intuitive or pure conceptual thinking level 4, above. This intuitive thinking can then be consciously applied to the whole of our life, so that our thoughts, feelings and deeds are in harmony with the world process.
The relevance of this worldview to contemporary education is explored below. Education for freedom: Steiner-Waldorf schools One of the aims of education is to engender spiritual freedom in young people. Thus we have in thinking a real possibility of taking hold of the world, provided that we can develop our thinking in such a way that it becomes free of conditioning and our own subjective, habitual conception of the world around us.
This kind of thinking gives us access to the spiritual content of the world and to the extent that our thinking is developed thus, we can say that in think- ing as well as through thinking we experience this spiritual dimension and are free. Actions based on intuitive thinking are therefore truly free actions. So how do we engender spiritual freedom through education? From the discussion above it seems that we must teach children from an early age to think about their own thinking, to develop their metacognitive abilities.
This view would certainly find support in the thinking skills literature, where there is evidence that teaching metacog- nition improves test scores Adey and Shayer ; see also Higgins and Baumfield ; McCrindle and Christenen ; Thinking Skills Review Group In a similar vein, Hay and Nye , ff.
However, I would argue that such an approach runs the risk of becoming instrumental and achieving the opposite effect to that it intended. This is because it is itself not conceived holistically. To put it differently, an apple tree produces apples out of itself, rather than by being fed apples.
It needs the right conditions to do this, such as sunlight, earth, water and air. I will briefly describe how Steiner applied his philosophy and the results of his later spiritual research to education. What is needed in the education of children to achieve freedom is the ability to develop this kind of thinking which involves also feeling and willing. Downloaded At: 14 April Nowhere does Steiner suggest that we should teach children intuitive thinking directly through special exercises.
Such exercises as he does suggest are typically aimed at adult readers. For example, the way in which thinking is developed through the SW curriculum is tuned into intuitive knowledge of amongst other things human development conceptualised in stages of roughly seven years. During the first stage the curriculum revolves around the development of the will.
Feeling provides the focus for the second seven years and thinking only comes into direct focus during the third seven years. The development of willing and feeling are thus seen as essential to a healthy ability to think and this is manifest in the different pedagogical approaches in each of the three stages e. Steiner , , The emphasis in SW schools on creative activities, such as rhythmic games, drawing, painting, music and movement, may give the impression that these schools foster innovation and original- ity, but while they may indeed do this, in actual fact the purpose of these activities lies much more in the development in pupils of willing, feeling and eventually intuitive thinking through the imaginative faculty, which may later foster moral imagination.
There are many further examples of particular aspect of SW schools that could be used to illustrate the way in which they are based not just on the need to develop intuitive thinking, but on insights into child development based on such thinking.
Some of these approaches could very easily be adopted in other schools, whereas other aspects of SW schools, such as their curriculum or organ- isation, are less easily transferable. The philosophy of freedom could be a reliable guidebook for teachers on this journey.
Conclusion: spiritual education for all? However, the nature of spiritual freedom itself can only be understood and experienced through a phenomenology of thinking. It gives a clear meaning to spirituality and embraces the definitions given in the introduction.
To go in search of evidence of spiritual development within the sense-perceptible world as Astley and Jackson [] suggested is then a naive realistic endeavour, Downloaded At: 14 April doomed to failure. Steiner shows the untenability of naive realism, except for think- ing itself. Any evidence of spirituality can thus only be found through intuitive thinking. Steiner-Waldorf schools embody a form of education based explicitly on a thor- oughly developed understanding of thinking and spirit.
In the twenty-first century it is becoming once more possible to talk about spirituality and to acknowledge that one important aim of education is to foster healthy spiritual development. Steiner- Waldorf education has, for almost 90 years, attempted to foster such development, not through a narrow instrumentalism, nor through religious indoctrination, but through a holistic education based on intuitively derived knowledge of the develop- ing human being.
Educational researchers interested in spirituality need to begin to take Steiner and SW Education seriously and engage in depth and breadth with both. Through such engagement it may become possible to develop an integrated approach to spiritual development for all schools, underpinning both curriculum and pedagogy. Oberski Acknowledgement I would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their constructive and encouraging criti- cal comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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