The Roots of Education

These five lectures on Waldorf education were given as a course during Easter week in Bern in 1924. Although they were delivered more than seventy years ago, they are remarkably contemporary. Every word still resonates with passion and dedication to the human adventure. "We must develop an art of education that can lead us out of the social chaos into which we have fallen during the last few years and decades. . . . there is no escaping this chaos unless we can find a way to bring spirituality into human souls through education, so that human beings may find a way to progress and to further the evolution of civilization out of the spirit itself."When he gave these lectures, Rudolf Steiner had only eleven months left to live. The first Waldorf School had been founded five years before and the intervening period had seen Steiner active in every aspect of school life. Now, in a sense, it was time to bring the ripe fruit of this work before the public.Together with its companion course The Essentials of Education (given three days before), The Roots of Education provides a stimulating synthesis of the Waldorf approach. Teachers, parents, and anyone interested in education will find here the fundamental characteristics of the process of a new art of education.