The School
What is Steiner Education?
The Edinburgh Rudolf Steiner School offers the internationally recognised Steiner Waldorf curriculum. This is a curriculum that, although first established in 1919, is increasingly valued for its innovative approach with current research frequently validating what has long been the practice in Steiner schools throughout the world.
The Steiner Waldorf curriculum is essentially holistic and spans the age range from 31/2-18 years. It places strong emphasis on integrating art, crafts, drama and music, with science also taught using a creative approach. It addresses all the multiple intelligences, including emotional literacy and kinaesthetic learning, and brings into balance the attributes of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This means that in addition to developing analytical, logical and reasoning skills as education has always done, it also focuses on the development of imagination, creativity, memory and flexible thinking skills – the so called ‘soft skills’ that are so much in demand in the 21st century.
The Steiner curriculum is based on an in-depth understanding of the development of human nature and of how children learn at different stages in their lives – factors which have stayed relatively constant despite the rapid rate of change around us. As a result the schools have not experienced the many radical changes that mainstream schools have undergone over the past forty years and the approach in Steiner schools remains broadly similar to that found in the earliest schools. That the ideas behind Steiner education are still highly relevant, some would say vital, to a 21st century economy, reveals just how far ahead of its time the education was when it first began.