How is the developmental theory of childhood reflected in Waldorf classrooms? The school day begins with a long, uninterrupted lesson. One subject is the focus; the class deals with it in-depth each morning, or several weeks at a time. This long main lesson-- which may well run for two hours--allows the teacher to develop a wide variety of activities around the subject at hand. In the younger grades lively rhythmic activities get the circulation going and bring children together as a group; they recite poems connected with the main lesson, practice tongue twisters to limber up speech, and work with concentration exercises using body movements.

After the day's lesson, which includes a review of earlier learning, students record what they
learned in their notebooks. Following recess, teachers present shorter "run-through" lessons with a strongly recitational character. Foreign languages are customarily taught from first grade on, and these lend themselves well to these later morning periods. Afternoons are devoted to lessons in which the whole child is active: eurythmy (artistically guided movement to music and speech, handwork, art, or gym, for example. Thus the day has a rhythm that helps overcome fatigue and enhances balanced learning.

Class teachers continue with a class from one year to the next, ideally, right through elementary school. With rare exceptions these teachers lead the main lesson at the beginning of each day. Other teachers handle special subjects, but the class teachers provide the continuity so often lacking in our disjointed world today. The class teacher and the children get to know each other very well, and it is this teacher who becomes the school's closest link with the parents of that class. When problems arise, the strong child/teacher/parent bond helps all involved work things through instead of handing the problem on to someone else.

This experience of class community is both challenging and deeply rewarding to teachers. Having to prepare new subject matter as their students get older from year to year is a guarantee against going stale. Children begin to see that a human being can strive for a unity of knowledge and experience.

When children reach high school age, the pupil-teacher relationship changes specialist teachers replace the class teacher.

The Ascending Spiral of Knowledge

The curriculum at a Waldorf school can be seen as an ascending spiral: the long lessons that begin each day, the concentrated blocks of study that focus on one subject for several weeks. Physics, for example, is introduced in the sixth grade and continued each year as a main lesson block until graduation.

As the students mature, they engage themselves at new levels of experience with each subject. It is as though each year they come to a window on the ascending spiral that looks out into the world through the lens of a particular subject. Through the main lesson spiral curriculum, teachers lay the ground for a gradual vertical integration that deepens and widens each subject experience and, at the same time, keeps it moving with the other aspects of knowledge.

All students participate in all basic subjects regardless of their special aptitudes. The purpose of studying a subject is not to make a student into a professional mathematician, historian, or biologist, but to awaken and educate capacities that every human being needs. Naturally, one student is more gifted in math and another in science or history, but the mathematician needs the humanities, and the historian needs math and science. The choice of a vocation is left to the free decision of the adult, but one's early education should give one a palette of experience from which to choose the particular colors that one's interests, capacities, and life circumstances allow. In a Waldorf high school, older students pursue special projects and elective subjects and activities, nevertheless: the goal remains: each subject studied should contribute to the development of a well-balanced individual.

If the ascending spiral of the curriculum offers a "vertical integration" from year to year, an
equally important "horizontal integration" enables students to engage the full range of their faculties at every stage of development. The arts and practical skills play an essential part in the educational process throughout the grades. They are not considered luxuries, but fundamental to human growth and development.