Michael Mount Waldorf School

Michael Mount Waldorf School is based on a century-old educational philosophy proven so successful that it has become one of the fastest-growing educational systems in the world. Here’s how it all started.

Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian scientist-philosopher who had articulated thought-provoking ideas on education in a series of public lectures and an influential 1907 essay titled ‘The Education of the Child’. The essay described the major phases of child development that formed the foundation of Steiner’s approach to education.

The Baby Care Programme at Michael Mount was started in direct response to calls from parents for a loving, gentle space run on Waldorf principles, to care for their babies.

“Most early education programs have been forced to accelerate the teaching of cognitive skills (which research is showing is inappropriate for these young children), while focusing less and less on their physical, emotional and social needs”. – Jane McCoy, BA, MA Curriculum Design, and a certified Waldorf teacher.

Babies do not distinguish between themselves and their surroundings. Michael Mount provides a safe haven where babies are slowly, gently introduced to the world.

Steiner believed that introducing abstract academic work too early in a child’s life was unhealthy for the development of that child. Children interact with their world through their senses. They get to know and understand the world by experiencing it – touching, tasting, smelling, seeing and hearing it – not by being told about it. There is no conscious analysis of the experience in the young child.

That’s why the Waldorf Nursery School curriculum is literally the provision of a deeply nurturing, friendly, playful, safe and predictable place. A place where imagination, creativity, kindness and friendships are encouraged in a non-academic setting. Activities are carefully structured to provide children with the best opportunities to fully experience their world through their senses.

While each Waldorf School is autonomous, all are connected by a consistent child development philosophy that is based on a careful study of how children change and develop. This philosophy underlies the Waldorf curriculum, which addresses the physical, emotional, intellectual, cultural and spiritual needs at each stage of a child’s unfolding development.

The Waldorf curriculum is unusually broad, offering a wide range of subjects – from mythology to botany and everything in between. It is developmentally appropriate, experiential, and yet academically rigorous. In South Africa, Waldorf schools also offer all standard subjects required by the Department of Education.

Curriculum topics are taught during an extended ‘main lesson’ for the first two hours of each morning, for a period of between 3 to 6 weeks – allowing an in-depth exploration of one subject at a time. The main lesson ties one topic to as many disciplines as possible. Each Main Lesson is rhythmically structured so that the children have to listen, work independently, participate and think at different times – involving the child in activities that awaken his or her powers of head (intellect), heart (feeling) and hands (doing). In Primary School, for instance, these activities could include mental maths, hand clapping games and jumping rope, folk dances, poetry recitation, singing, and writing and drawing in their ‘main lesson books’.

Main lesson books are books that each student makes for every topic studied. The book becomes a beautiful record of the child’s experience and understanding of the topic at hand. These are not books of pictures printed from the Internet or cut from publications: they are the children’s own artwork, research, poems and musings. By creating their own lesson books, Waldorf students come to ‘own’ the information and ideas that they study.

The aim of Waldorf education is not to turn any student into a professional mathematician, historian or artist, but to awaken and educate capacities that every human being needs – contributing to the development of a well-balanced individual. As such, all students are taught a full complement of subjects throughout their school years, including art, music, gardening, handwork, woodwork and metalwork – giving them the benefit of a wide, comprehensive education regardless of ability or inclination. Thus, the aspiring scientist learns to appreciate the beauty of artistic endeavor, while the budding artist discovers the inherent satisfaction of logic and reasoning.

Sport is an essential part of the Waldorf curriculum. Yet the approach to sport is fundamentally different from the way it is taught at conventional schools. To begin with, sporting activities are age-appropriate and match the child’s physical capabilities as well as emotional needs. Then there is the issue of competition. At Waldorf schools, there are no try-outs: any student wanting to participate is given an opportunity to practice, play and excel. There are no benchwarmers at games, either. All team members get to play. Contrary to what one would expect, Waldorf sports teams become powerful forces to be reckoned with – precisely because they are steeped in a spirit of generosity and inclusion.

In addition to extra-curricular sports, the Waldorf curriculum includes a regular program of physical education, sports and games designed to correspond with the child’s developmental needs, nurturing students to eventually face the challenge of competitive sports in a healthy way.