For the well-being of the child
International Forum for Steiner/Waldorf Education and European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education
The Goetheanum is a place of exchange and coordination of professional fields. However, high-caliber committees rarely meet as from 10 to 12 November, when the leaders of the Christian Community with the Goetheanum leadership and the secretaries general of the Anthroposophical Societies got together for the first time. (Anthroposophie weltweit Nr. 12/2017). On 18./19. November there was an exchange of two educational committees: International Forum for Steiner/Waldorf Education (formerly: Hague Circle) and European Council for Steiner Waldorf Education (ECSWE), in this case not for the first time.
While the International Forum addresses educational and social issues worldwide, ECSWE has a political impact in the EU. For example, in cooperation with the Alliance for Childhood, it ensures that the best interests of children are also guaranteed in the EU.
Finding a well-balanced relationship between wholeness and fragmentation was among the issues discussed. This, for example, refers to a tendency in Waldorf institutions to form their own grade level conferences (kindergarten, lower, middle and upper grades) - with the risk that the overall context will get lost and thus the view on the objectives across age groups. Using the example of South Africa, it became clear that this trend is being reinforced by an increasing number of government guidelines, so that a teacher will have to complete up to four professional trainings, thus destroying the wholeness of the school's development from day nursery to 12th grade.
Another issue was the need for schools to examine students in a defined frequency. However, these testings only consider a performance in certain test situations and not the overall performance throughout the year.
Sebastian Jüngel