Learning from the Phenomenon – One's Whole Life Long

Everything that is merely explained and understood intellectually, everything that is learned by rote, is merely ticked and put to one side – making the world a little narrower each time. But we want the world to grow wider and bigger, so that new things can be learned all the time.

Emotional Experience…
 
Eyes full of awe shine like glimmering stars that glisten in the clear winter sky above the heads of the pupils. They forget the cold and strenuous night walks. The shapes of the constellations are sought and found in the sky with inner fire. The 12 year olds have got to know them just before in their first astronomy lesson, which is a block lesson of several weeks through the mythical stories of the Greeks. Then they learn to draw them, big ones like Hercules and Pegasus, or little ones like the flashing Lyre.

Full of reverence the pupils discover the pole star attached to the tail of the Little Bear, and astonished they observe how this star gives order to the movement of the constellations.
 
In front of the constellations of the Zodiac on the Southern horizon, Saturn and Jupiter in the ascendant stand out of the otherwise homogenous carpet of stars and are welcomed cheerfully by the pupils. The spectator could almost feel dizzy with all these stars if he didn’t find his point of reference where he stands himself. He himself is the centre and finds his own zenith in the vertical imaginary line above himself.

… as a basis for independent thinking
 
Strongly-felt emotional experience and the constant practice of a phenomenological way of looking at things, build the basis for the inner engagement that the pupils will need 5 years later in class 11 when they will work towards the understanding of the laws of the helio-centric world view. Now they are asked to strive to penetrate with independent thinking the many interwoven rhythms of our planetary system. In doing so a step is reenacted for which even the wisest of human beings needed 1000s of years, but the wonder remains. Feelings of awe, reverence and love are the soil in which the sense of discovery, interest in the world around and the will for lifelong learning can grow.

Waldorf education meets the child as no other education. Learning, whether it be chemistry mathemetics, history or chemistry, is saturated with joy, which is the only possible basis for later studies in life. Education grows with life and so the Waldorf pupil draws from it for many years to come. When they come to college or to university, these students have an all-encompassing and deep basis for learning, as well as remarkable enthusiasm.
 
Dr. A. Zajonc, Associate Professor of Physics, Amherst College, USA