The Roots of Education

5 lectures, Bern, April 13-17, 1924 (CW 309)

These lectures on Waldorf education were given as a course during Easter week, 1924, in Bern. Although these talks were given more than eighty years ago, they remain remarkably contemporary. Every word still resonates with passion and dedication to the human adventure.

"We must develop an art of education that can lead us out of the social chaos into which we have fallen during the last few years and decades.... There is no escaping this chaos unless we can find a way to bring spirituality into human souls through education, so that human beings may find a way to progress and to further the evolution of civilization out of the spirit itself" (Rudolf Steiner).

At the time of these lectures, Steiner had only eleven months left to live in this world. The first Waldorf school had been established five years earlier, and the intervening period witnessed Steiner's tireless activity in every area of that school's life. Now it was, in a sense, time to bring the ripe fruit of this work to the public.

Together with its companion course The Essentials of Education, presented three days earlier, this book provides a stimulating synthesis of the Waldorf approach to education. Teachers, parents, and anyone interested in education will discover the fundamental characteristics of a new art of education.

These lectures are contained in the German edition Anthroposophische Pädagogik und ihre Voraussetzungen (GA 309).