Education in Search of the Spirit: Essays on American Education

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SteinerBooks, 1996 - Всего страниц: 236

Real education will always seek to strengthen what is best in the human soul: its longing for the experience of spiritual truth that brings into the self an objective appreciation of the noble aspects of its own nature, together with a subjective sense of real affinity with the rest of humanity, the earth planet as a whole, and the great cosmos above and beyond.

The premise of this book is that a human being is a being of body, soul, and spirit, whose core is "eternal spirit," from which center one should strive to live. From this perspective, the aim of true education is to help our children activate this deepest center in themselves. For this, living, intuitive thinking must be brought to life in a new way. The organ for such thinking is the heart, where will and feeling join in uniting self and world, morality and truth, love and action.

This book is in three parts. The first poses the problem; the second describes the Waldorf approach as a solution; and the third deals with questions of special interest to parents and educators alike, such as authority, discipline, and freedom; the nature of "genius"; and the question of cultural pluralism.

The first edition of this book was titled "The Experience of Knowledge" in response to a clear call for experience in education. Certainly, if the sole purpose of education is to acquire information, learning becomes dry, abstract, and deadening. To have meaningful consequence in a person's life, "coming to know" must become an experience. Too often, however, such experience is understood simply as doing -- field trips, class projects, and so on. But "doing," if unconnected to the whole person, is just activity. To become true experience, it must speak out of, and toward, a student's secret center: the spirit. Hence, the author affirms that authentic education is always in search of the spirit.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
7
INTRODUCTION
17
PART
29
PART
69
PART THREE
115
AFTERWORD
169
APPENDICES
177
BIBLIOGRAPHY
235
Авторские права

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Стр. 43 - It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily ; and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men.
Стр. 70 - THERE was a child went forth every day, And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became, And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
Стр. 110 - The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing how or why; in short to draw a new circle.
Стр. 196 - There is only one solution to his problem: to face the truth, to acknowledge his fundamental aloneness and solitude in a universe indifferent to his fate, to recognize that there is no power transcending him which can solve his problem for him. Man must accept the responsibility for himself and the fact that only by using his own powers can he give meaning to his life.
Стр. 193 - The function of the inner man is to provide an explanation which will not be explained in turn. Explanation stops with him. He is not a mediator between past history and current behavior, he is a center from which behavior emanates.
Стр. 224 - For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.
Стр. 205 - But it is also behavior, and we account for it in terms of other variables in the environment and history of the individual. It is these variables which provide the ultimate control.
Стр. 98 - O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.

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