Toward a
Relationally-Informed
Steiner Education
Attachment-based continuing education and support for Waldorf-inspired homeschoolers
“What do we need to do so that education can have a heart again?”
-Rudolf Steiner
Just over a century ago, Rudolf Steiner placed a query before the teachers of the first Waldorf school: “What do we need to do so that education can have a heart again?”
Here, at the HOMESCHOOLER’s Hearth, it is our observation that the relational-developmental approach of Dr. Gordon Neufeld, often referred to as “a psychology of the heart,” not only dovetails beautifully with Steiner’s yearnings for humanity, but also provides critical and timely answers to this seminal question of Steiner’s regarding education.*
Could Neufeld’s work a missing link in Waldorf education?
We think so and here’s part of the reason why….
The relational fabric of attachment in modern society and how it works on children’s brain and overall development has undergone notable change as a result of a century of mechanistic psychology getting the upper hand in many aspects of our culture, including education.
More specifically, the cultural milieu in which Rudolf Steiner offered his insights was one in which certain critical relational attachment dynamics were operating more robustly than they are in most places in the world today. As such, it is not actually possible to take many of Steiner’s educational indications and apply them directly today, without consideration of the social and spiritual tapestry of relational attachment in which they were offered.
Dr. Neufeld’s decades of work in the field of human development and his view of the human being is, like Rudolf Steiner’s, genuinely holistic as it reclaims and celebrates the role of Nature in human development. As Developmentalists, both Steiner and Neufeld honour the natural processes that work on and within children to grow them up.
“In a developmental approach, we assume that there’s order in the universe. …[we] start off from an incredible faith in Nature… that Nature has its reasons.”
-Gordon Neufeld
When Waldorf parents and educators behold the children before them through a relational-developmental lens; that is, when they incorporate and understanding of the psycho-emotional attachment needs that drive development in earthly life and ensure that thinking, feeling and willing unfold within the safe womb of relational attachment, learning and maturation can truly unfold according to Nature’s directives.
In light of Neufeld’s contributions, Steiner’s insights into the developing child, such as consideration of the seven year cycles, take on even richer tones. In turn, Waldorf caregivers become renewed in their ability to create the ideal conditions for the Pedagogy to have its intended influence.
A relational-developmental view of the human being also sheds new light on the relational underpinnings of Waldorf principles such as rhythm and imitation, as well as long-standing quandaries within the movement. These include, but are not limited to: understanding the source (and resolution) of bullying behaviours, addressing tricky “class management” issues, identifying past trauma and attachment-related factors in assessments for Grade One readiness, resolving communication challenges and enhancing community-building initiatives by way of a more thorough understanding of the natural dynamics of human defendedness and attachment.
