Rudolf steiner theory child development
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Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to his life and work by Gary Lachman
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John Lanigan tunes into Rudolf Steiner thanks to Gary Lachman.
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an educationalist whose name is increasingly familiar to parents today. The hundreds of Steiner and Waldorf schools inspired by his ideas are highly regarded for their stress on nurturing the creativity of young children through structured play. Some of the other better-known initiatives arising from Steiner’s work are bio-dynamic agriculture and the Camphill schools and villages for people with special needs. Many parents are vaguely aware that Steiner also had some idiosyncratic notions of a spiritual nature, but relatively few know or care much about them. Any who are curious could do much worse than read Gary Lachman’s excellent new biograph
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Life Dates
Rudolf Steiner was born in Kraljevec, Austria-Hungary (currently Croatia) on February 27, 1861, of Austrian parents. A quiet, introverted child, he spent most of his childhood and youth in a beautiful mountainous region of Austria, surrounded by natural beauty but immersed in the new technologies of telegraph and railway through his father. He attended high school in Wiener-Neustadt, near Vienna. In addition to his school subjects Steiner privately studied high-level mathematics and physics, Ancient Greek and Latin, and the scientific and philosophical works of the major German idealists and Romantics. Between 1879 and 1883, he completed his undergraduate studies at the Vienna Institute of Technology, during which time he worked as a private tutor and editor. In 1891, he completed his Doctorate at Rostock University, Germany, on Truth and Knowledge: The Fundamentals of a Theory of Cognition with Special Reference to Fichte’s Scientific Teaching. While still an undergraduate...
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Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner was a philosopher and social reformer born in Austria in 1861. He obtained a PhD from the University of Rostock and was a well-known thinker, speaker and author. Living at a time of great social upheaval and conflict his work aimed to create the conditions for a more cohesive and less fragmented society.
Anthroposophy
A belief in spiritualism and an afterlife was a popular concept in late 19th and early 20th century Europe when society was less secular that today. It provided hope that there was more to existence than the hard material life that most people were experiencing and provided an alternative to organised religion. Steiner's work was based on the notion of a spiritual dimension in oneself, others and the world that can be developed through working on creating higher states of spiritual knowledge. That by re-gaining this knowledge it would help people find solutions to the problems faced by the modern world.
This led to his development of Anthroposophy which is a 'spiritual philosophy' that supported the broadening of
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