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  Center & Periphery The Online Newsletter of the Center for Anthroposophy   Fall | 2021    In This Issue    Dateline Amherst, MA: Feeling Blue  Dateline Keene, NH: “Paying Forward” for Explorations International  Dateline Wilton, NH:Exploring Relations with Parents  Dateline Conway, NH:Speech and Self-Development in a Forest Glade  Dateline Keene, NH:From Renewal to Remediation  Dateline Wilton, NH: Renewal in New Hands  Dateline Keene, NH:New Training Course for School Leaders and Administrators  Dateline Wilton, NH: Preparing to Teach Science in a Waldorf High School  Dateline Wilton, NH:Where Are They Now?  Dateline Wilton, NH:A New Vision for Alumni of CfA and Antioch programs   From the Editor’s Notepad The word “new” keeps cropping up in this issue of our three-yearly newsletter: new leadership, new programs, new formats, new ideas about funding, and the formation of a new institute. And yet, the temporal and transitional is framed by the eternal and the enduring. We invite you to explore this juxtaposition of timely and timeless. –– Douglas Gerwin Executive DirectorCenter for Anthroposophy Dateline Amherst, MA: Feeling Blue Now and again, you may come across a remark by Rudolf Steiner in which he captures an infinitely complicated and seemingly ephemeral reality in simple down-to-earth words that speak across the centuries to the immediate needs of our time. Here is such an example:  Now I must show you how we can arrive at such an assumption that behind our physical nature there is an etheric or life body—strictly speaking, an etheric or life world—that is a multiplicity of differentiated beings. To express how we can arrive at this, I can clothe it in simple words: we are more and more able to recognize the etheric or life world behind physical nature when we begin to have a moral feeling and perception of the world around us.  What do I mean by perceiving or sensing the whole world morally? First of all, we direct our gaze upward from the Earth into the ranges of cosmic space from which the blue of the sky comes to meet us. Suppose we look upward into this blue sky spread out above us on a day when there are no clouds, not even the faintest, silver-white cloudlet. Whether we recognize it in the physical sense as something real or not, does not matter. The point is the impression that this wide expanse of the blue heavens makes upon us.  Suppose that we can yield ourselves up to this blue of the sky, and that we do this with intensity for a long, long time. Imagine that we can do this in such a way that we forget everything else that we know in life and all that is around us. Suppose that we are able, for one moment, to forget all external impressions, all memories, all cares and troubles of life, and can yield ourselves completely to the single impression of the blue heavens.  What I am now saying to you can be experienced by every human soul that fulfills the necessary conditions; this can be a common human experience. Suppose a human soul gazes in this way at nothing but the blue of the sky. A certain moment then comes when the blue of the sky ceases to be blue—when we no longer see blue or anything that can be called “blue” in human language.  If we turn our attention to our own soul at that moment when the blue ceases to be blue to us, an infinity arises before us, and in this infinity we experience a quite definite mood. A quite definite feeling, a quite definite sensation pours itself into the emptiness that arises where the blue had been before.  If we would give a name to this soul feeling, or sensation, and to what would soar out there into infinite distances, there is only one word for it: devotion, a devout feeling in our soul, a feeling of pious devotion toward infinity.  —Rudolf Steiner,Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature [CW 136; Lecture 1 of 10 given in Helsinki,  3-14 April 1912]   Dateline Keene, NH: Paying Forward for Explorations International “Explorations”, CfA’s popular online program of foundational studies, is drawing a growing number of participants from around the world. Many of them, however, face the yawning gap between their level of income and the value of their currencies when set against the U.S. dollar. Torin Finser, President of the CfA Board of Trustees, outlines a way to help bridge this gap.   Thanks to an increasing number of donors to our annual appeal last year, we were able to award several diversity scholarships to eligible candidates for their teacher training. Recipients of these funds were most grateful for this new form of assistance, and our diversity fund will continue this year. At the same time, we recognize how few of these candidates generally apply to our teacher education programs, thereby limiting the scope of this new initiative.   By contrast, our Explorations Program, now fully online this year, has become much more accessible, thus increasing both the number of participants (we grew from 40 to over 100 this past year) and the scope of diversity. We are now planning to launch our first-ever international Explorations Program, thanks to active conversations with interested groups in Indonesia, Kenya, Denmark, and other parts of the world.   We hope that many will be attracted to this trend-setting program, which provides prerequisite foundational studies for prospective and practicing teachers (see program flyer here).  If we can reach an even wider audience through Explorations, we can expect to increase the diversity of applicants wishing to become Waldorf teachers and, in this way, better serve our schools.  We will also need to determine an appropriate level of tuition for those who apply from other countries while still paying in U.S. dollars. This very real challenge affords us an opportunity to finally implement an aspect of social finance we have long yearned to initiate. Simply put, it is the concept of “paying forward”.   We propose that if we can raise the money needed for our first international Explorations cohort (approximately $30,000) through the generosity of […]

Download the flyer below to learn more.

When: Oct. 6th, 2021, 3 PM to 5 PM Where: Waldorf School of Cape Cod 22 Tupper Rd. Sandwich, MA What: Are you a teacher or parent interested in earning an AWSNA recognized teaching certificate in Waldorf? An accredited MEd? This workshop is for you if you have ever thought about becoming a Waldorf educator. Join us to learn about the opportunity to be part of a Waldorf training program called Building Bridges to Waldorf. Building Bridges is a series of workshops in Waldorf education that engages students in lively presentations, group discussions, self-development, and classroom arts. The content of these courses will include foundational course work in preparation for further Waldorf teacher training at Antioch University New England (AUNE). Weekends are designed to accommodate working teachers. This workshop will be presented by Torin Finser, Ph.D., President of Center for Anthroposophy Board of Trustees, Director of Waldorf Programs at Antioch University New England

Dear Friends: Over the years, CfA has pioneered a growing number of different programs related to Waldorf education, from introductory courses and teacher preparation to administrative training and ongoing rejuvenation – seven programs in all. In this issue of our online newsletter, we briefly showcase their latest offerings and most recent innovations. And we examine a basic right of all students. — Douglas Gerwin Executive Director Center for Anthroposophy Dateline Amherst, MA: The Right to Write In barely a generation, students have reversed the order in which they learn to write and to type. Douglas Gerwin, Executive Director of the Center for Anthroposophy (CfA), explores what happens when keyboard replaces cursive. The last time I wrote out a major-length paper by hand was during the early 1980s, when I was working on my graduate dissertation. Under pressure of time, I disciplined myself to compose some ten pages per day––or 50 pages a week––so that in eight weeks I had completed a first draft of the manuscript.  To speed the process, I placed a typewriter at my elbow in order, with minimum distraction, to keep a running tab of footnote references and supplementary remarks.  However, notwithstanding impending deadlines, I opted to write––at times to scribble––the body of the dissertation itself in long-hand. At the time, it was quite evident to me that the tone and style arising from long-hand cursive (or sometimes my short-handed approximation of cursive) were quite different from the more clipped tone and style of the typed footnotes. At some level I was aware that linking one letter to another by hand was helping me construct an argument in which one thought was linked (“seamlessly”, I hoped my dissertation advisor would say) to the next. Footnoting, by contrast, did not require that kind of textual weaving. Only after a final edit did I undertake the weary task of converting the written manuscript into a 391-page typed document. Were I to engage in such a project today, I would doubtless opt for the convenience of a computer –– not least because of that convenient button labeled “delete”, to say nothing of the time-savers “cut” and “paste”. In retrospect, however, I am grateful that I chose to compose that thesis on a notepad, rather than an electronic Notebook.  Nowadays, in light of government-mandated Common Core standards, I read with alarm how cursive has been dropped as a curricular requirement in many schools (to be precise, Common Core remains silent on this issue), though several states––among them California, Idaho, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee––have opted to give cursive another look. One reason to be alarmed is that, according to William Klemm, a neuro-scientist at Texas A&M University, writing in cursive makes kids smarter.  below“Cursive writing, compared to printing,” he concludes, is more beneficial “because the movement tasks are more demanding, the letters are less stereotypical, and the visual-recognition requirements create a broader repertoire of letter representation.” His is not the only voice to speak up for the merits of cursive writing, though there are others who challenge his conclusions. But the National Association of State Boards of Education, for one, stands with Professor Klemm: it has issued a report saying that cursive helps develop memory, fine motor skills, and better expression.   belowKlemm’s conclusions are further supported by a study in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, which reports that children who practice cursive writing show improved symbol recognition, leading to a heightened ability to read fluently. The study’s published fMRI scans show that physically writing the letters by hand links visual processing and motor experience, thereby strengthening students’ ability to recognize––and later to write––words and sentences. Writing by hand also improves memory and comprehension among adults. According to a study published in the journal Psychological Science, college students who take notes longhand write less but remember more than those who type their notes on a laptop. However, even those elementary schools that retain cursive in their curriculum are giving their students less time to practice it. Catholic schools, famous for emphasizing penmanship, are devoting considerably less class time these days to this skill. Instead of getting it for a half hour or so a day––or roughly 7 1/2 hours per week––students may get 15 minutes’ practice three times a week. That comes to less than an hour a week, or a tenth of the time once allotted to this exercise.  Meg Kursonis, principal at St. Peter Central Catholic Elementary School in Worcester, nevertheless points to research that comprehension and retention improves among students who write in cursive. “Students who print or type on a keyboard see individual letters when writing,” she says, “whereas cursive writers see the word as a whole, using the bridges and circular movements to join letters for connectivity. Seeing the whole word also helps them to be better spellers.” Meanwhile, an online poll by Harris Interactive reports that 79 percent of adult respondents––and even 68 percent of kids, ages 8-18––feel cursive should still be taught in school. Nearly half the adults polled (49%) and more than a third of the kids (35%) said that practicing reading and writing in cursive improved literacy.  Regardless of what schools decide about their curricula, most children these days begin to peck their way around the keyboard of a computer or smartphone long before they enter school and years before they are handed their first pen (if indeed they are handed a pen in school at all). And even when––in some cases we may need to say if––they pick up a pen, a growing number of children don’t even attempt to learn cursive, since they are allowed to remain with printing as they exercise their writing skills. Some teachers worry that students may leave school unable to sign their name in cursive.  What does this developmental switch––from writing or printing to typing or keyboarding––imply for future generations of writers –– and of thinkers? At a superficial level, one could say that they will not be able to decipher great historical documents such […]

Lauren Morley, one of our Antioch alums and a former member of our Renewal team, reads a fairytale. 

Dear Reader, It has been just over a year since news of the Covid-19 virus first began to encircle the world. Beyond its impact on human life and society, this pandemic has in short order radically upturned the way we teach children. In this issue we explore some of the human undercurrents coursing beneath the flow of events and peer ahead to see how teacher education will look during the coming year in light of the outbreak. You will also be brought up to date on several new programs–ands faces–at CfA and Antioch, as well as the latest news from the Leadership Group of our new Alumni Association. We invite you to join us on this retro- and pro-spective journey. Meanwhile, we wish you good health and continued strength for the remainder of this exceptional school year. — Douglas Gerwin Executive Director Center for Anthroposophy Dateline Amherst, MA: Teaching in the Age of Coronavirus Perhaps even more widespread than the current Covid-19 outbreak is a pandemic of fear and anxiety reaching down from adults into the lives of young people and arresting their ability to learn. As a long-time high school teacher, Douglas Gerwin reflects on a root cause and possible remedy for today’s youth. In teaching high school students, I encounter fewer cases of truculent teenagers who say, “I won’t!” and many more cases of trepid students who say, “I can’t.” We have entered a new age of heightened mental and emotional–to some extent even physical–paralysis. Rudolf Steiner predicted more than a century ago that we would find ourselves living in an age of ever more heightened anxiety. In a widely-read lecture known in English as “Overcoming Nervousness”, Steiner characterized a worldwide outbreak of fear and stress that was already gripping people during his time. “Everywhere,” he told a German audience some six years before the outbreak of the Spanish flu epidemic, “something like nervousness is present.” He went on: All this will, in the near future, grow worse and worse for people. If people remain as they are, then a good outlook for the future cannot by any means be offered. For there are harmful influences that affect our current life in a quite extraordinary way and that carry over from one person to the other like an epidemic. Therefore, people become a bit diseased in this direction: not only the ones who have the illness, but also others, who are perhaps only weak but otherwise healthy, get it by a kind of infection. Today, even more all-encompassing than the current pandemic attributed to new strains of the coronavirus, we live in an atmosphere of nameless anxiety that intensifies in our students–as in ourselves–an arresting stenosis of soul. In this same lecture, delivered fully seven years before the opening of the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Steiner criticised educators who induce a condition of pedagogical terror in their students by prompting them to cram for what today we would call “high stakes testing”. However, never one to leave his audience in a state of despair or hopelessness, Steiner spent the rest of this lecture outlining no fewer than ten practical exercises on how we as adults can come to grips with what is by now a worldwide psychological affliction. This very matter-of-fact lecture can be found here: https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19120111p01.html In this context, we need to ask: Given that students are growing up in an age of societal anxiety–a condition exacerbated by the use of smart phones and the Internet, which have been shown to arouse stress right down to a neurological and hormonal level–how are they to be educated? And how best to prepare their teachers to educate them? Step for a moment into the shoes of a student and you will recognize that, if you are suffering an intensified state of stress or anxiety, you will probably be unwilling, or simply unable, to learn anything new until you feel safe in your place of learning. In a condition of heightened stress, you are more likely instead to protect and defend what you know and shut out or simply ignore what you don’t know or can’t control. Cramming for a school test represents an archetypal example of this condition. While feeling the pressure to organize and retain what you have been told, it is simply too risky to explore an unfamiliar perspective or be open to the epiphany of new insight. More generally, if students don’t feel safe, they won’t move, which is to say that in order to move or be moved–whether outwardly in physical activity or inwardly in soul and spirit–they first need to feel safe. We can say, therefore, that in educating our students we need first to make sure they move. But here’s the rub: whatever pressure an adult exerts on a student from without will inevitably create anxiety in that student, who will feel–rightly–the alien source of this pressure. Though in younger years children need to be steered towards healthy situations and protected from harmful ones, by the time they are young adults movement needs to arise more from within, not be induced from without. In the end, all healthy movement arises from within, even if it is initially stimulated from without. This is the secret of the free human will, easily overlooked because clouded in unconsciousness and, among younger children, still largely undeveloped. With the exception of the reflex–an autonomic (and hence entirely unfree) reaction to the stimulation of the nervous system–healthy movement originates from within the human being, even if it is in response to outer guidance. Only when the kid moves will the kid learn. By the same token, as children grow into teenagers, loving guidance administered from without must give way to inner self-direction and a sense of confidence if something is to be regarded as truly “learned”. As we know from learning to ride a bicycle, you cannot claim to have learned the skill of balancing if your training wheels are still attached. Though the development of this […]