Reading Course

Knowledge Breaks the Chains of Slavery: Literacy Campaign Poster from the Soviet Union, ca 1930s

This Workshop With Eugene Schwartz
Will Be Streaming Online from
Friday, March 21, through Sunday, March 23

Listen and Watch the Presentations Anytime During the Weekend
Register Now
Tuition: $150.00

Is the Waldorf “slow reading” idea out of sync with our fast-moving times? Under increasing pressure from parents, administrators, and their own colleagues, growing numbers of Waldorf teachers are moving children more rapidly and systematically into writing and reading. Eugene Schwartz contends that these results-based approaches risk compromising essential principles of Waldorf pedagogy. With this in mind, he begins this course with the study of the eye and the ear, and not the brain. Eugene shares some surprising insights into the inner nature of Rudolf Steiner's literacy methodology, and also offers help to teachers unhappy with off-the-shelf reading programs that have been copied and pasted onto their school's curriculum.

About Eugene Schwartz

Part One:
Seeing, Hearing, Learning

Lecture 1
The Human Eye

The embryology and physiology of the eye. The ongoing work of the etheric body upon the eye. Foveal and peripheral vision: the part and the whole. The effect of early reading on life forces and eyesight.
[Running Time: 1 hr, 15 min]

Lecture 2
The Human Ear

The embryology and physiology of the ear. The role of the astral body in our breath and speech. The ear and the larynx. The oral tradition and the Word.
[Running Time: 50 min]

Lecture 3
The Interplay of Seeing and Hearing

The eye and the ear as reflections of the outer and inner worlds of human experience. The spiral path of balance. A new dynamic of seeing and hearing:
Eurythmy and Speech Formation
[Running Time: 50 min]

Part Two:
Paths to Reading and Writing

Lecture 4
The Scenic Route
to Reading and Writing

The Waldorf approach to writing and reading. Is literacy a skill? A subject? A Threshold? Comparing Steiner's indications with contemporary "evidence-based" methods. The teacher's insights versus scripted instruction. The role of the etheric body in Early Childhood Education and the Primary Grades. Is resisting reading a protective gesture? Today's Waldorf teacher may have to serve the role of an angel in the child's life.

[Running Time: 1 hr, 25 min]

Lecture 5
The Hitchhiker's Guide
to Literacy

It may be that you are teaching in a school that has enthusiastically adopted a "results-based" approach to literacy and you are given no choice but to work with it. What are your options? Your inner life and the relationship you make to the soul life of every student you teach can mitigate or counterbalance the harm caused by mechanical methodologies that have been grafted onto the Waldorf curriculum.
[Running Time: 1 hr, 6 min]

Part Three:
A Video

Reading, Writing, Recapitulation
A Video Slideshow About the Historical Evolution of Literacy

Eugene Schwartz created this video slideshow for teachers taking part in the Online Grade One Conference, but they, in turn, asked that it be made more widely available so that Waldorf parents, administrators, and teachers could also view this provocative presentation.

[Running Time: 45 min]

Part Four:
Resources for Further Research

Included are links to a video with Raine Springer introducing primary grades songs and games, a handwritten "first reader," galleries of Waldorf student main lesson book work, access to free articles by Eugene Schwartz, and more.

iWaldorf