Quotes

“We shouldn’t ask: what does a person need to know or be able to do in order to fit into the existing social order? Instead we should ask: what lives in each human being and what can be developed in him or her? Only then will it be possible to direct the new qualities of each emerging generation into society. The society will become, what young people as whole human beings, make out of the existing social conditions. The new generation should not just be made to be what the present society wants it to become.”

Rudolf Steiner

High School

High School Curriculum

Grade 11

Educate powers of analysis through deeper, more individualized study.

In the Eleventh Grade new found depths in the inner life of thoughts, feelings and deeds arise; deep, existential questions may begin to burn. The student feels the call to find his/her own path in life. The curriculum for the junior year allows the student to investigate the invisible recesses of life within by the study of those subjects that draw the student into areas of study not accessible to the experience of the senses. Such a journey requires a new type of thinking, not anchored only in senses impressions, and a confidence in the power of this abstract thinking.

In literature, this journey is captured in the morning lesson block devoted to the Grail legends. In science, the students study the history of chemistry and the development of the periodic table, an insight based on intuition, and the invisible world of the atom and of electricity in physics. In geometry, the meeting point of parallel lines at infinity can be thought, but never reached in the world of the senses.

In all of these subjects, the dimensions of the classroom are vastly enlarged to embrace the farthest reaches of the universe, realms that can be reached only in the imagination. These subjects pose a central question intended to strengthen the powers of independent analysis and abstract theorizing: the questions of why? Why are things this way? Why did the events of history take this course? Even deeper questions, those of destiny, purpose in life, and social responsibility also find their way into the classroom.

Grade 11 Curriculum

Medieval History
History Through Music
History of the Enlightenment
Dante
Parzival
Projective Geometry
Electricity and Magnetism
Chemistry III
Astronomy
Life Sciences III
Foreign Language or Journalism or Science
Math Skills III, Level A and B
English Skills III
Landscape Painting
Bookbinding
Stone Carving
Metals III
Drama III
Chorus
Music Elective
Eurythmy
Physical Education
Service Learning
Community Service