Quotes

”...Waldorf education remains to become better known to Americans. Other independent educational movements, much less thoroughgoing in their attempts to integrate at every level of education art, science, and an appreciation of the fully human, have curiously been given much more attention. At a time of searching and reappraisal in American education, the Waldorf Movement with its unique understanding of the education of the child and its years of teaching practice and institutional experience deserves the informed consideration of those genuinely concerned with education and the development of human wholeness.”

Douglas Sloan, Ph.D.
Professor
Columbia University

High School

High School Curriculum

Grade 12

Educate powers of synthesis

The senior year is intended to be the synthesis of the education and preparation for the next stage in learning. The senior curriculum serves both purposes by offering subjects that synthesize many themes: World History, History through Architecture, Anthropology, and Changing Consciousness. The students study the relationship of humanity with the world, and live with the thoughts of great writers who have questioned manís place in the world. Assignments call upon the students to synthesize disparate disciplines. The curriculum of the senior year not only recapitulates the themes of the high school, but also returns to the place where the first grade Waldorf curriculum begins, with the image of the whole, but with the expectation that now the student will truly “know the place for the first time.”

One strength of the Waldorf curriculum is the senior project. At the end of their junior year, the students pick a topic for independent study that will culminate in March of the senior year in a research paper, thirty to forty pages in length, and an oral presentation of their project before the entire high school, parents and friends, and, depending on the subject, some grade school classes. The completed project is also required to have an artistic component, which may involve a medium of their choice, and/or some form of performance. Previous senior projects have included Anorexia and the Solo Athlete; The Mexican Day of the Dead; Georgian Architecture; and The Changing View of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Grade 12 Curriculum

History Through Architecture
Transcendentalists
Russian Literature
The Human Being in the 20th Century
Calculus
Marine Biology
Optics
Chemistry IV
Internships
Foreign Language or Journalism or Science
Math Skills IV, Level A and B
English Skills
Human Form Drawing
Metals IV
Drama IV
Chorus
Music Elective
Eurythmy
Physical Education
Service Learning
Community Service
Senior Project