Ch. 2 from Partnerships of Hope, Building Waldorf School Communities by Christopher Schaefer

Underlying this description of the life cycle of Waldorf schools are a number of principles.  The first is that all institutions are human creations; they are created by people with an idea in response to a perceived need.  In the case of Waldorf schools, this need is a sense that the children in a given community or region want Waldorf education. The second principle is that schools, and indeed all organizations, are living entities, with phases of adaptation, growth, crisis and development .  This means that organic metaphors such as seed, stalk, bud and flower; or birth childhood, adulthood and old age are more relevant to the biography of schools than mechanical images such as that of an input-output system, a clockwork mechanism or a well- running engine. (View as PDF...)