Steiner Education, a Lighthouse for the Forgotten Chinese Pedagogical Wisdom

• In Event: A Vital Life Force Approach to Reanimate Nature and to Build Equality and Respect Among All People

Abstract

Objectives or purposes

Steiner education is on the rise in China. Our paper will examine Steiner’s educational ideas and its specific importance to contemporary China. We suggest Steiner education offers a pathway of remembrance for Chinese people, in which they may reconnect with their own deep cultural heritage. Steiner’s focus on the organic unfolding of individual's spirit is in line with Taoist and Confucian thinking. Currently in education in China, the idea of success is narrow and singular rather than holistic and interconnected. The Chinese education system to a great extent treats its students as a mere means-to-an-end, rather than as an end-in-themselves. Our paper will elucidate the importance of treating children as ends-in-themselves, as beings with their own individual spirit and life energy, and the role Steiner education will play in helping achieve this in China.

Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

Having undergone a rapid modernisation process and having been through a violent uprooting of its culture during the Cultural Revolution, China has been torn away from its past. 2,500 years of wisdom has been forsaken, which has been justified as the necessary price the country has to pay for competing with the West. This has left people in China to suffer a peculiar type of cultural ‘homesickness’, in which they may feel out of place in their own time and home country. The shared wisdoms found in ancient Chinese culture and contemporary Steiner education is based on a holistic approach, which connects body, heart, mind and spirit. The current Chinese education system, however, views human relations as separate and competing entities. This competitive environment diminishes and starves the human spirit and helps perpetuate the ‘cut-throat’ competition in education and in contemporary life of China. Steiner education as a phenomenon in China acts as a lighthouse for Chinese people; it helps awaken a deep memory they have of their own ancient wisdom, which perceives life and people as part of an interconnected nexus of all living beings.

Data Source and Analysis

This paper draws on data that generated from the first author’s ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in two Steiner schools in China in 2017. The first author conducted interviews with 56 parents and teachers, and we thematically analyzed the data. We also draw from literature to frame our understanding of the rise of Steiner education in China.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work.

This study is of vital significance to Chinese education and its rediscovery and embracement of its own philosophical tradition. We will especially outline how the holistic values of Taoism, which Steiner education helps bring home to Chinese people is not out of step with modern life. It is crucial for the health of children that they are treated with respect toward their inherent potential. This view creates space for the organic unfolding of creative individuals, who in turn, will benefit society at large and help the future maintenance of harmonious life on earth.

Authors

• Yifan Sun, Rudolf Steiner University College, Norway

• Dan Rees