Social Engagement
Waldorf schools seek to cultivate pupils' sense of social responsibility, respect, and compassion; to develop their cooperative capacities; and to enable them to contribute to societal and cultural renewal; studies have found the schools' pupils to be unusually oriented towards improving social conditions and having more positive visions of the future. Studies done in Germany and Sweden have found Waldorf pupils to be less xenophobic and less likely to be attracted to extreme right-wing political groups than pupils in other types of schools. The underlying educational philosophy has been commended for being based upon peace and tolerance.
Read more about this topic: Waldorf Education
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or engagement:
“A man’s social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he would lie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We must continually remind students in the classroom that expression of different opinions and dissenting ideas affirms the intellectual process. We should forcefully explain that our role is not to teach them to think as we do but rather to teach them, by example, the importance of taking a stance that is rooted in rigorous engagement with the full range of ideas about a topic.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)