Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD

In our credential obsessed culture, Waldorf’s developmental approach to learning focuses upon cognitive capacities arising in progressive stages that determine what students can authentically learn, thus avoiding educational activities appropriate to older students.

I support its fundamental shift in early childhood education away from a premature accelerated academic approach that too often creates a dread of student learning in favor a holistic approach of cognitive capacity-building and a wide range of skills acquisition via imaginative play, free time, art, and experiential learning.

Waldorf learners come to embody an intelligence not simply by arriving at ‘correct’ answers, but by discernible acts of embodied ‘presence’ within the subject of study. They discover the unknown without flinching, as they grow into different qualities of being. The key to Waldorf learning is the complete involvement of the learner’s interiority and social self that fosters a whole body thinking that fosters curiosity, inquisitiveness, discernment, and memory.