Waldorf Matters ... Language Teaching in Waldorf Schools

Frau Vanessa Mansell is Chair of College at Elmfield, in addition to teaching Handwork. In our weekly blog about key aspects of Steiner Waldorf education, Vanessa shares her thoughts on the significance of language teaching to Waldorf education

“Learning a foreign language and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.” Michael Gove

I’m not often given to agreeing with politicians, especially around the subject of education, but the above is a quotation I came across recently that I would have to consider as appropriate when discussing why learning foreign languages is a fundamental prerequisite to a broad and full education.

I would add to Gove’s comment that language learning supports the development of flexible thinking, and develops an interest in the wide world and in other people. It is important to be exposed to “otherness” and approach it with a degree of openness and curiosity and not with the fear and reticence that we often encounter in society.

The learning of not one but two languages is a large part of the Waldorf curriculum from an early age. The learning of languages is kept in the oral realm alone, for the first few years and is taught through songs, games, verses and nursery rhymes as if the pupils are learning their native tongues at their mother’s knee. The pupils get a feeling for the intonation , rhythm, pronunciation and flow of the language before learning to read, write and understand it grammatically later on - when the time is right - just like we do with our own language. It’s a very organic way of learning. This breadth of the Waldorf curriculum exposes pupils to a myriad of subjects; their possibilities of “becoming” are then also ‘manyfold’ in the true sense of the word. A curtailed curriculum can lead to curtailed individuals.

As the world becomes ‘smaller’ in terms of travel, accessibility and encountering people from other countries who speak a different language, the potential for us to work together becomes greater and in ALL circumstances communication is the key to this. If there is nobody to translate and communicate and understand other cultural aspects of people’s lives, world negotiations like we have just experienced at Cop 26 would not be possible.

To learn a foreign language enables broader understanding of the world we live in and the other people we share it with.