Abstract

John Gardner has worked in anthroposophy and Waldorf education for close to sixty years. The present volume collects some of his most striking thoughts on various aspects of education and adolescence viewed from the perspective of spiritual science. "It is a characteristic of youth, " he writes, "that what will later be accomplishment appears first as longing." This longing, which appears in manifold guises, is above all a longing for true forms of knowing. At the deepest levels, young people's thinking seeks to become imagination, their life of feeling to become inspiration, while in their sexuality, they experience the burgeoning seed of intuition. The leading question of education is how these longings are to be nurtured and cultivated so thai they fulfill their promise, and we grow up as free, responsible human beings able to care for each other and the greater life that sustains us. Such are the issues that John Gardner considers in this wise collection, which also includes reflections on such topics as discipline and the importance of play.