Meet Roundtable Member
John Brousseau
Co-Founding Director of
The Waldorf Institute of Southern California
John Brousseau on: Waldorf Philosophy: All Children Are Spiritual Beings
John Brousseau on Waldorf Education
Interviewed by Pamela Jaye Smith
Pamela Jaye Smith: John, please introduce yourself.
John Brousseau: Hello I’m John Brousseau and I am one of the Directors of the Waldorf Institute of Southern California. The Waldorf School of Southern California prepares teachers to teach in Waldorf Schools. We have two programs, one here in Los Angeles and another in San Diego. The Waldorf School is different from ordinary schools in that children’s teachers in the elementary grades go from first grade to second grade to third grade and often all the way until eight grade with the same set of children.
Pamela Jaye Smith: Why are the Waldorf schools designed in this manner?
John Brousseau – Well first of all it gives a sense of security to the children, so that they are actually freer to experience whatever it is they can in way of their education. It takes a teacher years to figure out what the children’s strengths and weaknesses really are and at that point, will pass them on to some other teacher.
Pamela Jaye Smith: Why do you think public schools are not fashioned in this manner?
John Brousseau – Well if you think about the motives of the people who wish to educate, if it is the state which educates, then you find the state making the choices; they want to educate a good citizen, however they define a good citizen. If the business community is involved, they want to educate someone who will serve business, or at the very least, they want to give them what they can consume so there is a heavy emphasis on computer and textbooks and things that can all be remade and resold again in another 3 years. So there is a conflict of interest with both the aspects of the government trying to enter the education sphere because they’re not really concerned with the individual; they have some image as to what a good citizen should be and the business community also as a conflict; they would at the very least like them to be prepared to serve in their particular business. But it’s more than that. Quite often what they’re really are looking at is an opportunity for profit, where as education itself belongs in the cultural sphere and you really shouldn’t be determining in advance what the students in the various schools are going to want to be and where they’re going to go. None of that should be decided by the nation or by the business leaders of the country as well you know.
Pamela Jaye Smith: How is art incorporated into the educational system?
John Brousseau – Art is very much present in the Waldorf Schools and I feel that it brings much needed help to the children. We recognize that the children’s consciousness is always continuing to change and evolve. It’s a natural aspect of being young and growing older. Focusing on beauty really brings out the best in the children and it turns out that, if you introduce art in the right way, everyone’s an artist in early stages of childhood and it’s not restricted to just the few talented ones that you encounter. If you really can introduce it the right way and allow them to enter into a gradual form, starting with the very early years, it helps them develop personally. It’s important to give them the opportunity to practice art and enjoy art and benefit in a health giving way.
Pamela Jaye Smith: Does this curriculum seem to help transform the children’s consciousness?
John Brousseau –Yes I would certainly say there’s been a change in consciousness among the children that I have experienced over decades and certainly one of the aspects is technology; that perhaps adds to that transformation. I’m not sure it’s the only criteria. I think there is an impulse in the world that is independent of the technological that is also urging humanity on, forward to a more awakened consciousness. But certainly we can see those kinds of things in our Waldorf Schools. We work fairly hard to reduce the amount of television that the children watch. You can see the results in the early childhood area where a child potentially acts out all the stuff that he experiences on to and after having had a diet of less television. All that disappears and he is able to play harmoniously with others.
I can say that I really don’t particularly enjoy giving a lot of homework until say, middle school aged kids because whatever I was doing in school was then taken home and it no longer has the advantage of being in the environment that I was presenting it. They’re doing it while listening to music and getting up to watch television and it’s quite a different feeling. I much prefer to get the work done in school; while school’s in session television is not playing.
Pamela Jaye Smith: What do you visualize as a future of consciousness?
John Brousseau – What do I visualize as a future of consciousness? Well I visualize the future of consciousness as one that is continuing to change and it’s pretty clear that there was a time long ago when consciousness was such that the people were in harmony with the spiritual world and lived the life that was connected to that world. In more recent times we have come into a time where we have an advanced awareness of the material world and we correspondingly have a decrease of connection with the spiritual world and awareness of it and therefore an increase of alienation and isolation from each other. I believe I’m seeing the beginnings of our going toward a consciousness where we are more aware again of the spiritual world and that will also flow over to a further awareness of each other.
It’s not going backwards but in a spiral upwards. So we will be different. We’ll bring with us all of the attributes that we have gained out of the freedom and then choose to rejoin that and bring all that you have learned with you back into connection with the spiritual world and that will have a very far reaching affect.
To me it’s been a cycle of increasing consciousness really starting from the time of Joan of Arc. At the same time we began the awareness of the whole stream of materialism and science as we know it today. On one side leading toward technology, simultaneously creating further and further distance from the spiritual world. We are, however, really still able to recognize that, as we become freer and freer our connection to the spiritual world is lost. At the same time we gain an inner strength to make the choice and it’s that choice that we make, that is the most important part about finding our way back to connection with the spirit. And all the materialism and all the efforts actually are helpful in a filtering way. As we get more and more isolated, we are really more and more on our own and then we have to actually face up to what it is that we are going to do; it’s really only our decision: what are we going to choose?
Pamela Jaye Smith: Tell me about Rudolf Steiner.
John Brousseau – Well Rudolf Steiner is a very significant individual and it would seem as though he had very accurate insights into the spiritual world and he was able to bring those insights and speak about them in a way that others could begin to follow, at least at the beginning. He really respected science as it was developing at his time, at least in the form the attention of actually being able to observe and repeat one’s experiments and come to recognizable results. He applied that in working in the spiritual world so that one could really rely on his research. If you could really work at it long enough or were capable enough, you could reaffirm that the steps he was taking into the spiritual world reached to some distance. It grows naturally that if you actually have a vision or a insight into the spiritual world and how things are truly connected, then you should be able to apply that in the external world and in very helpful ways. Rudolph Steiner was absolutely in his element.
Not only did he have all this to contribute with respect to Waldorf Education, but he had important contributions to make in the spheres of farming, medicine, and art in general. He founded a new art of expression called eurythmy and in each case the people who go into one or another of those fields find that those indications really played out and that many of the things we discovered now, he was suggesting way back, oh 75 or 80 years ago, and so we feel very fortunate in the Waldorf School, especially because the schools had the advantage of quite a number of specific suggestions and indications by Steiner. Teachers have gone on to try them out in various ways and tried to invent their own curriculum and work with it. We can find time and time again in real life, the practical life, the actual working out of the indications of Steiner. It’s not that we were to give his indications to the children, but that the indications were for the teachers to work on. They would find the intuition, the insight within themselves to meet the children. Perhaps one of the finest examples Steiner gave is a series of exercises for the teacher to be able to give the right answer to the question the child asked. And I have found that to be the case and not only that, because you as a teacher kind of get lost in what you’re teaching; you find that children ask the question that needs to be asked at the time. There is living in that class a child who knows what it is you really want to do and asks that question and you’re able to give the answer and everybody goes ah!
Pamela Jaye Smith: Thank you John for being a part of this conference.
John Brousseau – Well no, I am grateful for the opportunity to have taken part in this and I really feel it’s a wonderful impulse on the part of the IFGT to make such a conference and have a gathering of diverse impulses. The possibility of working together is really important.
WALDORF INSTITUTE OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA® (WISC)
Waldorf Education – for the Social Future
What is education and what is it for? Is it an invasive process of inculcating, informing, molding or reforming? Or is it one that entices, encourages, leads forth (as the dictionary says)? Does it inspire and support, helping children to develop their own inborn, unique potential and intentions?
Waldorf education creates itself anew with each child, each class, each teacher, school, and location in the world because it relies on the free, undetermined creativity of the individual teacher and community of teachers at the school. It owes its understanding of the developmental stages of childhood and its age-appropriate curriculum guidelines to the insights and founding guidance of Rudolf Steiner (1865 – 1925), natural and spiritual scientist, philosopher, and educator. Seeing the human being in terms of soul, spirit and physical attributes inspires teachers to support the child’s whole being not only in mental activity, but also in activities in art, handcrafts, movement, and in nature; and it inspires teachers to pursue a path of self-development and self-education that awakens creativity and presence of mind.
At the Waldorf Institute of Southern California® (WISC) you will find:
- Certified teacher education course - 3 years, part-time schedule
- Weekend workshops – for all interested adults
- Summer week-long classes – for all enrolled students, practicing teachers, and all interested adults
- Classroom observation and practice teaching in Waldorf schools
- Open houses and Saturday class visiting
Our goal is to guide and support our student teachers on a journey of soul-spiritual development and transformation that will continue as life practice and enable them to realize their potential as practicing Waldorf teachers. The fundamental idea is that we human beings are experiencing, and increasingly responsible for, an evolution of our consciousness and morality, and that this is happening through a process of recurring lives on earth. We enter the new life bearing the fruits of accomplishments in the previous life, and also with karmic consequences of the previous life calling for compensatory activity in the present one.
“Accept the children with reverence,
educate them with love, send them forth in freedom.”
~Rudolf Steiner~
You are invited to:
- Visit our website – http://www.waldorfteaching.org/
- Visit a local Waldorf school 877-394-1444
- Visit our classes – telephone 877-394-1444
