High School

Video about Waldorf High School

created by Karl Schurman and 10th Grade student, Cyrus Fenderson

“There is a knighthood of the 21st century whose riders do not ride through the darkness of physical forces, as of old, but through the forest of darkened minds. They are armed with a spiritual armor, and an inner sun makes them radiant. Out of them shines healing, healing that flows from the knowledge of the human being as a spiritual being. They must create inner order, inner justice, peace, and conviction in the darkness of our time.”

    Quotation by Karl Konig

Adolescents are like questing knights. They long to find truth, in themselves and in the world. They need an environment that will help them make sense of the fundamental life questions they are asking:  Who am I, and who do I want to become? Who are my fellow “knights,” the people who honor and share my ideals? How can we make a difference in the world? 
      
The Waldorf high school provides such an environment. For students who have grown up in Waldorf schools, the high school years offer the blossoming of previously planted seeds. The fairy tales that nourish first graders also develop the imaginative faculties high school students rely upon when they delve into the more adult tales of Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Hamlet and Faust. Simple form drawings that second graders practice transform into explorations regarding the nature of infinity in eleventh grade projective geometry. The French and German songs they learn in the elementary school often lead to a term abroad at age 16 or 17 in Switzerland or Germany or France.
     
For students coming from other educational settings to a Waldorf high school, they find a community of teachers dedicated to meeting the needs of the emerging individuality in every young person. Our teachers endeavor to stimulate in their students an enlivened thinking, at once objective and imaginative, a thinking warmed by enthusiasm for learning and capable of inspiring decisive action in the world, akin to what Ralph Waldo Emerson termed “the active soul.” The teachers recognize that every question contains a quest; with this understanding they approach their students and their subjects.
      
Holistic long before it became fashionable, the curriculum weaves together the multi-colored strands of human history in a rich, interdisciplinary tapestry, one in which the arts  are as important as academics. Students discover mathematical principles underlying their study of poetry and music; they consider a line of Emily Dickinson’s poetry in the light of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity; they make their own African drums from scratch and learn to play rhythms native to the region of the Mbuti pygmies, whom they meet in an Ancient Cultures course.
     
To see the whole in the parts, to see oneself and the world more clearly through the study of humanity’s strivings—such capacities can be powerful aids in a young person’s quest for truth. The world needs what a Waldorf high school can foster in its graduating “knights”—mobility of thinking, heartfelt empathy, a sense of stewardship for the larger world and a belief that they can, indeed, make a difference.

Who Are Waldorf Graduates?

According to the report, "Standing Out Without Standing Alone" by Douglas Gerwin and David Mitchell:

• 94% attend college
• 47% major in the arts or humanities; 42% in the sciences
• 89% are highly satisfied in their choice of occupation
• 82% place ethical principles as their highest priority in the workplace

For the complete article which summarizes the Research Institute for Waldorf Education's survey of Waldorf high school graduates, please see Standing Out Without Standing Alone.