Montessori and Steiner

Peace

As a Montessori teacher, I've often been asked questions about Rudolph Steiner and Waldorf schools. Though Montessori and Waldorf are both methods of education that are somewhat out of the mainstream, and very different from each other, this article illlustrates how they both grew out of the same deep human need for peace and security.

Montessori and Steiner: A Pattern of Reverse Symmetries
By Dee Joy Coulter

What a pleasure it was to read the open and tender dialogue between four wonderful Montessori and Waldorf educators (Holistic Education Review, Winter 1990). I have cherished both movements for years. I helped found the Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder, Colorado, and have worked with the Montessori movement during the past five years as well. It has been a delicate business, straddling the fence with these two dear friends. Each kindly granted me an exemption, agreeing to overlook that I was also befriending the other in my spare time. Nonetheless, I rarely saw openings for sharing the wonders of one movement with the other.

For a long time I held each movement in separate compartments in my heart and my head, considering the paradox of how they could both be so sound, so "right" - and so different. Then, one day I was attending a lecture at the Naropa Institute, a Buddhist-inspired college in Boulder that is my third dear friend, and where I love most to teach. Dr. Jeremy Hayward commented that the Buddhists regard wisdom (basic goodness) and skillful means (right action) as the two wings of the dove. All of the Eastern parallels tumbled through my mind then - the feminine and masculine principles, the yin and the yang, and the way each contains the other in seed form.

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