Kindness • Strength • Love

Seeds for a Healthy Unfolding - 100 Years of Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Education

by Margaret McCarthy

This reflection arises from participation in the international conference marking one hundred years of Steiner Waldorf early childhood education. The gathering brought together educators and contributors from the Goetheanum and across the global to consider the contemporary task and future responsibility of early childhood work.

I am deeply grateful to have been able to attend, alongside nine other attendees from Aotearoa, and to offer these reflections. The experience of such a conference is not simply the reception of content, but an encounter that calls for ongoing inner digestion if it is to become living practice. My intention here is to articulate what has begun to take form through reflection, and to share what was left percolating with me.

It is important to note that, in preparation for the conference, participants were asked to engage with Rudolf Steiner’s Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. This framing is significant, as it places the question of early childhood education explicitly within the domain of inner development. It was particularly meaningful that our own Kathy MacFarlane contributed as a speaker. Her presentation was met with a standing ovation, reflecting both the clarity of her articulation and the depth of her professional and pedagogical work.

It was deeply touching to hear a story special to Aotearoa, that of Ranginui and Papatūānuku, shared on the Goetheanum stage. For ease of reading, I use the term kindergarten throughout this writing to refer collectively to our early childhood settings. This includes our childcare centres, playgroups, and all Steiner Waldorf early childhood initiatives. If your setting does not use the term kindergarten, please know that you are very much included in what is described here.

As a first step in preparing ourselves to carry this work, we are reminded of the necessity of caring for our own physical and mental wellbeing. This is not peripheral to the task; it is a prerequisite for meeting it responsibly. Working in education reveals, again and again, how deeply we depend upon one another.

Our work is not carried in isolation. We need each other, and we share responsibility for the moral and human atmosphere we create. Children meet and imitate not only what we do, but the quality of our inner life. In this sense, our work is quite literally in our hands.

This shared responsibility feels especially significant in the present time. Children are entering a world that is increasingly complex, uncertain, and at times deeply fragmented. To welcome a child into the world today asks something new of us. It calls for a conscious awareness of the space we are creating - not only physically, but morally, socially, and spiritually. The kindergarten becomes a place where the child can be received with warmth, safety, and human trust, even as we remain awake to the realities of the wider world.

From this perspective, steadfastness emerges as a quality rooted in warmth and strength. It grows when we cultivate a love for action, doing what is needed without waiting for visible results. Much of our work unfolds beyond our immediate sight. Remaining committed without confirmation asks for trust, perseverance, and devotion.

In the midst of contemporary life, this devotion requires renewed attentiveness. The task is therefore not to push forward blindly, but to remain connected and responsive. We are invited to return continually to the questions: What is needed here? and How is what we bring being received? Listening becomes the true starting point of working with others. From this listening arises the capacity to recognise when change is needed and to respond with flexibility rather than rigidity.

Within this attitude of listening, gratitude begins to take on a central role. It was described through the image of breathing: to breathe in, to hold the breath, and to breathe out. Not all that we take in is easy or immediately welcome; experiences require digestion and transformation. Gratitude, in this sense, is not sentimentality but an all-embracing form of love that must be consciously cultivated. At times it arises easily - sympathy; at other times it must be patiently transformed from experiences - antipathy. This work of transformation belongs to the inner life of the educator and asks us to create an inner space capable of both receiving and giving gratitude. When we meet with antipathy we need to take in that experience and transform it.

Carried into daily practice, this inner orientation becomes essential. The repeated tasks that shape kindergarten life can only be sustained when held with love. Without this orientation, the work risks becoming depleting and burnout becomes a real possibility. Understood rightly, this is humble devotional work: essential work that supports human beings in walking their destiny. It invites a simple but profound daily question: Did I truly see every child today? Some days the answer comes easily; on other days it invites quiet honesty and a deep breath.

From here, the question naturally widens. If the kindergarten is a place where social capacities are consciously nurtured, how do we carry this culture into the wider community? The work of social renewal cannot remain contained within the kindergarten alone; it must gradually extend outward through the lives and actions of those who carry it.

Seen in this light, imitation, so central to early childhood, calls for the ongoing self-education of the adult. Inner work is not an optional addition but a fundamental responsibility. Each of us carries an inner life that need not be explained or justified, yet must be responsibly cultivated.

We are living in a time in which humanity is becoming increasingly conscious of what it means to be human, while simultaneously encountering powerful forces of dehumanisation. Our task is to remain awake to both realities while consciously creating environments that protect childhood and strengthen the capacities needed to meet an unknown future.

Within the Steiner Waldorf movement, this understanding also has practical implications. Where new initiatives arise, the importance of beginning with early childhood was emphasised. Where expansion becomes possible, strengthening the kindergarten remains a priority, recognising the foundational role of the earliest years.

The conference reaffirmed for me the central place of inner development, gratitude, steadfastness, listening, and devotion in the ongoing task of early childhood education. Through the daily work of welcoming and caring for young children, we participate, often invisibly, and unassuming, in the shaping of the future, one, sometimes very ordinary, day at a time.

Margaret McCarthy from Waikato Waldorf School - Miro House Kindergarten was supported by SEANZ to travel to the conference.