Abstract
100 years ago, Rudolf Steiner pioneered an anthroposophically oriented approach to education for children with disabilities. It was founded on a spiritually extended phenomenology of embodiment, which places the intentional development of relationships in professional practice at its center. This perspective is connected with Heinrich Marianus Deinhardt's humanist impulse, which is rooted in Friedrich Schiller's ideas on education, freedom, and the role of play as an archetype of cultural activity. The contribution that anthroposophic approaches in supportive education, inclusive education, and inclusive social development can make to the development of this interdisciplinary field of work are discussed below with a view to the founding of the Section for Inclusive Social Development at the School of Spiritual Science (Goetheanum, Dornach, Switzerland). (1)
Key Words:
anthroposophy ∙ supportive education ∙ inclusion ∙ disability ∙ social change
1. Preliminary considerations of spiritual science
One hundred years ago, Rudolf Steiner held his course on «Heilpädagogik» (1995a)—variously translated as Curative Education, Therapeutic Education, Supportive Education, or Education for Special Needs (2)—in the Carpentry Hall [Schreinereisaal] in Dornach. The attendees were a small group of people who were directly involved in the very beginnings of anthroposophically oriented work with differently abled children and adolescents. However, the course's core esoteric motif—the dynamic relationship between the point and the circle—already runs through Steiner's work as a central motif and reappears repeatedly in various forms. It is also implicit in the idea of the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm—which Steiner identified as fundamental—and in the concept of inversion in Steiner's theory of metamorphosis (2015). It is one of the hallmarks of anthroposophic spiritual science's approach to understanding—a motif that catches the eye and reveals a fundamental characteristic of both humanity and the cosmos: both can develop only because they exist in a state of tension with one another.
Human beings are separated from the cosmos, existing as microcosms in their own right; yet, as an inversion of the macrocosm, they also contain within themselves all the forces and principles of the cosmos. When the microcosm ‹human being› and the macrocosm ‹cosmos› enter into a resonant relationship, this separation is overcome once again, without either the human being or the cosmos losing their respective, independent realities. When I am able to achieve this state, I am present both in myself and in what I encounter as ‹not I›—the other. Then, as an individual who was born out of the cosmos, I can again become a creative co-shaper of the cosmos, which conversely also furthers my own self-development.
The body is the place where the I and the world intersect—where they rub up against each other and where resonance may or may not arise. The perspective of body phenomenology, which places the body at the intersection of the I and the world and at the center of its investigation of humanity—as belonging to consciousness and simultaneously appearing as an object—builds upon the work of Merleau-Ponty (1966), which was further developed by Waldenfels (2000), among others. This perspective also underlies Levinas' attempt to understand the phenomenon of intersubjectivity (1999) and, among other channels, flows into the neurosciences through Thompson (2007) and into a phenomenological perspective in psychiatry through Fuchs (2009, 2017), in the context of which the concept of embodiment is a central paradigm.
In anthroposophy, embodiment is viewed with a level of nuance rarely found in any other modern spiritual approach (Steiner 1995a, 2019a). The body is everything that belongs both to me and to the world—everything I mean when I say, «I am…», but which is also present in the external world and can also be—at least potentially—perceived and described by others using the words «she/he is/they are…» It is only through this intersection of my bodily existence with the world that I can act upon the world, and the world upon me. From an anthroposophic perspective, this embodiment can be categorized according to the three major organ systems:
- the nerve-sense system, centered in the head,
- the metabolic-limb system, primarily anchored in the abdomen and the limbs, and
- the rhythmic system, whose main organs are the heart and lungs, and which mediates between the other two systems.
This categorization intersects with another division into four different functional levels, each with its own dynamic of forces: the physical body, which is the aspect of embodiment that is subject to physical laws; the body of formative forces, which is the organic-morphological organism; the soul body, which is a configuration of stimulus responsiveness, consciousness and inner experiences; and the I organization, which is a configuration of the structures that enable us to have reflexive self-awareness and free, self-initiated action.
Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom (2021) is itself devoted to the intersection of the I and the world within the body. In it, Steiner develops a monism that does not resolve the separation between the I and the world in favor of one side or the other. He integrates them by demonstrating how the rift between human beings—who experience themselves as separate subjects—and a natural and social world that seems foreign and unattainable, can be healed through a mutually resonant relationship mediated by the body. The world touches me, and I am aware of it through my senses. They allow me to experience my encounters with beings and things that I did not create myself, and that are therefore initially foreign to me. This experience can isolate me if I cannot integrate it into a conscious and meaningful relationship with the world. But if I immerse myself in the experience through my own spiritual activity—that is, if I respond to the sensation by engaging with it inwardly and allowing it to speak to me—I can become aware, through the phenomenon itself, of how it relates to me and to other world phenomena. Then the world speaks to me – the rift is overcome, just as Steiner characterized in his work on Goethe's natural scientific writings: «Recognizing an idea as it manifests in reality is the true communion of the human being.» (Steiner, 2022, p. 167) This «recognition of an idea» is not an intellectual achievement, although it can be conceived as such in retrospect; rather, it is an inherent experience of coherence and meaning within our lived experience.
This experience is closely connected to the first of three elements that Antonovsky characterizes as the «sense of coherence» (Eriksson, 2022) in the context of salutogenesis, and posits as an essential prerequisite for health:
«A global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that 1. the stimuli from one's internal and external environments in the course of living are structured, predictable, and explicable; 2. the resources are available to one to meet the demands posed by these stimuli; and 3. these demands are challenges, worthy of investment and engagement.» (Antonovsky, 1987, p. 19)
Antonovsky expands the concept of the «sense of coherence» beyond the receptive aspect of the experience of coherence—which can arise when I become aware of the meaningfulness of a reality outside my self that is affecting me—to include the idea of self-efficacy. This is the second theme in Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom (2021): A resonant relationship with the world also goes in the opposite direction, when the impulse to connect originates in me and I make an imprint on the world through my activity, which then reflects back a perceptible signature. The world changes because I am in it and because I am active out of my own initiative, as opposed to any dictated by others. This active side of my self's relationship with the world is also facilitated through my body, and it can be successful or not. If my impulse to connect with the world is rejected or doesn't reach it, the world remains silent. But if an answering movement comes toward me from the world, a transformative process takes place, in which the world and I initiate mutual transformation in each other. I have the experience that I am integrating something into the world that is essential to it and that can only appear in it as a reality through me, an embodied spiritual being. In recent years, the sociologist Hartmut Rosa (2016) developed a concept of resonance as a kind of successful relationship with the world, which describes four elements or levels of the resonance process that can be understood as a chronological sequence but that also overlap in a non-linear manner and are present simultaneously. According to Rosa (2020), resonance arises, if:
a) something touches me;
b) the touch sparks inner activity in me that responds to the touch;
c) when both I and what touches me take in each other's ‹voice›, we are both changed by it;
d) something new arises, which has its own dynamic, its own unique character that is intangible and that cannot be brought into existence rationally, for a specific purpose, or controlled.
This new thing is more than the sum of what I and my counterpart bring to the relationship. We enable its emergence through the resonant quality of our relationship.
1.1 The resonance phenomenon as the source of developmental processes
This relationship or process pattern also appears repeatedly in various contexts in Steiner's work, and is closely connected to the point and periphery motif. In this vein, Steiner refers explicitly to the process that occurs when I encounter another person. He describes this, in a very similar way to Rosa's description of the resonance phenomenon, in the Foreword to the 1918 edition of his Philosophy of Freedom (2021), and in his 1919 lectures for teachers at the Waldorf School (2019a), among other places. In another lecture held in 1918, Steiner describes this dynamic that emerges in the meeting of two human beings as «…in a Goethean sense, […] the root phenomenon of social science.» (Steiner, 1990, p. 175) It is the foundational element of all community-building, as well as the material from which all social contexts are created (1989).
This root phenomenon, like the resonance phenomenon, can be depicted in four phases that can be intentionally taken up and can thus become a source of individual and social transformation and development processes:
a) I turn toward the other person with an open mind and heart;
b) I put my own inner experience to the side, instead opening myself empathically to the other person's experience;
c) I inwardly return to myself, transformed by what I have taken in through the other person's experience;
d) I allow space for the echoes of the encounter, so that new internal images, intuitions and moral impulses can arise and be integrated into external reality, as transformative and healing forces, through the initiative of my I (Urieli, Müller-Wiedemann, 1995/ Urieli, 2001).
Steiner also describes this process as a «reverse ritual» (i.e., one that mirrors or complements that of the traditional Christian communion ritual) that allows us to «awaken through/in the other person.» (Steiner, 1989, p. 178) This «awakening» leads to an expanded awareness of how social contexts and organisms can be shaped, not according to mechanical rules, but rather based on living principles. It is the foundation of a new art of social development and the seed of a future form of human community and society which, even if they cannot be fully realized in the present, can nevertheless be cultivated, planned, and practiced (Göschel, 2017/ Steiner, 2014). The central qualities of this future community are a solidarity that is rooted in an ever-deepening empathy and shared experience of the suffering and the needs of others, an unconditional respect for the inalienable freedom of every individual in the sphere of their religious, spiritual, and soul relationship with the world, and a lived spiritual understanding of the world. This spiritually deepened understanding, a shared experience of coherence, allows us to move beyond our personal points of view, without negating the diversity of lived perspectives in the world (Steiner 2005, 1995b, 1996).
The field of supportive and inclusive education and inclusive social development combines these two approaches. On the one hand, the focus is on the individual developmental process, in which each individual human being builds up their physicality as they develop, so that, as their physical organism matures, they are increasingly able to find a resonant and self-effective relationship through it with the world around them, and to realize their biographical intentions in the world. The complementary perspective looks at the social sphere that makes up the periphery—the surroundings—for individual development and biographies, and attempts to shape this so that it makes resonance experiences possible and invites every individual to participate. It focuses on future-oriented forms of inclusive community and society, which can be cultivated and continuously developed further. The term ‹inclusive social development› is based on this creative approach to the future in the present, as is intended by the name of the new, twelfth section of the School of Spiritual Science the Goetheanum: The Section for Inclusive Social Development. This name is also intended to be in resonance with Rudolf Steiner's motto of social ethics: «Health is present only when the whole community is reflected in the mirror of the human soul, and the strength of the individual soul lives in the community.» (Steiner, 2019b, p. 298)
2. The cultural impulse of «Heilpädagogik» [Supportive Education]
Anthroposophic approaches to education for children with disabilities, which began in 1924 with Steiner's course, Education for Special Needs (1995a) can be seen as a part of the evolving development of this field within the Central European context, and which was most commonly referred to as «Heilpädagogik» [Supportive Education] at the time of Steiner's course. Just as anthroposophy as a whole can be understood as a response to issues of historical and cultural development in the early twentieth century and to the emerging late-modern dynamics of the following 100 years, Steiner's approach to Supportive Education can also be interpreted as an attempt to address the questions and challenges emerging in that field within the context of that cultural development. This paper briefly outlines how the thrust of the course resonates with the general development of «Heilpädagogik» [Supportive Education] and its sources in (Central European) cultural history.
Supportive Education, much like the related and, in some cases, overlapping disciplines and professions of social pedagogy, social work, and special education in schools, as well as psychiatry as a field within medicine, is a very young field in the history of civilization, having only emerged as a distinct sphere of professional practice in the second half of the 19th century. The term ‹disability,› to which the professional practice of Supportive Education refers, also emerged only gradually and in several stages in the course of this professionalization—a process of negotiation that is still ongoing.
At the risk of oversimplifying, it can be said that in most premodern societies, people who today would be identified as ‹people with disabilities›, if they were unable to easily participate in general social life, were generally either systematically excluded (to the point of abandonment and murder) or were viewed as vessels providing access to a transcendent reality, and thus a transcendental or sacred significance was attributed to them and their disability. Examples of this include morally charged ideas of a childlike, innocent embodiment of the Imago Dei, the motif of the ‹blind seer,› or other roles as facilitators of a spiritual path of development for other people (Schumm, Stoltzfus, 2016). Jacobs (2017), among others, points out that even such positive interpretations of experiences with people with disabilities are problematic.
A broad definition of ‹disability›, one in which such diverse conditions as blindness, deafness, missing or deformed limbs, cognitive impairments, and mental illnesses—and their respective implications for social participation—are reflected, could only emerge in social discourse once the focus shifted from concrete individual situations and specific types of functional impairment to the associated risk of social exclusion as a common and overarching issue (Gebrekidan, 2021/ Geurts, 2021/ Winzer, 2012).
Using the example of Western European cultural history, we can trace how such a ‹modern› perspective on the phenomena of ‹impairment,› ‹disability,› ‹exclusion,› and ‹participation› gradually took shape in parallel with the emergence of academic disciplines and professions. The first efforts to professionalize work with and for socially marginalized people, people in precarious life situations, people with physical, sensory, cognitive, and mental functional limitations, and people in socially precarious situations can be traced back to the Enlightenment. They replaced the charitable initiatives that had previously existed, mainly within religious and monastic contexts, which were organized in the form of monastic shelters and hospices but did not approach their work as part of a professional pedagogical or therapeutic system (Winzer, 2012).
The new scientific interest in human beings that was awakened during the Enlightenment inspired theologians, physicians, and educators to develop methodologies and didactic ideas on the education, social integration, and therapeutic treatment of children and adults. These experiments were motivated by humanistic ideals, on the one hand, but were also intended to serve as experimental evidence for the underlying theories about human nature and its development. In the context of this increasingly secular humanistic ethic and the emerging scientifically based systematization of professional practice in the fields of education, medicine, and pastoral or social work, the first institutions, schools, and homes emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries and became the main centers of development for the new professional fields that focused on people in danger of social exclusion (Winzer, 2012).
2.1 Sources of inspiration and pioneers of the concept of ‹Heilpädagogik› (Supportive Education)
1861 can be considered the beginning of «Heilpädagogik» [Supportive Education]. It was the year in which Jan-Daniel Georgens (1823-1886) and Heinrich Marianus Deinhardt (1821-1880) published the first volume of their work by that title in Vienna (1861), which is now attributed solely to Deinhardt (Stöger, 2017). In this book, Deinhardt introduces the term ‹Heilpädagogik› and attempts to establish an independent and systematic foundation for this emerging field. Georgens and Deinhardt were the founders and directors of the Levana Institute for Therapeutic Care and Education near Vienna. Deinhardt's friend and supporter Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900), who would later become Rudolf Steiner's university professor and significant mentor (Steiner, 2000), saw Deinhardt as the true creative genius behind the concept of «Heilpädagogik» [Supportive Education] early on (Schröer, 1880). In the same year, Deinhardt also published his work Contributions to the Appreciation and Understanding of Schiller [transl. Beiträge zur Würdigung und zum Verständnisse Schillers] (1861), which he developed in parallel with Supportive Education. In it, he engaged especially intensively with Schiller's (1795a, b, c) letters On the Aesthetic Education of the Human Being – material that also played an important role for Steiner.
Rudolf Steiner, who had likely become aware of Deinhardt through his mentor, Schröer, referred repeatedly to the importance of Deinhardt's writings on Schiller (AnthroWiki, 2024). He saw them as the foundation for a necessary educational reform, moving toward an «incredibly profound social education for the people» (Steiner, 2023, p. 399) which Schiller and Deinhardt had made possible, and whose neglect he regarded as a disastrous loss for the development of European civilization.
Deinhardt had attempted to take Schiller's more philosophically abstract ideas on educating human beings in a way that is consistent with their individual potential for freedom, and translate these ideas into a pedagogical practice—one that is methodologically and didactically productive—based on play as the archetypal manifestation of human culture. Supportive Education, as conceived by Deinhardt (1861), can be understood as a prototypical attempt to give practical form to and implement this impulse, so that the spiritual roots of Supportive Education as a cultural impulse can be traced back to the body of thought that Schiller articulated in his letters (Schmalenbach, 2012/ AnthroWiki, 2024). It is only in the form of Supportive Education that the «incredibly profound social pedagogy for the people» (Steiner, 2023, p. 399)—which, in Steiner's view, is embedded in Deinhardt's work—has, at least in embryonic form, found its way into the social life of Central Europe.
In the preface to his «Heilpädagogik» (1861), Deinhardt briefly outlines what this newly launched cultural initiative entails and how it relates to the existing professional fields, at whose intersection it initially takes shape:
- pedagogy,
- medicine,
- pastoral care,
- social work.
He sees Supportive Education as an interdisciplinary approach that recognizes human beings in their development as complex physical, emotional, and spiritual beings in a unique and innovative way, and views the various layers as part of a holistic entity.
Depending on how one interprets it, Deinhardt's brief outline might even suggest a transdisciplinary intention; at the very least, he sees the integration of various professional perspectives as giving rise to a transformative impulse for these professional fields, the full implications of which he himself cannot yet fully grasp. This education must «gain an anthropological foundation […]—one that is different from the narrow and sterile foundation of the psychology popular in educational circles—and take health issues more seriously» (Georgens, Deinhardt, 1861, S. VII) in its concerns than is customary. Medical science must adopt «a more positive view of the medical profession» (ibd., S. VII) and recognize the importance of the «health-oriented organization» (ibd., S. VIIf.) of the education and social welfare systems, as well as their potentially significant role in promoting health. «Pastors who truly care for individuals and their ‹salvation›» (ibd., S. VIII) are called upon to overcome «the theological insularity that still characterizes most of them» (ibd., S. VIII) and to contribute their part to a new, expanded understanding of the human being in the development of a therapeutic-pedagogical anthropology.
At the same time, Deinhardt (1861) notes that, particularly with regard to this as-yet-undeveloped anthropology, which integrates medical, educational-psychological, and pastoral-social perspectives, there is not yet much progress. Such an anthropology would require a new kind of physiology, for example, that could overcome its materialistic and analytical reductionism and learn to observe and understand the phenomena and forces of the organic realm according to its own living laws. But the development of this new, non-reductionist anthropological science would be an essential prerequisite for the success of the Supportive Education project. Sixty-three years later, Steiner's anthroposophic approach (1995a) takes up precisely this theme – the search for a deeper understanding of the human being's nature and physicality as the foundation for the education of children with disabilities.
Deinhardt's initiative to establish a professional identity for the field was so successful that the term ‹Heilpädagogik› came to be adopted in publications, professional training programs, academic institutions, and an organized field of practice in the German-speaking context. Although the field of the pioneers of education of children with disabilities remained broad and diverse, a group of humanistically oriented Supportive Educators emerged who identified as such and, despite the diversity of their concrete approaches, saw their individual intentions reflected in the concept of ‹Heilpädagogik› (Buchka, Grimm, Klein, 2002). Among them was Johannes Trüper (1855-1921), the founder of Sophienhöhe in Jena, where the practical founders of anthroposophically-informed education for children with disabilities would make their first attempt at an anthroposophically-oriented establishment in 1924, as well as Theodor Heller (1869-1938) and Heinrich Hanselmann (1885-1921), who, in the years leading up to World War II, contributed significantly to the establishment of Supportive Education as a distinct interdisciplinary field—based on humanistic, value-driven, and, above all, psychological principles—in German-speaking countries and throughout Europe.
By the time Steiner's course (1995a) took place in 1924, however, a counter-model of Supportive Education had also become established – one that did not build on the humanistic ideas of Schiller and Deinhardt, but was rooted in a materialistic and reductionist view of human nature. In 1859, two years before the publication of «Heilpädagogik», Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1909) had been published. Although not intended by Darwin himself, so-called ‹social darwinism› developed in the context of the reception of his work. His cousin Francis Galton (1822-1911), James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944) and Alfred Binet (1857-1911) began to develop the first intelligence tests. The ideas of «natural selection» as the driving force of evolution and a measurable, heritable, and normally distributed «general intelligence factor» as a measure of adaptive fitness merged into what Galton termed «eugenics» (Winzer, 2012)—developments that the anthroposophic physician and supportive educator Karl König (1902–1966) would later count among the catastrophic missteps of the last century (2009).
In 1911, Clemens Pirquet (1874–1929), a Jesuit-trained theologian and pediatrician, took over as director of the University Children's Hospital in Vienna (Wien Geschichte Wiki, 2024a) after returning from Johns Hopkins University in the USA. One of his interests was public health, and he appointed Erwin Lazar (1877-1932), a pediatrician trained in psychiatry, as head of a new child psychiatry department, called the Department for «Heilpädagogik» (Wien Geschichte Wiki, 2024b). With Pirquet's backing, Lazar sought—in clear contrast to the existing humanistic paradigm of Supportive Education—to appropriate this term for a form of child psychiatry that was entirely under authoritarian medical supervision, with its non-medical support staff serving merely to implement medical instructions. It saw its overarching social mission as mitigating the ‹harm› caused to the national community by the burden of psychopathological children and adolescents (Friedmann, 2020/ Lazar, 1925/ Sheffer, 2018).
Lazar and his team of physicians sought to base their version of «Heilpädagogik» on a rigid scientific foundation, focusing on the identification and potential correction of existing pathologies and deficits. They regarded the humanistic and transdisciplinary approach to Supportive Education in the Deinhardt tradition as weak, idealistically romanticized, and unscientific (Sheffer, 2018). Both before and after World War II, the department bore distinct characteristics of a «total institution» as defined by Erving Goffman. Under the direction of Hans Asperger (1906-1980), the head of the department from 1932-1957 whose «guiding principle […] was ‹strict discipline› leading to ‹optimal performance›» (Friedmann, 2020, S. 157), the department was involved in the Nazi's child euthanasia program. Asperger knowingly cooperated with this program in numerous cases, albeit with an ambivalent attitude, the nature of which remains the subject of controversy (Sheffer, 2018/ Czech, 2020).
The Department for «Heilpädagogik» at the University Hospital in Vienna can therefore be seen as a totalitarian, clinically-oriented counter-model to the Supportive Education inspired by Schiller's «impulse of freedom» in the tradition of Deinhardt. It attempted, with some success, to appropriate the term «Heilpädagogik» for itself and to delegitimize the humanistic approach. This counter-model persisted for several decades even after the end of World War II and is, in some cases, equated with the term «Heilpädagogik» both in academic literature (Sheffer, 2018) and in journalism (Talbot, 2024), without its origins being sufficiently understood.
These two streams of development stood in opposition to each other when Rudolf Steiner held his course, Education for Special Needs (1995a), in Dornach after St. John's Day in 1924.
After their attempt to take over the Sophienhöhe facility, founded by Johannes Trüper in Jena, had failed due to resistance from the doctors there, Sigfried Pickert (1898–2002), Albrecht Stohschein (1899–1962), and Franz Löffler (1895–1956) had launched their own project: the Lauenstein Therapeutic and Educational Institute for Children in Need of Special Care. Also present at the course were staff members from the pediatric department of the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim, under the direction of Dr. Ita Wegman (1876–1943), as well as available teachers from the Waldorf School, where Karl Schubert (1889–1949) had developed an educational program for children with disabilities (Frielingsdorf, Grimm, Kaldenberg, 2013).
By applying the anthroposophic, spiritual-scientific understanding of the human being to the tasks of educating children with disabilities, Steiner (1995a)—without explicitly referring to Deinhardt—addresses the question of an integrative and interdisciplinary anthropology as the foundation for a humanist supportive education. However, he prioritizes relationship-building over any methodological integration of pedagogy and therapy: The ‹social ur-phenomenon› forms the fundamental prerequisite and context for all pedagogical and therapeutic effectiveness. According to Steiner, everything depends on who I am and how I relate to the child—how I shape the space between ‹I› and ‹you›—out of interest, with warmth and loving attention. True educational, therapeutic, and healing effects unfold in this space, even before any specific professional action is taken.
3. Anthroposophic supportive education and inclusive social design
Steiner's course, Education for Special Needs (1995a), directly and clearly addresses professionalism in the fields of childcare and education, as well as in medicine and therapy. At first glance, the social and pastoral dimensions are not as obvious; although, interestingly, Emil Bock (1895–1959), one of the founding priests of the Christian Community, was present for at least some of the lectures—personally invited, like all of the participants. The question of accompaniment and support for adults with support needs is also not directly addressed. This topic is discussed two months later in Steiner's Pastoral Medicine Course (2019c) with doctors and priests, in the context of a specific spectrum of constitutional phenomena that involve unusual states of consciousness. There, Steiner begins by explaining how therapeutic and liturgical-sacramental work in the service of humanity stand in polar opposition to one another and yet can interact and complement each other. He then suggests that this picture could be further expanded to include the role of the educator, so that «it will later become clear to what extent both the physician and the priest, in collaboration with the educator, can bring about something healing for humanity.» (Steiner, 2019c, S. 19). Because Steiner discontinued his lecture activities shortly after the Pastoral Medicine Course due to his illness, this is not explored further.
Although intentional community-building has been key to the practice of anthroposophic supportive education since the founding of Lauenstein, the question of shaping social spaces and of the principles and possibilities of inclusive community-building has only developed gradually. It first took center stage when the first generation of children in anthroposophic establishments reached adulthood. In particular, this issue was consciously taken up within the Camphill Movement, and with the founding of Botton Village in England, an initial attempt was made to create a prototype inclusive village community that sees itself not as a service provider but as a life-sharing community. The goal was to dissolve the traditional roles of educators and therapists on the one hand, and recipients of support services on the other, in favor of a relationship between equals.
It goes without saying that this has never been completely and permanently achieved; rather, it has been striven towards in practice as a guiding principle and ideal. Karl König's Village Conference Lectures (2016) represent an early—and now classic—attempt to reverse the approach of supportive educational work with children and adolescents, in which individuals and their unique developmental path are the focus of attention. Instead, attention is directed toward the periphery—the social environment—to shape it in such a way that every individual human being within it can find a resonant relationship with the world, see themselves reflected in it, and realize their biographical purpose. The individual is left free—simply offered opportunities to form relationships.
In this context, the pastoral gesture comes to the fore. The goal is to understand and accompany another person's life story by offering to become part of that story and allowing the other person to become part of our own. In order to create communities in which coherence, an inner connection, and harmonious relationships between people, between people and the earth, and between people and the transcendent can be experienced, an artistic approach to the elements of ritual and religious practice is required (Göschel, 2017). The question of inclusive social development today is how this can be realized not only in small, intentional communities but also directly within the broader societal and social contexts of the public sphere. In this context, the denominationally bound and traditionally inherited religious element often stands in the way, while at the same time the question of an open and creative approach to new cultural practices—ones that create coherence without excluding or restricting anyone—can be recognized as a task for development.
In inclusive community development, the focus and professional approach shift from the circumstances of individuals who need guidance and support to realize their life goals, to the surrounding environment, which must be shaped in such a way that it offers as many people as possible the conditions for successful participation and individual development. Transforming existing social spaces into more inclusive environments requires the collaboration of the most varied professional disciplines and elements of human culture and civilization. The goal is not to create a uniform and tightly knit communal organism, but rather to establish open spaces in all spheres of economic, social, political, and cultural life—spaces that are diverse and accessible and that invite participation and contribution. The Anthropoi Bundesverband project, ‹In Good Company—Living Inclusion› (2024), is an example of what this might look like.
Working anthroposophically in the spirit of the Education for Special Needs course (1995a) means recognizing that the success of supportive education and inclusive social and community development is also dependent on the inner capacities of the individuals involved. This means acting creatively and constructively in social contexts, guided by an inner moral compass and a deep understanding of the specific situation. Anthroposophic spiritual science, spiritually expanded anthropology, and the contemplative path of development offered by the Education for Special Needs course are intended to provide those engaged in supportive education and social development with the tools to do so. The emphasis on these inner dimensions of professional practice—rather than on the resulting concrete practices, which can and should always be adapted to the specific situation—is the essential characteristic of what it means to work anthroposophically.
At the heart of the professional esoteric practice introduced by the Education for Special Needs course lies a meditation on the dynamic between the center and the periphery, between concentrated attention and peripheral vision (Zajonc, 2008). Contemplative work with this meditation can help us learn to engage with this dynamic and to move within it internally, to be able to move easily between perspectives and to continually see and understand both social contexts and individual development processes in new ways. This can bring movement to entrenched patterns in individual paths of development, biographies, and social processes, and can transform them in order to create more possibilities for participation.
In historical accounts of the profession (Winzer, 2012), there is a common assumption that a premodern ‹moral› understanding, which often linked disabilities to transgressions by the individual, the family, or the community, was replaced by a rationalist ‹medical› approach during the Enlightenment, which focused on scientifically grounded diagnosis and methodologically effective treatment of individual functional impairments. This was then replaced by the so-called social model of disability. This model attempts to understand disability as a phenomenon that arises in the interaction between a person and their social environment when the structure of the environment hinders or completely blocks access to the person as they are, effectively excluding them from essential areas of social participation. From the perspective of the social model, professional practice focuses equally on empowering the individual and on removing barriers in the social environment.
3.1 Relationship-building, social sphere orientation, and culturally critical perspectives
Anthroposophic supportive education cannot be clearly classified as either a ‹medical› or a ‹social› model. The Education for Special Needs course (1995a) devotes a great deal of space to the question of pedagogical and therapeutic intervention tailored to the developmental challenges of individual children. It does not explicitly address participation in society, or supporting adults with disabilities. A social-sphere-oriented perspective focuses primarily on the nature of the relationship between an adult and a child, which is accorded great importance, albeit within the context of this smallest social unit. In practice, however, a strong social-space orientation developed from the very beginning, primarily in the form of a drive toward community building, which—particularly within the Camphill Movement—was understood as a prototypical experimental field for exploring the principles of inclusive social design and which today is increasingly seeking to expand into the public sphere in order to promote inclusive processes there (Frielingsdorf, Grimm, Kaldenberg, 2013 / König, 2016/ In Guter Gesellschaft, 2024).
Since the 1980s, another perspective on disability—one with a stronger focus on cultural studies—has developed, particularly in the Anglo-American world (Köbsell, 2012). While Disability Studies also aims to bring about structural change, it prioritizes culturally critical questions regarding lived experience and the meaning of being human, disability, and identity. The Disability Studies approach, which has also become established in German-speaking countries since the early 2000s (Köbsell, 2012/ Dederich, 2007/ Leskau, Nusser, Sorrels, 2022), was initially driven primarily by people with disabilities themselves and builds on «the discovery of the body, the subject, and identity as historically and culturally shaped phenomena [as well as] the problematization of discourse, knowledge, and power as strategies that constitute reality» (Waldschmidt, 2005, S. 10), which also underlie other critical disciplines in the cultural studies sphere. It seeks to dissolve the binary distinction between a problematized ‹state of disability› and a ‹state of non-disability› which is taken for granted as normal, in favor of a perspective that starts from the experience of all members of a culture or society and acknowledges this experience in its full breadth as part of the spectrum of diverse possibilities of being human, in order to then view each individual ‹way of being› in its own right and from within, according to its own intentions and needs. In this way, the perspective of Disability Studies aligns with a concern that Steiner addresses right at the beginning of his Education for Special Needs course (1995a) by deconstructing the concept of normality: The concept of ‹normality› has, at best, meaning in the sense of a statistical mean or a social convention, but no substantive significance from which individual differences can be classified or any professional standards of practice derived.
This theme also runs throughout König's Village Conference Lectures (2016)—even though, at first glance, there appears to be a wide gap between the paradigm of Disability Studies and anthroposophic supportive education. A nuanced and systematic discussion is needed to determine whether and how anthroposophic perspectives on disability, participation, and inclusive social space design can be aligned with these various models of disability, whether they might enter into dialogue with them and expand or integrate with them, or whether the anthroposophic approach stands outside this framework and must be regarded as a completely independent transdisciplinary paradigm. This has so far only been tentatively explored (Grimm, Kaschubowski, 2008/ Göschel, 2012).
4. Concluding thoughts
In October 2024, the Section for Inclusive Social Development was founded within the School of Spiritual Science at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. It evolved from the Anthroposophic Council for Inclusive Social Development, which was founded in 1979 as the Curative Education and Social Therapy Council within the Medical Section. Previously, the field had been represented within the Medical Section in the form of a small working group, after Steiner had asked Ita Wegman, the section's first director, to serve as a mentor for this new initiative, which she did with great dedication.
The new section is situated within the transdisciplinary context of all the disciplines represented at the Goetheanum. There, it provides a space for the full range of questions and topics outlined here. This also involves exploring the areas of tension, ambiguities, and polarities, both in relation to one another and within the context of the perspectives and contributions flowing from all other sections; deepening them through anthroposophic and spiritual-scientific approaches, creating spaces for professional esoteric work, and inviting those active in this field worldwide in connection with the section to join an active community of research, development, and practice. This includes the people who, as advocates for themselves, help drive these questions forward in order to contribute to the shaping of a future inclusive society.
The goal is to tap into these tensions and contradictions as a source of creative energy and to find appropriate forms of social art that allow the various perspectives on a complex set of issues to be meaningfully integrated. The «point and periphery meditation», which is at the heart of the Education for Special Needs course (1995a) and serves as its central theme, can serve as a suitable guiding principle and inner tool for this purpose.
Translation from German: Tascha Babitch
Notes:
(1) This article first appeared in Merkurstab, 2024 / Issue 5 / Special Issue: 100 Years of the ‹Education for Special Needs› Course.
(2) This article discusses the origins of the German term ‹Heilpädagogik› and the specific conceptualization of the professional field of education for children with support needs that emerged in German-speaking contexts, which does not have an exact equivalent in English-speaking contexts. Therefore, where specific reference is intended to the concept of «Heilpädagogik» and its history, «Heilpädagogik» and/or Supportive Education (capitalized) will be used. Lower case uses of supportive education, special education or similar terms are intended to refer to the general professional field of education for children.
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