GA 317

Curative Education

Heilpädagogischer Kurs

Twelve lectures for curative teachers and doctors, Dornach 25 June to 7 July 1924. With 15 coloured reproductions after the original plate drawings.

Contents

This is the only series of lectures by Rudolf Steiner in the field of curative education to provide a spiritual-scientific foundation for work with children in need of spiritual care. It became the starting point of the worldwide curative education movement.

„Anyone wishing to work with children who are not fully developed naturally must first gain insight, genuine and penetrating insight, into the methods used to educate healthy children. Everyone intending to work with these children would need to know this. For we must be quite clear in our minds that anything that may come up with children whose development has not been complete, children with special needs, is also subtly evident in an inner life that is said to be ‘normal’; one must merely be able to observe that normal inner life accordingly. One might say that every one of us has an ‘anomaly’ somewhere, in some corner of his or her inner life. Merely a minor flight of ideas or an inability to produce words at the right pace when speaking, so that the words either trip over themselves or the listener can take a walk between two words which the speaker is producing, or other irregularities of that kind that may also show themselves in the life of will and life of feeling — we note them, at least to a small degree, in the great majority of people. We shall have to say a few things later on about such irregularities, for they must be taken as symptoms by anyone who wants to pay attention, as a teacher or medically, to those irregularities, especially if they are major ones. We must be able to make studies of the symptoms just as physicians speak of symptoms in cases of sickness that allow them to identify the disease, perhaps also referring to a syndrome that gives an overview of the illness, though they will never confuse the nature of a syndrome with the actual substance of the disease.“ (Lit.:GA 317, p. 11f)

Literature

• Rudolf Steiner, Paul G. Bellmann (ed.), Anna R. Meuss (transl.), Mary Giddens (cover): Education for Special Needs: The Curative Education Course, CW 317, Rudolf Steiner Press 2014, ISBN 978-1855844513 rsarchive.org

German

• Rudolf Steiner: Heilpädagogischer Kurs, GA 317 (1995), ISBN 3-7274-3171-7 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.