Head, Heart, Hands

Head, Heart, Hands

Understanding head, heart, and hands is the primary educational paradigm in Waldorf. Children have three forces impelling them forward: mental, emotional, and physical activity. Rather than focusing the educational work around the objective of acquiring knowledge, creating a meaningful learning process itself becomes the focus. Through multi-sensory learning experiences, teachers and students use of a variety of intelligences to develop capacities for thinking, feeling and intentional, purposeful activity (willing).

Head/Imaginative Thinking:
Enables a person to perceive events with clarity, to comprehend situations fully, and envision new solutions for seemingly unsolvable problems. Mainstream schools focus on fact-based instruction, yet this is flawed. The world changes so quickly that information becomes outdated (for example, Jack Petrash remembers learning in school about the miracle fiber, asbestos and how wonderful it was.) In Waldorf learning, we learn through wide-awake perceptive observation that gives rise to questions rather than answers and the knowledge is a by-product of an ongoing learning process.

Heart/Feeling/Emotional Involvement:
This is being sensitive and resilient to inevitable emotional storms, and being able to look beyond the obvious to hear what is unspoken. It is imperative that education directly touch the hearts of children, to help them care about their fellow human beings and to reassure them that there is beauty and goodness in the world and that they play a role in preserving it. Emotional involvement is developed through the arts. Painting, drawing, drama and music foster heartfelt connections, making everything more meaningful and memorable.

Hands/Resolute Determination/Willing:
This is the ability to turn hopes and dreams into reality. To implement your intentions with resolve, discipline and purpose engenders confidence and self-esteem. Self-directed activity, actions with focus, intention and self-determination are vital components of strong character. The power to make a difference is in the will. This is developed over time through conscious repetition and gentle insistence on good habits.

To foster a child’s healthy development, we need to encourage a balanced growth of all three aspects so that in the end, clear, insightful thinking will rest upon a strong foundation of purposeful activity as well as a framework of emotional development.

These three influences are applied differently in the kindergarten than in the grades.

(From Jack Petrash's 'Understanding Waldorf Education')