Search Forum:

I would agree with Les Smith too? Given the historical facts that: 1.In 1953, Piaget claimed that he didn’t become interested in education?until his first daughter was born in 1925, the year when Steiner died in March. 2.A possible link is between Steiner and the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute where Piaget began to work in 1921. 3.However, the two early introductions of the Institute by Bovet in 1928?and Claparede in 1925 to American audience do not mention Steiner as a guest lecturer or visiting professor although a number of important shakers and movers of the day were mentioned. 4.Finally, an interesting book by Dennis Shirley (1992), The politics of progressive education: The Odenwaldshule in Nazi Germany. Harvard University Press, does not seem to discuss Steiner’s influence within the German society at the time. The Waldorf school, created in 1919, in the era when Geheeb’s?Odenwaldshule school (1910) and the Rousseau Institute (1912) appeared in Europe. Shirley’s book describes much of the cultural, social and especially political milieu in the German speaking countries at the time. As suggested in 2,?the history of the Rousseau Institute could be a crucial link to Steiner, if any.?There is a possibility that he passed through, or get on board briefly, this flagship of child study and teacher education in Europe of the 1910s and 1920s. More facts need to be uncovered. Yeh Hsueh