by Stephen Keith Sagarin, Faculty Chair
We learn with more than just our heads. Lots of us, not just those in Waldorf schools, agree with this. In 1956 (and after), to take a prime example, Benjamin Bloom described a taxonomy or hierarchical organization of learning within a threefold context of cognition (thinking), affect (feeling), and psychomotor behavior (will). Based on continuing research, his taxonomy has since been modified and now includes these six levels, from the highest to the most basic: creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding, and remembering.
Based on the work of John Gardner at the Garden City Waldorf School in the 1950s and 1960s and Douglas Gerwin since then, Waldorf schools approach each grade of high school differently in terms of assignments, expectations, and the development of thinking.
Looking over their work recently in preparation for a faculty meeting, it occurred to me that John Gardner almost certainly took Bloom’s work and compressed it—six levels sandwiched into four years of high school. And it makes sense to do this. Bloom’s work was based on higher education, on students who had largely passed the developmental stage of adolescence. For those teaching adolescents, a gradual introduction to sophisticated thinking makes sense.
Interestingly, Gardner had the insight to move the synthesis required of creativity to the head of the list before a reassessment of Bloom’s research in the 1980s that did the same thing—earlier, “evaluating” was higher than “creativity.”
Our high school Core Teachers study education at each of our faculty meetings, and use the concepts outlined above in creating assignments in literature, history, science, and other subjects based on this understanding of thinking, learning, and mastery.