To Sleep — Perchance to Dream: Waldorf Education in an Age of Insomnia

Starlight Rays in Darkened Times: Seminars on Contemporary Topics

with Douglas Gerwin

From mainstream empirical studies, we know how much of our growing, our healing, and (according to recent research) our learning we undertake not during the waking day but while we are sleeping.

At the same time, we see today an alarming decline in the amount––and, perhaps more importantly, the quality––of sleep our students are getting. Some reasons for their shortened and disturbed sleep are familiar, such as their blending screentime with bedtime, “grazing” on snacks rather than “eating” prepared meals at regular hours, foregoing a steady regime of rhythmic exercise. Other more deep-seated reasons, however, go largely unrecognized, especially if we have an incomplete picture of what actually happens when we sleep.

In many of his lectures on education and other subjects, Rudolf Steiner builds up an elaborate multi-layered picture of how we spend our sleeping hours. Contrary to outward appearances, he suggests, students, as well as their teachers, are extraordinarily active during the night.

Perhaps unique among educational approaches, Waldorf education embraces the full circadian cycle of waking and sleeping. We will examine sleeping activity at three levels––physiological, psychological, and spiritual––and relate them to Waldorf high school practices.  As part of this investigation, we will explore seven specific steps to improving the quality and the rewards of the pedagogical night shift.

After all, in the final analysis, Waldorf schools are night schools!

Himself a Waldorf graduate, Douglas Gerwin, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Research Institute for Waldorf Education (RIWE). He has taught history, literature, German, music, and life science at the university and Waldorf high school levels for over 40 years and has helped prepare high school educators to teach these subjects for over a quarter-century.

In 1996 he founded CfA’s Waldorf High School Teacher Education Program (WHiSTEP), a graduate-level training specifically for high school teachers which he chaired for 26 years. During that time, he also served as advisor or mentor to well over three-quarters of the Waldorf high schools in North America and helped train Waldorf teachers on four continents. For two decades he was also CfA’s Executive Director.

Editor of ten books and author of numerous articles on Waldorf education and anthroposophy, Dr. Gerwin also sits on the Pedagogical Section Council of the School for Spiritual Science of the Anthroposophical Society in America; in addition, for the past decade he was a member of the Hague Circle, an international leadership group of some 45 Waldorf teachers from around the world.