Speech therapy

‹New listening and authentic speaking› in connection with earth maturity were the topics of the speech therapy conference from 23 to 27 October at the Goetheanum.

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A hundred years of Waldorf Education also means a hundred years of artistic speech for the teachers. Where are we today? How can artistic speech be used to help children and adolescents to incarnate, particularly in Waldorf Schools? A hundred people came together to dwell on these questions. In what way are our speech and conversation endangered today by the temptations of the media? Rainer Patzlaff spoke of the necessity of perceiving each other, of a new listening, a «speech pregnancy» and the forming of a new organ, «speech is the most spiritual aspect of our everyday life».

All the contributions by speech artists demonstrated in detail how this can be achieved, for instance with a comprehensive Waldorf speech curriculum, from Xandor Koesen-York for the class teacher period to Jutta Noethiger for the upper school.

Throughout the conference it became apparent, down to the individual case studies, how important it is to give space to the other person. It also became clear that dramatic declamation is a thing of the past, because our speech needs to be authentic for the essence of the sound to be able to come to expression. Looking towards the future in this way made us aware of the need to establish a new connection between Waldorf Education and artistic speech.

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