Camphill Academy: Transformative Higher Education in Community

Editor’s note: The Camphill School of Curative Education & Social Therapy is becoming Camphill Academy, adopting the School’s Mission and Vision to take it further as an independently incorporated non-profit higher education initiative embedded within the North American Camphill movement. Incorporated September 29, 2012, it is governed by a Collegium, which serves as its ‘College of Teachers,’ with offices located on Camphill Special School’s main campus in Glenmoore, PA.

Adam Bittleston in his role as teacher at Emerson College would sometimes suggest to a skeptical or challenging student, “Hold it as a question,” when he presented a concept out of anthroposophy. That advice— to take a new concept and live with it, allowed the idea to settle into one’s daily life and to prove whether it became a helpful and elucidating idea or just not. It was a useful and freeing statement. Some ideas we develop throughout our own life experiences, sometimes even as prejudices or generalizations, and some we encounter through our more formal education. All of these we can continue to evolve through life if we are open. Some become our intellectual bedrock, our soul companions and our path to continuous discovery. For many of us, anthroposophy has given us those. It has also suggested ways we can be human, create culture, and address the most significant questions of our lives.

If education is to be authentic and valuable, it has to generate openings in our minds and hearts—it gives us tools and avenues: ways and means. What, then, are ways to share or offer anthroposophy? There is nothing in anthroposophy that cannot be verified by our own experiences and seeking. Yet it can be opaque to those who merely experience it through others whose cultural conventions may seem unusual. The “daughter” movements of anthroposophy can give opportunities to those who want to develop their own thinking out of life experience. When those experiences are combined with helpful concepts, a deep education can take place. Often superficial judgments about anthroposophy transform to interest and enthusiasm.

Contemporary college level learning often incorporates practical experiences along with intellectual stimulation. Practica, internships, student language immersion opportunities, as well as spring break service learning are sometimes available. That we learn and gain wisdom through experiences is well known. What are ways to combine life experience effectively with conceptual development? How is it possible to combine conceptual development with inner insight and self-development? Working with these questions, coworkers at Camphill have formed the innovative Camphill Academy, formerly the Camphill School of Curative Education and Social Therapy. The Academy creates formal opportunities and spaces for learning within the life of its member communities, including full-time courses of practice- and community-integrated studies in the fields embraced by the work of Camphill. It aims to provide college level transformative learning that allows individuals to unfold their potential to contribute to healing—of the human being, society, and the earth. Students experience immersive and experiential learning, as well as conceptual and inner life enhancement. They participate in programs uniting knowledge, art, and practice through the cultivation of anthroposophy as founded by Rudolf Steiner and the approaches to action research, phenomenological study, and contemplative inquiry that arise from it. As an expression of the activity of the School of Spiritual Science, the Camphill Academy seeks to be a force for renewal in the context of North American higher education.

As a community of learning, the Camphill Academy includes participating member communities of the Camphill Association in North America and the North American Council of Anthroposophic Curative Education and Social Therapy. Experiencedcoworkers, most of whom have significant anthroposophical training as well as university degrees, are faculty and mentors. Their own education has been furthered by their work in Camphill, and they in turn can teach and guide newer coworkers who choose to take the Academy’s offerings. Students can experience intensely human encounters, deepening their understanding of themselves and others—of the human experience—from experiencing community life with those who are considered “less abled” or atypical. Combined with organizational, ecological experiences and course work including the arts, life and learning can take place in increasingly healthful ways. Students can “hold as questions” new ideas and concepts, as life and work unfold daily, demanding skill and new approaches.

Already in 2005, 2007 and 2010, the Program was evaluated by the National College Credit Recommendation Service of the University of the State of New York and received college credit recommendations, allowing students to earn transferable undergraduate credit and complete BA degrees through cooperation with accredited BA completion programs. In 2008, the first student received his BA in Education with a Competency in Curative Education from Prescott College. This partnership continues to evolve, and graduates of the program have continued as graduate students in master’s programs, including teacher certification programs, and have established themselves as professionals in fields as varied as child development, human services, social farming, non-profit management, and international aid work. The Academy is also collaborating with the Waldorf Education faculty at Antioch University New England to offer a new advanced-track MEd with a Transdisciplinary Focus on Healing Education [ www.antiochne.edu/teacher-education/waldorf/ ].

Higher education gets a lot of press these days— mostly because students who long for the credentials, if not the education itself, often are in the position of remaining in debt for a very long time in order to meet the costs. In fact, forprofit colleges are now being viewed as the next attempt to entice low incomeyouth into taking on huge debt—and profiting as the government pays colleges via grants and loans. The Academy’s programs do not require funding from individual students. Students’ full participation in the program in a Camphill or North American Council community’s life is supported by the member communities, by the Camphill Foundation, and by charitable gifts to the Camphill Foundation. To learn more about the Camphill Academy, visit www.camphillschool.org.

Diedra Heitzman, MSW, (diedra@camphillkimberton.org) is Secretary of the Board of Directors and Resident Volunteer at Camphill Village Kimberton Hills, Pennsylvania. Jan Goeschel, MA, PhD, is a trained Waldorf teacher and curative educator, currently serving as Director of the Camphill School of Curative Education and Social Therapy.