The First Teachers’ Course

A joint project of the Education Research Group of the Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen Duetschland and the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum


This book contains lectures and an address from the First Teachers’ Course given by Rudolf Steiner to prospective teachers in preparation for the opening of the first Waldorf School in the fall of 1919. The 14-day intensive course consisted of lectures on anthropological foundations of education and teaching methods in the morning, and several hours of practicing teaching in the afternoon.

This edition of the First Teachers’ Course combines what used to be published as three separate volumes (The Foundations of Human Experience  or The Study of Man, Practical Advice to Teachers,  and Discussions with Teachers) and presents the lectures in chronological order as they were given, allowing readers to enter more fully into the spirit of the course.

The translation is rendered with fluid and accessible language that would allow readers from various language backgrounds to grapple with Steiner’s demanding contents without being impeded by unnecessarily complex sentence structures or terminology.


This English translation is of the following three volumes from Rudolf Steiner’s complete works (Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, GA):

GA 293 Allgemeine Menschenkunde als Grundlage der Pädagogik, 10th edition, Basel 2019, edited by Urs Dietler.

GA 294 Erziehungskunst. Methodisch-Didaktisches, 7th edition, Basel 2019, edited by Urs Dietler.

GA 295 Erziehungskunst. Seminarbesprechengen und Lehrplanvorträge, 5th edition, Basel 2019, edited by Susanne Speckenback, Andrea Leubin, and Urs Dietler.


Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Donarch and Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Basel, Switzerland.