Our Mission Statement

We, the people living on this planet in 21st century, face many challenges.
Education is one of the most important themes in the modern era as we seek a way of living as free human beings while retaining our hope for the future.

Our shared passion gathered us here to establish a place for children and adults to learn together in order to inherit and pass on our history and culture.

We aim to practice a form of education in which all children are accepted with love and respect, so that they feel the wonder of life and realize the meaning of their existence, and maintain a balanced relationship with the environment and people.

It is an education in which children can create lives of their own through self-determination, outside the constraints of established values.
In order to practice “the education towards freedom,” our educators need to have a holistic view of humankind and education. They need to be skilled in timing and technique in dealing with children’s will, feeling and thought processes depending on age and the mind/body development of the child.

In the early 20th century, philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) made observations about humankind from the perspective of remote time and space. We empathize and practice these observations based on his views on the nature of human beings. Rudolf Steiner says in his lectures on education that, “Education needs to be heightened to an art form.” In his views he states that education is not only about transmitting knowledge or developing new skill, but it is “the art of human interaction” practiced in Waldorf schools throughout the world. Educators make their best efforts to offer a balanced and rich composition of music, poems, movement, color and shapes so that the children understand them to the depths of their soul.

These efforts have their maximal effects when the “freedom of education” is truly acknowledged as the spiritual, cultural domain of social activity. We believe that this education will be a new source of power for society, and so, in order to support these educational practices, we operate the school autonomously by each individual.

In Yokohama and its surrounding area, there are groups of parents and teachers that have been practicing the Waldorf style of education for preschoolers and elementary/middle school for more than a decade. Based on these grass-roots efforts, we hope to build “a school that grows with the community” in modern Japan and be a part of developing a healthy society.
We declare here the establishment of Yokohama Steiner School (Specified Nonprofit Corporation) as a full-time educational facility.

September 7, 2003
Yokohama Steiner School (Specified Nonprofit Corporation)