About Camphill
Curative Education and Social Therapy
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is curative education?
- How does curative education differ from traditional remedial education approaches?
- What specific educational practices and methods are involved in curative education?
- What is social therapy?
- What are the origins of curative education and social therapy?
- Sources (For More Information)
What is curative education?
Curative education is an interdisciplinary approach to addressing the unique needs of people with developmental disabilities. It involves the integrated use of practices taken from remedial pedagogy, from medicine and psychiatry, from a variety of therapeutic techniques, and from the arts. These practices are tuned to the developmental needs of each individual; in fact, the specific challenges and potential of each person are the starting point for all curative education work.
Curative education is based on the understanding that the student and teacher are closely interdependent, with each contributing to the other’s psychological and spiritual development.
Generally, the term “curative education” refers to the work with children. The related approach to supporting adults with disabilities is referred to as “social therapy.”
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How does curative education differ from traditional remedial education approaches?
Many remedial education practices focus on disabilities as categories. They do not view individuals with disabilities as people with needs and potentials that are unique to them. Focusing on categories risks leaving each person’s unique value hidden and, consequently, each person’s specific wishes and developmental needs remain unmet.
Curative education has a different philosophy. It intentionally cultivates the full intensity of each person’s life, with the abilities, talents and gifts that each can contribute to his or her world.
Curative education also differs in its focus on community. It is well known that people always learn from their relationships with others: parents, teachers, siblings, classmates, and members of the surrounding community. Curative education harnesses the developmental power of those relationships as an actual method of pedagogy, by building relationships within a community to create social forms that facilitate learning, personal growth and development.
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What specific educational practices and methods are involved in curative education?
Curative education includes several areas: classroom-based teaching of traditional school subjects, crafts, physical activities, and a wide range of complementary therapies, as well as support in daily life through residential care, parent education and/or family support services.
- In the classroom, subjects such as reading, math, sciences, and the humanities are taught at an age and development appropriate level. Teaching differs by focusing on a strongly artistic element, which also engages the aesthetic and emotional life of the child.
- Crafts are pursued as a means to develop motor skills, to promote motivation and to instill a work ethic that gives the learner a sense of his or her value in the community.
- Physical activity also builds motor skills. It aids children in the vital process of mastering their body, and accommodating themselves to the physical aspects of their disabilities.
- Complementary therapies work alongside of medical treatments, and include a wide array of practices: art therapy, music therapy, eurythmy (a form of movement therapy), play therapy, counseling, physiotherapy, speech therapy, rhythmic massage, hydrotherapy, and horse riding therapy. These bring harmony to the child’s’ cognitive, emotional and behavioral life, as well as addressing specific therapeutic needs.
- Through residential care, day care and/or support and education for families of children with disabilities, curative education addresses the overall life-circumstances of a child, including aspects that fall beyond the scope of classroom education and specific therapeutic methods.
Curative education needs an interdisciplinary environment that allows for the integration of all of these aspects. Ideally, This is provided through a community that can embrace the children and their families and create spaces for teachers, therapists, homemakers, doctors, artists, craftsmen and other to work together collaboratively beyond their specific professional responsibilities.
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What is social therapy?
Social therapy is the continual creation of a healing social and physical environment for adults with special needs. It is closely related to curative education in its philosophical foundations, but differs in practical approach and method. In supporting the lives of adults with disabilities, the emphasis shifts towards creating inclusive communities that can offer life situations appropriate for people with a diverse range of needs and abilities.
Social therapy is practiced by individuals who aim to discern the right thoughts, words and deeds needed to bring healing to a particular situation. His or her skills can grow through training courses and practical experience, but the true source of this capacity is an individual’s practice of an inner path of conscious self-development.
The practice of social therapy stands on the principle that the only authentic and sustainable motivation for work is an interest in meeting the needs of others. Social therapy recognizes that people with special needs are themselves teachers and care-givers. Sharing life with people with special needs offers opportunities for self-knowledge and personal development for all, including those without identified disabilities.
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What are the origins of curative education and social therapy?
Curative education and social therapy go back to the early 1920s and the pioneering work of the Austrian philosopher and educator, Rudolf Steiner. The approaches to education and therapy pioneered by Steiner spread slowly throughout Europe through the 1920s and 1930s. After the end of the Second World War, they became much more widespread. They are used today in many contexts, including Anthroposophic medicine and Waldorf education (named for the first such school created by Rudolf Steiner). The International Curative Education and Social Therapy Council (www.khsdornach.org/en), provides an international forum and network for ongoing research, development and cooperation in this field.
In 1939, Dr Karl König, an Austrian pediatrician, founded the Camphill Movement in Scotland. The movement practices community-building, based on Steiner’s philosophy and social principles, as a context and foundation for the practice of curative education and social therapy. All Camphill communities are affiliated with the International Curative Education and Social Therapy Council.
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Sources
Foundation Grantees
