Explanation of Waldorf's Spiritual Approach to Children's Education and its Critique with Emphasis on Islamic Teachings M

The main purpose of this research is explanation of Waldorf's spiritual approach to children's education and its critique with emphasis on Islamic teachings. For this purpose, the descriptive-analytical method is used to identify and describe the components of Waldorf's spiritual perspective on children's education. Then, using the regressive analysis in Frankena’s method, the philosophical foundations of Waldorf's spiritual approach to children’s education are investigated. In the second part, Waldorf's spiritual approach to children's education is criticized by using the method of critical philosophical enquiry emphasizing the Islamic point of view. The results of this research indicate that Waldorf's spiritual approach pays attention to features such as: the development of children's whole beings, strengthening their artistic potentialities, developing their spiritual perception, emphasizing meaning-making and finding meaning, and freedom as the goal of education. These features are based on philosophical foundations such as: The existence of a spiritual world beyond the material world, the existence of various spiritual beings, the unity of the universe in a spiritual sense, looking at the child as a spiritual being, the repeated reincarnation of humans, emphasizing the senses, intellect, inspiration and intuition as sources of knowledge, the interaction between objectivity and subjectivity in the pursuit of knowledge, and the matching of human "I" with "Christ" as the ultimate goal of human life. In criticizing Waldorf's spiritual approach based on the Islamic point of view, it became clear that Waldorf's views on the nature of the transcendental and the belief in reincarnation are not acceptable in the Islamic view. At the same time, some educational implications of the mentioned approach, such as looking at the child as a spiritual being and honoring him, paying attention to the development of the child's whole being and especially his spiritual dimension, emphasizing artistic education and education based on the stages of child development, have commonalities with the Islamic perspective.