Educating Traumatized Children

Waldorf Today, March 14, 2022 Our book reviews are arranged many weeks in advance. I had no way of knowing that current events in Europe would make the review of Educating Traumatized Children all the more relevant. Teachers and parents will both sense the relevance of this book in the modern educational landscape. Trauma, much as we might hope to relegate it to the purview of special educators and therapists, has become a daily facet of life. Gone are the days when only one or two children in a class were in need of special help. Bernd Ruf found his calling at the time of the 2006 Lebanon War. Since then he has facilitated the development of Emergency Education. He and teams of teachers, doctors, psychologists, and therapists have taken part in crisis interventions around the world. They work with psychologically traumatized children and young people in war zones and disaster areas. Bernd Ruf presents an anthroposophical understanding of trauma itself. There is a an extensive examination of psychological trauma and healing the frozenness of trauma. The book contains many vignettes of their trauma work and concludes with emergency education as threshold education. Although the book is written primarily out of the experience of emergency educators in trauma situations, I would imagine that many classroom teachers and parents would find much they recognize in their normal world. Five stars. Great book. --David Kennedy, Waldorf Today