Social Sculpture and Education: Schiller, Steiner, Beuys and Sacks

Abstract

This essay tries to reconstruct the idea and history of an alternative model of education, which – based on a model writing by Friedrich Schiller from the late eighteenth century – continues to formulate and practice alternatives to predominant educational practices. It highlights the way in which Friedrich Schiller’s ideas about the aesthetic education of the human being and Rudolf Steiner’s theories about an alternative educational practice could be seen as important sources for the development of the idea of Social Sculpture brought into discussion by Joseph Beuys and which has been developed, taught and practiced by South African artist Shelley Sacks for more than 20 years at the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University.