Many conservatives have found the philospical insights of Austrian scholar Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D., (1861-1925), on education and agriculture, most illuminating. Steiner may be best known for his outstanding contribution to education with Waldorf or Steiner education. Based upon his philosophy of the person, the aim is to present a holistic approach to develop the individuality and creativity of each student, to encourage the physical, behavioural, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual aspects of the student. Teaching focuses upon imagination and creativity. This is a long way from what I experienced as a teacher in Australian high schools with most of the time being spent on riot control in a white board jungle.
Steiner also had a holistic philosophy of agriculture, biodynamic farming, and readers may have sampled this in the delicious Paris Creek Farm yoghurt. This is the best yoghurt I have ever tasted. The idea of Steiner was to adopt a spiritual-ethical-ecological approach to agriculture, with biodynamic farming not only embracing organic farming, but being self-sustaining, anticipating he permaculture movement of creating a farm ecosystem. So far, so good.