Sophia Mundi

Sophia Mundi is an inner city multi-campus school that develops and offers learning experiences based on the educational principles of Rudolf Steiner.

The first Steiner School opened in Stuttgart, Germany in 1919. It was an attempt to begin to heal the terrible social ills of the day in the aftermath of the First World War. It was part of a social impulse based on the same tenets as those of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, fraternity. Liberty was to pertain to freedom for the individual in matters of the spirit: in education, in religion. Fraternity, or brotherhood, would apply in relation to our economic, material responsibilities towards one-another, and equality in matters of rights and the law.

Steiner saw that for individuals to be a confident and a potent force in the future they would need to be educated in a way that kept their ‘spirit’ free, their ‘hearts’ warm and their ‘will’ active. Art and science would work together in this education.

Sophia Mundi was founded in 1985 in Richmond, Melbourne. Amongst the founding parents of Sophia Mundi were people whose own work was in the artistic and healing professions. They included artists, architects, nurses, social workers, healers. They worked for an education to support the free spiritual growth of their children. They envisaged Sophia Mundi as a place resounding with music, sounds of children playing freely, of artisans workshops, a place of strong community, woven into the surrounding community.

Sophia Mundi has recently taken significant steps into the community. Services to family health and care of young children are growing. Weaving into the wider community has expanded with considerable space to grow into and fill with artistic activity, drama and life. Adults are challenged daily to find a balance between enthusiastic individual initiatives and a need for tolerance and kindness towards one another. The children and students remind us that we have a common goal.