# Steiner schools schools which use the educational methods developed by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Steiner was the founder of anthroposophy, a spiritual movement still active in Europe and the United States, based on the notion that there is a spiritual world comprehensible to pure thought but accessible only to the highest faculties of mental knowledge. Anthroposophy centers on "knowledge produced by the higher self in man." Steiner's first school, which he characterized as a "school of spiritual science," was built near Basel, Switzerland in 1913. Many different types of schools have grown out of Steiner's work.