The Camphill Movement was founded in the 1940s by Austrian physician Karl Koenig (1902-1966), together with a group of other refugees from Austria and Germany, in Aberdeen, Scotland. As a movement for community-building and social renewal, Camphill has been involved in the practice of Curative Education, Social Therapy and related endeavors since its beginnings.
With the spread of the Camphill Movement to North America in the 1960s, professional training in Curative Education and Social Therapy also became available on this continent, through what was then known as the ‘Camphill Seminar’.
In September 1979 the first conference of the newly founded International Curative Education and Social Therapy Council, a department of the Medical Section of the School of Spiritual Science, took place at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. From 1979 on and into the 1980s, faculty members of the Camphill Seminar at Camphill Special School took part in regular conferences, bringing together faculty from the various Camphill Seminars that had grown throughout the international Camphill Movement.
More recently, the Curative Education Program at Camphill Special School in Glenmoore, PA and the Social Therapy Program at Camphill Village Copake, NY have undergone substantial revisions and upgrades.
In 2005 and 2007, the Curative Education Program was evaluated by the National Program on Noncollegiate Sponsored Instruction (now National College Credit Recommendation Service) of the University of the State of New York and received college credit recommendations, allowing students to earn transferable undergraduate credit and complete B.A. degrees through cooperation with accredited B.A. completion programs. In 2008 the first student received his B.A. in Education with a Competency in Curative Education from Prescott College.
Meanwhile, the Social Therapy Program in Camphill Village Copake underwent similar revisions, following a four-year curriculum aligned with that of the Curative Education Program and with close cooperation among faculty and joint retreats and workshops. At the same time, efforts began to find ways to extend the possibility of full-time practice-integrated studies in Curative Education, Youth Guidance, and Social Therapy to those communities that lacked the resources to support a complete program by themselves. This led to the development of the Community-Based Extension Program. In 2010, the first two years of the Social Therapy Program and the Community-Based Extension Program were reviewed and recommended for college credit by National CCRS (formerly National PONSI), making these learning experiences transferable to suitable B.A. completion programs.
Today the three sister programs exist side-by-side, each with its distinct emphasis, each a member of the community of learning that is the Camphill School of Curative Education and Social Therapy.
