THE TEACHERS OF THE WALDORF SCHOOL.
I alluded yesterday to what takes place when the boys and girls one is
educating come to be 14 or 15 years old and reach puberty. At this
stage, a teacher who takes his responsibilities seriously will
encounter many difficulties. And these difficulties are particularly
apparent in a school or college where the education is derived from
the nature of man. Now it is out of the question to overcome these
difficulties by extraneous discipline. If they are repressed now they
will only re-appear later in life in all manner of disguises. It is
far better to look them squarely in the face as an intrinsic part of
human nature and to deal with them. In a school like the Waldorf
School where boys and girls are educated together and are constantly
in each others company such difficulties occur very frequently.
We have already referred to the difference between boys and girls
which begins to appear about the 10th year. At this age girls begin to
grow more vigorously and, particularly, to shoot up in height. Boys
growth is delayed until round about puberty. After that, the boys
catch up with the girls. For one who observes the one interplay
between spirit, soul and body from the standpoint of a true human
knowledge, this is of great significance. For growing, the overcoming
of the earth's gravity by growth, engages the fundamental being of
man, his essential manhood, whereas it is not essentially a concern of
the human being whether a certain organic phenomenon appears at one
stage or another of his life. For, actually, certain cosmic,
extra-human influences which work in upon the human being from the
external world affect the female organism more intensely between the
10th and 12th year than they do the male organ-ism. In a certain sense
the female organism between the 10th and 12th year partakes even
bodily of the super-sensible world.
Please realise the importance of this: between the 10th and 12th year,
or the 13th and 14th, the female organism qua organism begins
to dwell in a spiritual element. It becomes permeated by spirit at
this period. And this affects the processes of the blood in girls in a
very special way. During these years the blood circulation is, as it
were, in contact with the whole universe. It must take its time from
the whole world, from the universe, and be regulated by it. And
experiments carried out to find the relationship between the rhythm of
pulse and breath between 10 and 12 years, even if done with external
instruments, would find the results among girls other than among boys.
The boy of 13 or 14 begins to show a nature hitherto unrevealed, and
he also begins to grow more than the girls do. He grows in all
directions. He makes up for the delay in his growing. At the same time
his relationship to the outer world is quite other than it was in the
earlier periods of his life. And so in boys it is the nervous system
which is now affected, rather than the circulation of the blood. Thus,
it can easily happen that the boy's nervous system gets overstrained
if the instruction at school is not given him in the right way. For in
these years, the form and content of language, or of the languages he
has learned, have an enormous influence upon him. The ideas of men
enshrined in language, or in foreign languages, press upon the boy,
beset him as it were, while his body grows more delicate. And so at
this age the whole world drones and surges within a boy — the
world, that is, of this earthly environment.
Thus: in girls a year or two sooner is implanted some-thing of the
surrounding universe; in boys earthly environment is implanted through
the medium of language. This is apparent externally in the boy's
change of voice. And indirectly, in connection with this
transformation in the voice enormously important things take place in
the boy's whole organism. In the female organism, this rounding off of
the voice is very slight. On the other hand in connection with the
quickened growing, there has been a preparation in the organism, which
is, as it were, a flowing into the maiden of supernal worlds. The
recent advances of materialistic science of the world come into their
own on a spiritual view.
You see when people hear that a spiritual outlook or spiritual values
are upheld somewhere, they are apt to say: O yes, those are queer
cranks who scorn the earth and all material things. And then comes the
natural scientist and cites the marvellous advances of purely material
science in recent centuries. And so people believe that anyone who
advocates a thing so alien to the world — not that I mean that
Anthroposophy is alien to the world — but that the world is alien
to Anthroposophy — but when a strange thing like Anthroposophy
appears, people think it is not concerned with material things, or
with practical life. But it is precisely Anthroposophy which takes up
the latest discoveries of the natural sciences, takes them up with
immense love and saturates them with the knowledge that can be got
from the spiritual world. So that it is precisely among those who
support spiritual philosophy that there exists a true appreciation of
materialism, a proper appreciation of materialism. The spiritualist
can afford to be a materialist. But the pure materialist loses
knowledge of matter when he loses the spirit, all he can observe is
the outer appearance of matter. It is just the materialist who loses
all insight into material happenings. I call attention to this as it
seems to me of great significance.
And you see, when you have the attitude of a Waldorf teacher towards
the children you look in quite a different way upon a child who has
reached puberty — a child who has just passed through that stage
of development which includes the organic changes I have alluded to
— you look upon this child in quite a different way from that of
a person who knows nothing of all this, who knows nothing of it, that
is, from the spiritual point of view.
A boy of 14 or 15 years old echoes in his being the world around him.
That is to say: words and their significant content are taken up
unconsciously into his nervous system, and they echo and sound on-in
his nerves. The boy does not know what to do with himself. Something
has come into him which begins to feel foreign to him now that he is
14 or 15. He comes to be puzzled by himself, he feels irresponsible.
And one who understands human nature knows well that at no time and to
no person, not even to a philosopher, does this two legged being of
the Earth called Anthropos seem so great a riddle as he does to
a fifteen year old boy. For at this age all the powers of the human
soul are beset by mystery. For now the will, the thing most remote
from normal consciousness, makes an assault upon the nervous system of
the 15 or 16 year old boy.
With girls it is different. But when we aim, as we should aim, at
equal treatment for both sexes, at an equal recognition, — a
thing which must come in the future — it is all the more
important to have clearly in view the distinction between them. So,
now, whereas for the boy his own self becomes a problem, he is
perplexed by himself, — for girls at this time the problem is the
world about them. The girl has taken up into herself something not of
the earth. Her whole nature is developing unconsciously within her.
And a girl of 14 or 15 is a being who faces the world in amazement,
finding it full of problems; above all, a being who seeks in the world
ideals to live by. Thus many things in the outer world become
enigmatic to a girl at this age.
To a boy the inner world presents many enigmas. To a girl it is the
outer world.
One must realise, one must come to feel, that one now has to deal with
quite new children — not the same children as before. And this
change in each child comes, in some cases, remarkably quickly, —
so that a teacher not alive to the transformation going on in the
children in his charge may fail to perceive that he is suddenly
confronting a new person.
You see, one of the most essential things in the training of the
Waldorf School teachers themselves is receptivity to the changes in
human nature. And this the teachers have acquired relatively quickly
for reasons which I shall explain. A Waldorf teacher — if I may
express myself paradoxically — a Waldorf teacher has to be
prepared to find a thing completely different to-morrow from what it
was yesterday. This is the real secret of his training. For instance:
one usually thinks in the evening: to-morrow the sun will rise and
things will be the same as they are to-day. Now, — to use a
somewhat drastic mode of expression which brings out my meaning —
the Waldorf teacher must be prepared for the sun not to rise one day.
For only when one views human nature afresh like this, without
prejudice from the past, is it possible to apprehend growth and
development in human beings. We may repose in the assurance that
things out there in the universe will be somewhat conservative. But
when it is a case of that transition in human nature from the early
years of childhood into the 14th, 15th and 16th year, why then, ladies
and gentlemen, the sun that rose earlier often does not rise. Here, in
this microcosm, Man, in this Anthropos, so great a change has
come about that we face an entirely new situation. As though nature
upon some day should confront us with a world of darkness, a world in
which our eyes were of no use.
Openness, a readiness to receive new wisdom daily, a disposition which
can subdue past knowledge to a latent feeling which leaves the mind
clear for what is new, — this it is that keeps a man healthy,
fresh and active. And it is this open heart for the changes in life,
for its unexpected and continuous freshness, which must form the
essential mood and nature of a Waldorf teacher.
How the relationship between boys and girls of this age and their
teachers is significantly affected by this change can be seen from an
episode which occurred last year in the Waldorf School. One day when I
was back once again at the Waldorf School for the purpose of directing
the teaching and education — a thing I can only do intermittently
— a girl of the top class came to me between lessons, in —
what I might call — a mood of suppressed aggression. She was very
moved, but she said to me with prodigious inner determination:
‘Can we speak to you to-day — it is very urgent — may
the whole class speak to you to-day? (i.e. the top class). But we only
want to do it if you wish it.’ You see, she had constituted
herself leader of the class and wished to speak to me in the presence
of the whole class. What was the reason? The reason was that the boys
and girls had come to feel for their part that they were not in touch
with the teachers; they found it hard to get in touch with the
teachers, to make a right contact with them.
This had not arisen from any grudge against the teachers. For among
the children of the Waldorf School there is no grudge against the
teachers. On the contrary, even in the short time of the School's
existence, the children have come to love their teachers. But these
children of the top class, these boys and girls of 15 and 16 now had a
terrible fear that owing to the new relationship which had come about
between pupils and teachers they might lose this love, this love might
diminish. They had a most extraordinary fear of this. And in this case
I did not do what perhaps would have been done in past times if
children had blurted out this sort of thing, — namely snub them
and put them in their places — but I went out to meet them and
talked to them. And I spoke to the children — but at this age of
course one should call them young ladies and gentlemen, as I said
before — I spoke to them in such a way that they could realise I
was prepared then and there to discuss the question with them, and
together with them come to a conclusion. We will talk to one another
without restraint and arrive at some decision together when we see
what the matter is:
And then, what came out was what I have just described: a great
anxiety lest they should be unable to love the teachers in the same
way as before. For an enormous wonder, a great curiosity concerning
certain things in the world had entered into the children. And since
Waldorf School pedagogy is evolved day by day every occurrence must be
carefully studied and educational measures are founded upon living
experience.
Now the children said a great deal that was rather remote from the
issue, but it seemed immensely important to themselves, and they felt
it deeply. Then I said a good many things to them, don't you know, of
how one finds this or that in life as time goes on, to which the
children eagerly assented. And all that was necessary was to arrange a
slight shifting of teachers for the following school year. At the
outset of the next school year, I allotted the teaching of languages
to a different teacher; I changed the teachers round. What is more, we
realised in the college of teachers that this was the method we should
use throughout the school, to come to decisions from out of a working
in common. But in order to stomach this new position — this
meeting with young ladies and gentlemen of this age on equal terms,
where one was formerly an authority — in order to be equal to
this situation it is essential to have what the Waldorf teachers have
— an open outlook on the world, to be a man of the world. We call
it in German: to have a Weltanschauung, (a philosophy). Not merely to
have taken a training in teaching method, but to have one's own
answers to questions as to the fate of humanity, the significance of
historical epochs, the meaning of present day life, etc. And these
questions must not buzz in one's head, but must be borne in one's
heart, then one will have a heartfelt experience of them in company
with the children. For in the course of the last four or five hundred
years of western civilisation we have entered deeply into
intellectualism; this however is unnoticed by the majority of men. But
intellectualism is a thing suited naturally only to men of advanced
years. The child is naturally averse to intellectualism. And yet all
our modern thinking is tinged with intellectualism. The only people
who are not intellectual so far are the people over there in Asia and
in Russia as far as Moscow (i.e. Asiatic Russia). But west of Moscow
as far as America, intellectualism is universal. We are not aware of
it, but in so far as we belong to the so-called cultured classes we
think a kind of mental language that is incomprehensible to children.
And this accounts for the gulf there is nowadays between grown-up
people and children. This gulf must be bridged by teachers such as the
Waldorf school teachers. (literally: this chasm must be filled up).
And it can only be bridged when one can see deeply into human nature.
Allow me therefore, to tell you something of a physiological nature
which is not usually taken into account, since it can only be rightly
appreciated when it confronts one as a fact of spiritual science, a
fact of spiritual knowledge. Now people think that it is a great
accomplishment when a thing is put in the form of a concept, when
there is an idea, a notion of a thing. But only people who judge
everything according to their heads believe this. Truths are often
terribly paradoxical. For if we enter into the unconscious, into the
heart nature, the feeling nature of man, we find that all concepts,
all ideas are bound up for every man — even for a philosopher
— with a slight feeling of antipathy; there is something
distasteful, disgusting, in the formulating of ideas: whether one is
conscious of it or not, there is always something distasteful. Hence
it is so enormously important to know that one must not accentuate
this hidden unconscious disgust in children by surfeiting them with
concepts and ideas. Now you see it comes from the fact that when a man
has been thinking, when he has thought hard the inside of his brain
presents a curious formation — unfortunately I can only give you
results in this account, it would take many lectures to demonstrate it
to you physiologically; I can now only give the facts. Now the brain
is permeated throughout by deposits, compounds of phosphorus lie all
about the brain. These have been deposited during the process of
thought. Particularly if one is thinking oneself, thinking one's own
thoughts, the brain becomes filled with unreason — forgive the
word — full of deposited products such as phosphoric acid
compounds; they litter the brain and be-slime it. These excretions,
these deposits are only removed from the organism when a man sleeps or
rests.
Thus, corresponding to the process of thought is not a process of
growth or a process of digestion, but a catabolic process, a breaking
down of substances. And when I follow a train of thought with some-one
of a certain degree of maturity, i.e. over 14, 15, or 16 years old,
together with him I am setting up a catabolic process, a depositing of
substance. It brings about the breaking down of substance. And in this
separation, this eliminating of substance, he experiences his
humanity. (Tr. Note: i.e. it provides a basis for self-consciousness).
Now if, on the other hand, I simply dictate ideas to him, if I give
him finite concepts which have been formulated dogmatically I put him
into a peculiar state. For these finite concepts can get no hold in
human nature, they jostle and press upon one another and can find no
entry into the brain, but they beat up against the brain and thus
cause it to use up over again in its nerve activity the old deposited
substances which lie about.
The effect brought about by all finite intellectual concepts is to
compel a man to use over again the cast-off substances which lie about
within him; and this gives the human being a feeling of slight
disgust, which remains unconscious but which influences his whole
disposition so much the more. You see, unless one knows these things,
one cannot appreciate their importance. And people do not realise that
thinking is a breaking down of substance (ein Absondern), and that
thinking in mere ideas forces man to use once again what he has thrown
off, to knead up over again all his cast-off phosphoric acid salts.
Now this is of enormous importance in its application to moral
education: if we give the child definite precepts in conceptual form,
we oblige him to come to morality in the form of ideas, and then
antipathy arises; man's inner organism sets itself against abstract
moral precepts or commandments, it opposes them. But I can encourage
the child to form his own moral sentiments direct from life, from
feeling, from example and subsequently lead him on to the breaking
down, to the catabolic stage, and get him to formulate moral
principles as a free autonomous being. In this case I am helping him
to an activity which benefits his entire being. Thus, if I give a
child moral precepts I make morality distasteful, disgusting, to him,
and this fact plays an important part in modern social life. You have
no idea how much disgust human beings have felt for some of the most
beautiful, the noblest, the mast majestic of man's moral impulses
because they have been presented to them in the form of precepts, in
the form of intellectual ideas.
Now the Waldorf teacher comes to learn such things as this through
spiritual science. It is indeed this that gives him insight into these
material processes. Let me repeat: materialism takes its true place in
life only when looked at from the spiritual standpoint. For this gives
insight of what is really going on in man. Only through adopting the
spiritual standpoint can one become a truly practical educator in the
physical sphere.
But such a thing is only possible when the teacher or educator has
himself a philosophy of life; when his own view of the world makes him
feel the deep significance of the problem of the universe and of man's
fate.
And here again I must say an abstract thing, but in reality it is a
very concrete thing. It is only apparently abstract. You see, man
confronts the riddle of the universe, and he seeks a solution to this
riddle. But people suppose nowadays that the solution of the riddle
could be put down in some book, stated and expressed in some form of
ideas. Remember, however, that there are people — and I have met
some of them — who have an extreme horror of such a solution of
the riddle of the universe. For they say: if it should really happen
that a solution of the riddle of life were discovered and written down
in a book, what in Heaven's name are other people who come after them
to do? It would be most terribly boring. All contributions to the
solution of the world riddle are there to hand, they only require to
be learned. And people think this would be colossally boring. I don't
altogether blame them; the world really would be a boring place if
someone wrote a book containing the answer to the riddle of the
universe once and for all, and we could read the book, and then —
why then what indeed would remain for us to do in the world?
Now you see there must be something in existence which, when we have
the key to it, the so-called solution, calls for further effort on our
part, calls upon us to go on and to work on. The riddle of the
universe should not be stated as a thing to be solved and done with:
the solution of it should give one power to make a new start. And if
world problems are rightly understood this comes about. The world
presents many problems to us. So many, that we cannot at once even
perceive them all By problems I do not only mean those things for
which there are abstract answers, but questions as to what we shall
do, as to the behaviour of our will and feelings, as to all the many
details of life. When I say the world sets us many problems, I mean
such questions as these. What then is the real answer to these many
problems? The real answer is none other than: man himself. The world
is full of riddles and man confronts them. He is a synthesis, a
summary, and from man comes to us the answer to the riddle of the
universe.
But we do not know man as he should be known. We must begin at the
beginning. Man is an answer that takes us back to the beginning. And
we must learn to know this answer to our problem, Man, this Oedipus.
And this drives us to experience anew the mystery of our own selves.
Every new man is a fresh problem to be worked at.
If one desires to be a Waldorf teacher, which means to work from a
true philosophy of life, this mysterious relationship between man and
the world must have become second nature; (literal translation: it
must become an unconscious wisdom of the feelings.) Certainly people
take alarm to-day if one says: the Waldorf teachers start from
Anthroposophy: this gives them their vision. For how if this
Anthroposophy should be very imperfect? That may be. Produce other
philosophies then, which you think are better. But a philosophy is a
necessity to one who has to deal with human beings as an artist. And
this is what teaching involves.
How far the anthroposophical attitude to things contains something
helpful alike to education and teaching will be the subject of the
third part of my lecture to-day.
When I look back over these nine lectures, I find much to criticise,
much that is imperfect, but the most regrettable thing about them is
that I should have given them at all in the form in which I have given
them. I would far rather not have had to give these lectures —
paradoxical as this may sound. That I should have had to give them is
in keeping with the spirit of the time, far too much so, for it seems
to me that there is an incredible amount of talk about the nature of
education and teaching in our age, far too rich; people seem, driven
far too much to discuss the question: how shall we educate, how shall
we teach? And when one has to enter into these questions oneself, even
though it is from a different stand-point, one realises how much too
much of it there is.
But why is it there is so much talk today about education and
teaching? Almost every little town you come to announces lectures on
how to educate, how to teach. Now how does it come about that there is
so much discussion of this subject, so many conferences and talks
everywhere? If we look back to earlier ages of human history we shall
not find people talking nearly so much about education. Edu-cation was
a thing people did naively, by instinct, and they knew what they were
about.
Now I have said that a truly healthy education, a healthy instruction,
must be based on a knowledge of man, and that the staff of the Waldorf
School has to acquire this knowledge of man in the way I have shown,
and it may well be asked: did the men of earlier ages then possess a
knowledge of man so infinitely greater than ours? Strange as it may
seem, the answer is: yes. Certainly men of former ages were not so
enlightened in the domain of natural science as we are; but earlier
men knew more about man in their own way than we do. I mentioned
before in these lectures that man has gradually come to be regarded by
us as a final product. We contemplate all the other creatures in the
world and say: they have evolved up to man, the final product; and
here we stop and we say extraordinarily little about man himself. Our
physiology even tries to find explanations of man in the experiments
done upon animals. We have lost the ability to give man a position in
the world as a thing in himself. To a large extent we have lost the
being of man.
Now anthroposophy seeks to give mankind once more that knowledge of
the world which shall not exclude man himself, which shall not regard
him at most as the latest of the organisms. But a knowledge of the
world where what one knows about the world truly gives a power to see
into the real nature of man, to know him in soul, in body and in
spirit. Further, that one shall be able to know what the spirit
actually does in man; that one shall know: the intellectual form of
the spirit breaks down substances, in the way I described. Now our
present way of considering history does not attain this. It makes a
halt on reaching man and classifies him with the animals. It
formulates a biology, and connects this with physiology; but there is
no grasp of what man is. As a result, men act to-day a great deal out
of instinct; but as an object of knowledge, of science, there man is
not favoured.
The teacher requires a science which will enable him to love man once
more — because he can first love his own knowledge. There is much
wisdom behind the fact that formerly men did not speak simply of
acquiring knowledge, but they spoke of philosophia, of a love of
knowledge. Anthroposophy would bring it about that mankind should once
more have knowledge which can lead to knowledge of man.
Now, when one knows the human being, when all know-ledge and science
centres in man, then one can find the answer to educational questions
in every part of one's philosophy. The discoveries and the knowledge
required, even about children, are to be found on all hands. And it is
this that we need. It is because our ordinary science can tell us
nothing about education or instruction that we make extra institutions
and have to talk so much about education and teaching. Such lectures
as these will only have achieved their object when they shall have
become superfluous, namely, when there shall no longer be any
necessity to treat this as a special theme, when we shall once again
possess a philosophy, a knowledge of the world in which education is
implicit so that a teacher having this knowledge is also possessed of
the art of education, and can exercise it spontaneously,
instinctively. Our need to talk so much about education shows how
little impulse for education is contained in the rest of our
knowledge.
We need a complete change of direction.
This is the real reason why the Waldorf Teachers do not cultivate a
definite and separate pedagogy and didactic, but cultivate a
philosophy of life which by teaching them knowledge of man makes it
possible for them to have spontaneous impulses for education, to be
naive once more in education. And this explains why, in speaking of a
Waldorf Teacher one must speak of man as a whole.
This also precludes there being anything fanatical about Waldorf
School education. Fanaticism — which is so rife among men —
is here ruled out. Fanaticism is the worst thing in the world,
particularly in education, — a fanaticism which makes a man press
on in one direction and push ahead regardless of anything but his one
aim, reduced to precise slogans.
But if one looks at the world, without prejudice one will concede:
views and opinions are but views and opinions. If I have a tree here
and photograph it, I have one view of it; the view from here
has a definite form; but the view is different from here, and
again different from over there; so that you might think it was not
the same tree if you only had the pictures to go by. In the same way
there are points of view in the world, there are outlooks. Each one
only regards one aspect of things. If you know that things must be
looked upon from the most manifold standpoints you avoid fanaticism
and dwell in many-sidedness, in a universality.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if one realises that what people say in the
world is for the most part not wrong, only one-sided: that one needs
to take the other view into consideration, that all that is necessary
is to see the other side also — then one will find goodness
everywhere. Hence it is so strange when one is talking of Waldorf
education and A. comes and says: Yes, we do this already, but B. does
it all wrong. And then B. comes and says: We do this, but A. does it
badly. Now a Waldorf teacher would say A. has his good points and R.
has his good points; and we seek to use what can be found universally.
That is why one hears so often: Waldorf School pedagogy says the same
things that we say ourselves. But this is not so, rather we say things
which others afterwards can assent to because we know that a fanatical
pursuit of one definite line works the utmost damage. And it is
essential for the Waldorf teacher to be free from any kind of
fanaticism, and confront purely the reality of the growing child.
True, many people may say: there is an Anthroposophical movement, we
have met many fanatics in it. But if they look into things more
closely they will find: the aim of Anthroposophy is to make knowledge
universal and to spiritualise it. That it is called Anthroposophy is a
matter of indifference, as I have explained. Actually, it has no other
object but the making universal once more what has become one-sided.
If, nevertheless, people have found fanaticism, dogmatism, a swearing
by definite precepts, within the Anthroposophical movement, this has
come in from outside, it is not inherent in the movement; for much is
caned into the movement which does not accord with its nature and
being. Therefore when it is said that there is also a sect of some
kind behind the Waldorf School principles, where people indulge all
kinds of crazes, one should study the matter properly and find out the
facts and what it is the Waldorf School lives by. Then one will see
that Anthroposophy can indeed give life to education and teaching, and
that, far from pursuing anything preposterous or falsely idealistic it
seeks only to realise the human ideal in living human beings.
And with this indication that the life that speaks through the Waldorf
teacher is derived from this source I will bring these lectures to a
close. And let me add that although I said that I regretted that these
lectures had had to be given — nevertheless it has been a great,
joy to me to give them and I thank the honourable audience for the
attention and interest they have accorded them.
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